Supernatural, S9 Ep06 – Heaven Can’t Wait

Meet Steve. Steve is your normal sales associate at a convenience store. He’s hard-working, perhaps a bit socially awkward, but a real trooper. Oh, and he used to be an Angel of the Lord. Castiel’s adventures as a human continue, but it’s not all fun and games. In fact, it’s not fun and games at all. I loved seeing Castiel having to deal with being human, however, if you’re not an avid Cas fan you may find this episode a bit slow. But it delved more into character, which is what I love about this show, and it gave us a lot to chew on.

Cas holding a baby, Cas holding a baby, this is not a drill!

For Cas fans, this episode was fan-service at its finest. It had everything: Cas mimicking other people and failing in adorably incompetent ways. Cas maybe having hope at a real human relationship. Cas failing to achieve said human relationship because he actually has to babysit instead. CAS WITH A BABY. CAS SINGING TO A BABY. I have to admit, I was impressed with how well Misha Collins was able to sing while maintaining Castiel’s gravelly voice. That must have been a challenge. The only way this could have gotten better for Cas fans is if he had had more scenes with Dean. There were not enough Dean/Cas interactions for my liking. Dean had plenty of longing looks, but it wasn’t the same. Still, watching Cas trying to make his way as a human is something I absolutely adored.

And we got some great character development out of Cas. Cas feels like he let heaven down, so now he’s trying to be the best human he can, even though he has to sleep in the stock room of his store because he doesn’t have a place to live. He even turned out to be a pretty good babysitter, because as Nora pointed out, he cares, and that’s what’s always made him special. But he’s also clearly struggling in his new life. After an awkward introduction to Nora’s baby, he ended up discovering that the two of them have a lot in common. They are both new to Earth, to this human existence, and it can be a scary, painful thing that just makes you want to cry.

Staring at his angel…

When Dean left him at the end, you could tell that Cas wanted to go with him to help figure out the angel problem. And that was the most frustrating part of the episode. Dean kept Sam away from this case because he wanted to hang with Cas without Zeke getting in the way. Dean misses his buddy. And Cas misses him. And I miss the Dean/Cas dynamic of long stares and no personal space. The Zeke storyline is grating because it’s forcing Dean to lie to both Sam and Cas as well as keep Cas at a distance. Zeke didn’t even make an appearance, but you could feel his presence, his ambiguous menace in Dean’s caution. This is not going to end well, not for Dean and Cas, and not for Dean and Sam, once the truth comes out. I’d rather have the purgatory flashbacks than this plotline, so I hope it wraps up soon and we can finally deal with the inevitable fallout and get back on track.

We also saw the introduction of a new angel type, the name of which I could not spell for the life of me but according to Supernatural Wiki is Rit Zien, an angel of mercy (of sorts) that would bring peace (aka death) to angels suffering on the battlefield. This was pretty cool, but could have been cooler. The plot felt secondary in this episode, but it also gave another mention of the televangelist who is working with the angels. Overall, however, I don’t think we learned much from it. Cas’s struggle as a human carried this half of the episode, but I wish he had been given more to do. I’m hoping that he’ll have a stronger role in the myth arc after he goes through some trials (metaphorical ones) as a human.