Tonight's episode proved one thing: demons can still be scary.
THIS friends is what Supernatural should be. Even the brief moment when the hell gate opened, the...things that we almost-saw, which while cheesy, were in the right context with Asmodeus standing there. The opening scene where Asmodeus openly referred to the Crowley "corporate" era of Hell struck me as a bit of a meta, the writers telling us that we're in for something different.
Also gotta say...I like that they openly discussed teleporting for the second episode in a row, and lo and behold, we actually got an answer. For something that they've danced around for five years now, it's refreshing for them to admit that this is an ability angels are supposed to have.
That said I wish we got a little more exposure to the alternate world than we got in this episode. The scenes between Mary and Lucifer were very well done, and as usual Lucifer managed to be reasonable and convincing before he lost patience and turned to other means...actually rather reminded me of Zacchariah when he got annoyed, which again is a refreshing callback.
Not sure about the way the alternate angels were depicted though. They looked like commandos and appeared not with the flutter of wings, but in bursts of fire that looked like comets. Alt-Michael's entrance was one of the best entrances at least since the start of the episode, when Asmodeus appeared in a burst of light too...maybe they're trying to underscore that the alternate world really is different, but I wish we'd seen something more familiar.