Although the playfully titled "Clip Show" didn't quite showcase the greatest hits of "Supernatural," it did take us on a brief trip down memory lane, revisiting characters from "Wendigo," "Shut Up, Dr. Phil," and "Provenance."

It's been a while since I've felt the need to rewatch an episode of "Supernatural" to try and fully digest it, but "The Great Escapist" was a dense and action-packed hour that proved integral to the season's arc and added another layer to the show's mythology as a whole.

I'm of two minds about "Taxi Driver," which had some ambitious ideas and some weighty plot movements to handle, but also seemed to lack the sparkle or gravitas of previous episodes in much of its execution.

After an agonizing three-week absence, "Supernatural" returned with "Goodbye Stranger," which turned out to be one of the best episodes of Season 8 to date. Written by Robbie Thompson and directed by Thomas J. Wright, "Stranger" was well-paced, crammed with memorable lines, and showcased some delicious character interplay.

This season of "Supernatural" has been better than some at constructing engaging standalone episodes with only minor threads of mythology woven in, but "Man's Best Friend With Benefits" fell a little short of the mark.

Did "Supernatural" just give us more character progression in one episode than we've had in three seasons? Because it sure felt that way to me.

The odd-couple dynamic of Aaron and his belligerent golem offered an amusing detour from the season's mythology, even if the chosen Monster Of The Week -- Nazi necromancers! -- was a particularly random choice, even by "Supernatural" standards.

In typical "Supernatural" fashion, the playful "LARP and the Real Girl" was a tonal 180 from the emotionally fraught events of "Torn and Frayed," which probably comes as a relief for those of us who are still reeling from last week's intense hour.

Perhaps most impressively, considering "Torn and Frayed" was mostly just a typical search and rescue mission, the episode featured plenty of development on the mythology front without feeling too heavy-handed.

While "Supernatural" has featured some interesting character developments over the past few weeks, the season's mythology has taken a backseat since episode 802, so it was great to rejoin that arc so decisively with "A Little Slice of Kevin."

No one does honesty like the Winchester brothers. Whereas most of us would try to be up-front about our resentment for our family members in a constructive and healthy way, Sam and Dean subscribe to the "Supernatural" method of conflict resolution ...

After two weeks of standalone episodes, it was good to get back into the meat of "Supernatural's" mytharc again, and with an episode written by Ben Edlund, we knew we'd be getting a story full of wit, heart and believable character beats.

As a conceit, and to capitalize on the "Paranormal Activity" trend, "Bitten" proved to be an engaging hour, building on the lessons learned in "Ghostfacers" in order to stitch together an episode that was 90 percent "found footage."

Episode three was basically a standard "Monster of the Week" installment, but like many of the show's best standalone entries, it also helped contextualize the brothers' relationship to help the audience understand what's motivating them at this point in the season.

This week's "Supernatural" did some things spectacularly and dropped the ball on others, but the episode did serve to drive the narrative forward, as well as delving deeper into Dean's time in Purgatory and giving us our first glimpse of Castiel.

The boys are back in town -- and thank Chuck for that -- since it seems like collective anticipation for Season 8 has reached boiling point over the past couple of weeks. It will be nice to finally lay a few fears to rest and witness exactly what new showrunner Jeremy Carver has planned.

The beauty of this finale -- especially that ending -- is that it's truly impossible to predict where the show might go from here, so we can spend the summer in rapturous speculation.

A TV season is a marathon, not a sprint, but I'm concerned that Supernatural is starting to show signs of fatigue as it nears the finish line.

After a three week hiatus, anticipation was high for this week's "Supernatural" -- not least because it featured the return of Bobby (Jim Beaver), who met an untimely end eight episodes previously in "Death's Door." The show was operating on two levels with "Of Grave Importance," one being the Monster-of-the-Week case of the spooky Van Ness House, the other being Bobby's ghostly return and the Winchesters' discovery of that fact. Though the two story threads spent a great deal of time intersecting, only one of them really worked for me: the reintroduction of Bobby and Sam and Dean's subsequent reactions to his ghost status.

While this episode certainly lacked the heart or finesse of some of the season's stronger installments, the final five minutes elevated "Party On" from a typical Monster Of The Week romp to a game-changer, in terms of the season's direction.

Misha Collins did masterful work in this episode, finding so many subtle nuances between Emmanuel and Castiel that it was a joy to watch him reinterpret the familiar character once again.

What initially appeared to be a typically humorous, filler episode of Supernatural actually gave us some big developments on the mythology side of the show, as one of the leviathans dropped their master plan on Sam and Dean at the end of the episode. So what do these ancient, terrifying, people-eating monsters want to do now that they're out of their cage?

Whenever there's an A-grade episode of Supernatural these days, chances are that evil genius Ben Edlund is the man behind the magic.

Choosing to follow a mythology-based or emotionally heavy episode with a light, frivolous one is the "Supernatural" way, and your enjoyment of said filler episode is generally dependent on whether you're a fan of the monster-of-the-week format or wish that the show could be all plot, all the time.

This week's "Supernatural," titled "The Slice Girls," will no doubt leave fans split since it revisited the basic theme of one of this season's most divisive episodes, "The Girl Next Door."