I really enjoyed the episode, and I like the idea of the Men of Letters...reminds of The Watchers in Buffy.

Dude, the past 2 episodes have been a welcome sight for me. The first 5 seasons are my favorite show of all time. The past 2 seasons have been utter failures on many levels. There have been bright spots, but these last 2 episodes have felt right. They feel like earlier seasons and that's what I've been missing. These last 2 episodes have given me hope that the show is returning to it's former quality. This Men of Letters thing is something I really like and I don't see it as a plothole as so many other reviewers keep infering. This new plot thread has given Sam and Dean new purpose.

Love the title. Golem was pretty sweet too, but maybe a smidge too reminiscent of Mr Hyde from the LXG abortion.

 death4sale, I wouldn't call the last couple of seasons utter failures, but I would agree that they really had no idea where the hell to go...Season 6 especially really didn't have any direction whatsoever....but I REALLY enjoyed the season 7 Leviathan plot, and look forward to what this season is building towards.

 *the only UTTER FAILURE I've experienced was "Exile on Main Street", the Season 6 premiere...just awful, IMO.

I rather wonder if they really are going to shut the Gates of Hell, because a large, supersecret organization of undead Nazi necromancers who just recovered the records of their experiments (it looked to me like Baldy ran off with the ledger) seems like a reasonable substitute for demons.  The fact that they can be killed with headshots (temporarily if you don't also burn them) doesn't make them any wimpier than most of the baddies they've had on the show.

And I know this sounds stupid, but the Golem's arms were some sort of prosthesis, right?  At first I thought they just managed to find a rather oddly shaped fellow, but rewatching more closely, it seemed like his arms were a bit rubbery.

 I also think some make up was involved, fenngibbon...I found out via IMDb that the actor who played the Golem was no stranger to Supernatural though...he was actually the ghost in the season 3 episode, "Ghostfacers"...you know, the guy who brought dead bodies home from the hospital for his birthday party?  But yeah, pretty sure Golem's arms were make up.

I thought that this was one of the best episodes in years.  Not only was the infusion of Jewish mythology a nice touch (a nice departure from the primarily Christian mythology of demons and ghosts), but I really like the new direction they are taking with the Men of Letters subplot.  It's giving the show a bit more history and depth than simply "two men against the world" as it has been for years.  A few seasons back when they had Ellen and Jo, in addition to Bobby and Rufus, we were starting to see that there was a larger network of Hunters.  But that fell by the wayside the last two seasons, especially with the craptacular (sorry, Caveman) Leviathan story arc.  I thought that was the worst storyline/season that they've ever had.

Now the showrunners seem on a good path to bring us back around to a larger world of Hunters, Men of Letters, and the other disparate "forces for Good" who have been working the world over through history to hold back the tide of evil.  Without that, we are left thinking that everything bad that happens is only in the continental U.S., and is being held back by the members of one family.

I also think that there was a big (though understated) shift in the dynamic of the main characters.  For almost the entire duration of the show, it's been Sam trying to get out of hunting, with Dean trying to keep him in, and the two bitching at each other the whole time.  Suddenly, at the end of this episode, Dean makes what at first seems like a snide comment about Sam being the new Man of Letters organization... but then he reverses it and says that he likes it, and clinks glasses with Sam.  For a show to truly succeed, the characters need to evolve and grow.  That hasn't happened much in the last two seasons.  This episode showed that we may be back on track to positive character growth and development.

All in all, I think this is the first real "A" grade episode of this season, and possibly of last season, too.