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  With only five episodes left in the season, Supernatural ramped up the end game last night and brought another peripheral character back to the apocalypse. In typical fashion, Kripke and company managed to balance a pervading sense of doom against the dramatic and emotional identity of the show. Sam, Dean, Cas and the gang are up against the wall now, and yet the show still finds time to inject some generous doses of humor.

Take for example the opening scene of ‘Point of No Return’ which finds the angel Zachariah (Kurt Fuller) hitting the bar at happy hour with other disgruntled office types. He’s commiserating with one clearly disgruntled cubicle jockey and they are throwing around terms like ‘upper management’ and Zach laments ‘I only needed one yes and still I couldn’t seal the deal.’ It’s one of the most amusing and human-oriented moments that the show has given any of the angels outside of Castiel. Then, to puncture the light atmosphere, the glory of Michael arrives and burns out the eyes of all the patrons.

That kind of discordant tension between the goofy and the darkly serious exists all through this episode, which marks a kind of turning in the storyline. Dean has been despondent and disenchanted, ready to give up his person to Michael so he can wage a war with Lucifer. Bobby has been teetering on the brink since he lost his legs, Castiel slowly becoming a bitter, atheistic mess despite being a former angel. Then there’s Sam, once the poster boy for twisted ambition, trying desperately to hold everyone together as a family. And, just as things are poised to snap, the writers bring back another Winchester, Adam.

That’s an interesting move, considering Adam had a single episode last season wherein he was not only revealed to be the long lost brother of Sam and Dean, but also really a ghoul, masquerading as the young man he recently killed. By the time the Winchesters found the real Adam, he had long been dead. Now, in an excellent sense of symmetry he returns from heaven, pulled out of retirement by Zachariah and touted as the newest candidate to serve as vessel for Michael. Dean, all ready to do some cosmic leasing of his skin, is taken aback by that;  he doesn’t want to sacrifice anyone else in his stead, and he doesn’t trust or believe that Sam will be capable of resisting Lucifer.

There were several strong confrontational scenes between Dean and nearly every member of the group last night. Particularly moving was a moment where Bobby places the bullet he’s been saving for suicide out of a desk drawer and relates “The only reason I haven’t done it is I made a promise to YOU! Also quite stirring (and entertaining) is the sequence where Castiel gives Dean a ferocious beating to prevent his heading off to commission the celestial host.

But, as usual, the most emotionally rich bits were held for the Winchester brothers. This time, not just Sam and Dean, who go a long way to sorting out their recent, growing estrangement, but Adam also who isn’t exactly keen on becoming one of the ol’ Winchester boys just because the apocalypse is heading up the coast. When Adam is taken by Zachariah as a trap for Dean, and Sam reveals that he’s bringing his older brother along because he knows he will do the right thing, the switch flips for the elder Winchester.

Dean doesn’t succumb, kills Zachariah, and Adam is seemingly snatched up by Michael, while Cas is no doubt also in trouble and presumably surrounded by angels. This leaves the boys down two compatriots, Lucifer is still on the loose, and while Zachariah is gone, his boss, Michael may have the vessel he needs to wage his war. Not exactly a victory, but now the brothers are at least once again on the same page.

The episode resolves with Sam and Dean pushing the past into the background, and planning a united stand against the forces opposing them. They commit to getting Adam and Cas back and bringing the fight to Lucifer instead of waiting around for a heavenly war that will level the world.

Again, the writers manage to have their existential suffering and biblical denouements and still get us back to where we, the audience, want to be; riding around in that Impala with Sam and Dean vs. the world. 

Now, more than ever, I’m looking forward to the final showdown with Jacob…err, I mean, Satan.