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THEN: Jack lost his grace and can't do anything. Pile o' corpses. Super monsters. "Sammy, it's me. You can tell because I immediately took off this stupid hat."

NOW: Well, I hoped we'd get a little more of that reunion scene, maybe a hug. Denied! {Sidebar: why can't I find a GIF of Gomez Addams saying DENIED!} But we do get this, which is just as good.

It's just every time I think about it, you know, it's like a nightmare, I mean, I can't eat, I can't sleep, it's always just there, watching me.

Dean, it's just a beard. I've been a little busy lately.

Yeah, well, that's not an excuse, you know? Cause Duck Dynasty called and they want it all back.

Some people say I look good.

No. No, Sam, no people say that.

OH MY GOD. This is ridiculous and I love it so much. And it even makes sense on a Watsonian level. What's Dean going to do when he becomes un-Michaeled? He's going to try to be as Dean as possible. He's going to joke. He's going to poke at his brother. He's damn sure going to notice that new (magnificent) beard. This combines all of those things.

(That is, of course, presuming that one believes Dean has actually been un-Michaeled...)

They've apparently just come from Duluth. Dean hasn't even changed clothes - he lost the hat \o/ and jacket, but is still wearing a nice clean white shirt and a vest.

It's a good look.

Things get serious for a second, with him telling Sam that he doesn't need to ask if he's okay. Because of course he's okay. Why wouldn't he be okay? He reiterates that he doesn't know why Michael left, and claims he doesn't remember anything after he said yes - which would mean he doesn't remember killing Lucifer. He says his entire time as Michael went in the blink of an eye. He's just happy to be home, although it seems like he changes his mind when he walks into the war table room and finds it full of people. Hey, all the extras are back! I guess they finished their vampire hunt from 14.01.

{Sidebar: Aren't Sam and Dean walking through the hall where their bedrooms are? Does that connect to the garage? How did they get there without walking through an area full of people?}

One random guy calls Sam "Chief," which Dean isn't happy about, and Sam claims he asked them not to call him that but he doesn't sound very sincere and I DON'T BELIEVE YOU, SAM. Jack and Cas show up, and at least we get to witness their hugs. Cas reminds us again that he couldn't go on the rescue mission because Michael would have sensed his presence. It's almost like that's going to be important later. And part of me thinks Michael must really be gone, because Cas would have sensed his presence. But another part of me remembers that Cas couldn't detect a restaurant full of demons, even though he's allegedly able to see their true faces. And still a third part of me wonders if Cas and Sam were ever together when Gadreel was wearing Sam, and if so, why he didn't detect that, but that part of me can't remember and is too lazy to look it up. But if any of y'all want to do that, let me know what you find, okay?

Sam neatly writes Bobby and Mary (Mobby? Bary?) out of the episode by explaining they stayed behind to clean up the "situation," which is what we call a big pile of corpses with their eyes burned out. Dean goes off to take a shower, and Sam is still very concerned about him, and he is still claiming to be okay.

But we don't believe him, do we, Sam?

Sam asks about Nick and finds out that he "said he had some personal business to attend to" and "was in a dark place" (and I think "darker than the cage? probably not") and isn't returning phone calls and kind of dances around the whole I reminded him that his family had been murdered and then he went kind of crazy aspect of the story. Nobody seems to be taking this as seriously as they should. Or maybe they're just happy he's gone. The conversation goes back to Dean and how okay he actually is, and why Michael would have just left, and why was Michael helping monsters. Sam says he doesn't know. "The truth is, we don't know anything." And he's sad and distressed and you know what else we don't know? If Michael actually left. Or maybe it's just me. Maybe you've all accepted it and moved on with your lives.

While this is happening, we cut back and forth to Dean in his room. Set up for another angsty mirror scene, maybe? He yanks off Michael's vest and shirt and angrily throws them to the ground, and then heads for the mirror and sees... oh, that's interesting. A giant scar on his shoulder. Dean thoughtfully turns toward the camera (but, oddly, away from the mirror) to get a better look. (And expose some arm for us! \o/) He is clearly befuddled by this development.

(Hey, remember an earlier episode when was gone and came back and found a giant scar on his shoulder? That was awesome, wasn't it? )

Oh, I bet that's why this episode is called "The Scar!"

Title card! Still don't like those wings.

Dean, Sam, and Cas are discussing the scar and wondering what could have hurt Michael. Dean insists that Cas perform a "Vulcan mind meld" to pull up the memory, so Cas plants his hands on Dean's head and we get flashbacks of people getting sliced and tossed from 14.01 and 14.02. But when that doesn't work, he puts a hand directly on the scar, and then we get a memory of a black cloaked figure stabbing him in the arm with a pronged lance, which accounts for the two holes.

Although Dean's memory wouldn't look like this, which is a pet peeve of mine, because how hard would it have been to use a Dean's-eye-view of this attack?

Cas asks who that was, but before Dean can answer, we cut to Jody Mills \o/ texting with Claire, who wonders if her current case is "anything monstery." But no, she says, it's definitely human (spoiler alert: not so much!) Then her phone rings, and it's Sam. She picks it up and anxiously asks if he has any news, because ONCE AGAIN Sam has not called her to let her know Dean is alive and well. Seriously, Sam. This is why you don't have any friends. Sam stammers out an apology and then Dean says he's back. I love that Jody is so relieved. I just love Jody and her relationship with these guys.

Dean tells her they think the monster that killed Kaia in The Bad Place is here. Oh, ha ha, I forgot about that thing! She says she hasn't noticed anything rift-related, but when Dean describes his scar, she says "like someone stabbed you with a giant meat fork?" and we see that she has pictures of bodies with that very same wound. And without their heads. Ew.

Cut to the guys packing their bags (and Dean wearing that black jacket that I love). Jack shows up, predictably, to be told that once again he doesn't get to go on a hunt. Jack wants to hunt Michael too, and feels responsible for Kaia's death, and is tired of being told he needs "more training." Dean tells him he's "barely 100 pounds soaking wet," which is obviously not true, and Sam and Cas give him weird looks for that. "I didn't mean to be a dick," Dean says, as Jack slinks away.

But then someone we don't know, named Jules, shows up with the victim of a Wichita witch (heh) who's been cursed with a prematurely aging hand. Jules mentions that the curse took effect quickly, before she even had time to bury the body, which makes me wonder why she'd be burying it anyway and not burning it. Cas tries to heal the girl, but it doesn't work, and he says it might take a while, so Sam and Dean should go on without him. Well, that's convenient. Sam and his magnificent beard and pretty hair are reluctant to go without Cas, but Cas and Dean both insist, and Sam's obviously not in charge of this outfit any more.

Sam, if you still want to order someone around, you can take charge of me any time.

Impala. Dean's driving fast and angry. Sam brings up that they still don't know why Michael let Dean go, and that he still won't talk about it, and "we need to deal with it." Dean says going off to find the Kaia-killing monster is dealing with it, because to Dean, dealing with it is not processing what happened to him, it's finding the monster that can hurt Michael and... hurting Michael. And Sam, maybe having gotten used to saying what he thinks, points out that the possession was instantaneous for Dean, but for him it was weeks of not knowing if Dean was alive, and he needs Dean to talk to him. "Just slow down, so I can catch up." But Dean is all "ha ha you think you can force me to deal with this, it's like you don't even know me." (And the Sam!girls are all "if he had to deal with what happened to him, he'd also have to accept what happened to YOU, and THAT AIN'T GONNA HAPPEN," because we're bitter that way.)

Sioux Falls. The guys meet Jody in the middle of nowhere and she's so happy to see them. And to see Sam's beard. They both get big hugs and Jody touches the beard (lucky girl) and says "hey, I like it!" and Sam gives Dean a see, chicks dig the beard look and let's just watch this in GIF form, shall we?

Stolen from itsokaysammy on Tumblr.

Sam asks about the girls and Jody confesses that she's avoiding Claire because she doesn't want to discuss the Kaia monster situation. She shows the guys where the apparently-human bodies were found, and Sam uses his serial killer knowledge (thank you, Continuity Fairy) and they go wander the woods in the dark looking for a dark-cloaked killer, which Sam thinks is a bad idea, but since Jody's avoiding home, and Dean's avoiding everything, neither is willing to wait until daylight.

Bunker. Jack packs his bag and leaves an envelope addressed to Sam, Dean, Castiel. For some reason it bothers me that Cas isn't before Dean. These are your father figures, Jack, not the show credits. You can list them in any order you want. As he heads for the door, he overhears Cas and Jules (you remember Jules, don't you?) and goes into the room they're in. I don't remember ever seeing this ornate door before, but it opens onto the infirmary. Jack sees the girl, Laura, and learns that she's been stricken by a curse that's aging her. From the hand on up. The magic is "too knotted," but they consulted Rowena \o/ and she suggested a spell, which they're currently working on. Cas asks Jack if he's going somewhere, but then Laura groans and Jack's all, what this backpack? Naw, it's just my snacks, I'm not going anywhere.

The wilds of Sioux Falls. Dean wants to split up to save time, but Sam and Jody say no. Dean is still kind of obsessed, Sam is still very unsettled about all of this. Dean, who has walked ahead anyway, finds something and calls to the others. Oh, it's the three missing heads. On pikes. Sam draws his machete, which seems like the last weapon he'd need, considering that their heads have already been chopped off. Dean examines the heads and discovers vampire fangs. Presumably they belong to Jody's three headless bodies, but she says she took tissue samples home and tested them for reactions to silver or dead man's blood and got nothing. Well, I'm not a scientist, but I don't think dead man's blood would do anything to a dead vampire, the same way sedatives or poison wouldn't do anything to a dead human. I don't know about silver. Do we think it would cause a reaction to a dead vampire? Discuss.

Dean finds the remains of a campfire near the heads, and a can in the ashes is still hot, so someone's been there recently. And you know what they don't do here? They don't have Dean say "This can is still hot. Someone's been here recently." They just show him picking up the can, finding it hot, and quickly dropping it. I think the writers of last week's episode might want to pay attention here. You don't have to have Bobby and Sam say "silver bullets aren't working!" Just make sure we know they have silver bullets, and we can see for ourselves that they aren't working. Thus endeth the scriptwriting lesson.

Looking up at the trees, Dean has a quick flashback or memory of the hooded figure with the giant meat fork. He turns away, and then looks back and it is the hooded figure with the giant meat fork. So was that not a memory at all? Was he actually seeing it? It's confusing. (After I just praised your scriptwriting, Berens. Come on.) The figure attacks, and pummels all of them, and eventually its hood falls back to reveal (gasp!) the Kaia-killing monster actually looks like Kaia. She escapes rather than killing them, jumping over some kind of fence made of sticks. It's supposed to be daring and dramatic, I guess. (It's not.)

Jody and the Winchesters pick themselves up and stare after her in shock. Jody says "you saw her die over there, right?" and Sam's all yeah, she was dead, as if that means anything. They remember that Kaia's killer had the same hooded robe and the same killer moves.

Bunker. Jules wonders if they have sheep's eye for the spell, and Cas is all, yeah, it's in the pantry, behind Sam's French vanilla K-cups. {Sidebar: while researching a fic, I learned that things called for in spells like "eye of newt" were actually nicknames for plants, not weird animal bits. Who knew? But these must be literal sheep's eyes because they're in a drawer marked "gross stuff."}

(I do not actually think Sam would use K-cups. Too much waste.)

(But I'm sure he would use sheep's eyes.)

Jack accidentally wakes Laura by touching her gross aged hand. She asks "is that your Dad" for some reason. "One of them, yes," Jack answers, as he looks fondly at Cas, and this makes me happy. Happy that he's actually feeling fond toward Cas right now, happy that he affirms Cas as one of his fathers. He asks about Laura's parents, but she's a runaway who figures her mother hates her. "Because I left. I ran away. I hated school, I hated our crappy one-stoplight town, and I hated her rules. I was sick of being treated like a kid. I thought I could make it on my own." Watch out for that anvil, Jack, because it's about to hit you right in the noggin. She was sick of learning and being treated like a kid and she thought she was good enough and strong enough so she left and NOW LOOK AT HER, JACK, DYING OF OLD AGE, AFTER SHE WANTED TO BE OLDER AND WISER THAN SHE ACTUALLY WAS. DO YOU SEE THE PARALLELS? DO YOU, JACK?

So much irony. So little subtlety.

Laura tells Jack how the witch said her new young friends "kept her young." She touches a gigantic necklace and says the witch "gave us nice things," and (1) this necklace is not nice, it's ugly and cheap and looks like part of a Halloween costume, and (b) DOESN'T THAT NECKLACE LOOK SUSPICIOUS TO ANYONE ELSE? DOESN'T IT LOOK LIKE IT'S UP TO SOMETHING? Jack promises Cas will fix her, and then looks at Cas like "you are gonna fix her, right?" Cas's face is not reassuring at all.

Sioux Falls. Sam speculates that, since the vampires didn't kill anyone in town, they might have been sent there by Michael to find Monster!Kaia. Dean says that doesn't change the plan and stomps off. Dean is pretty antsy and Sam is pretty frustrated.

And they're also both just plain pretty.

Bunker. Cas and Jules finish the spell. It doesn't work. In fact, Laura suddenly gasps and, as Cas watches impassively from across the room, ages even more.

Sioux Falls. Jody ignores a call from Claire. She had promised Claire that she'd involve her in any monstery cases, but she doesn't want to get her involved in this one. "Claire's been doing so good. And anything connected to Kaia, she's a powderkeg. First love strikes quick. And to lose it, like that?"

Oh, dammit. You all tried to tell me, and I was too blind to see. I was so sure they were setting up Claire and Kaia to be Dean and Sam, and all the while they were actually Sam and Jessica. In my defense, I'm going to blame Kathryn Newton's wooden acting. And the fact that they knew each other for, what, two days before Kaia died? It definitely looked more like "~~experienced~~ hunter who considers herself experienced feels guilty about causing death of inexperienced hunter" and less like "hunter's first love gets violently fridged." {Sidebar: I also wonder if this romance is a bit of retconning/fanservicing. "First love strikes quick?" Because we need to explain away that they only knew each other for two days? I see what you're up to, Berens.}

Jody notes that the brothers are "having a time of it," and she doesn't mean a good time. Sam says Dean's working through things, alone, and isn't ready for this case. But Jody thinks maybe he needs it.

Monster!Kaia drops to her knees in front of a cabin, as if she literally just jumped out of a tree, and goes inside. (There's a leather armchair in this rustic cabin, which I find amusing for some reason.) She drinks some water and scrounges for food. When she leaves, the door creaks behind her and she turns to see Dean, who must have been hiding in the cabin all along.

I wonder how she gets her hair to curl like that, out in the wilds of Sioux Falls? She can't have any styling tools out there, unless they're campfire-operated. Does she wrap it around large sticks while it's damp? Or cans? Is that why she was heating up a tin can, to use as a primitive curling iron?

Dean punches her unconscious, and Sam and Jody stare at him like that was a bad thing.

On the other hand, I'm gonna stare at him like he's hot. Because he is.

Cut to now-conscious Monster!Kaia tied to a chair. Jody asks what she is, and she says she's not "your Kaia." Monster!Kaia says "what I was to her, she was to me." (What was Monster!Kaia to Your!Kaia? When Kaia dreamed about The Bad Place, she wasn't dreaming about Monster!Kaia, because she was the one who got hurt. She had no idea Monster!Kaia even existed.) Killing her was an accident - she was trying to kill Claire. She refuses to say how she got there, but why she's there is because of "him," as she looks at Dean. Dean points out that he's not Michael, and she already knows that, because he's "much weaker." She's not afraid of him, but she is afraid of the monsters Michael sends after her. Meanwhile, we see three of Michael's super-vampires stalking through the woods. Ruh roh!

Bunker. Cas is pulling a sheet over Laura's face, so I guess that actually was her last gasp. Jack feels awful, because he could have saved her if he still had his powers, but he suddenly remembers what I said about that Necklace of Eviiiiiil and insists on seeing the witch's body. The show continues flipping back and forth between the bunker and Sioux Falls at this point, but that's getting annoying in this recap so I'm going to stick with the bunker now and get this story out of the way.

The bunker has its own morgue? And the witch is in a drawer in that morgue? Why did Jules bring the dead witch? I'm sure we'll never know. The witch has a bullet hole in her chest, and a matching ugly necklace. (It matches Laura's ugly necklace, not the bullet hole.) Jack hypothesizes that the witch was stealing her captives' youth, and her spell is still sucking the life out of Laura, trying to keep her alive, but the witch-killing bullet stopped it, and the necklace was cursed, not Laura. (I'll say it's cursed. It's butt ugly.) Jack finds a tympanic hammer and takes it to the necklace.

Laura's life force. It's in here.

Jack, are you sure?

No.

Hee! Jack smashes the necklace, and even if Laura's life force isn't in there, I applaud this act. A cloud of glowing green smoke flies out of the witch's necklace and into Laura's. She gasps back to life, the aging reversed. Yay Jack!

(Hey, remember when Dean was chasing Sam with a hammer? That was amazing.)

Cabin. Jody thinks they should take Monster!Kaia to the station to keep her safe, but Dean says "No, we need to break her, right here, right now." Sam has never met Dean, especially obsessed Dean, so he asks what he means by break her. "He wants to know where I hid my weapon," Monster!Kaia says. "That's what he wants." Well, if he was waiting for her in the cabin and didn't see her hide it, she must have hidden it pretty far away from the cabin.

Jody is shocked that Dean plans to torture Monster!Kaia. Because she's never met him either. Dean says her weapon is the only thing they know that hurts Michael. Because he forgot about the One and Only, Accept No Substitutes, Even If They Appeared in Previous Episodes, Archangel Blade. Sam says "No, dude, there's a sword made just to kill archangels. Michael must have wiped that from your brain." (No, he doesn't. But he should.)

(Question... Did Michael!Dean still have the archangel blade when he left? Or did he leave it behind in the church?)

Dean says he'll do "whatever it takes" to get the information out of Monster!Kaia, and apparently that means... shoving her chair against the wall and grabbing her shoulders and yelling in her face. She smirks at him, and rightly so, because this is stupid.

(Hey, remember fresh-from-Purgatory Dean whipping off his tie before "interrogating" someone? That was fantastic.)

Dean yells at Monster!Kaia and she says he's no different from Michael, using threats and violence to get whatever he wants. Dean says he's nothing like Michael, but Kaia says "Yeah, you are, you always have been. I saw what you did to her when you were angry. You shoved your gun in her face." We get a flashback of Dean yelling at Kaia to "get in the damn car," but we still don't get an explanation of why Monster!Kaia has Your!Kaia's memories. I mean, we do, but we don't. Sam figures out Monster!Kaia is a dreamwalker, and she says "what she saw, I saw," but Your!Kaia didn't see Monster!Kaia's dreams. She had injuries when she came back from her trips to The Bad Place. She was there.

{Sigh.} Whatever.

"I know where it comes from, your anger, your impatience," Monster!Kaia says, because it's important to have people who don't know Dean psychoanalyze him sometimes. "You're scared. And you're weak. Michael hurt you. He hurt me too." Flashback of Michael!Dean appearing at Monster!Kaia's campfire. He's sensed her ever since he appeared in our world because "You're like me. You bleed new energy. So does that," referring to her giant meat fork. Which I've just noticed has testicles.

Is it just me?

He wants her to join his army and give him her spear. She'd rather not. As she talks, Dean apparently remembers their fight. Jody walks off in disgust or distress or something. Sam, still stuck in Buckleming mode and thinking we might not have followed the story, says "so Michael wants the spear because he knows it can hurt him. And that's why his monsters are coming after you."

And now the vampires are here! They burst in, and the only one with a speaking role says "We only came here for her, but I was never one to turn down a buffet." Fight time! There's a lot of punching and no biting for some reason. (Well, I know the reason, but there's no in-universe reason.) Jody's arm gets broken. Dean manages to get his gun out, and the werewolf says "those spiked bullets don't hurt us any more," but it turns out he was just planning to shoot Monster!Kaia's chair leg. Somehow, that lets her escape from the chair. "Now you're in trouble," Dean laughs, thinking Monster!Kaia is going to join the fight. Instead she leaps out the window. And the werewolves, who only came here for her, immediately follow. Oh, no, ha ha, that would make sense. They stay in the cabin, whupping three humans who Michael definitely did not send them to whup.

Monster!Kaia quickly comes back, brandishing her giant meat fork, which she must have hidden close by even though Dean was surely watching her from the cabin and yet didn't see her hide it and... okay. Whatever. She kills the werewolves and then does some bizarre little touchdown dance at the end and holds a dramatic pose for an embarassingly long time. Like, a REALLY LONG TIME.

Jody, who also thinks we might have not been paying attention, says "You saved us. You didn't have to." (Dammit, Berens. Why are you doing this to me now?) She says she came back for the werewolves, not them. Sam points out that Michael and his monsters will keep chasing her as long as she has the spear. Oh good, does this mean she'll be back! I hope so! (NOT REALLY. I SAY THIS IN CASE YOU WEREN'T PAYING ATTENTION.)

Jody and the Winchesters get back to their cars after dark. Dean tries to apologize to Jody, but she won't accept it. She declines a ride to the hospital and says she's more worried about seeing Claire. "I'm dreading those consequences."

(Hey, remember when Billie threatened "cosmic consequences?" That was cool.)

Jody gets teary-eyed about "seeing (Kaia's) face again," and I guess my cold black little heart is the problem, because again, TWO DAYS. YOU KNEW HER FOR TWO DAYS. But this is guilt and fear more than affection (and guilt and fear I understand, my friends) because she says she didn't even get a chance to know her, and it makes her worry about the girls she is raising, and she feels like "I already lost, before I even began." Oh, Jody. Stroke Sam's Beard of Despair again. That will make you feel better. I'm sure it has magical powers.

(Hey, remember the first time Jody lost a child? That was heartbreaking.)

Back to the bunker. Jack's lying in bed, and Cas comes in to apologize for not being there for him, and to tell him he did a great job and he's proud of him, and offer to take him on a hunting trip. Jack thinks this is a great idea, and then he coughs and says he must be getting his first cold because he's human now. And I can accept this from Jack, because he's just a baby, but Cas is thousands of years old and he's watched a lot of Netflix so Cas knows that when a character on TV coughs, IT IS ALWAYS A BAD SIGN. IT IS NEVER, EVER JUST A COLD. Cas goes to make Jack some soup.

Impala. Dean feels guilty about putting them in danger today, and says Sam was right, he didn't want to look at what Michael did to him, he wanted to skip to the end. "Yeah, I know," says Sam, because for those of you who have forgotten (looks hard at all the writers), SAM KNOWS. Dean confesses that, while he said he didn't remember anything during his time as a vessel, and it happened in a snap, he was actually aware of every second. He felt like he was underwater, drowning. He thought he could defeat Michael, but he wasn't strong enough, and now he's out there creating an army of monsters and it's Dean's fault. And guys, Sam doesn't say "at least you don't remember killing people," he doesn't say "that's funny, my last experience was different, because I was present most of the time but then I lost time and I just thought I was losing my mind AGAIN." He just sits there and gets teary-eyed at his brother's pain. Dammit.

Dammit.

And finally we cut to Jack, who coughs blood into a tissue and tosses it into a waste basket full of bloody tissue. I TOLD YOU. So, what the hell is going on here?

(Hey, remember when Sam had Trialsculosis and was coughing up blood? That was awesome.)

So. This episode. On rewatch, I'm realizing that I didn't really like it. There were some good things. Jack is getting back to his old self. Sam still has the beard. Dean is back. (Apparently.) We got huggy Jody and teary-eyed Sam and angry Dean. There was continuity with previous seasons. And yet. There was also annoying, unnecessary exposition. There was no real reunion between Sam and Dean. Jack is under threat.

Quite honestly, I'm getting burned out from three mytharc episodes in a row. I hope the next one is a monster of the week. (But, as usual, please do not spoil me. Thanks!)