Everyone didn't die in Thursday's Supernatural entry, "The Song Remains the Same," wherein Anna told Castiel her big plan to kill Sam and spread his atoms all over the universe, so Lucifer couldn't put Humpty Dumpty back together again (not sure what becomes of Lucifer once Nick finally burns out. He . . . evaporates? Remains incorporeal until the end of time?). Castiel put the kibosh on this because "Sam is [his] friend" (AWWWW), so Anna opted for Terminator-approach: she hoped back to 1978, planning to kill John and Mary Winchester before they could have either of our Intrepid Heroes. Unfortunately, Anna apparently never watched a Terminator movie during her human days (which is hard to believe a) given that they're always on and b) it's not like she was spending the time on hot oil treatments), so she didn't realize that this plan never works.

It was nice to see the show get back to dealing with the Apocalypse directly (even though Death's movements remain unknown. Perhaps the earthquake in Haiti made the writers feel bad about portraying Death as a natural disaster?). It's too bad that the more wheel spinning we see from this season, the clearer it becomes that the balls-out writing manoeuvre of Sam accidentally unleashing Lucifer was a mistake. Despite the fact that show seems to have been building toward it all along, they certainly don't know how to play the long game. 

Though there were great moments in the episode, like Sam and Dean trying to convince Mary to leave John because they would be better off if they never existed, the only real tension in the episode came not from the possibility of ending things before they could get so fucked up but from how this tiny spark of hope would be snuffed out. Michael makes his long overdue appearance in Young John's meat suit (a nice callback to "The Rapture," wherein we learned that angel-human matches are both genetic and hereditary), burns Anna to a crisp with a single touch (very nice), and has a long talk with Dean about how free will is a hoax, blah blah pre-determination cakes.  He then hits the reset button, erasing John and Mary's memories of angel-violence, reviving Sam, and sending Sam, Dean, and comatose Castiel back to the present. 

Well acted and executed moments aside, the thing with these tension-free middle-season episodes is that they allow more time to speculate about how, exactly, the season will end. Will God show up? Awfully big move for a show so relentlessly bleak. Will He, so moved by Sam and Dean's dedication to humanity, hit the reset button on their lives and give them the apple-pie existence that Dean, at least, so desperately craves à la Legion? Will He simply send his bickering sons back to their rooms? Or will He be an even bigger dick than the angels who claim to love Him (after all, where has He been this entire time?)?

Of course, the writers are welcome to take me up on my idea to send Lucifer back to Hell and put Armageddon out of the angels' reach. After all, our boys know where they can find a Hell Gate, and they have the key. Then season six could focus on dealing with the aftermath, cleaning up a severely damaged Earth, and maybe starting a training ground for new hunters in Bobby's giant junk yard. Unless there will be no season six after all, in which case the writers should just kill everyone. 

Also:

• Did we really need Sam to tell his dad that he's more sympathetic toward John's twenty year revenge spiral that ruined his son's lives now that Sam's been on a five year one of his own? I love Padalecki (his reaction toward meeting his mom was very nicely done), but no.  
• Dean's dreams interrupted by angels are incredibly lame:  this time it was mostly covered no-touch strippers; last time, fishing. 
• "I don't understand that reference." Cass's deadpan confusion never gets old.