From MadCap's Couch - Supernatural: "Heaven and Hell"

Ironically, the movie Supernatural Road Trip was not well-received.

Last time, Sam and Ruby bang-a-ranged and scarred Dean for life, Ruth Douglas started hearing the voice of angels, and we ended on a cliffhanger where said angels wanted to kill her.

Caught up? Ballin'. Let's carry on.

Picking up where we left off, Castiel and Uriel pop in to kill Anna. Sam and Dean protest, though Castiel and Uriel insist that Anna is far from innocent. Being unable to match the angels in combat, Castiel and Uriel essentially walk through Sam, Dean, and Ruby... and then are disappated by a bright white light. In the next room, they find Anna having slit her arms and drawn a strange symbol in blood on the mirror and claiming she sent the angels "far away", but doesn't know how she did it.

After the title sequence, the boys compare notes. Dean decides to get Anna somewhere safe while Sam does some research. In Bobby's panic room, Ruby gives a pair of hex bags to Dean... which he actually thanks her for.

GEE, THIS SEEMS LIKE THEIR RELATIONSHIP IS DEVEL-oh, right. I did that joke last time.

Bobby sadly does not appear this episode, but Sam has done some research on Anna - specifically that she had a psychological episode where she was scared of her father, claiming that he wasn't her real one and that her real father was mad and coming to murder her. When Anna confronts them on this, she has no idea what is going on and is spiraling toward panic again. When Anna mentions that she'd give anything to know, Sam has an answer: Pamela Barnes, blinded after her experience with Castiel. She teases Sam a bit with her blindness, apparently able to see with her psychic abilities. She also has creepy plastic eyes that resemble a white-eyed demon.

If you think that's leading to anything, it's not.

Pamela does her psychic mojo hypnosis on Anna and after some panicked moments and some exploding lights later and we have the answer: Anna is a fallen angel and her full memories have been completely restored. She later explains that she was originally the superior of Castiel and Uriel, but she ripped out her grace - the source of an angel's power - and was reborn as a human. Ruby points out the obvious: heaven or hell, they're going to get her. In order to prepare, Anna wants to get back her grace... but has to track it down. Upon questioning about her fall, she does confirm that she could be seen as she fell... and Sam narrows it down to a meteor that fell to Earth in 1985 nine months before Anna was born.

Sam and Ruby have a conversation about the events going on, Ruby insisting that Sam could toss Alastair back into the Pit. Whatever it is that he has to do, however, Sam refuses to do it. Something Ruby says however - comparing the bout of Heaven and Hell to Godzilla and Mothra fighting - seems to spark an idea in Sam.

"Finally. I'm getting laid this episode."

Outside, Dean and Anna commiserate over pros and cons of humanity vs. angelic existence, the fight to come, and what it's like to have an unknowable father figure. We also get the lore dump here that only four angels have ever seen the face of God... which is confusing given later seasons, but let's leave that alone for a while. Sam interrupts their conversation to show that he found something, a spot near where Anna was born where a full blown oak sprang up within six months of being planted. Anna explains that a Grace is an energy of pure creation.

On the ride there, Dean makes a Penthouse forum joke with Anna and Ruby in the backseat. Sam chides him for confusing porn with reality. Dean reverses it on him and does a rare acknowledgement about how absolutely messed up their lives are. When they arrive, Anna approaches the tree... and finds her Grace is gone. Disappeared. Houdini'd. Naturally, this is more than a little cause for worry.

Anna hears the angels, a looped recording giving Dean an ultimatum - give Anna to them by midnight or they'll throw Dean back into the Pit. Outside later, Dean is desperately trying to find something to help Anna out. They talk about the situation, Anna thinking that perhaps she has to pay for what she did. Anna reveals to Dean that she knows what he did in Hell, having heard the angels talking about it, and encourages him to forgive himself. She attempts to comfort him, telling him that he's not alone, and a kiss leads into a sex scene - "I'm Ready For Love" by Bad Company playing behind it.

Also, yes yes, Titanic scene. I'm familiar. It's not like it's been parodied everywhere.

Admittedly, the scene itself is pretty damn effective at being steamy. Including a point where Anna puts her hand over Castiel's brand on Dean's shoulder.

In the house, Ruby watches over a sleepy Sam before slipping away. At a crossroads, she burns a hex bags and meets with Alastair, attempting to bargain with him: Anna in exchange for letting her, Sam, and Dean walk. However, Alastair refuses this and captures her for a bit of torture that is surprisingly graphic.

In the hideout, Dean meets with Uriel... in his dream. The two exchange barbs and Dean's attempt to bluff that Anna's an angel again is ruined when Uriel reveals he has Anna's Grace. He also taunts Dean about having slept with Anna and about Dean's time in Hell. He also, when Dean refuses again to give up Anna, knows that Dean breaks well... and just has to apply the right... pressure.

Alastair gets Ruby to agree to show him where Anna is.

"Now I know what you're thinking - 'Did he stab one demon or only one demon?'. Well, in all this excitement, I've kind of forgotten myself..."

Back at the ranch, Dean is aggressively drinking his guilt away and lying to Anna about him being alright. Castiel and Uriel ride in and we get the reveal of what they did to get Dean to break - threatening Sam. All hope seems lost, Anna sharing one last kiss with Dean before seeming to accept her fate and making it clear that she forgives Dean. He did the best he could.

Castiel attempts to apologize, but Anna rebuffs him. This gives Alastair just enough time to show up with a heavily-wounded Ruby and a brigade of stunt demons. A fight naturally ensues. During which, Castiel attempts to exorcise Alastair... and discovers that he can't - the demon is too powerful for him. Alastair turns the tables on him, trying to banish Castiel and Dean intervenes with a crowbar, interrupting him. As Alastair lays waste to the boys and Uriel banishes demons left and right, Anna snatches her grace back from Uriel and reabsorbs it. Urging everyone to shut their eyes, she explodes in a massive white light that seemingly destroys Alastair completely when he approaches it.

Dean reclaims Ruby's knife and taunts Uriel about now having to chase Anna as a full-blown angel. He and Castiel depart and we get the reveal that Sam took the Godzilla and Mothra plan to heart and brought Heaven and Hell together, taking each other out. Sam mentions that wherever Anna is now, she must be happy. Dean and Ruby share a look as Dean mentions that he doubts it.

On the hood of the Impala, Dean and Sam share a beer and Dean finally reveals what happened to him in Hell. In the Pit for four months - forty years in Hell time - Dean was tortured by Alastair again and again and again and every day he was offered a choice to get off the hooks and torture other people in Hell. Dean refused... for thirty of those years. He broke, and he spent that last month torturing person after person... shedding blood in Hell.

...yeah, I'm sure that won't come up again.

Needless to say, Dean is an absolute wreck in emotional freefall. As you are in such a situation. Sam insists that Dean can't blame himself, he lasted longer than anybody else would have in that situation. Dean, though... he just wants to shut off all of his emotions, harkening back to how he felt the angels feel, and ending the episode.

["Behind Blue Eyes" plays in the distance]

Heaven and Hell makes for a good companion piece to I Know What You Did Last Summer, as is the intention in it being a two-parter. The build up of Summer gets paid off quite a bit here and we see Sam and Dean using some out of the box thinking to deal with a problem. Sure, it's not the most complex of plans but it did ultimately worked and it wasn't like they could just solve the problem by the usual solution of "shoot it in its face until it stops moving".

No, angel and demon conflicts are solved like that in later seasons. Badly, even!

Anna is painted as more than a little bit of a tragic figure here, which makes her characterization later a little depressing. Finding out, too, that she was originally going to replace Castiel as the Angel on Dean's shoulder is a little depressing as well. There was so much that could have been done with her character, but she unfortunately only shows up in four more episodes after this one before she's only ever seen again in the show in a clip show.

Okay, it's not technically a clip show but I'm still counting it.

The point is, there was a lot that they could do with the character - an angel that knew what it was to be human. Shame that they didn't do that until much later and not really as well with Castiel. If I actually review the show past Season 5, we might get into that. I wouldn't be holding my breath were I you, however.

Dean's conflict over what he did in Hell and trying to hold on to the belief that angels are some sort of marblized perfection is sad as well... though it's undercut just a bit by the conversation he had with Castiel in It's the Great Pumpkin, Sam Winchester!, where Castiel revealed that he does indeed have doubts. However, holding onto it as a way of not having to deal with the pain and guilt over what he did in Hell, I completely get.

Next time, we get into Family Remains. The all-American family is about to get wrecked by a bloodthirsty force that they don't understand, and only Sam and Dean can save them. But is the threat what they think it is?

Be there!