TV episodes review
US airdate 3 December 2010; 10 December 2010; 4 February 2011; 11 February 2011 (The CW)

Crowley makes a big exit, Dean does a deal with Death, Sam gets his damaged soul back, while the ‘Mother of All’ is risen!

Demon Meg is back in ‘Caged Heat’, teaming up with the Winchesters to take on Crowley. The mystery behind Samuel (Mitch Pillegi) is revealed: he’s working for Crowley. Raiding Crowley’s demon jail, the gang come up against Supernatural’s cheapest stand-by invisible monster, the hellhound.

Finally, Crowley seems to buy the farm (freeing up Mark Sheppard to appear in the few SF shows left that he’s not yet been in) at the hands of Castiel. Biggest revelation is that Sam’s soul is likely to be in a bad way after a year stuck in Hell with Lucifer: maybe he’d better off without it.

‘Appointment in Samarra’ confirms that notion, as Sam goes to great lengths to avoid Dean’s plan to reinstall his damaged soul, even if the bad stuff is to be locked behind a mental ‘firewall’. There’s a neat turn from Robert Englund — Freddy Krueger himself — as a dodgy doctor who (temporarily) kills Dean so he can make a deal with Death to get Sam’s soul back. The price is that Dean has to be Death for a day, and his human compassion means he doesn’t make for a great Grim Reaper.

More chilling is when Sam turns on Bobby in his attempt to avoid getting his soul back. There’s an uncomfortable grim undercurrent to much of this season of Supernatural that makes it less-than-enjoyable viewing (apart from the ace comedy episodes).

Sam is finally back (as is the brothers’ much-missed scathing banter) in ‘Like A Virgin’. It’s a great reset for the series, and reminds us what recent episodes have been lacking. The main plot — a pair of dragons are gathering virgins and Dean needs a magic sword to defeat it — is rather silly, but amusingly done. The story kick-starts the arc for the second half of the season, as they open a door to purgatory and release the mysteriously named ‘Mother of All’.

‘Unforgiven’ offers two stories for the price of one, as flashbacks reveal what Sam was up to when he was soulless boy — and it ain’t pretty. The monster of the week is almost inconsequential, as it’s more about how soulless Sam’s moral compromises created a new group of monsters. The whole episode is like a standalone spin-off novel, but it ends with a brilliant, grim image of Sam burning in Hell… Brian J. Robb

VERDICT
Episode 10: Caged Heat: 6/10
Episode 11: Appointment in Samarra: 6/10
Episode 12: Like A Virgin: 7/10
Episode 13: Unforgiven: 7/10