Supernatural: Girls, Girls, Girls (10x07)

Alrighty! I'm pretty late with this review. Sorry. But I liked it! For the most part!

Sam is amused and annoyed to discover that Dean has taken them on a detour to meet up with a girl from a dating app so that he can get laid. However, the joke is quickly on Dean, as he discovers that the girl is a prostitute. However, her payment isn't money - it's her soul. Dean quickly gets the girl to confess that she has been forced into this job, and he and Sam trap the demon responsible. Before they can question the demon about the brothel where other such forced prostitution is going on, the angry woman kills her pimp, cutting off their best lead. However, they are still able to track down Raoul, the man running this operation, by finding some of the cards he passed out to possible clients.

When they get there, someone has beaten them to it, and Raoul is already dead. It was a witch by the name of Rowena. She liberates some of the women who were forced into prostitution, taking them under her wing to train them as witches. Sam and Dean track her to a fancy hotel. Sam tries to fend off one of the girls, who Rowena has transformed into some sort of monster. Dean chases down Rowena, and actually manages to stop her. However, at this unlucky moment, Cole shows up to finish things with Dean once and for all. He forces Dean to let Rowena go.

Dean and Cole fight, and Dean manages to overpower Cole. However, he hands him back his gun, saying that if Cole still wants to kill him once he's explained himself, then Dean will let him have his shot. He explains that Cole's father was a monster, and reveals that he does in fact remember having killed him. Sam shows up but Dean tells him to put his gun down and let him keep talking with Cole. He tells Cole that the people who love him had pulled him back from the edge of darkness, but that once that darkness is in you, there's nothing you can do to stop it. Cole has a family that he has to get back to, so he shouldn't do this. And... Cole decides not to. He drives off to head back home.

Rowena doesn't get away entirely, though. She is captured by some of the other demons who were running the brothel, and brought to Crowley. (Crowley, by the way, is not happy that they created a brothel in his name). Crowley goes in to see the prisoner, and is very shocked - Rowena is Crowley's mother!

Cas and Hannah's subplot is pretty brief. As they continue on their mission to track down angels on Earth, Hannah's vessel's husband shows up. He demands to know why Caroline left him. Hannah, pretending to be Caroline, lies and says she ran off to be with Cas, kissing him as proof of their relationship. Later, Hannah says that she thinks it's time to give Caroline her life back. Since she has been on Earth and in a human body, she has felt so many human emotions and hungers. And when Caroline's husband showed up, she felt Caroline screaming to get out and return to her life. She leaves her vessel and goes back up to Heaven. Cas helps Caroline get home, and then does research on his own vessel, Jimmy Novak.

Okay! Do I have problems?

Well, one kind of big one, actually. I'm a bit confused as to why the Rowena plot and the Cole plot were in one episode. It felt like two entirely different stories going on. Why wouldn't they save Rowena for later, if they wanted to wrap up the Cole plot so badly? They could have been on any old run of the mill case when Cole interrupted, but this is a rather important one, don't you think? For that matter, what's the hurry to wrap up the whole thing with Cole? It feels really silly that we introduced this character just seven episodes ago and are now apparently done with him? The pacing of the overall season feels off, especially considering we only got Demon!Dean for three episodes, and it's obviously going to be quite a while until the whole Mark of Cain thing comes back into play in any serious way. I don't know... I just wish we could have had a whole episode to focus on Rowena's epic introduction.

This isn't really a complaint so much as a question... are we really done with Hannah, too? I'm sad! I liked Hannah a lot! If Hannah is truly gone, what does this mean for Cas? Will he keep tracking down the rogue angels? It seems like most of them are back in Heaven anyway. What will he do next? What is his next mission? Also, I'm hoping and praying that Cas doesn't discover that somehow Jimmy is still alive in there. I would call major continuity bullshit. I mean, he's died more than once in that body and been resurrected. Jimmy is totally dead.

Despite the potential overcrowding effect of introducing Rowena at the same time as resolving Cole, I still did like this episode quite a bit.

First of all, I loved the fun brotherly banter at the beginning of the episode, coupled with their awesome teamwork in the fight against Rowena and the two apprenticed witches. My favorite moment was when the demon came into the room, saw Dean, then saw Sam come out of the adjoining room, and just said "Winchesters." That's like my favorite trope in all of Supernatural. I love it when there are references to how famous the Winchesters are in the supernatural world.

Rowena is awesome! I love her accent. I love her fun and silly way of speaking, her nearly childlike delight as she kills the demons. I had almost forgotten the mysterious murderous redhead from the end of 10x03, but it is pretty neat to discover that those bodies on the ceiling were actually demons, not humans. Rowena might be a piece of work, but at least she's not a human-killing piece of work. Except for the one girl that she... ahem... killed. And the waiter. A moral relativist if I've ever seen one. And the twist that she's Crowley's mother? Gold. I mean, I'll admit that I wasn't all that surprised, but it's still an excellent way to introduce a new villain. Crowley is our ultimate baddie, and he's far too interesting to kill off until the very end. So, how do we keep the new and interesting bad guys coming? Make them Crowley's mother, apparently! Lovely. Great work from the actress, too.

I also just loved all the strong women in this episode. These women working as prostitutes did not want to be there, and they weren't complacent in their subjugation. I mean, every demon that died in this episode was killed by either Rowena or by one of the other women. Awesome!

Dean's whole speech to Cole was really great. Of course, everyone has been freaking out about the "people who love me" line, which even the writer of the episode has confirmed is supposed to mean Sam and Cas. So great. And then what Dean says about not being able to come back from the darkness? Noo! My baby! I think it's so important for Dean's character right now that he feels helpless. And he probably feels that darkness still within him. From Sam's perspective, it's the Mark of Cain's fault and once they find a way to deal with it, everything will be fine. From Dean's perspective, he's marked, and not just by some little symbol on his arm. The things he did while he was a Demon are going to haunt him for the rest of his life. There's this little moment at the very end of the scene with Cole that I want to mention - as he takes the gun from Cole, their fingers brush just for a second. I don't know why, but I just really loved that. Dean saved himself and Cole by stopping Cole from shooting him.

Then there's the Cas and Hannah stuff. I don't know, maybe I'm a defective Destiel shipper, but that kiss was actually pretty hot. I think Cas was surprised that he liked being kissed by Hannah. He wanted to talk about it with her later. However, despite Hannah indicating interest in Cas in the past, it turns out that the kiss didn't mean anything to her. She is much more concerned about Caroline. All of her human emotions, including any feelings she might have had for Cas, were there because she was in a human vessel down on Earth. She knows now that stealing those feelings from Caroline is wrong, and she has to return to Heaven to give her vessel her life back. I also really loved the tiny moment of Caroline at the end. She seemed shaken, but she knew who Cas was, and she was obviously fond of him. That was nice. Usually vessels don't get to have a happy ending, so this was a nice reminder.

I think that's all the stuff I need to talk about. As we look forward, I'm most excited about returning to the bunker. We really haven't been there since Dean became human again! My fanfiction brain demands an angst-y brotherly conversation once they have returned to the place where Dean tried to kill Sam. I probably won't get what I want, but a girl can dream, right?

7/10