I'm just going to say upfront that this is nothing but a SPOILER filled recap/review of the season 4 premier of Supernatural. If you've DVR'd it, then as I always say, avert thine eyes and return once you've seen it for yourself. If you are of the inclination, then read on my trusty readers!

Supernatural: Lazarus Rising starts out the CW's 4th season of the popular fantasy show.

We get dealt with a nice compilation of the brothers Winchester, Sam (Jared Padalecki) and Dean (Jensen Ackles), demon fighting escapades from last season. It ends with the Hell Hound coming and taking Dean away and getting sent to Hell.

It's four months later and Dean wakes up in his coffin. He crawls out of his grave and the camera pans back and we see that his grave is in the center of what looks like a meteor strike. All the trees pressed down and away from the grave. This starts Lazarus Rising.

I immediately notice the eerie silence to the scene. There's an absence of background music that lends to the tension.

Dean does what, well Dean does. After crawling from the ground he walks down the road a bit to find a closed mini mart. He breaks in for supplies, snags a girlie magazine and steals a car.

A few things happen in the store. He checks a mirror and he has not scars from the Hell Hound, and he has one nasty red welt in the shape of a hand print on his left shoulder. For no reason, all the electronics in the store turn on and the windows all shatter inwards. Interesting, indeed.

Dean has a heck of a time convincing Bobby (Jim Beaver) it's really him and Dean has to cut himself with a silver knife to prove it. While he's trying to tell Bobby about himself, Bobby splashes holy water in his face saying he couldn't help himself. A nice comedic moment in the tense scene.

They locate Sam (With a girl no less!) and he needs a little convincing too. The one notable issue for the moment is that Dean can't answer any questions about Hell... he has no memory of it. (Yet) But at least Sam dissuades them from thinking he had anything to do with the raising, even if he wanted to bury Dean whole so he had a body to return to. (Hmm?)

To figure out who might have pulled Dean out, Bobby takes them to a psychic, Pamela Barnes, (Traci Dinwiddie) to see if they can locate the demon who raised Dean. She's a bit of a horndog as she makes a suggestive offer Dean who starts grinning as if to say, check it out, barely back and I'm in the game. She then extends her "offer" to Sam too. Dean turned to say something to Sam but I was laughing so hard I missed it.

Summoning Dean's Saving Demon on Supernatural

Pamela tries to locate and summon the demon who pulled Dean out of Hell, but all she gets for her efforts is blood running out of her eyes and blindness.

It seems even the local demons won't even touch Dean, out of fear of his benefactor. While Sam and Dean confront a few demons in a diner, Dean calls their bluff and slaps one of them a few times, and she does nothing. He feels vindicated that he is right... they're afraid. The boy is brave on a nuts kind of level!

In their hotel, again, all the electronics turn on around Dean. His ears split from a sound and more windows break around him. This is driving me nuts. Not to mention he's going to need a window repairman following him around everywhere.

Dean and Bobby are now contemplating summoning the demon while Sam is off on his own, looking for the demons from the diner. He's on a serious mission to eradicate all demons it seems. But all he finds are bodies in the Diner, all their eyes burned out.

One is still alive, though blind. She attacks, but it seems she's seen the "thing" and says it's the end, but won't tell Sam what he looks like. Sam dispatches her... by gesturing at her with his psychic powers. The same psychic powers that earlier, he told Dean he wasn't using. There's part of the rift that's going to develop between the brothgers that's been hinted at.

The girl that Sam was with earlier shows up at the diner saying good job and it turns out to be Ruby. Ruby in another body?? She says that what ever pulled Dean out is more than demon, like cosmic. Ruby?? Sorry, I'm fixating.

Bobby and Dean finally manage to summon the one who raised him. Despite every glyph known to them adorning the walls and floors, it doesn't even phase him. Nothing fazes him, not rock salt, not the demon killing knife. He touches Bobby on the forehead and he goes to sleep. He tells Dean they need to talk, alone.

This is Castiel. He tells Dean he is an angel of the lord. Dean does not believe him. Castiel explains that the moments where the windows were shattering were times when he tied to speak, but now he's tempered his voice through this vessel he found, so they can talk. He also explains that Pamela went blind because no human can stand seeing his true visage and that he tried to warn her.

Castiel says God commanded Deans resurrection and that they have something for him to do. Eesh. That's heavy. The problem is the Dean does not believe that Castiel is an angel, and that nothing good happens to him. A conflict of beliefs, including one where he doesn't believe in god.

Wow... good ending to keep me hooked for more of this new season of Supernatural.

My thoughts:

The episode had a dark intensity to it that was injected with humor here and there. There was a subtle sense of energy. The eerie stillness of no background theme or sounds in most scenes really lent itself to keeping me riveted.

What does tick me off is that while Ruby is in the story, she's not played by Katie Cassidy - because they let her go due to budget issues. I think that's either a really cheap stunt to pull, or Cassidy was asking for an awful lot. The only reason they can pull this off is because demons can possess who ever they want.

Regardless, if budget cuts force them to tighten their focus on characters and create the atmosphere of this episode, with this kind of intensity - this is going to be a whopping good season.

My thoughts are that if the longest running sci-fi show, Doctor Who, started out and survived on a shoe string budget, it is doable. But they have to be careful, make sure they stick to quality content and keep the character developments fresh and meaningful.

Then they just might have a real winner on their hands for this new season.

So now we have to wait to find out:

Will Sam tell Dean about his developed psychic powers? Is this Castiel really an angel from god? He seems to be immune to all the protective demon glyphs, so that lends itself to this new character. What's Dean's mission details?

My big concern is how big of a rift is going to be created between the brothers. We have Sam with his new ability to kill demons with his mind. We have Dean's new mission. Not to mention we'll be seeing Dean slowly but surely starting to remember or recall his time down below. How will that affect him?

Again, I see promise galore with this story thread.