Supernatural 'Mother's Little Helper' Review: Abaddon's building an army

"Mother's Little Helper" was one of those odd episodes of Supernatural that straddled the line between "Monster of the Week" case and "important mythology" installment. By the end, we had plenty of new information about Abaddon and a pretty clear picture of the rest of Season 9.

Sam broke off on his own this week to investigate what seemed like a run of the mill case until we learned that the people involved had no souls. Sam then came across a former nun who revealed to him that the Men of Letters, specifically Henry Winchester and Josie (Abaddon's current vessel) arrived in town almost 50 years ago on a similar case. Henry thought they had stopped the demons (including Abaddon) causing the problem, but Abaddon possessed Josie and went undercover, which set up the slaughter of the Men of Letters that we saw last season.

It turns out that Abaddon is harvesting souls to create a loyal army of demons who aren't devoted to Crowley or refuse to pick a side in this whole war for control of Hell. And what's worse is she's already got this operation up and running like a chain of Starbucks, so needless to say Sam and Dean have their work cut out for them.

Speaking of Dean, he spent the first portion of the episode researching how to find the Knight of Hell and the rest of the episode getting drunk and playing pool while Crowley talked his ear off about The First Blade and its effects on the elder Winchester. Crowley called Dean a coward but kept pressing that Dean wanted to feel the touch of the blade again so that he could experience the rush of emotions he did in last week's episode. Dean eventually relented and got back on the path of hunting down Abaddon so that he could get his hands on the blade once more.

Now call me crazy, but this powder keg is primed to explode. We've got Crowley manipulating Dean, who's more than willing to throw himself headlong into this newest quest so that he can feel the rush again (or so it seems). Dean's not the healthiest individual to begin with, so throw an ancient weapon that has addictive qualities into the mix and you've got a recipe for disaster. As Crowley said, "now he's ready."

Now that Sam knows Abaddon's plan, he too is gung ho to stop her. And if we know anything about the Winchesters, it's that charging full steam ahead usually lands them in trouble.

Notes from Dad's Journal:

-       Misha Collins directed this episode and he's welcome to direct more as far as this viewer is concerned. He didn't reinvent the art of directing, but he made plenty of interesting choices that freshened up the episode. He had a fine debut and I hope he gets to step behind the camera again.

-       There were smart people all over the place in this episode. Crowley tricked Dean with that demon playing a young hunter. Sam had an incantation recorded on his phone in case a demon had his vocal cords in a vice. Abaddon tricked Henry into thinking everything was hunky dory.

-       It seemed like juuuuust a bit of a stretch that Sam so quickly deduced that these people had no souls, but that's a minor gripe on my part. He's pretty much the smartest hunter alive, so if anyone would figure it out so quickly, it would be Moose.

-       Crowley has decided to give into his human blood addiction, but it didn't look like he was showing any ill effects this week. Maybe he's just shooting up less often?

What did you think of tonight's episode? Let us know in the comments below.