Supernatural: The Vessel (11x14)

I'm of two minds on this episode, because on the one hand I loved it, but on the other hand, I'm not sure that it served much of a purpose in the season as a whole.

Cons:

Like I said, for an A-plot episode this didn't really move us any further towards killing Amara. I mean, it exposed the whole Casifer thing to the boys, which was undeniably important, but this whole episode was centered around finding the Hand of God, a weapon that's supposed to help defeat Amara. And yet that particular tool is neutralized before the episode is out, so the whole thing amounted to zero net gain or loss for the boys. That's a bit frustrating, especially since I liked the good ol' days of finding magical tools that were going to help them defeat the baddies, like the Horsemen's rings, or the Colt, even. But sadly it was not to be. A lot of cool things were set up, and yet it amounted to nothing.

Dean goes back in time to a war submarine during World War II, and he encounters Delphine, a 1940's European Woman of Letters. She was great, but the other characters aboard the submarine didn't have a lot of meat to them. When it became clear that the submarine was destined to sink, and that all the people aboard it were destined to die, it would have packed a bigger punch if I had understood these characters a little better. It's odd, because a disproportionate amount of this episode was spent sitting around talking, which should have made for some good development. But besides Delphine, I didn't get a good grip on any of these sailors as individuals. It made it hard to get emotionally invested in their tragic sacrifice.

Pros:

But even despite the lack of specificity in the characters of the crew, I still really liked Dean's submarine adventure. Mostly, I loved Delphine. She's a bad ass Woman of Letters, and I like the fact that they didn't even hint about a romantic connection between Delphine and Dean. They were both there to do a job, they both knew the risks, and there was no shoe-horned romance to get in the way of that. Delphine's character was strong from beginning to end. I loved the cold open of the episode, where we see her posing as the mistress of an important Nazi. Once she gets him to show her the Hand of God, she kills him with no mercy and takes it herself. Awesome! She trusts Dean when he shows up, having traveled into the past to get the Hand of God before the ship can sink. This trust even leads her to sacrifice herself to get Dean out with the Hand of God. She was a strong and brave character, and I hope they find some way to bring her back into the story again. She was pretty great.

Meanwhile, Misha Collins steals the show as Lucifer, impersonating Cas for much of the episode. The opening scene showed that Lucifer is a careless ruler of Hell, giving his minions no direction. Crowley has been chained up like a dog, but Lucifer knows that his spirit isn't quite broken yet. This scene didn't add a lot to the rest of the episode, but it did set up the contrast between Lucifer, who is chaotic evil, and Crowley, who is lawful evil. We can see why we'd prefer the latter - at least we know more or less what we're going to get when dealing with Crowley.

Then, "Cas" gets a call from the Winchesters and goes to the Bunker, where he agrees to go back in time with Dean to get the Hand of God. This scene was so precious. Dean insists that Sam stay behind, because if something bad happens, at least one of them needs to be left behind to take out Amara. Since Dean knows it can't be him, it only makes sense that Sam stays. Sam is extremely reluctant to let Dean do something like this on his own, and only agrees after "Cas" promises to stay by his side the entire time. That's so adorable! Sam doesn't want Dean to go without backup, and Cas might be the only person in the world that he'd trust to take his place.

But Cas, or rather Lucifer, can't get past the wards that Delphine placed on the ship, so Dean ends up there alone. Sam is extremely worried about Dean, trying to find something to break the wards from the outside so they can get Dean back. Lucifer, meanwhile, is much more upset about losing the Hand of God. When Sam finds something that could help, but that needs the power of an archangel, only Lucifer knows that it will actually work. Sam, thinking that Cas is trying to do a spell far above his abilities, offers the power of his soul to help him power up. At this point, Lucifer breaks cover. He has realized that there's really no reason to keep Sam alive, since Cas is proving to work just fine as a vessel. But before Lucifer can kill Sam, Cas fights back against Lucifer, gaining control long enough to tell Sam that they need Lucifer to save Dean, since Lucifer is the only one powerful enough to time travel.

Lucifer does indeed save Dean, if only so he can get his hands on the Hand of God. Sam immediately tells Dean that Cas isn't Cas, and Lucifer tries to kill them both. He's infuriated to find that the Hand of God is now useless, since Delphine used it to get Dean off of the ship earlier. Sam manages to banish Lucifer using a sigil before he can kill either one of them, and the boys vow to track down Lucifer and save Cas.

Where to even start with all of this? I so admire Misha's acting ability, as he does a convincing but not quite totally convincing Cas in all the bunker scenes. Sam definitely knows something is up, but he chalks it up to Cas being upset about losing Dean. When Cas suddenly attacks him out of the blue and starts talking crazy, it only takes Sam a few seconds to put it all together. Kudos to Jared as well, because he pulls off terrified and devastated really well in that scene. He loses consciousness at one point, while Lucifer and Cas are fighting for control of the vessel, and when Sam comes back to himself and sees Cas leaning over him, he recoils in terror, sure he's about to die. And if it weren't for Cas' strength, he would be dead.

Cas manages to hold off Lucifer to protect Sam, but he can't expel him entirely. And even if he could, he wouldn't. Why? Because Lucifer is the only way to save Dean. That and that alone is enough to stop Cas from even trying to break free of Lucifer's grasp. Talk about true love. I mean... friendship or whatever.

The final scene has Sam and Dean contemplating their next move. Dean refuses to believe that Cas might not want to be freed from Lucifer - he's determined to rescue him whatever the cost. I also really liked the moment in this scene where Dean talked about his adventure in the '40s. He said he was basically just a witness. It was the bravery of those men, and especially the bravery of Delphine, that saved Dean's life and brought the (now useless) Hand of God forward to the future. You could tell that Dean felt awed and even a little privileged to have been able to witness such courage. It was a nice moment, and it was done very subtly.

That's all I've got. For an A-plot episode, I felt frustrated by the lack of real progress being made here. But on the other hand, Misha was awesome, and I'm so happy that the guys finally know about Casifer. Now they can do whatever it takes to save their friend!

8/10