(pt. 1)

Bea: So, this scene goes over to Dean eating chips and this is where, as we stated previously, he’s compiling the best deaths that have happened within the All Saints' Day series.

Remmy: Dean and Dirk are having a lot of fun with talking about their favorite deaths.

Bea: Yes. Getting their nerd information out there in the open.

Remmy: Uh huh.

Bea: And Dean takes a call, and Sam says that it's a ghost. Dean's already wondering where the graveyard is, but they’re like, nope, Jordan was cremated, and oh by the way there's a possessed David Yaeger coming for you at the hospital. And Dean is so psyched.

Remmy: He is so excited. He's so excited. He's like, “David Yaeger's coming here??”

Bea: “He's gonna fight me?”

Remmy: “Are you telling me. That David Yaeger is on his way?” And Sam's like, “Dean. Dean, pull it back, come on, let's focus. Pull it in.”

Bea: Yeah. Put your head in the game.

Remmy: And Dean’s, “David Yaeger. Is coming here.”

Bea: He's so ready.

Remmy: You can practically see the b**** face on Sam.

Bea: Yeah. And like, also, this conversation’s not exactly quiet, y’know, and Dirk’s going to be listening in and being like, the f*** are you talking about…?

Remmy: Well, we do see Dirk do a little double take to Dean.

Bea: Yeah.

Remmy: And the next scene is that ‘pulling back the curtain’ wham bam thank you ma'am “yes, ghosts. Vampires, ghouls, werewolves.”

Bea: Yep, yep.

Remmy: Get in the salt circle.

Bea: “We ain't got time for this. I'm pouring out salt, get in the circle, do not leave. Stay in it, whatever happens.” And meanwhile Sam is attempting to pick the lock over at the comic shop, and he's trying to figure out, why now is Jordan attacking Stuart? If it's not been a recent thing that Jordan's passed away, then why is he attacking Stuart now? And Samantha basically brings out to open-air that Stuart's been stealing, and she's been taking his pay, but a ghost isn't really gonna know about that.

Remmy: And there's obviously long-standing resentments, anyways.

Bea: Yeah.

Remmy: Between Jordan and Stuart.

Bea: Yeah… I'm sorry, I'm just sitting here and like, my eyes just widened, and I just nodded like, to say the least…

Remmy: [laughs]

Bea: Yeah. Woof. And they're having no luck with this lock picking, so Sam goes to a backup. And he just goes, “Eh, so… Do you have any cleaning supplies?” Then we cut back to the hospital, at Stuart's hospital bed. And Dirk is kind of losing it, there. His breath is fogging up, and the room is acting extra possess-y.

Remmy: Uh huh. The cabinets are rattling, there's a wind flowing through the room. There's some spooky noises going on — but maybe that's just the soundtrack… Oh! The TV is flickering, and Dirk is just having a bad time. He's freaking out.

Bea: Yeah, he just later days out of there.

Remmy: Yep. He says, “I can't, I can't!” and he runs.

Bea: Meanwhile, Dean is going down the hallway of this hospital. And initially he's going to break the emergency glass…

Remmy: Uh huh.

Bea: But then he goes, ‘oh, no way, I can just open the door and grab the axe haha,’ and he takes that. He heads back around, looking for where this David Yaeger might come from.

Remmy: And we see this darkened hallway, very slasher, mirroring the movie that we've been seeing clips of.

Bea: Yeah. Yes.

Remmy: Through this whole — Where David Yaeger’s been stalking an abandoned hospital.

Bea: And Stuart's mom has come in: she sees David Yaeger.

Remmy: [laughs]

Bea: And is just kind of, ‘uhhh…’

[simultaneously] ‘Uhhh, nope!’

Bea: And then Dirk is yelling.

Remmy: Yeah!

Bea: For David Yaeger/Jordan: “If you want to go after Stuart, you have to go through me!” And Jordan’s kind of —

Remmy: I really liked that.

Bea: Yes.

Remmy: I really like that, because Dirk — You know, we saw Dirk flee the room, but when David Yaeger comes in front of Stuart's mom Dirk comes out and confronts Jordan/Hatchet Man.

Bea: Yeah, Dirk really steps up.

Remmy: Yeah, he does. It was so good: he squares off against this life-sized model of this murdering ghost, and he says, “I know who you are, I know what you want, and if you want to get to Stuart then [you] have to go through me.” [laughs] And we have this moment of tension between Dirk and the Hatchet Man, and then… Yaeger says… ‘okay.’ Well, he doesn't say it, he just starts charging towards Dirk. And Dirk's like, “oh s***,” and he runs off.

Bea: Yeah, “oh crap,” and he is gone.

Remmy: He bolts.

Bea: And here's where we start drawing the deep parallels between what's happening on the movie and what’s happening in real life. So, there are a couple of security guards —

Remmy: [laughs]

Bea: And they’re eating popcorn while watching All Saints' Day 3.

Remmy: I looooved them! I love them.

Bea: Yessss.

Remmy: I love them so much. I would watch this entire episode over again just for the security guards.

Bea: [laughs]

Remmy: They’re beautiful.

Bea: Yeah, and it was a really fun mechanic, too. That we have — Okay, so ‘Camera 6’, we can see Dirk has gone running. He's trying to escape David Yaeger, and on the movie screen there’s the woman who’s trying doors and who trips over nothing. And she just keeps trying to escape.

Remmy: And the security guards are having a grand ol’ time making fun of her. Like, “Run girl, run!”

Bea: Yeah, yeah.

Remmy: “Why you goin’ so slow?! What did you just trip over?!”

Bea: There's so much lampshading going on, too. Because earlier Dirk was saying, “Oh, it kind of pushes belief, you wouldn't see a hospital so empty…”

Remmy: Uh huh.

Bea: “At that time of night,” and Dean’s like, “Nah, I've been in enough hospitals, that's kind of legit.” And then lo and behold here we are in a hospital late at night, and Dirk is screaming for help.

Remmy: There’s nobody there.

Bea: He goes running to the elevator the same way that the movie heroine does. They're both frantically hammering on the buttons and yelling, “You're dead! You're dead!!”

Remmy: We go back to the security guards, they’re like, “Yeah! Press that button! You better get in that elevator!” And we can see the screens behind the two security guards that are actually — This whole time, we can see Dirk running through the hospital on the security monitors, but the security guards are just too focused on the movie to [notice].

Bea: Yeah.

Remmy: It's comical and, like you said, it's such a good mechanic. To go back and forth between the movie, the All Saints' Day movie, and Dirk.

Bea: I super liked that they did this. It was a lot of fun. And, yeah, Dirk's just jamming on the elevator keys, like, “Come on come on come on,” and I'm… That doesn't work! That doesn't speed anything up!

Remmy: [laughs]

Bea: But I understand the impulse. Go hard. And we cut from that back to Sam and Samantha. And Sam has a Scooby-Doo lunch kit that he’s loading up with chemicals.

Remmy: Uh huh!

Bea: And, another stellar line coming out of here, where Samantha is like, “How did you learn to do all this…?” and Sam just, deadpan, “I had a messed-up childhood.”

Remmy: [laughs] Yeah. Yeah, so Sam's making a f****** bomb in this aluminum lunch bin.

Bea: Mhmm. He hangs it up on the back door of the comic shop, and they go and they hide and it's just: tick, tick, boom! The door blows off the hinges, and they’re able to get out. And both Sam and Sam[antha] are standing there like, “Cool.”

Remmy: Yeah.

Bea: Then we go back to Dirk, and now he’s found his way to the morgue. And he’s just slightly freaked out, and a hand grabs his shoulder. He whips around, but it's just Dean, everything's okay.

Remmy: Just slightly freaked out, yeah.

Bea: Just un petit peu.

Remmy: [laughs]

Bea: So Dean, I don't know, he's kind of like, “Why are you here? I told you to stay put!” blah blah blah, that's not really…

Remmy: Yeah, I'm kind of like, why is Dean even in the morgue? How did he make his way to the hospital basement??

Bea: He's just like, ‘Where would I go if I was David Yaeger looking for a fight?’ and so he's just been sitting here with his axe like, this is gonna happen.

Remmy: [laughs]

Bea: Very excited. And, yeah, we get this great moment here where Dirk's like, “He's here.” You know, like, David Yaeger/Jordan, he's here.

Remmy: Uh huh.

Bea: And lo and behold, a body rises off of one of the slabs. And it is Hatchet Man.

Remmy: It's so ‘80s horror. It's so good.

Bea: Oh my god, yeah.

Remmy: It's like every — We're pulling out every cliche.

Bea: Yes. And not only that, but the life-sized model sits up and pushes [his] button, and it's the recorded: “Time to slice and dice.”

Remmy: [laughs] I loved that little mechanic. I mean we got — If Yaeger ever wants to talk, ‘cause we don't actually ever see or hear from Jordan.

Bea: Yeah.

Remmy: Jordan as a ghost is just possessing and animating these objects, but… [laughs] But Jordan knows what he wants to say, and he presses the button and we get those recorded little action figure bits from the doll.

Bea: Yes.

Remmy: “It's time to slice and dice,” or “Sometimes we all do bad things.”

Bea: Yes, oh my god. And here is the moment where they decide to splice in the fake trailer. Or, I guess it would be the real in-‘verse trailer.

Remmy: Uh huh.

Bea: For this fake movie. And it walks us through the history of how David Yaeger became Hatchet Man. And it's like: “Three years ago, on Halloween in 1983 — [dramatic announcer voice] a practical joke turned deadly.” And, yeah, we're seeing a bunch of recycled footage from Route 666, and the Season 5 episode where we see Matt Cohen as John Winchester in the garage.

Remmy: Mhmm.

Bea: [sighs] Oh my god…

Remmy: Okay, so, you know what: It wasn’t until you said 1983 —

Bea: Yep.

Remmy: — that I even had the thought, but wasn't Dean born in ‘84?

Bea: Dean was ‘79, and Sam was ‘83.

Remmy: Okay, yeah!

Bea: Yeah. All Saints' Day would be November 1st, 1983. And November 2nd would have been the day Mary died.

Remmy: [pained] Oh my god…

Bea: So, again, when I talked earlier, like, ‘This is a fun, happy [episode]…’ But as soon as I started connecting these dots…

Remmy: Uh huh.

Bea: I — I sat at this point of the episode, and I had to parse through what was going on in my head. It was basically this, this big medley that had to do with, y’know, Sam and Dean, how they grew up. ‘Cause, again, the movie dates are the year Sam was born, and the year that Mary died.

Remmy: The day before…

Bea: Yeah

Remmy: …Mary died. So — So this trailer, it was the three years before, right? It says that he —

Bea: Yeah. So that on, um, [on] November 1st of ‘86 is when he rises to get revenge.

Remmy: So the trailer opens up on November 1st…

Bea: Mm, October 31st

Remmy: October 31st, sorry, 1983. And in the trailer we have this footage of Matt Cohen as John Winchester, and the narrative is just inviting us to draw these parallels. They’re telling us to think about this, they're inviting us to be retrospective about it. And it's just like — It gives me John feels!! It gives me John feels about, you know, this one event in John's life, this fire.

Bea: Mhmm.

Remmy: David Yaeger, he — The ‘practical joke gone wrong’ was that he was working in a garage and then he got crushed under a car. And then they set the car on fire, so that's why Yaeger looks the way he does. But… again, the John parallels! This one night in 1983, his entire life goes up in flames and he becomes a monster.

Bea: Yeah. And, just take the name ‘David Yaeger’, okay —

Remmy: Do I want to?!

Bea: If — if you're translating it to name meanings, it’s ‘Beloved Hunter’.

Remmy: [pause] Noooo.

Bea: Yeah!

Remmy: Nooooooo.

Bea: Yeah!!

Remmy: Is it, really?

Bea: It is! It is, really. So like, when I said I had to sit down and process my f****** feelings…

Remmy: [laughs]

Bea: As soon as I heard the last name Yaeger, I was like, ‘Oh f***, we got some on-the-nose s*** going on, here. What does it mean?!’ And by the time we got to this fake trailer, and there was the old footage that they were recycling — It was Matt Cohen there, and with the dates that are involved; with the nostalgia that we’re being invited to think about, here… There’s this really strong parallel.

Remmy: Yeah. We're being told to consider Dean's own childhood. And on the Dirk mirror, y’know, Dirk's poor relationship with his father… [heavy sigh] Ohhh my god…

Bea: And, okay, so if David Yaeger is drawing strong parallels to John, then… To look at what happened to David Yaeger, like you said, there's this one moment that completely turned his life around. But he died, and he rose again from the dead, and what he pursued after reviving was revenge.

Remmy: Yeah.

Bea: All that David Yaeger cares about is going and finding revenge. I mean, we talk about it a lot, but there's this really complex relationship that the Winchesters have with death. And to have David Yaeger be one of many mirrors that are brought to them, to give us this opportunity to reflect… So, David Yaeger the [action figure] is being possessed by Jordan, who Samantha said was like their own personal Willy Wonka, who taught them everything they know. Samantha, Dirk, and Stuart had him as a father or an uncle figure, and yet there’s this wrong that Jordan sees one of them performing and he can't abide by it, and he has to do something [to stop it].

Remmy: And Samantha says that the shop was his life. And it's just…

Bea: Yeah, [he] taught them everything they know.

Remmy: Oh my god, you're sending me spiraling again. Because the shop was [Jordan’s] life, it was everything to him. We can draw that parallel to John and hunting, and how with the Dirk and Samantha mirror, it’s… Jordan really was a father figure to — Oh my god, Jordan!! His — I’m sorry — Jordan with a ‘J’, and John, and Sam, and Dirk and Dean…

Bea: Yep.

Remmy: [sighs] I'm f****** mad! So mad!!

Bea: This — Again, I felt so bad when [we] started recording this. Like, ‘I should have much more enthusiasm than this!’ But I was just sitting there, this hollowed-out husk of a human —

Remmy: [background giggling]

Bea: — being like… Why did I have to… They never even said John's name this episode!!

Remmy: Ohhh my godddd. Can I now have feels about Dirk confronting Jordan earlier, with a Dean/John mirror now…

Bea: I’ll — I’ll give you one little thing we can cut, but ‘Jordan,’ the name meaning, is ‘to descend.’

Remmy: …I hate it. Thanks, I hate it!

Bea: You're welcome.

Remmy: [laughs] Don't cut that! The listeners have the right to know! Oh my god… Let’s —

Bea: [deep sigh]

Remmy: Let’s move on. This, this is…

Bea: I don't think I can! Like I said, I had a high school-level essay that I could write here about the parallels between Samantha, Dirk, and Jordan, and Sam, Dean, and John.

Remmy: Yeah.

Bea: Oh my god, the whole fact that this episode — Like, why are we sitting here feeling sad when the episode was so funny??

Remmy: So funny!

Bea: And so fun!

Remmy: So fun, and so good, and so lighthearted, and every moment was — You know, watching it I just had a grin on my face!

Bea: Yeah, and I'm like… It's the veneer again. You look at Dean, and when he talks about his childhood he's always trying to put the positive spin on it. He's always looking at all the good times of it, and here we are, like, ‘Well… is that just the candy coating on top of this more serious nostalgia that's going on?’ ‘Cause we can see Sam is not having as nearly as much levity throughout the episode because he — he won't answer Dean's questions about why he dislikes Halloween until very much later but… Dean is the, “C’mon! It's good, it's fun!” and Sam is the, “Well, no, there’s bad memories attached to this.”

Remmy: Mhmm. He’s the grouch.

Bea: Well, and I'm like… Okay, all of these parallels we’re being invited to consider: Sam's the one who struggled so much with their [childhood], with how they grew up, in a really outward fashion.

Remmy: [quiet] Oh, my god.

Bea: Dean struggled too, but he didn't let it out.

Remmy: Ohhh my god...

Bea: He did the ‘yes sirs,’ he stepped in line. He put the smile on, and…

Remmy: My god…

Bea: I’ll — I will write you my f****** essay on this! On this piece!

Remmy: Bea.

Bea: ‘Why was I sad?’ Oh, I have a billion reasons why!

Remmy: You’re so right. Bea, you’re so right, oh my god…

Bea: I'm sorry!! Because it is a really —

Remmy: You’re so right. This — Dean...

Bea: It's written so well we get two layers to it.

Remmy: This whole Dean/Sam thing. That they're saying, “Oh, Sam the grouch doesn't like Halloween,” and Dean enthusiastic about the whole thing. And, “Oh, Sam, why can't you just lighten up a little bit?” It's — it's a blast straight to the past. Season 1, Season 2. That was Sam, the reluctant son and Dean, the…

Bea: The ever-optimist, because an optimist was required. But, again, go back to what the summary for this episode was: it was, “as Dean still struggles.” Dean's struggling. He's not in a good place, and yet he… He's throwing himself into where he can find enthusiasm and interest. [Sam] brought him on a case that has killer toys, and it has his favorite slasher villain that he now gets the fight, and we’ve paused on that scene for infinity because there's so many feelings that are cropping up!

Remmy: I'm so… I don't — I’m not having fun anymore!!

Bea: I'm sorry, I —

Remmy: [laughs]

Bea: I wasn't either!

Remmy: Oh my god, this is — Okay, I — [in an undertone] I’m really being very serious, this is f****** hilarious.

Bea: [laughs]

Remmy: I'm having a great time.

Bea: Well, I'm suffering.

[both laugh]

Bea: Yeah, my notes right here say: talk about feels about vengeance driving beyond death.

Remmy: Yeah… Honestly, I did not make a single John/Jordan/Yaeger — Ah, [misunderstanding ‘Yaeger’ for ‘Jaeger’] ‘Yaeger’ starts with a ‘J’, too! Did you know?! Yeah!

Bea: [laughs]

Remmy: Anyways…

Bea: Riddle me this!

Remmy: Uh huh, uh huh. See, and you keep saying like, “Oh, I don't know why this is happening to me, because it was such a fun episode,” but it's the writer’s fault!

Bea: They didn't say John!

Remmy: They're inviting us —

Bea: Yeah!

Remmy: They're inviting us to, to…

Bea: To give ourselves our own swirlies.

Remmy: Uh huh.

Bea: In the toilets, spiral our way down. “Why are you hurting? Why are you punishing yourself? I gave you a fun episode?”

Remmy: [laughs] I… Uh, yeah. Yeah, no, it is very deliberate, obviously.

Bea: Then we get [this] really fun scene. We got Dean with an axe vs. Jordan with two hatchets.

Remmy: Uh huh!

Bea: So, who's going to win??

Remmy: Uh huh.

Bea: And Dean has this awesome little line that essentially boils down to, “You can walk into the light, or I'll send you there,” and then lo and behold Jordan pushes the button, and it's, “Time to slice and dice.” And Dean’s just so happy.

Remmy: He is.

Bea: Like, yassss, we get this fight.

Remmy: Dean's like, “Y’know what, I was kind of hoping you would say that,” and then they face off.

Bea: And then, blam! They’re fighting. Jordan appears stronger than he looks, and Dean kind of has to rally from that. He tells Dirk to get back, and they have at it, there.

Remmy: Yeah.

Bea: And while this is going on, Sam and Samantha are rushing to the hospital. And Samantha is getting the rundown on how ghost possessions, these types of things work.

Remmy: Yeah. Sam says it doesn't make sense, that Yaeger-as-Jordan is traveling the way that he is. Because if he's been cremated, then usually ghosts — The way it works is that ghosts attach themselves to an object, something of great importance to them, and they’re pretty stationary. They're attached to that object, so they can’t go where the object isn’t. And then Samantha gets smart about what that means.

Bea: Yes.

Remmy: And Samantha is the one who concludes: the keychain.

Bea: Yeah.

Remmy: The keychain to the store that Jordan loved so much.

Bea: Yeah, and Sam's like, “Sounds great!”

Remmy: [laughs] Yeah! Yeah, Samantha's like, “Um, does that make sense?” and Sam's, “Yes, yes.”

Bea: “You got it in one, you’re a quick study.” And then, at the morgue, Dean is getting tossed around.

Remmy: Mhmm.

Bea: And David Yaeger grabs the axe that Dean has lost hold of. [Dean’s] kind of in a tight pinch, but then Dirk stabs the David Yaeger model from behind, and he gets back-handed for it.

Remmy: I know! I felt so bad for them fighting this — It's not a person, it's not a monster. I mean, you can't cut its head off and —

Bea: Yeah, how do you hurt it in any significant way?

Remmy: Yeah, but I guess they're distracting it long enough that Sam and Sam[antha] get to the morgue.

Bea: Yeah. They're really hoping that Sam and Samantha are the ones that are on the case, and they're figuring out what possession [Jordan] is attached to. But Dean, he — he's getting knocked around. He’s put into a chokehold by the Hatchet Man, and this is when Sam busts in, Samantha on his heels. And he says, “It's the keychain!”

Remmy: [laughs]

Bea: And Dean fumbles around on the model, he grabs the keys, tosses it [over], and Sam goes to try and burn it. Samantha grabs a container of ethyl alcohol to use as an accelerant, and they get that key chain hummin’ away in one of those little pans.

Remmy: And the whole time Dean is being choked out against the morgue drawers.

Bea: Yes.

Remmy: And f******, again, it was so fun, it was so humorous. They keep cutting from Sam and Samantha trying to burn the object to Dean getting the life choked out of him.

Bea: Yeah.

Remmy: But — but Dean's making these wrap-it-up motions like, ‘Uh, guys? Guys??’

Bea: And, forgot to mention, but during the fight Dean grabs two of those — I wouldn't say bed pans, because it's a morgue… They're not bed pans, but two little pans, and he's just clanging the Hatchet Man up against the head, like —

Remmy: [laughs] Yeah.

Bea: There's so many good little fun moves.

Remmy: It was! I think that… I also have a lot of thoughts about the choreography in the last few seasons.

Bea: Yes.

Remmy: I think it's, [imitates kiss] mwah! Chef’s kisses, it’s phenomenal.

Bea: Yes, the fights have gotten stellar.

Remmy: I know, yeah. And so, yeah, Dean lost his weapon and he had to make due. Again, utilizing — We've seen this a lot in the past few seasons, utilizing what's around him.

Bea: Yeah. Environmental.

Remmy: He throws a trash can at [Yaeger], he throws — [laughs] a roll of paper towels at the guy.

Bea: Ah, so good.

Remmy: And then he grabs a couple, uh. I guess they’re… utensil pans?

Bea: Yeah.

Remmy: And starts to fisticuff with that.

Bea: Yeah.

Remmy: Some improvised brass knuckles.

Bea: So good.

Remmy: But Sam, with the ethanol, gets the keys lit up in one of those same pans.

Bea: Yup, and then the spirit inside David Yaeger goes up. Jordan is done, and Dean is sitting there rubbing his neck. Dirk’s — he’s like, “Okay, is it really over? Just like that?”

Remmy: [laughs]

Bea: And you can see Dean’s like, Just like that??

Remmy: Dean's like, excuse me??

Bea: It's not that easy!

Remmy: Uh huh.

Bea: We get our brotherly scene, now.

Remmy: Yep.

Bea: They're driving, heading back home. And Dean actually thanks Sam out of the blue. He appreciates Sam getting him out of his funk.

Remmy: Yeah.

Bea: Getting him a win.

Remmy: He says, “I know what you were doing. You wanted [to] bring me out of my funk, and get me a win,” like you said. It just made me think, did Dean know all along? And maybe he was just humoring it until he wasn't, or maybe they're each aware of each other's motives but, uh, I dunno.

Bea: Yeah, I think they know each other well enough at this point that it's not like they’re really able to trick each other. Even if it was only on a superficial level that Dean was like, ‘Oh boy! A case, I'm going out there,’ I think that there's still this deeper level. Like, my brother is giving me something that… Or, he came to me with something that he knew I would be interested in, and it would be impossible to say no to. And by doing this, and by going through this, I can say that it was really good and it was what I needed.

Remmy: Yeah, it was good.

Bea: And just voluntarily coming out and saying that. Like, “Thank you, I needed that.” And Sam admits that it was a bit of an… unexpected turn on this case.

Remmy: [laughs]

Bea: But Dean's just like, stoked about the David Yaeger angle.

Remmy: He is. Again, glowing. Sam was basically like, “You know, I wanted to pitch you a lowball, there,” but Dean says —

Bea: Well, Dean says, “Don't ruin this.”

Remmy: Yeah.

Bea: “Let me have this.”

Remmy: Yeah. Dean's more like, “Hell no, this was the best day ever!”

Bea: Yeah. And to me it goes back to that difference in perspective. That we're going to see right away that, to Dean, this was a fun case. And Sam, if he were to dissect this or want to talk about it on a more serious level, then it could ruin that fun. Dean just wants to look at it on the bright shiny level when… y’know, there is some darkness to what happened to this case. This father figure to these three kids [who] turned on one of them.

Remmy: But Dean says, “Nope, let me have this. This was a good day.”

Bea: Exactly. ‘Let's not overthink this.’ And then Sam takes this opportunity to reinforce to Dean, “You can't hide out just because of what happened with Michael. What he did with your face is not your fault, and you did the right thing by saying yes to him. My life was on the line, Jack's life was on the line — you did it for your family, and no one blames you.”

Remmy: Yeah. We talked about it last episode, where Dean is unable to separate his choices from Michael's actions.

Bea: Yeah, his body and Michael's choices. Because they took place in his body, they’re his responsibility.

Remmy: Yeah.

Bea: I really did appreciate that Sam takes another chance to say, here: “No one blames you for this except yourself.”

Remmy: And Dean says, “That's enough.”

Bea: Yeah. He just is not going to be able to meet Sam on Sam's level for this.

Remmy: No, no.

Bea: Dean's just not going to get over it. But he'll agree that, yeah, we got to just keep moving forward.

Remmy: I actually really like that Sam was saying to Dean, “We don't blame you, nobody blamed you. It's not your fault and you shouldn't blame yourself.” And Dean is hearing that, but he also… And it's not in a stubborn, or petulant, or self-destructive kind of way, but —

Bea: It's just in a factual way.

Remmy: Right, right. He's just saying, “The fact that I blame myself is enough.” That, y’know, this is something real that I'm feeling.

Bea: It is what it is. I can't parse this down, I can't break this into components where I can find a different secret truth inside of it. This is what it is.

Remmy: And, like you said, Dean is not going to be able to meet Sam on this. But I liked how straightforward it was.

Bea: Yes.

Remmy: And true.

Bea: I like that we get to see the brothers, like, they’ve matured to a point where that's okay. They don't need to, but they know that they're there for each other. And that counts for something.

Remmy: Yeah, very true to life. I mean, sometimes we just have our s***, and we're not going to get better from our s*** [just] because we're offered a way out, you know.

Bea: Yeah. Everyone has their own pace that they're approaching things. And although Sam is sitting over in that one location, Dean just — he's not going to be able to make it there, and not for a while.

Remmy: Yeah, but I don't know, I still think… As bleak as we're making this sound, I still think it was a hopeful note.

Bea: Yeah. Dean's sitting there and he's going, “I'm here for whatever you need, alright Chief?”

Remmy: Awwww.

Bea: And then Dean gets a little [phone] chime, and, okay, Halloween’s officially over. Now, you've gotta tell me why you hate it.

Remmy: [laughs]

Bea: And, [mocking self] blah blah blah, a lot about John feels, but here Dean is trying to do a guessing game. He's like, “Is it because I ate all your candy?” Then he goes, “Is it because of Dad?”

Remmy: Yeah.

Bea: Once again, we have the sunny bright veneer, and then there is this subtext of the harder times that they've had in their lives.

Remmy: And, you know, the fact that Dean said… Not to — not to bring us back down to the pits of despair —

Bea: I'll happily spiral! I'm ready!

Remmy: But, Dean even saying, “Was it something that Dad did?” It… Okay, so this is something that Sam has carried with him for years and years and years, and Dean knows it's just like…

Bea: It's a hard topic, yeah.

Remmy: Yeah, it's something that Dean doesn't know about Sam. But when, I don't know, when Dean said, “Is this something that Dad did?” it rang to me as [Dean] almost, behind a mask of levity, putting forth a concern that… We know that Dean has suffered trauma after trauma under John that Sam’s not even aware of, right?

Bea: Yeah. Well, Sam knows of some, but there's no way that he's going to know the entirety.

Remmy: No, no. There's so many moments in Dean's upbringing that have impacted him so deeply, that Dean's just never revealed to Sam. We get stories here and there, but we also get the feeling that we're only scratching the surface. Now, in Dean's mind, it's like… There are 1500 moments where John maybe ruined something for [Dean], or it's just something that [he] thinks about, these low that [he’s] hit because of John. But [his] entire life was devoted to shielding Sam from everything in the world, including [John] — even though he would never say such a thing out loud, but you know that Dean shielded Sam from a lot of John. And I just think that it would be a lingering fear, that Dean couldn't protect Sam from everything, and there's some things that Dean doesn't know regarding John.

Bea: Yeah. That for Dean to bring up John as the possible culprit for why Sam doesn't like Halloween, it's also bringing up, like, ‘Did I fail you in that fashion?’

Remmy: Yeah.

Bea: Those old knee-jerk expressions of wanting to protect his brother from the worst of things, even when that includes his father. But Sam, to Dean's relief, is like, “No, it's a different memory of when I was in sixth grade. We were living in Bismarck, and I super liked this girl, and I was so nervous about it that I barfed all over her.”

Remmy: [laughs] “Went to a Halloween party that she invited me to. We were playing bobbing for apples…” And, I’m just like, me knowing where this story is going, I’m like [pained] ‘Did he — did he puke in the — did he —’

Bea: That — I'm like, that would be some gross water. That no one — that game is over.

Remmy: [laughs] You couldn't even hose down the bucket.

Bea: I’m like, burn that house down, buy me a new one.

Remmy: Yeah, yeah. Throw out the baby with the bathwater on that one.

Bea: [pained] He barfed on her.

Remmy: “And it was super embarrassing, and it was awful, and everyone laughed, and I ended up hiding in the woods.”

Bea: “People ran and screamed.”

Remmy: [laughs]

Bea: And yeah, yeah. Dean's just like, “That’s great!”

Remmy: He —

Bea: And Sam, “No! I hid in the woods until you came and picked me up!”

Remmy: Uh huh. And Dean is just thrilled.

Bea: Yeah.

Remmy: I don’t know, I also loved that. You know, talking about these slow reveals, these tidbits, these stories that we've gotten over the years… I just love every single one of them, honestly.

Bea: Mhmm…

Remmy: It's like, every new piece of information is something that we can slot into their history. I dunno, it's just part of any relationship, that there's always something new that you can discover about [another person].

Bea: Yeah. That you don't know everything about someone, but that's not detrimental: that's an opportunity that you're going to find out more. You're going to have these delightful moments of revealing something that the other person never knew.

Remmy: Yeah, that was great. It was super cute.

Bea: Yeah.

Remmy: And very bro, and I missed it. We're on episode 4, and it's been go go go, drama drama drama, and this was just a breath of fresh air. It was great.

Bea: Yeah, it was a really fun monster-of-the-week, despite how we make it sound otherwise.

Remmy: [laughs]

Bea: It was really fun. And even here Dean is trying to basically — to baffle Sam with costume suggestions. With, “Next year, we're going to do Halloween right.”

Remmy: Oh, I have so many feelings about that! Oh my god.

Bea: Matching costumes!

Remmy: “Next year, we're going to do Halloween [right].” Just, these moments from Dean, too, on, “You know, we should take a vacation.”

Bea: Yeah! Hearing them talk about the future in casual ways.

Remmy: And it's really been Dean, more than [where] it used to be Sam, in the past few years. Which is — I could talk about that, too. But! But, I don't know, I had a lot of feels about Dean saying ‘next year, we're gonna do Halloween right.’ And cue me crying in front of my TV, because next year is the last year.

Bea: Yeah… What are they gonna give us?

Remmy: Let me — let me run us through the final scene, and then I'll give you my takeaway. Because it ties straight into this. So, the final scene is: we're back in the morgue.

Bea: Yep!

Remmy: We have that creepy morgue ambience, and we've got some music…

Bea: And we've got one of the security guards from earlier.

Remmy: Uh huh! [He] comes in, turns on the lights. He's unconcerned, except there's something — a mess in this room. He sees there was a struggle in this room. There’s things gone, blood on the floor…

Bea: The axe, there's the knife, there's the hatchets.

Remmy: Uh huh.

Bea: And the lights are flickering…

Remmy: Uh huh! Again, very ‘80s horror. The lights are flickering, so the security guard clicks on his flashlight, and he sees the knife and the hatchets, and he rounds one of the tables — that still has a f****** body on it.

Bea: Just out there, yeah.

Remmy: Peak morgue aesthetic. And he lights on the boots of… These workman's boots, and he pans up the figure of David Yaeger, the model. That they just left in the morgue, apparently. And we get a dun dun dunnnn

Bea: [imitating Yaeger] “Trick or treat.”

Remmy: “Trick or treat!” It was — yeah, we end on this ‘80s horror movie moment.

Bea: Yeah, yeah. Again, invited into the nostalgia, just enjoying it.

Remmy: But, on that, I'll tell you my wish for —

Bea: Please do.

Remmy: For this episode. It's that, next Halloween, I want Yaeger back. I want Yaeger back! I want Yaeger back, and I want Samantha, and I want Dirk. Bring them back, they were so good.

Bea: Yeah. Imagine, like — Okay, so Sam and Dean leave, now we have Samantha and Dirk at this comic shop and both of them know the truth. Imagine what you could do with that, there. That could be a lot of fun.

Remmy: They were so gung-ho about the monsters, too.

Bea: And on point!

Remmy: Yeah! Competent.

Bea: “Okay, that's the information you're giving me? I'm gonna work with it, boom. Okay, that makes sense.” Like you say, competent.

Remmy: Samantha with the brains, she puzzled out the comic shop and the keys with Sam. And then Dirk as the hero.

Bea: Yeah, the courage.

Remmy: Yeah! Courage. And it's just, I want them back! I want them back so bad. Can you just imagine, maybe we drop the knowledge that Dean and Dirk have kept in contact?

Bea: There's a new All Saints' Day coming out.

Remmy: Uh huhhh.

Bea: Them texting about it.

Remmy: They've been texting about it, maybe they play — I don't know what the kids play these days.

Bea: Fortnite…

Remmy: I don't know what the video games are… I can't see Dean playing Fortnite, but… Oh my gosh, can you imagine having an All Saints' Day Halloween episode, and we get it casually dropped that Dean and Dirk are in contact, because I — I just need Dean to have friends. I need Dean to have friends.

Bea: Yes. Yeah, we’re coming back to that. There's the Hunter Hub, there. There's a whole motley of people there, and yet [Dean’s] so apprehensive of [being] there.

Remmy: And Dean’s just… always so alone. Isolated. And it is, half the time, of his own making. But… we have the Hunter Hub…

Bea: But that's Sam's thing, you know?

Remmy: Yeah.

Bea: That's where Sam's interest is. That's where his efforts are, and Dean just can't encroach on his brother’s thing. Like, we're talking about Charlie, we're talking about Dirk: these are people who have connections to the normal life, you know? Things that the average person could have an interest in, and Dean excitedly reaches out to these aspects. And yet, here’s a whole shwack of hunters that have [their own] experiences. You could go ask them questions about how their day-to-day goes, and Dean just isn't interested.

Remmy: I just think it's almost like Dean stumbles across these relationships. He has to click with the person, but he definitely does not seek those relationships out.

Bea: Yeah. He just kind of assumed that the way that he's going is the way he has to go.

Remmy: I have so many Dean feels this whole episode, so…

Bea: Mhmm…

Remmy: Oof. What was your — What was your takeaway?

Bea: I — I did really like that there was this open invitation to draw parallels. From the get-go, we're told look at Samantha and Sam, look at Dirk and Dean, and from there we can just… We get a playground of just what ideas that raises. What reflections that gives to these characters, and what it means for Samantha and Dirk. So I just really liked having that brought to us so explicitly. Like, ‘David Yaeger.’

Remmy: Yeah!!

Bea: As a name, like…

Remmy: Yeah. This episode was so, so fun. It really was so fun. But there was so much nuance [to it], and it's so much subtext and, like you said, we’re invited to see it and then follow it to its conclusion. To hold that in the back of our minds and to be retrospective about it.

Bea: Yeah, and the farther back you hold that mirror, you can do a reflection on the entire series. How it began, what John's storyline meant, and what it did to the kids.

Remmy: And what [John] became.

Bea: Yeah.

Remmy: Yeah, oof. Oof! It’s so good.

Bea: So much.

Remmy: And I love it. It was a good episode.

Bea: Yes. A lot of fun, a lot of tears… [I] really enjoyed it. So… That was your takeaway, too? Or, did you have a takeaway, Remmy?

Remmy: Do I have a takeaway… I just, you know, I really did love Samantha and Dirk. So maybe my takeaway is kind of your takeaway, but… I liked how self-aware Dean was in this episode, you know? It's kind of like, at the beginning we see him holed up in his room, but like I said, it's almost like he's doing right by him. Even though it doesn't…

Bea: Yes.

Remmy: He's just healing as well as he can with the cards that he's been dealt.

Bea: Yeah. It's not a step forward for him, but it's not a step back either. He's just taking a moment to lick his wounds.

Remmy: Yeah, and he comes into this episode so joyous, and so enthusiastic. And it's really kind of… Maybe you can say it's just ‘fake it til you make it,’ but I think he is making it, you know? Because, just like he is escaping in his horror slasher TV, he’s throwing himself into this case and he's having fun with it. He's struggling, he's not okay, but he doesn't let that steal away all of his good moments. It's really… I don't know, it's really good. And then at the very end of the episode, we were told, “I'm not going to get over it, but… I had a good day.” And that's a step.

Bea: Yeah.

Remmy: It's good. It's so good.

Bea: Yes, and like, “Thank you for doing this for me.”

Remmy: Yeah, yeah.

Bea: Yeah…

Remmy: [laughs] And… that… is Season 14, episode 4: Mint Condition.

Bea: So, yeah! If you guys listen to this, and if you had similar thoughts — or if you had completely different thoughts! — we would love to hear.

Remmy: Or if you want to even link us some of that meta that we talked about, we’re here for it.

Bea: Yeah, we want lots of perspectives on the show, and not just our own. Because very clearly, like…

Remmy: [laughs]

Bea: The spiral got introduced very quickly. [laughs]

Remmy: Yeah, uh… Thanks for sticking with us.

Bea: And so, hopefully you guys will tune in next week when we cover Season 14, Episode 5: Nightmare Logic.

Remmy: Yeah!

Bea: And, as always, if you guys want to email us we're at nochickflickpodcast@gmail.com, and we’re also on Tumblr and Twitter if you guys want to reach out to us there.

Remmy: Yeah, on Tumblr we're nochickflickpodcast, and on Twitter we are @nochickflickpod. Subscribe to us on iTunes, or Google Play, or Spotify: anywhere, and you'll be the first to know when we publish on every Sunday.

Bea: Yes, so, see you guys there!

Remmy: Yeah, see you then! Bye!

Bea: Bye!

[post-outro stinger]

Bea: I watched it, and I was like, “Why am I not…” I’m f******, what's his name, Pagliacci —

Remmy: [laughs]

Bea: That f****** clown. I'm sitting there —

Remmy: [cackles]

Bea: — putting on my clown makeup, like… “This was a good episode… It was a fun episode…”

Remmy: [cackling escalates]

Bea: “Why am I not smiling…?” And then it’s, oh, it’s because my brain is, like, parallels-parallels-parallels-parallels-parallels-parallels-parallels.

Remmy: You’ve broken me, Bea…

Bea: I broke myself.