If you're one of the fans who has had complaints about this season's Supernatural then episode 4.15, Death Takes a Holiday, hits every major gripe.

In this episode Bobby calls the boys to check out Greybull, Wyoming where people have stopped dying.  While Sam is gung-ho to check it out Dean is still smarting from their siren-induced showdown from last episode.

The two of them check in and at Bobby's direction they find that the local reaper has been kidnapped by demons and that it's part of the plan to break one of the 66 seals.  In a how-kamikaze-can-I-be moment, Dean proposes that he and Sam become ghosts to fight the demons. (Not as easy as it sounds in a town where no-one can die.)

The solution?  Call their friendly neighborhood psychic, Pamela Barnes.  (Okay, she's not really in the neighborhood, but she's the only psychic that they seem to know these days.  Apparently Missouri Mosley doesn't make house calls.)  Pamela shows up under protest --because knowing the Winchester boys is a good way to shorten your lifespan.  She puts them under and stands guard over their bodies. 

On the other side of the veil, Sam and Dean track down the last person to die in Greybull: a little boy named Cole Griffith.  Cole tells them about how his reaper was grabbed while trying to convince him to cross over.  Shortly after that Reaper Tessa shows up to finish the job.

For a moment there Dean has that embarrassing sense of almost-recognition with her.  The reaper helps reboot Dean's memory with a kiss before the demons return to kidnap her away.  Cole reveals that the demons are keeping the reapers at the local funeral home and provides them with a martial-arts-movie-cliche style tutorial in being a ghost.

Sam and Dean then go to the funeral home where they find the reapers being held in a ritualistic circle of some kind.  They get led into the middle of the room and the demons close all the escape routes with iron chains.  Then Alistair kills the first reaper and prepares to kill Tessa.  The boys plus Tessa foil the plan by causing a chandelier to fall – ghostly haunting style – onto the edge of the circle, breaking it and allowing her to escape. 

But back in the hotel room a demon comes after Sam and Dean.  Pamela manages to wake Sam, but not before being stabbed.  Sam tries to get her to go to the hospital but she refuses – maintaining that so long as the reaper isn't reaping, she is fine. 

Out on the street Dean is cornered by Alistair.  But before he can attack he is captured by the angels.  Castiel reveals that it was he, not Bobby, who sent the messages to Sam.  He leaves and Tessa returns.  She needs Dean's help getting Cole to cross over.  Dean convinces Cole to go and Tessa  returns the favor by telling Dean to listen to his instincts and that the angels are just using him – and that there are bad things ahead.

Pamela returns Dean to his body just in time.  The reapers are active again and she is now bleeding profusely.  With her dying breath she whispers to Sam that even if he has good intentions his powers aren't good-intended. 

Over the last season a lot has been made about what is wrong with Supernatural.  The show seems unable to have a regular guest star without killing them off.

Additionally there have been fans dissatisfied with the brother-against-brother direction that the season has taken as well as what fans say is too much focus on Dean's story to the exclusion of Sam's story.   And then there is what some fans call the dumbing down of the boys that has them rely way too often on an outside source for their information (In previous seasons it was Ellen or Ash at the roadhouse.  This season it seems to be Bobby).

If you are one of the fans who has groused about any of the above then you will probably find plenty to despise about this episode.

But if you are like me and trying to overlook all of that for the sake of enjoying the show, (Fingers stuck in your ears. Chanting La, La, La, can't hear you, music's too loud. Whatever gets you through your day.) then there are things to love about the episode. 

It was nice to re-visit Dean's reaper interaction from season two.  Although Dean didn't remember it, his near-death experience has been a cloud over his life from the moment that John made the deal.  What's dead should stay dead has been an often repeated line from that time.

Dean has always wrestled with his faith (or lack thereof) even in the face of proof.  But faith takes many forms.  In the religious context, faith carries connotations of belief in the unseen.  But in the more mundane context, faith has tones of beliving in the unacted upon. 

Prior to being yanked out of hell, Dean had no faith in the existence of God (even though he wanted it).  Now, he has concrete proof that God exists, he is wrestling with faith of the second kind  (God exists, but do you have faith that he is good?)

Tessa stirred the crisis of faith pot with her assertion that God is (or at least the angels are) not good, and he does not want Dean for a higher purpose.  This isn't going to play well with Dean's already battered self-image.  Because if God wants him as a tool for nefarious purposes, what does that say about Dean as a person? (shades of Daddy's blunt little instrument)

Dean's ethos doesn't remind me of the Judeo-Christian one so much as it does the Norse mindset.  In Norse mythology, there were two places where the soul went upon dying.  Warriors went to Valhalla, and everyone else went to Hel (which was a cold, forbidding place).  According to Norse Ethos, we all die.  The question is, how you die.  It's better to die on your feet than on your knees.  (Perhaps an oversimplification, but doesn't that sound like Dean?)

Sam's confrontations with Alistair and his various demons as well as with Pamela made an interesting counterpoint.  Sam exorcises Alistair and Hell keeps sending him back.  Although Sam has good intentions, he isn't really removing demons from the war.  Pamela made no bones about the fact that Sam's powers weren't intended for good. 

My only worry about this episode is actually a worry about the show in general.  Namely, since Supernatural has been getting progressively darker with each season, where does it go from here?  Sam is sleeping with a demon and Dean has been to hell.  How much darker can it get?  

I'm afraid to find out.