After a month-long hiatus, Supernatural returns. Sam and Dean Winchester are back in ‘The Things They Carried.’ This series is often criticized for having jumped the shark, and their numerous fan-service episodes– while beloved and entertaining– border on ridiculous, but this episode reverted back to the monster-an-episode format that they’ve found a dependable rhythm with over the last decade.

This episode features the re-immergence of Cole Trenton, the man who (earlier in this same season) kidnapped Sam in order to exact revenge on Dean for killing his (possessed) father, proving that any character that has more than one episode on Supernatural is fair game for a reprisal except for poor Adam.

After last episode’s climactic confrontation with Cain, this whole “Dean is consumed by the evil within” is getting less and less viable as a central focus for the story as a solution becomes less and less possible. Not one to fall into the hole of making an entire series about an unsolvable problem and then giving the audience no leads, this episode takes a different tactic: the people that Sam and Dean will be attempting to save are heroes who rescue people but who have been infected with an evil within; infected, no less, while attempting a great heroic deed. Very subtle and subtext-y. Saving People & Hunting Things: The Army Motto.

This episode follows the Winchester boys, just the original duo without Crowley, Castiel, or any of our other favorite bros, as they investigate the bizarre murder of a woman who should, by all accounts, never have been a victim—she was extensively trained in martial arts, including Krav Maga. However, once they reach this adorable little town, the adorable little cop in the adorable little precinct tells them that they shouldn’t have driven all this way, the perp was a Special Forces veteran with PTSD, and before they go would they like some birthday cake? His partner made it.

The boys investigate anyway, because they didn’t come all this way for birthday cake (if it had been pie, that would have been a different story), first visiting Special Forces perp Rick’s widow and then, on her referral, checking in on Gemma, whose husband Kit had been in the same unit as Rick and was exhibiting the same symptoms—namely, he’s thirsty. Like, really thirsty. Like “drink from the dog bowl” thirsty. Gemma, by some bizarre coincidence, is friends with Cole Trenton (see episode 2 of season 10 for the time Cole tortured Sam for information and then tried to murder Dean), and after a weird awkwardness outside Gemma’s house, the boys and Cole all get burgers– and Sam doesn’t even get a salad. Maybe this is what emotional eating looks like for him. As they discuss the case, Cole gets an encrypted email from an army intelligence contact sent to his cell phone with classified information on Kit and Rick’s most recent op, which is totally believable and not at all ludicrous, even though there’s a video of this classified operation attached to the email that all three view at a picnic table by the burger-vending food truck.

What follows largely deals with Kit’s inability to control the hungers inside of him, whether he’s confronted with total strangers or people he loves, and Cole’s desire to save the people he loves and having to come to terms with evil possessing them such that they are no longer the people he loves. I’m really glad they gave that Mark of Cain thing a rest, though, right? Sam lamenting the idea that Dean might not be the brother he loves, and Dean fighting his hunger for violence, that was getting really old. This was a nice change.

Overall, for a series that has been going for a decade with the same core cast of two, you have to give them credit for keeping their audience consistently engaged. They listen to fan feedback and they respond accordingly. With only that ghost-in-the-wifi episode bringing this season down, this episode is far from objectionable, and is somehow managing to keep this series alive against all odds. It might be playing a bit to the clichés of the show, but the fact that this show has created its own set of clichés is unique in and of itself.