"Last Call" – Supernatural S15E07

God, I miss Leverage.

Supernatural drives that point home tonight with "Last Call". Which features Christian Kane, Eliot Spencer on Leverage. Yes, Kane's in The Librarians, but I've never caught the fever on that show. Maybe it's just bad TV scheduling: I can only watch so many shows a week.

Part of it is we get to hear Kane singing. Along with Jensen Ackles. Kane is an honest to God singer, and Ackles isn't too shabby himself. So watching them do a duet is pretty entertaining.

And part of it is we finally get to see Dean go up against someone worthy of him. A friend, a Hunter, and a killer. We haven't seen a lot of Dean's personal life, so to meet a guy both Dean and John liked helps give Dean a bit of background. I'm not sure if it all gibes with what we've seen in the past: the Winchesters seemed to be pretty on-their-own Hunters. But sure, I'll buy they had some people accompanying them on their Hunts.

The secondary monster, a marid, was pretty weak sauce. And the Sam-Eileen-Castiel-Sergei shenanigans in the bunker really didn't do anything for the characters. It did continue the season-long plot of the Winchesters versus God. But it didn't do any favors for Eileen, Castiel didn't seem that much "new Castiel", and Sergei (Dimitri Vantis) has never done anything for me and tonight's appearance didn't change my feelings. But, oh well.

So what did happen in "Last Call"? After an opening tag of a drunken woman, Sally, vomiting at the edge of a parking lot, and her friend, Angela, struggling in the car and then disappearing, we get Dean checking on cases. It turns out Sally has reported Angela was raptured. Which doesn't make much sense, as Sally doesn't seem at all religious. So why she would use "raptured" to describe her friend's disappearance is never made clear.

Dean picks up on the fact Sam and Eileen are on the verge of making out and decides to leave them alone in the bunker while he drives to Texas to check out the missing girl. When he gets there, Dean has a slightly off-kilter chat with a helpful sheriff (Emy Aneke), who goes on about how Angela went to Hollywood to try a TV career. The sheriff went to Hollywood to do the same, and he figures Dean has the look to make it in TV. Which presumably is some kind of meta reference to Jensen Ackles being a TV star, but it doesn't go over as at all entertaining or funny.

Dean goes to a second bar run by his friend, Lee Webb (Kane). Lee is singing on stage, and it turns out he used to Hunt with the Winchesters before Sam went to college. Dean and Lee are soon drinking, beating up on drunks picking on Sally, and getting a description from Sally about Angela's "rapturing". This does give us one good line when Dean and Lee note Angela's car disappeared and point out cars don't get raptured. Sally comes back with "It was a good car."

Dean goes looking for the missing car, and despite Lee's attempts to redirect him, Dean finds the car in a scrapyard. Lee knocks him out, and it turns out Lee has a marid in the bar's basement. He feeds it blood from his victims, and the marid gives him whatever he wants. So, it's more of a djinn than a Supernatural djinn. Okay.

After breaking free and killing the marid, Dean goes upstairs and confronts Lee. The two soon run out of bullets and fight it out hand to hand. Dean runs a pool stick through Lee's chest and kills him, after Lee gets a few words about how he's glad Dean was the one to kill him. There's also some earlier back and forth about how Lee has decided the world owes him the riches the marid can give him, so he's justified in killing people. Well, one person. Either that, or Lee was a lot more careful with his other murder victims than he was with Angela.

Back at the bunker, Sam and Eileen are holding hands and researching Chuck and Lilith. Castiel arrives and Sam collapses from the Equalizer gunshot wound. The angel calls in Sergei to heal Sam, but Sergei threatens to kill Sam unless Castiel gives Sergei the Key of Death, which unlocks the door to Death's Library, and the Key is tucked away in the bunker. This would be a lot more interesting if we had ever heard of the Key before. It seems like a useful artifact for the Winchesters to have.

Castiel refuses to play and reveals he's having Bobby follow Sergei's niece. If Sergei doesn't stop Sam from dying, Castiel will have Bobby kill Anna. Sergei heals Sam and says he likes the new Castiel. Which doesn't seem that different from the old Castiel, at least some of the time. Yes, there were times when Castiel was namby-pamby and weak. But there have been times in the past when he was ruthless, and not just when he first appeared.

When Dean returns, he and Castiel exchange a few terse comments. Sam says he shared Chuck's memories and knows Chuck is weak, and figures they can defeat God. Which doesn't seem that big a revelation: why did they think God didn't just smite them where they stood?

As noted, the best part of the episode was Kane, who brings a certain charisma to every character he portrays. His Lee Webb is no exception, and I wouldn't mind a flashback or two revealing how he hooked up with the Winchesters in their John-era Hunting days. As a one-shot monster of the week, and a dark mirror to Dean, I supposed there was no chance he was going to survive the episode. That's a pity. Supernatural could do worse than follow this season's The Flash and split up the season with two different Big Bads, and keep Lee as a former Hunter turned evil who knows all the Hunting tricks.

But given the Winchesters are fighting God, and have fought Big Big Bads like Leviathans, archangels, Lucifer, and God's Sister, I suppose one unpowered Hunter just wouldn't be that impressive, even if Kane was playing him. As I've noted before, that's the problem which each season upping the ante of the Big Bad: everything else pales by comparison.

I like Eileen, but she doesn't have much to do here other than be Sam's prospective girlfriend. Castiel doesn't have much to do, either. It's his big return to the bunker, but he probes Sam's wounds, is ruthless with Sergei, and uncomfortable with Dean. And that's it. Sergei tosses in a bit of secondary danger, but that's all there is.

"Last Call" is an above-average episode of Season 15 Supernatural. It gives us Lee as the first decent villain of the season, it gives us a decent human "monster of the week", and it keeps everything moving. That's the best you can hope for in a "Winchesters versus God" final season because having God show up each week would eventually look strange when God didn't just smite the Winchesters and be done with it. Granted, having him off-camera doing... something seems strange as well, but that's the corner the creative team has painted themselves into. God is the Big Bad, but the creative team can't have God around too much or people will wonder why he just doesn't do something omnipotent and end things.

But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong. What do you think?