Some of the more mystical sects in Judaism have a view of Gehenna that makes it a sort of purgatory. An analogy used is a great laundry where your soul is boiled and beaten and wrung until all the sin washes out. Maybe some sins are so bad that they never wash out, and those souls are eternally damned stuck in spin cycle forever. (Or maybe everyone gets clean after enough time has passed.) Most or all get reborn once the sin is out, and get to keep trying keep being laundered and reborn until they get a life right and make heaven. But being laundered is painful and , well, hellish. I think of it as a sort of super-therapy where you can't lie to yourself or therapist, and have to face to full consequences of everything you have done, and the full moral weight of all your actions and intentions. Effective but very very painful. And after you go through all that work, you have to forget what you've learned and try to do right just with however your soul has changed without being able to take any of that hard won self-knowledge with you.

One thing that I've been noticing, as Dean has been surrounded by the soulless and the naive, is that he is coming out with some very definitive views that feel new. And yeah, they're off the cuff, and I can't help think "he'd make a great dad". Answering all those awkward questions and responding to all those random surprise awkward moments that need a dispensation of wisdom. He's never felt more like a parent to me than in this season, whatever it's (numerous) flaws. I mean, having the answers (even if they're wrong) to questions that a normal person would never have to encounter (like what to do when a loved one is abducted and the surviving loved one is horny and bored and soulless).

How did Meg get the knife, again?

Also, we don't know where the Colt is, do we?

During my X-files education, I just watched an episode introducing Special Agent Manners. Most of his dialogue was obscured with bleep. Heh.

Presumably Meg took Ruby's knife off the guys when her minions had them tied up.

I think we haven't seen the Colt since Dean shot Lucifer with it.

Had we seen the knife before this season? Had Sam been carrying it this whole time?

Do we have any reason to think Dean lost the Colt? Because if there are only 3 beings in the universe it can't kill (2 being God and Lucifer) it remains pretty damn useful. Is Death the third? Is my memory playing tricks again when I remember a total of three beings it can't kill?

Five things it can't kill. And one is Lucifer. God may be a fair assumption, but it hasn't been stated.

On rewatch I found more skeevy things I kind of wish I hadn't, like Dean saying he would've let Cas have a round with Meg before killing her, and Crowley coming up with the classy "whore!" greeting as his insult-of-choice for a deadly enemy—though at least the actress made it look as if Meg was as sick of hearing the word as I am. And Meg's Ellen-esque stand to hold off the hellhounds while the others forged ahead didn't really ring true, since the whole kill Crowley mission was bound up in self-preservation for her. (If she'd started cooing to the hellhounds once the others were out of earshot and revealed they would obey her, it would have been awesome and more in character.)

As long as I'm rewriting things, while I cracked up at "I feel so clean!" I would have preceded it with "I hope you tipped him well." instead of "Well, A-plus for you."

Someone on IO9 said she wanted John to come back and kill Sampa.

I would pass out three different ways just having JDM and Pileggi on the same screen, never mind righteous Sirful vengeance. That's just the best idea ever, and I'm sad it won't happen.