Supernatural - Appointment in Samarra

This was the second episode aired this week and is the better one of the two.  This was a huge episode.  Firstly, Dean goes to an old physician who used to fix up his Dad, played by Freddy Kruger himself, Robert Englund!  He has to kill Dean (how ironic!) for three minutes (ends up being seven!).  While dead, the Reaper Tessa comes for him and he asks her to summon Death who appears.  Dean asks him to get Sam and his brother Adam, souls out of the cage.  Death agrees to get one soul but Dean must choose, and he chooses Sam.  There is a catch or two.  Firstly Dean must wear Death's ring for one day and do his job and if he takes the ring off, then the deal is off.  Secondly, he advises that Sam's soul is very damaged but he can build a temporary wall to hide the memories of hell.  Dean agrees and goes to work as Death!  Firstly he takes a robber, then a fat man who has a heart attack, but then he has to take a 12 year old girl with a heart condition. He refuses and she makes a miraculous recovery.  But Dean soon discovers he has upset the natural order and the nurse who was looking after the little girl is killed in an accident because she got to leave the hospital early.  The knock on effect is that her husband drinks himself into a stupor and gets in his car and is going to kill himself.  Dean tries to stop him and realises he has to remove the ring to do so.  After the man survives the crash, Dean returns to fix up what he should have done in the first place and takes the girl's life.
Meanwhile, Sam is trying to work out how NOT to get his soul back and is told by Balthazar that he has to kill his father.  Because his Dad is already dead, then the next closest thing will do, Bobby.  Just as Sam is about to kill Bobby, Dean arrives and stops him. 
Death then arrives to get his ring back and finds that Dean has learnt all about the natural order of things and agrees that if he had to do it all again, he would take the girl in the first place.  Dean is upset that he failed in the task but Death agrees to get Sam's soul back because Dean has learnt a valuable lesson and that Sam and Dean keep coming back and upsetting the natural order on a global scale and now that Dean understands the implications of that, perhaps they will stay dead next time!  Death returns with Sam's soul and returns it to him, painfully.  Have they done the right thing?
I have to say, I love the character of Death (I can't believe I just typed that!).  He is neither good nor evil, he just is and that matter of factness has a refreshing normalness to it.
That was the halfway mark for the season.  Can't wait to see the rest of the season!