Tinkle, Tinkle RAAAWWWR! This, of course, would be the point where I'd normally turn to my usually faithful recapping companion, Raoul The Big Gay Supernatural Dragon, and ask him for his opinion on the action thus far. Unfortunately, the idiots responsible for this mess scheduled this episode to air on Academy Awards Weekend, a high holiday Raoul holds sacrosanct -- as well he should, I might add -- and so the dear, dizzy lizard has asked me to convey his regrets, as he is far too busy supervising the final preparations for his annual Oscars blowout to participate in this evening's festivities. He's done his best to keep the details of the party secret, but as each of the cater-waiters he's hired bears an uncanny resemblance to Cam Gigandet, I believe he's going with a Burlesque theme this year, despite the fact that that instant classic received a whopping zero nominations. Nevertheless, the soiree promises to be a gas, and I do hope I make it over there in time to watch Annette Bening lose again, especially because Raoul loves to take what some might call a perverse pleasure in seeing her fail. "Hag!" I'm sure Raoul would shriek at this juncture were he here. "Strident, talentless hag!"

In any event, once the tinkling is done, we return to the unlikely soundstage to find Sam and Dean still flailing about atop their mattress, after which the camera sneaks over to the bank of monitors arrayed in front of the director and his assistants, and here's my main problem with tonight's hijinks: In case you haven't figured it out by now, Belthazor hurled Our Intrepid Heroes into an alternate reality of his making to protect them from Raphael's ravening hordes. That's fine -- I mean, after all, the boys have been flung into alternate realities of various creatures' making since the second season, so this premise is nothing we haven't dealt with before. However, in each of those previous instances, the narrative never strayed from events the boys themselves were experiencing -- in other words, we never heard or saw anything Sam and Dean didn't hear or see for themselves.. Hell, even when they ascended into Heaven last season, we never got a glimpse of anything outside of their direct experience of the place. So, why are the idiots responsible for this mess fucking with well-established precedent by shuttling the camera over to the director's chair for the in-jokey conversation between Brian Doyle-Murray and his underlings that follows? For that matter, why does the camera linger on "Misha Collins" farting around with his Twitter feed later in the episode, long after Sam and Dean have wandered out of earshot of the guy? And why do we then witness "Misha's" kidnapping and murder? And "Eric Kripke" going down in a hail of bullets?