Lower Decks

Supernatural
“The Rapture”
Originally Broadcast Thursday, April 30th, 2009

Only three episodes left in the season and this is how Supernatural decides to spend one? What a waste of an episode. The best I can say about “The Rapture” is that when it ended, the showdown between the Brothers Winchester (which has been a long time coming) is finally here. That’s something. But the rest of the episode was quite frankly boring.

Prior to this episode I had never given any thought to whether Castiel was the pure embodiment of an angel or just the spirit/essence of an angel that had taken over a human body the way demons do. I wasn’t surprised to learn that the angel we know as Castiel is actually a man named Jimmy who has bravely donated his body to the cause. As far as I know, this had never even been hinted at in past episodes, let alone laid out so succinctly. But it makes a lot of sense. That being said, I didn’t need an entire episode about Castiel’s human host.

I missed the first minute or two of the episode so I’m not quite sure how Sam and Dean learned that Castiel was in trouble. They find him in a busted up house and determine that angels have been fighting amongst themselves. But it isn’t Castiel, not really. It’s Jimmy. Jimmy is basically a less cool and collected version of Castiel. Also, he’s human. And he’s married with a daughter. And he left them to do the Lord’s work, which his wife thought was totally nuts.

Although Sam tells Jimmy he can’t go back to his family because demons are after him, Jimmy slips out during the night. Anna (introduced in “I Know What You Did Last Summer”) pops up in the back of the Impala and chastises the brothers for letting Jimmy get away. She thinks he’s probably already dead. Nope. He’s back home and has convinced his wife, Amelia, he’s totally sane. She believes him, at least until their neighbor drops by and is taken over by a demon.

Things get really hairy when another demon shows up. But just in the nick of time Sam and Dean show up and save the day. It takes a little work, though, because Sam is having trouble using his powers. They steal a car and send Amelia and Claire (the daughter) on their way to safety. Amelia is taken over by a demon and offers a swap: Jimmy for Claire but Jimmy has to come alone. He doesn’t.

Sam and Dean are quickly captured and Jimmy is shot. Then Castiel takes over Claire’s body and goes to town. Sam cuts the throat of one of the demons and drinks its blood while Dean and Castiel-as-Claire look on. They quickly win the day. Castiel-as-Claire wants to take Jimmy to Heaven but Jimmy begs him to leave Claire and use his body again. Castiel agrees and quickly brushes off Dean, saying that he doesn’t serve man and especially not Dean.

Whew. We don’t learn exactly where Castiel went, aside from Anna’s comment about him being recalled (presumably to Heaven). It wasn’t a good thing, in any event, and apparently he was told not to involve himself in the affairs of humans. He has a mission and sharing things with Dean isn’t part of it. Throughout the episode we’re reminded that Castiel apparently had something to tell Dean and it ends without anyone learning what it is.

Speaking of endings, “The Rapture” came to a close with a bit of a shocker. Earlier in the episode we saw Sam drinking demon blood (probably Ruby’s) and calling her sounding desperate for his next fix. It seems he needs the blood to “fuel” his power. When he drinks fresh blood from a demon he’s “charged up” and easily dispatches the demon in Amelia’s body. He later tries to get Dean to yell at him but Dean just says he’s tired.

Bobby calls the brothers and they head to his place. He leads them into the silo he’s turned into a demon-safe fortress (I believe it was first seen in “Are You There, God? It’s Me, Dean Winchester.”) and then, before Sam can react, Dean and Bobby lock him in, telling him it’s for his own good. Harsh. I’m not quite sure how Dean was able to hatch this plan with Bobby but it worked quite well.

Next week we’ll see what the next step is. Will Bobby and Dean try to dry Sam out, wean him off the demon blood? Will Ruby interfere? Will Castiel? Anna? Anyone? Will they be forced to let him out when they need his powers? This brotherly confrontation has been a long time coming and hopefully it won’t be pushed to the side.

As I said earlier, I didn’t much care for poor Jimmy’s story. If this episode had been shown earlier in the season, in place of one of the numerous Monster of the Week episodes that weren’t at all related to the running Angels vs. Demons story line it might have been more interesting.