The season finale is next week! Sucks doesn't it, but it means tons of plot, which is exactly what we got with "Two Minutes to Midnight."
I was disappointed Pestilence wasn't dealt with last week, so it was good to see the brothers move against him from the onset of the episode. Pestilence is posing at a doctor at nursing home and doing all sorts of disgusting and slimy things to people. Cas comes back de-angeled, but is still able to cut off Pestilence's finger. That leaves Death and the flue vaccines. Part of me chuckled at the use of the swine flu vaccine to spread the Croatoan virus when in real life, there are millions of unused vaccines. Clearly the episode was written back in a time when everyone was still completely freaking out.
Sam and Bobby, who get gotten use of his legs back from Crowley, go after the vaccine while Crowley and Dean go for Death. Bobby, Sam, and Castiel go to the warehouse, save a bunch of people, destroy the vaccines, and wrap up a story line that seemed kind of misplaced.
The big story was Death with Jen Titus's Oh Death introducing him. This time, there wasn't a confrontation with the Horseman--far from it. Death is very old and doesn't want to be used by Lucifer. He openly hands his ring to Dean with the condition that Sam must be the one to jump in. And with that, the rings are together and a huge fight wasn't even needed and there's a reason why the writers did this. Fighting Lucifer is as much if not more of an internal conflict as a physical one. This isn't something that can be resolved by beating someone down. Dean must grapple with letting his brother go and every feeling raging against his decision. The understated subtly really works in the penultimate episode, leading up to the final fight with Lucifer which is sure to be explosive.
Score: 9.4/10
