Join us in covering S14E5, "Nightmare Logic", or the one where Bobby's got a bug up his butt, Dean shows surprising emotional maturity, and Sam, you're doing amazing sweetie. 

Remmy: Hello everybody! Welcome to (No) Chick Flick Moments, our Supernatural watchcast, where today we are going to be listening to — and again, I forget to introduce myself. Bea, every time...

Bea: [laughs] Every time.

Remmy: Every time, she has to remind me, and by the magic of editing we cut it out and splice it in like it never happened. But no, I am your co-host, Remmy. Hi guys!

Bea: Hi! And I am your other co-host, Bea.

Remmy: And as I said, this is (No) Chick Flick Moments. Today, we are discussing season 14 episode 5, “Nightmare Logic.”

Bea: This was a really good one. I super-enjoyed it.

Remmy: It was! I did too. It was a monster-of-the-week episode but it was so well-written, which makes sense because this episode was written by Meredith Glynn, and it was directed by Darren Grant. I like how I just slip into my broadcast announcer voice when I'm talking about the “written and directed” and the description. And the description reads that [laughs] Shut up, don't make fun of me.

Bea: [laughs] I'm not!

Remmy: You totally are. The description reads, After a hunt gone wrong leaves Maggie's whereabouts unknown, Sam, Dean, Mary and Bobby race to find her, but what they find are their own worst nightmares. Full cast today.

Bea: Full cast, and I forgot to read the synopsis in advance of watching it. I’d almost forgotten that Bobby and Mary were going to be making an appearance in this one too.

Remmy: So you were as surprised as Sam and Dean when they showed up.

Bea: Yeah, I got to have that organic moment again.

Remmy: [laughs]

Bea: Yeah, we start right off in Claremore, Oklahoma, where Maggie is on her own. She's entering into this private graveyard late at night.

Remmy: Super creepy.

Bea: Yes, she pulls out a little go-camera when she's outside of the Rawling crypt, and she lets the camera know that she suspects there's a ghoul in here. She's gearing to go in with her machete, and it doesn't take her too long before she reaches the bottom of the mausoleum. She hears something approaching, and as she turns she's blindsided by this really haggard looking creature.

Remmy: Now, I didn't have my brightness all the way up but [laughs] did we have one of those horror movie moments? When there's a figure behind her that kinda wasn't there when we looked again? Because I know that there were those statues — some saints statues and some Mary statues, or angel statues, I should say — so you saw those when Maggie was exploring this dark crypt with her little flashlight that apparently doesn't shine for s*** [laughs] Get some LEDs, man.

Bea: [laughs]

Remmy: I thought you were professionals.

Bea: I mean, now there are — what was it Sam said? There's a good solid 16 hunters that he was taking care of and, assuming that’s teams… I mean, that's a lot of equipment to be on top of. I don't know what kind of budget they would have at the bunker.

Remmy: Oh my gosh, I have some feelings about teams but [laughs] Maggie's here by herself in this opening scene, and I'm like, “Maggie, what are you doing?”

Bea: Yeah, how did you get here alone?

Remmy: The buddy system, man! Is this your first day? Yes, it is her first day.

Bea: Yes, spoilers, it is.

Remmy: [laughs] Yeah, yeah, yeah, I do think that I saw one of those classic horror movie moments, where there was a figure behind her in the gloom, and then it wasn't there or it moved, and it was right before she got blindsided by this creepy old dead-looking dude who jumped her in the dark.

Bea: Yeah, that is some very pale skin on the dude, some very sunken eyes. Just — whoosh — out of the darkness and she's down. Then we go over to the bunker, where Sam is debriefing what looks like half a dozen hunters, and almost giving them... homework assignments?

Remmy: [laughs] Yeah, he's propped up on the arm of a chair — or is he standing? It doesn't matter — he's standing before this table of hunters and he's coaching, it seems. He's telling them be smart, take notes, all information is good information. “You guys are doing great, let's go.”

Bea: Yeah and, like you say, he has a very teacherly vibe, and Dean says as much when he comes in. He's like, “Y’know, there’s practically a camp counselor vibe coming off you right now.”

Remmy: Uh-huh, uh-huh. Dean comes in and catches the tail-end of Sam's little pep talk or lesson, and immediately starts making fun of him.

Bea: Yeah, just poking fun at the parental vibes that Sam is getting off here like, “Okay, you kids have fun out there!” [Dean] trying to be the jokesy dad to the serious one.

Remmy: Uh-huh, and Sam, y’know — b**** faces abound. Sam dismisses the hunters and goes to get more coffee and, like I said, Dean is at his shoulder the whole while, trailing him [and] heckling him. Sam's phone is going off and Dean says, “What is that?” and Sam says, “Check-ins,” and Dean laughs, “Aww, check-ins? That's adorable!”

Bea: Yes, he just can't fathom having that much structure, I think, to the hunter lifestyle, because they would have just grown up with their dad being the one who gives them the predominant rundown of what the day today looks like. As they got older, Bobby got introduced, [and] they met other hunters along the way, but it was still very unstructured, whereas Sam is doing things in a very regimented fashion right now.

Remmy: We were kinda told in the early seasons that yes, there is a system of hunters. I mean, look at the Roadhouse or look at Bobby, but John one-part never trusted [them] enough to participate in those networks, and one-part got himself booted from those networks because he was who he is. He seems to be notorious as kind of unreliable, or just someone not pleasant to work with.

Bea: Yeah, he wouldn't really cooperate nicely with others. He would lean on his own plans more than he would accept others.

Remmy: Yes, so he was definitely a lone wolf in the hunter world, and from that Sam and Dean were kept away from those hunter networks that John made himself an enemy of early on. So they were also raised as lone wolf hunters.

Bea: Yeah, and to mimic one of the later characters, what she says, “They were too young to know any better.”

Remmy: Oh my god.

Bea: That it was just the way that it was.

Remmy: Bea, I basically wrote down that conversation word-for-word, so I can't wait to get to it.

Bea: [laughs]

Remmy: Because we're going to talk about it.

Bea: Ohh yes. But for now, Dean is doing his check-ins with Sam, y’know, “You don't seem like you've gotten very much sleep.” Even if it is wild out there right now, he still needs to take care of himself, but Sam is adamant that he has too many things to do right now to consider as paltry a thing as, “Oh, my body needs sleep.”

Remmy: Yeah.

Bea: He has the 16 hunter teams — excluding Cas and Jack, he says, in Sarasota, and Mary and Bobby in Texas — and that, although these people are experienced with war, it's not the same as hunting. They still require lore, tips, backup. They need to be trained on how to survive this life.

Remmy: Yeah, and Sam is not only acting as the “Bobby” of the situation — and when I say Bobby, I mean the old Bobby, the hunter support — but he's also a one-man Men of Letters right now.

Bea: Yes. Sam would have seen how valuable that was to their life, how many times they relied on calling up Bobby for information, and to think, “Okay, here's a whole schwack of people who have zero experience. Well, I can step in and be that role for them.”

Remmy: Yeah, and at this point we're not quite sure if — at least for me, we're not quite sure if Sam is reveling in this role — he's “Chief” — he has built something and it's something good.

Bea: Yeah, but is he enjoying it, or is he just taking this role because someone needs to step into it?

Remmy: I just want him to enjoy it, okay? [laughs]

Bea: And I think that he would! After we see this episode here, we can see all the characters around him that — although there may be some questions regarding his suitability for it, I feel like those questions were coming from Bobby second-guessing his own self and projecting those things, as opposed to Sam himself being questioned of his worth. Sam is in this role, and Mary and Dean have no doubts that he is excelling at it.

Remmy: One of the big themes of this episode is that question: Is Sam fit for this, and does he feel fit for this? [Is] he doing a good job or is he in over his head?

Bea: Yes, and by proxy: If he's in over his head, then are the other hunters in danger too?

Remmy: Right, right, because as we're sitting here in the kitchen — Sam got his coffee refill and Dean's saying you need some sleep, man — his phone beeps and he checks it, and I don't even know what Sam's face was doing because it was so subtle. He just kind of blinked at his phone like maybe this is something unexpected. But I love Dean in that moment, who just clued in instantly. To me, even as the viewer, it was just like Sam pulled out his phone and maybe we got a little furrow of the brows, but Dean [becomes] insta-serious. No more playing. He says, “No, what's wrong?”

Bea: Yeah, because despite how Dean might be teasing him, Dean is concerned about his brother's well-being. When Sam shows that he is concerned about whatever is showing up on his phone screen, then Dean is going to snap to that attentiveness and see what's wrong and if there's anything that he can do.

Remmy: I really loved that. I thought it was a good brotherly moment. I think I mentioned last week, that this is how they love. They tease and they heckle and they neg on each other, but it's from a place of love. It's also understood to be what it is, which is there’s brotherly torment and there's real “I'm there for you.”

Bea: Yes, they break the tension of their sincerity with each other with these little jokes, but when the moment calls for it then they will be sincere.

Remmy: Right, right. And so Maggie missed check-in.

Bea: Yes, and so Sam goes to retrieve his laptop. He’s looking through the information on it while Dean tries calling Maggie's phone and gets no answer. It's here that we find out that Sam has set up the hunters with body cams that backup immediately to a server, and these cameras come with the intention of not only having real-world information that he can use to show these newbie hunters, but also that he has a record in case things go wrong.

Remmy: Yep, he coaches it two different ways: You learn by viewing, and if something does go wrong we have a starting point for what went wrong. So smart!

Bea: Yes, and it wouldn't come quickly to get this infrastructure. We were joking earlier, “Oh, what kind of budget would it take to buy all these body cams?” but it does take some time, and then to have these things routing to a server where they are automatically backing up… There's some tech savviness going on there that I would assume that Sam’s probably shouldering the brunt of, considering in apocalypse world I don't know how much technical infrastructure they had after having angel wars for so many years.

Remmy: [laughs] Yeah, it's been awhile. It's been awhile. Bobby with his “DFA — DNA…”

Bea: Oh yeah [laughs]

Remmy: I can't believe I didn't talk about that in that episode, because I was so mad. A second grader knows what DNA is, okay?

Bea: [laughs] I know, but his second grade was a long time ago.

Remmy: [laughs] And then he's like, “Oh, it's been awhile, forgive me if I'm not up to snuff on my FBI lingo —” Okay, but we are not talking about episode 2 right now [laughs]

Bea: Not right now, no, but I feel like we're going to go back to episode 1 briefly, but that'll come later. For now, Sam has pulled up the footage that came from Maggie's body cam. Sam immediately fears the worst for Maggie, but Dean is trying to puzzle this out logically, saying that a ghoul wouldn't attack the living. This doesn't seem to make much sense.

Remmy: Right, ghouls are scavengers so something is not adding up, and if it's not adding up then maybe she's not dead. Maybe we have a chance here, because Sam immediately goes worst case scenario. “You saw what I saw. You saw her get jumped. Ghouls don't take prisoners.”

Bea: Yeah, and I think that Sam's instinct to go to the negative here might reflect on the fact that he knows he has [too] many balls up in the air that he's juggling, and he's just dreading the day when —

Remmy: One drops.

Bea: — something falls, yes.

Remmy: Yep, yep, yep. But big brother Dean, he is being counter to Sam. He's being the voice of optimism. He says, “Let's not jump to conclusions. Let's go find out. Let's take some action.”

Bea: Yes, “Let's go and try and find her.” So Sam and Dean drive out to this place in Oklahoma, and they approach the same private cemetery where Maggie was last seen. Dean is teasing about, “Oh, private cemetery, that's super convenient.”

Remmy: [laughs]

Bea: And Sam’s like, “The f*** are you talking about?” and we get the backstory of how Maggie found this case, which was essentially that there were some people out here “studying” when they came across a walker and had to go split.

Remmy: Sam is, “A walker, y’know, it's from The Walking Dead,” and Dean's immediately like, “I know what a walker is, Sam!” [laughs]

Bea: Yeah, I really like that because — I mean, we spoke last episode about Dean's relationship with media, but it seems so often that Dean has this timestamp [in his tastes], where it has to be content before a certain date that he [finds appealing]. Anything beyond that it seems to be — at least, the assumption from Sam — that Dean is not going to know what it is. By all means, it is a bit hit-and-miss about [where] Dean's interest lay, but he doesn't just stay stuck in the past. There are things like The Walking Dead and other information that interests him. Again, Dean’s relationship with media is a super interesting one to me, and I like any time that we get these little glimpses into it.

Remmy: [laughs] Yeah, it was funny, and it was another one of those little Dean insights. And when Dean is walking up to the crypt, he sees some discarded beer cans at the entrance of the crypt, and he gives Sam this look like, “The students were ‘studying’, were they?”

Bea: “Yeah, my kind of ‘studying’.”

Remmy: Uh-huh, the ones that were chased away by the walker. They enter the crypt — it is daytime now, I would like to say. Maggie, again, get your s*** together.

Bea: Maybe Maggie just wanted The Full Experience, like, “I want the shiver-me, I want the tits-out fear of going into this mausoleum by myself at dark.” She was excited — we hear from Maggie that she was nervous but she's excited — did I say Maggie, or did I say Mary?

Remmy: You said Maggie, but we hear from Mary, yes.

Bea: Yes, Mary says that Maggie is excited to be going on this case.

Remmy: Her first solo case. But we go into the crypts.

Bea: Yes, and when Sam and Dean get to the bottom of it, same as where Maggie was, they see drag marks along the ground. Dean is optimistic because they don't see any blood.

Remmy: Yeah, and Maggie maybe — maybe the ghoul didn't finish the job. Maybe he's taking her away a snack for later, to put it callously [laughs]

Bea: Yes, and so they are arguing a bit about whether or not she’s still alive, but regardless they decide they want to find whatever did this and kill it.

Remmy: Yeah.

Bea: And while they're down there this voice calls out from up on the main grounds, and so they announce, “Okay, we're coming up. Don't hit us with your hoe there.”

Remmy: [laughs]

Bea: And they give their aliases as Harrison and Byrne, and say there with the Historical Preservation Society.

Remmy: Yes. We see the groundskeeper, right?

Bea: Yes, the groundskeeper, Dan.

Remmy: Yes, this man who is wielding a hoe with gumption.

Bea: Yes, they spin him a line saying they're here with the city and they're just looking at [giving] a preservation status to the building, and that segues into them being invited up to the house to speak to the homeowner. We cut to the guy in question, who is Neil, and he is stoked by the prospect of the preservation taking place.

Remmy: I loved that because 1) it wasn't your typical FBI “tell me everything you know because I'm FBI”, so it was a fresh alias and 2) because they kind of weaved it into Neil's enthusiasm, and it was just a thread that ran through the whole episode where Neil is just like, “Oh God, I hope this doesn't affect our chances with the Historical Society.” [laughs]

Bea: [laughs] Yeah, it's not often that you see Sam and Dean approach somebody who is enthusiastic about whatever role they've chosen. Normally people are speaking with reluctance to them about whatever has taken place, but without even getting to the information they're trying to glean from the case, Sam and Dean have already got their foot inside the door and onto the welcome mat. They're in and they can do as they please.

Remmy: They are ushered in.

Bea: But Neil is kind of curious, like, “Okay, how many people need to be here in order to preserve this location?” and Sam and Dean are like, “Okay... what?” and we round the corner and, lo and behold, Bobby and Mary have already showed up just recently.

Remmy: Yeah, and we have Mary, and Bobby in a little newsboy cap [laughs]

Bea: Yep.

Remmy: For some reason.

Bea: He's dressing fancy. He's feeling himself.

Remmy: Hi is dressing fancy. He's dressed to impress [by] Bobby standards, absolutely, and they are sitting on the couch and neither was expecting the other.

Bea: No, and there is this masked conversation [taking place], where they're talking about, “Oh, you should have checked in with the ‘main office’,” and Bobby being like, “Well, the ‘main office’ is run by idiots.”

Remmy: Oh, god.

Bea: And even Dean is like — he looks to his mom like, “The f*** is going on?”

Remmy: Oh my god, I know! Yeah.

Bea: It's Bobby this time that’s firing off the Salt Rounds.

Remmy: I know, I'm like holy s***, that wasn't even pretending to be subtle!

Bea: No, you are telling the “main office” to his face what you think, like [cringes]

Remmy: Exactly [laughs] Yeah, so I'm put on my back foot by that. I'm curious to see where it's going.

Bea: Yes. So Mary immediately excuses herself with Sam and is going to brief him on what's going on. They find out that Neil is not the homeowner but instead the nurse to the homeowner, who is a Mr. Rawling. This is where we find out that it was Maggie's first hunt solo, that she was excited and nervous about it. Mary and Bobby were in touch with her as she was going through it, giving her tips, but then she stopped texting for pointers. At that point, they decided to drive out and see how she was doing in person.

Remmy: Right, right, and Mary says, “I'm sorry, we should have called but we were just concerned.” So they are all there on the same mission, they all want the same thing. They're just going to roll with it.

Bea: Yeah, and for a moment it seems like Sam's going to be like, “No, it's fine you couldn't text,” but I think that there is still — he's trying to respect the rules for all hunters, and so he lets Mary be apologetic for not following the rules.

Remmy: I do know what you're talking about, I know the exact moment that you're talking about. Mary says, “I'm sorry, we should have called,” and he didn't say, “Yeah, you should have,” but I think he does just let — like you said, let it go.

Bea: Yeah, he lets it stand as an apology without really acknowledging what to do about it.

Remmy: But non-verbally he's saying, “You should have called.”

Bea: “Yeah, you should have,” yeah. They don't get too long to talk before Dean is calling them over, and so Sam and Mary now join Bobby and Dean and Neil in the room where Mr. Rawling is being kept. What Neil describes is that he had suffered a stroke, and Mr. Rawling is set up with transfusions and a ventilator. Sam and Dean [are] looking at him, [and have] recognized him as the ghoul from the footage from Maggie’s body cam.

Remmy: Yeah.

Bea: And so Neil tries waking up Mr. Rawling, but at this time there is a woman's voice calling out, and we are now introduced to Sasha, who is Mr. Rawling’s daughter.

Remmy: She comes in with her grocery bags, and she's taken aback by this room full of strangers.

Bea: Yeah, and Mary and Bobby are both putting on their best little school[kid] smiles like, “Hi!” [laughs]

Remmy: She's like, “What's going on?” and Neil hops in again to “don't mess this up for me, Sasha.” [laughs]

Bea: Yeah [laughs] “I want this preservation status!” Before we jump into the next conversation, there was a small glimpse between the scenes where we saw Maggie strung up and scared somewhere hidden, and there are blood bags situated around her. So this was our first glimpse at Maggie. [She] is still alive, but she's not in a good spot.

Remmy: Right, right, she's weakly calling for help and she's strung up and weak.

Bea: Yes, but it's just a short glimpse because we're going to be returning to Sasha. So Sam and Dean are trying to talk with her but she just doesn't know much about her dad, she just came in because of his current situation. She's getting his affairs in order, she said, and it's very clear that she is overwhelmed by this situation she's in.

Remmy: Right, right, and under the guise of this historical society, they're talking about the house and the history and the ownership of the house, and Sasha says it's just been a really long week and I don't actually know much because I was not close to my dad. I'm just here because my dad is dying. Sam [is] trying to be sympathetic, he says, “Just a few questions,” and Sasha says, “No, I can't.”

Bea: Yeah, she's like, “No-no-no, bye.”

Remmy: Yeah. “You need to leave, I can't do this. Leave a message, come back later.”

Bea: Yes, she doesn't even seem like she wants to talk with him or follow up, like, “I'll talk to you tomorrow.” She's just done with this. “I don't care about this, just please leave.” Where we end up is at the trunk of the Impala, where Mary and Bobby and Sam and Dean are now just “What the heck is going on?”

Remmy: Yeah, they're running through the likely suspects.

Bea: Yeah, Bobby has checked out Mr. Rawling [and] says there didn't appear to be any bite marks, so they don't think it's a ghoul. He also did a holy water check, so that rules out a demon possession, which even when — as it is suggested — Bobby is immediately scoffing at it.

Remmy: Yeah, it could be a shifter — Dean is the one who shoots that down; it doesn't seem like the shifters MO. They're running through the likely suspects and nothing seems to fit, and Bobby is, again, being a little b****y.

Bea: Yeah, he is very pissy towards Sam right now, and it is Dean who prods him into voicing his opinion. With a zero hesitation, Bobby is saying that Sam let Maggie on a case that was clearly not a milk run and put her in danger, and a real leader would have known that she wasn't ready.

Remmy: Yeah, oh my god. Not even subtle. But again, Bobby doesn't have any sort of relationship with these boys, so [he has] no reason to pull his punches. But Dean says, “You got something you want to say?” and Bobby says, “Yeah, I got something I want to say,” or, “Yeah, I got a problem: it's him,” pointing to Sam, and poor Sam. At the top of the episode, we got him already voicing his doubts, and then we have Bobby just [sighs]

Bea: Hammering into them.

Remmy: Yeah, yeah.

Bea: Because while Bobby is saying this, Sam isn't responding in any way other than physically. His body expressions let you know that he is agreeing with Bobby. He is ready to believe anything that will assume the same position as his doubts within himself. So Bobby is saying things that Sam already fears are true, so, “Okay, good. Now I have confirmation that they're true.”

Remmy: Right.

Bea: It also makes me think back to episode 1 of this season, where we spoke at length about how Bobby was the one who was saying Jack wasn't ready to come along on the case to Motown Meats. Sam makes the call without having had spent as much time around Jack as Bobby had, and so Bobby went along with it at that time. He went along with it now [too], but it has reached a breaking point where he doesn't think that he can agree silently with whatever Sam is doing.

Remmy: We have reached that breaking point, and Bobby is being overt — even hostile, if you ask me. But Mary shuts him down.

Bea: Yes, she can see that this conversation is going to go nowhere. There are two different philosophies, essentially, that are happening here right now when it comes to leadership, which [are] you can't know when someone's ready — which is what Dean says — versus what Bobby says, which is a real leader would know if they were ready or not.

Remmy: Oof, my heart.

Bea: Yeah, it's a tough spot. I can see both sides of it, but at some point it has to be a leap of faith. Sam picked this as Maggie's moment, and Bobby clearly disagrees.

Remmy: Ugh. Mary pulls out the Mom Voice, she says, “Hey, that's enough,” and she says, “This conversation is going nowhere. Let's do something actionable. Bobby, you are with Dean. Sam, you are with me. Let's go.”

Bea: Yeah, she's trying to bring everyone onto the same page while also neutralizing where the heat is right now. So with Mary and Sam, we have Mary saying, “Don't listen to Bobby. You know he doesn't come from the same perspective as what you need,” but Sam’s saying, “No, he's right, I encouraged Maggie to go out on this hunt.” But Mary just affirms that she sees the way that Sam acts within the hunter hub and that he's born to lead.

Remmy: Mary is me. Mary is me in this moment. She is trying to assure Sam the best that she can, and she says, “I've seen you. This is what you were born to do,” and I'm like [clapping] yes!

Bea: Yes!

Remmy: This! Because, again, I am biased — I'll be the first to admit I am super-biased here, this is what I want for Sam. I love Men of Letters Sam, I love Sam in season 12 when we visited this hunter network thing, and I love to see the hunter hub here. I love the hunter hub so much, guys — augh, I think I just got my 10,000 steps sitting here gesturing wildly —

Bea: [laughs] The emotional steps that you were taking right now.

Remmy: [laughing] Exactly!

Bea: But Mary is giving further insight onto Bobby's side, and essentially saying that he's been missing things lately. She's getting close to whatever is the cause of this, but the culprit still isn't clear. He's just been hunting, hunting, hunting, and Bobby won't talk about whatever is bothering him.

Remmy: Yeah, what she says is that — Sam brings up, “Y’know, not that it's any of my business, but you and Bobby seem to have been getting closer,” and Mary says, “Well, I thought we were, but ever since we got back —” back meaning from the apocalypse world.

Bea: Yes.

Remmy: Because Mary and Bobby did spend months together in the apocalypse world as well. They've probably known each other longer in the apocalypse world then they have had here.

Bea: Yes, I would agree on that.

Remmy: And so Mary says, “I thought that we were. I thought that we had something, but now I'm not so sure. Bobby has walls and he doesn't seem interested in letting me past them, and I just don't think that — I don't know if I can do it.”

Bea: Yes, and she almost shocked Sam with what she says about Bobby in comparison to John. That John was always so open and Sam's like, “I'm sorry, whomst are you talking about?” [laughs]

Remmy: “Whomst?” [laughs] Yeah, exactly. She says, “Bobby's not open like your father was,” and [nervous laughter]

Bea: Sam does the full-on blink meme, like, “I'm sorry, we're talking about Jonathan?”

Remmy: Uh-huh, and credit where credit's due, Mary does see that recognize that and says, “Well, the John that I knew,” which I also thought was super interesting. I like Mary here a lot.

Bea: I feel like when it comes time to talk about season 14 episode 13, “Lebanon,” this is something that is going to come up again, but I do like the insight of Mary [here], understanding her relationship with John is very different than her boys relationship with him.

Remmy: Yeah, and it's something we haven't really talked about within the show. I think that this moment is maybe either what Mary has inferred on what's been unsaid on the boys' relationship with John, or if maybe there's been some behind-the-scenes talks, [some] real conversations about this but [laughs] We spent 25 minutes talking about John feelings last episode…

Bea: We're going to spend — we're going to limit [ourselves] to 2 minutes [here]. We can't do it again.

Remmy: We can't do it again. I just wrote the description for [podcast] episode 4 and it was “the spiral into Winchester despair.”

Bea: [laughs]

Remmy: I can't do it. I can't do it.

Bea: Yeah, we gotta break things up here. We gotta shake it up, keep it interesting.

Remmy: Keep it fresh.

Bea: Yes, so while Mary and Sam are having this conversation, Bobby and Dean are having one of their own. Dean is being very defensive for Sam’s sake, saying that Sam has been doing better than his best and Bobby is just being too hard on him. Sam is killing himself over this hunter hub.

Remmy: Yeah, again, in front of Sam Dean is poking fun, but I think he himself is also proud of what Sam is doing. He is just concerned about what it is doing to Sam.

Bea: Yeah, I would agree. What are the costs that are associated with Sam putting so much effort into the hunter hub.

Remmy: Yeah, so you see the big brother Dean white-knighting for Sam here.

Bea: Yes, so there is a very short scene that follows up with this one, where Sam is saying that he's still trying to get to know this Bobby. He lets Mary have insight into the Bobby that he and Dean grew up with, but if the Bobby she knows is anything like the Bobby they know, then her Bobby's story is not pretty either.

Remmy: Two thoughts here: one, Sam serving up some looks. That was a very sharp jacket.

Bea: [laughs]

Remmy: He looked radiant under the forest here.

Bea: Yeah, beautiful blue.

Remmy: Is this a fictitious forest, or...?

Bea: Oklahoma is outside of the radius that I care about, and so I'll let it be whatever it wants.

Remmy: [laughs] You let that one slide — and two, this is where Sam and Mary are talking about Mary now, and it's just super cute when Sam is awkwardly trying to encourage his mother to pursue the relationship.

Bea: Yeah!

Remmy: [laughs] And Mary says, “I'll try, if I'm even ready to put myself out there again,” and awkward Sam [laughs] Again, Mary kind of — it was cute. She was cute.

Bea: She's enthusiastic. She lights up about the prospect of putting herself out there again, and when you — okay I'm going to limit my 30-second John feels here but —

Remmy: [laughs]

Bea: — think about the history that went on for John, Dean, and Sam when Mary passed away — I say passed away — when Mary was killed. And then now, you can see Mary go, “Well, my life is still going on. There's still things that I could do with it,” and to have Sam there encouraging her to pursue her interests, I'm like, “What a good son.” What an awkward conversation, but what a good son [laughs]

Remmy: Uh-huh. Mary says as much. “Oh, I shouldn't be telling you this,” but you're totally right [flustered] Stop it with your — stop it, Bea! No more John feels!

Bea: I — that was below 20 seconds!

Remmy: I know, but now I have to back you up on it and say, “Yeah, look at what John became.” Also, also, oh my god, off of last week's episode — David Yaeger, John the Monster — after this tragedy in his life, and then look at Mary now. Mary, who was —

Bea: Risen from the ashes.

Remmy: — had her entire life — yeah, who has had her entire life also uprooted as she knew it, and she is... better.

Bea: Yeah. She isn't looking for vengeance. She's looking for growth.

Remmy: Augh. Yes, yes, yes.

Bea: End John feels. F*** that.

Remmy: [laughs] Yeah.

Bea: So Sam and Mary are walking through the forest here, and Mary spots something unusual. She sees this burned area, and as she's picking through it, she is finding a collection of IDs that belong to the same person but are from various government positions. While this is going on, Bobby and Dean are also walking through the woods, and they come across an old trapper’s shed and they go to investigate it. But while Dean is stepping into the shed, Bobby sees someone else walking through the forest, and goes to pursue him instead.

Remmy: Yeah, yes. So we have this rapid back and forth on Sam and Mary investigating this burn pit, and Dean slash Bobby — even though Bobby runs off, Dean's not actually aware of Bobby leaving him at this trapping cabin — but Dean is investigating this cabin and he discovers the body of the man that we see Mary and Sam discovering the... remains of? The possessions of?

Bea: Yes, the burnt-out wallet of this — what they’re presuming would be a hunter.

Remmy: Right, because he has a number of IDs, everything from FBI to Forestry.

Bea: Yes, and so while Dean is investigating the body he has found, there's a noise behind him. When he turns, it is the same ghoul that was seen before. He raises his weapon and stabs at it, and it puffs out into a baker's confectionery sugar level of dust covering Dean.

Remmy: Ash attack!

Bea: [laughs] Ash attack.

Remmy: [laughs] Yes.

Bea: And his face is just like, “What the f***. What clownery just happened here?”

Remmy: Yeah, he — the ghoulish old man walker charges Dean, and he just stabs into the heart, and ash attack! He just goes up in a puff of smoke.

Bea: Yeah, and when Dean steps out from the cabin, he's looking for where the hell Bobby was, and Bobby is hustling his way back there. They both have this moment where, “What the hell happened to you?” — “Well, what the hell happened to you?” [laughs]

Remmy: Yeah, and then Dean's just like, “F*** it. Come on.”

Bea: Yeah. “This is too weird. We need to regroup.”

Remmy: Yep, exactly.

Bea: So after this, [the] scene comes next with Sasha in the same room as where her father is being tended to. She hears a noise upstairs and goes to investigate. She's calling for Neil but he's not present anywhere, and when she makes her way to the attic door — when she opens it — she's attacked by a thing with fangs. She flees, but it doesn't follow her.

Remmy: Did you — I literally watched that jump-scare with the monster, where Sasha pushes open a door into a dark room or corridor or something, but as she opens this door a monster jumps out and, like you said, Sasha runs. But she is not actually being pursued by that monster. I rewound three different times trying to figure out what is that — it's got pointed ears, it's bald, it's got fangs — but I don't know if they’re fangs that I recognize as one of our world’s monsters. So I was like, this is a monster, but I don't even know if I would say that it's a monster that I've seen before.

Bea: Yeah, I would agree on that. It just was a generic frightening figure.

Remmy: Right, right and [laughs] and then we get Sasha a shock blanket in the foyer, and she is explaining what happened to Mary and Sam.

Bea: Yes, Mary and Sam are sitting there with her, and Sam is assuring her that she's not crazy. They explain themselves as hunters and what their nature is.

Remmy: A metaphorical shock blanket, I should say.

Bea: Yeah. Neil’s right beside her comforting her, though.

Remmy: [laughs] And poor Sasha, she's just — like you said, Sam and Mary are trying to explain to her, “No, you're not crazy. If you say you saw a monster...” She says, “I don't know! I don't know what I saw. I don't know what it is. It's crazy, it's insane, but it looked like a vampire.”

Bea: And they're just like, “Oh, honey, that's not the strangest thing that we've heard ever.”

Remmy: [laughs] “That's not the strangest thing we've heard in the past two hours,” yeah. And [then] Dean comes in, still totally ashed out, and he's like, “Okay, okay. We've got a problem, guys.”

Bea: Yeah, Dean is really glad that Sasha and Neil have been filled in and he's just like, “Yeah, I found this dead guy,” and they get into this quick comparative. “Okay, the IDs match the body, so something is killing hunters.”

Remmy: And just ping pong, back and forth, for Sasha like, “What the f*** are these lunatics talking about?”

Bea: Yeah, she’s like, “I had max capacity of my ‘ability to deal’ with these things hit two days ago, when I found out my father was dying. Now I have four strangers in the house. I am being told that vampires are real. I'm being told there's a body on my property. They just keep talking like this is all cool.” Now [she’s] reached a 120% [her] limit, [she needs] to go shut down.

Remmy: Yeah, Sasha is not having it.

Bea: Yeah, and then, to make matters worse, Dean says that who attacked him was Mr. Rawling, her father, and she's like, “Dude, he's right there. Tell me how he's doing that, then.”

Remmy: Right, right.

Bea: But Sam and Dean are too busy being like, “This makes no sense.”

Remmy: Yeah! It is sixteen hits a minute here. Sasha is asking questions, Neil’s asking questions; no one's getting any answers because they're just too wrapped up in the mystery of this, because it doesn't make sense. “Sasha saw a vampire. I saw a zombie. We have a dead hunter in a hunting cabin,” and just nothing is adding up here.

Bea: Yeah, and they walk through [a] really quick series that comes after this. Okay, maybe it's not monsters — maybe it’s manifestations. Could it be a spell? Could it be a psychic? There's psychokinetic powers that could be at play here, and there's just so many pieces that are moving so quickly in this conversation. I'm like, “Meredith!” [kisses] You've done an excellent job delicately keeping all these plates spinning up in the air.

Remmy: Absolutely, and they land on — I did not write down the name of the —

Bea: Fred Jones?

Remmy: — Fred Jones, the psychokinetic individual who made everything go Looney Tunes, as they described it. He was from season 8?

Bea: I'm nodding.

Remmy: Yes [laughs] It's okay, I won't make fun of you this time — season 8, and we're like, okay, we've seen this before, where an individual could make his dreams come true in a way. Maybe this — where before we had this elderly man in a coma who was bringing to life his favorite cartoons — maybe this guy is bringing to life his worst nightmares? Some sort of manifestation of monsters.

Bea: Yeah, Sam is spinning this theory, but Dean's like, “Why the hell would he scare his own daughter?” and even Sasha's like, “My father the psychic??? No, my father the workaholic, my father the narcissist. If there's powers there, I would have no idea about them.”

Remmy: Yeah.

Bea: And again, Dean goes to the fact that Sasha was scared, and so they go, “What were you doing when you got scared?” and it points to her being scared away from the attic. So there's some sort of purpose behind this.

Remmy: Yeah, and I really like — it was a really good Dean moment, very — clever maybe is the word — but he tunes in on this significance of the fact that Sasha heard a noise. She said she went to go investigate, she thought it might be rats in the attic. So she was going to go to the attic but she was scared away, and instantly Dean latches onto that: “You were going to go to the attic but you didn't.”

Bea: Yes.

Remmy: And Sam's like, yep, got it instantly, he's gone. He's pulled out his machete, he's going to the attic. We did skip over the fact that Mary is no longer here, though.

Bea: Yes. When it was brought to attention that there was a hunter that was killed on the premise, at this point Mary goes to leave to check on Bobby, because Bobby didn't come in with them. So she's run out to the truck where Bobby was last seen, but he isn't there right now, and so she's calling for him and looking for him.

Remmy: Yep, yep, and Sam has gone off to investigate the attic. Dean is playing protector on the downstairs, and we [laughs] I do like this next scene, so set me this scene.

Bea: Yes, so with Mary outside and Sam upstairs, we are left with Sasha and Dean in that living room area. Sasha is doing a meds + alcohol combination, which I feel is a terrible decision —

Remmy: [laughs]

Bea: — and Dean is behind her, sharpening his machete. She is just so overwhelmed, she is so totally done with the day, that she snapped at him, like, “Do you really need to be doing that?”

Remmy: Right. I felt so bad for Sasha, I was like, Dean [laughs] stop it, you're freaking her out.

Bea: And he wouldn't even think anything of it — the soothing, repetitive motion, so this might even be calming to Dean — but Sasha, who has never had anything like this in her life before, and who, we learn, she wouldn't have even wanted to come back here, now she has all of these things to deal with on top of her emotional baggage.

Remmy: Yep, yep. She snaps at Dean, like you said, “Do you have to be doing that right now?” and Dean kind of throws up his hands and says, “Okay,” and so they're left in silence, and Dean's the one who tries to broach that silence.

Bea: Yeah, Dean asks if she's okay and she's just like, “No no no, I don't want to do any opening up to strangers right now. My dad is dying, there are strangers in the house,” and Dean realizes, he says, “So there's no love lost between you and your father here, huh?”

Remmy: Yeah, and Sasha says, “I'm just not feeling up to a heart-to-heart right now.”

Bea: Yeah, she doesn't want to engage on this detail, but somehow Dean manages to glean a little bit more information from her. She essentially says that her dad wasn't a great person, he was always gone, and that her mother had mental illness — she had depression in her family — and without her father there to help her, Sasha ended up finding her mother when she was 12.

Remmy: Yeah, yeah.

Bea: And it’s left very vague as to what occurred in that moment for Sasha, when she was 12, but she really resents that her father took no accountability — or, indeed, didn't even apologize for Sasha having gone through that.

Remmy: Right, because when Sasha reveals that she lost her mother at a young age, Dean says, “I'm sorry.”

Bea: Yeah, and Sasha's like, “Everyone's always sorry.”

Remmy: Yeah, “That's what everyone says, except him —” indicating her father “— he never apologized,” and we get the feel that of all the people who have apologized, to offer her condolences, it doesn't mean anything, but —

Bea: The gesture is important regardless of what the gesture actually is, I guess.

Remmy: Well, what I was going to say, if I could get my thoughts together...

Bea: [laughs]

Remmy: So when people offer their condolences, they say, “I'm sorry,” but they're not assuming blame for the thing that has happened. They're just offering condolences. But now we’re making the distinction here, where she says, “That's what everyone says, ‘I'm sorry’, offering their condolences, except for my father,” and we see — we're drawing the line between condolences and the one person that she feels actually has something to be sorry for.

Bea: Yes, that's true.

Remmy: There's one person who she would’ve liked to have seen take on some responsibility, because she accused him as much earlier. He knew that her mother was not okay, but he was never around to do anything about it.

Bea: Yeah, and Sasha really regrets — she says that she worshipped him as a kid, and she just didn't know any better. But he is her only family now.

Remmy: Um, yeah [laughs] So are you going to bring up the John feels, or should I?

Bea: You got 20 seconds, go.

Remmy: [laughing] I can't! I can't!

Bea: [laughing]

Remmy: Oh god, okay.

Bea: Make them Dean feels and then you can talk as long as you want.

Remmy: [strained laughter]

Bea: [laughs]

Remmy: Anyways, so I have my notes saying Sasha, her “daddy issues”, but also I love her.

Bea: I adore her as a character of the week, yeah.

Remmy: She's a great character, for sure, but so [sighs] She says — when she finishes her thoughts on her father, she says, “Do you want to know what the most ridiculous part of it is? I worshipped him when I was a kid. I didn't know any better. He was the only family I had left.” She phrases it in present tense — “He is the only family I have left” — but I was so entrenched in Dean feels that I actually wrote it in past tense, so...

Bea: [laughs]

Remmy: But that is Dean, right? Dean worshipped his father. His entire identity was wrapped up in his father, and Sasha says, “I didn't know any better.”

Bea: Yeah. “I was just a kid when I started doing this,” and you live a life but there's these things that are so difficult to unlearn. As the wool gets pulled back from your eyes, you start seeing people for who they really are.

Remmy: “He was the only family I had,” which is exactly mirrored to Dean, Sam, and John. John was Dean's world and [sighs] What Dean says next is where I am just sent into — it's when I go to the kitchen and take six shots.

Bea: [laughs]

Remmy: Dean says, “You want my advice? Let it go. The past is —” and I am literally quoting because I paused and wrote down word-for-word, so [laughs] I'm sorry but —

Bea: [laughs] I have it written down word-for-word too.

Remmy: He says, “Let it go. The past is nothing you can do about it now, so it's just baggage.”

Bea: Yeah, you can't change it, so let go of that baggage.

Remmy: “Let go and you'll feel a lot lighter.”

Bea: Yes, but —

Remmy: [overwhelmed noises]

Bea: But oh gosh. Now my question [is]: How much do we have an honorable narration going on here? How much is what Dean saying meant to comfort Sasha versus actually being honest about what he does? Because Sasha turns it around right away and says, “Is that what you do?” and he just says that he tries, every day, to do that same thing.

Remmy: Exactly, exactly! I don't know what episode it was, I don't know what season it was, I have no idea — I don't even know the situation in which this line came out — but I do know that Dean was asked this question before. Listeners, let me know, please god, because [laughs] I'm dying inside. I'm haunted. I'm dying inside — Dean was asked this question before, where Dean offered some advice on how to move forward, or how to cope with all the horribleness that surrounds you, and he was asked, “Is that what you do?” and he said, “Hell no, I do the exact opposite of that.”

Bea: [breathes] Oh, god.

Remmy: [laughs] And that was a couple seasons ago.

Bea: Was that when he and Cas were in the diner?

Remmy: Yeah! It was, wasn't it.

Bea: I haven't even watched this episode.

Remmy: [laughing] You're so right. Yes, it was. It was the diner date, oh my god [laughs] Alright, listeners, you're off the hook on this one. Yeah, so Dean is offering Cas this nugget of wisdom on how to cope and — I remember now — Cas gives him this little knowing look and says, “Is that what you do?” and Dean says, “Hell no, I do the exact opposite of that. But don't be me, I'm not a role model to look up to,” but it was mirrored to this one here.

Bea: Can I throw something into the works here? I mean, I know Sasha is talking about her father, and we can definitely draw that line quickly to where Dean is. But, to me, what is the most pressing on Dean’s mind right now, that he needs to let go of, is his agreement to let Michael possess him.

Remmy: Oh, absolutely.

Bea: And so although we can see him [and] question, “Okay, what did he mean when he was thinking of these things?” I really don't think that it was John on his mind in this moment, or his growing up. I think what was most pressing for him was learning to let go of the fact that he said yes to Michael. I mean, it doesn't draw as neat a line, but for his conclusion — saying that you would have to try and let it go, and that he tries to do that every day — I really felt that was more a comment on him trying to deal with his Michael deal, more than anything.

Remmy: Aahh, dude, I'm not disagreeing with you, 100% yes. Dean's conclusion on this episode, when we reach the end of the episode, is him talking about moving on from Michael, so what's on his mind in this moment is absolutely Michael. Michael is what we should be thinking about, but [laughs]

Bea: But we get thrown this curveball and we're like, “Spirals!” We're just like Junji Ito, there's f****** Uzumaki on the wall right now. We gotta follow the spiral.

Remmy: Know I'm a f****** one-trick pony, okay? I just have all the Winchester feels, and I'm going to make you listen to them so...

Bea: [laughs]

Remmy: I know it's not what we were supposed to be thinking about here, but —

Bea: How bad is it going to be if we go back to season 1 season 2?

Remmy: [laughing]

Bea: Every episode is going to be three hours long and it's just going to be an unedited sobfest.

Remmy: [laughs] Yeah, so I don't know. I think it's very, very fresh for Dean to be putting forth this kind of optimism.

Bea: Yeah, he's trying to essentially build a new skin above the scars that he has. This is the way that he reacted in the past, this is his cycle, and it is unhealthy and he is trying to break it. But to try and break those old ones is so difficult. It's easier to just shuffle them into a box and tuck them away, but with his current issues he's like, “Okay, what I did before didn’t work. I have to try something new, and I'm going to at least provide lip service to these thoughts even if I struggle with actually implementing them.”

Remmy: No, no, no, this whole scene — Sorry, when I say “no” I'm not like telling you no [laughs]

Bea: I just put a sentence out of there and you're just like, “Nah…” [laughs]

Remmy: [laughing] No! No at my heart.

Bea: [laughs]

Remmy: [laughs] so [laughs] Anyways, I only realized three no’s in that I was like, “Oh no, I'm not talking to you, sorry.”

Bea: [laughing]

Remmy: Just voicing my despair. So you say that he’s [performing] lip service and he's going to fake it ‘til he makes it. He knows that what he’s done before is not moving him forward, so he's going to try something new. But for me, it wasn't a fake it ‘til you make it because his face, in this moment, there's just such serenity over him. He's just very secure in what he's saying. “The past is baggage; drop it and try, try, try to move forward and you'll feel a lot lighter doing it.”

Bea: Yeah.

Remmy: It's really just so different from that, “Hell no, I do the exact opposite of that, but still you should listen to me because I'm trying to. I know how I could be better, I just don't,” to what he’s saying now, which is, “Yes, I try.” Yes.

Bea: Yes, the cognitive dissonance between what he believes he should be doing and what he's actually doing. He's really trying now to actually work through that dissonance and try and be like, “Okay, I'm going to make these things overlap and it's not easy, but it is better than just outright dismissing this as something I can't do.”

Remmy: The Love, Simon: “You know what this is? Growth.” I'm doing that hand motion.

Bea: [laughs]

Remmy: I loved it. Great scene.

Bea: Yes, yes that was probably my favorite scene in the episode. So yeah, we go from that scene with Sasha and Dean back to Sam, and Sam's upstairs with his machete out, and he finally gets inside the attic door. He's looking around inside, and there's just the usual detritus like a creepy dollhouse and taxidermy, y’know, in every house.

Remmy: [laughs] Yeah, the usual s*** you find in any old attic.

Bea: Yes and then, Maggie — I wrote “Maggie!!!” with three exclamation marks. He finds her, and she has this IV attached to her neck that he pulls out. She's a little bit delirious but she's immediately telling him, “It's here, it's here,” and right behind him is one of these pseudo-vampires that we've seen before. Sam attacks it, and it dusts the same way that it did with Dean.

Remmy: When Maggie's like [raspy], “It's here, Sam, it's here,” I was like, “Use your words, come on!”

Bea: Yes! What is your “it” referring to? Because that's just a pronoun. What's your proper noun associated with it? [laughs]

Remmy: Uh-huh.

Bea: And I was just thinking about this. We were talking about what these vampires look like and at my initial impression, I was thinking of this hybrid between the vampires and the werewolves that were on Buffy [The Vampire Slayer]. The fact that when they’re attacked they dust, I'm like that's a little bit Buffy for me too.

Remmy: Maybe Meredith's a fan.

Bea: Maybe, yeah. She's just doing a subtle nod, like if djinn had their way [vampires] would making dust bombs too.

Remmy: Now what I think it is — so we haven't actually talked about what these monsters are, these manifestations, but this vampire — we did see that in the apocalypse world, last season, the monsters have gone feral and they were more monstrous.

Bea: You're right.

Remmy: Yeah, I think that if we were to look back on that one cave sequence, where we entered into this nest of feral vampires — I think they were vampires — it would have been the same prosthetics there that were used here.

Bea: Excellent point.

Remmy: So this vampire is —

Bea: — the ones that Maggie is more attuned to.

Remy Right. Apocalypse world vampires, perhaps. I like your Buffy better, though.

Bea: [raspberry] I was pulling that straight out of my ass, being like, “Is this a thought? Is this a thought?”

Remmy: [laughs]

Bea: But poor Maggie, she's just immediately apologizing to Sam. “I'm sorry for getting caught.” Sam is being a good dad and being like, “No, you did nothing wrong.”

Remmy: And he dusts out the pseudo-vamp, and we're back to… Dean?

Bea: No, we're back to Bobby in the forest. Bobby is just hunting around, I guess. He's a bit haunted by the fact that he saw a figure earlier in this forest and has been looking for him. Lo and behold, this person comes towards him with burnt-out eyes, and it is Daniel. Daniel introduces himself by saying, “Hey, Dad,” and then [starts] absolutely whaling on Bobby.

Remmy: Yeah, yeah.

Bea: Poor Bobby is just disbelieving as he's getting this beatdown, but Daniel is adamant that he's real, and that he is happy about what he is doing to Bobby.

Remmy: Yeah, Daniel is kind of doing what Bobby was doing to Sam earlier. Like you said, Sam was just accepting Bobby's criticism as what he deserves in exactly the same way that Daniel is voicing and validating Bobby's own worst fears about the fate of his son.

Bea: Oh, absolutely. Poor Bobby is being told here that my son he was crucified. “They crucified me, piece by piece.” And Daniel goes and pins him up on a tree with an angel blade —

Remmy: Ouch.

Bea: — he's pulling out another one, about to do the same thing, and Mary shows up. She's threatening to shoot [Daniel], and indeed tries to, but then [she] gets another beat down for it. Daniel pins her to the ground and is choking her.

Remmy: And Bobby has this brief battle between his reluctance to hurt this manifestation of his son and his impulse to protect Mary.

Bea: Yeah, we have Bobby, [who] has to come up to where Daniel is choking Mary, make the action of killing Daniel. It just makes me think of when Sam was recounting the story of their Bobby to Mary earlier, and thinking that Bobby had to do the impossible and kill his wife.

Remmy Take care of it himself, yeah.

Bea: And then here is this other Bobby. This seems to be a fate that you guys can't escape.

Remmy: I had the exact same thought about that mirror, for sure. That parallel.

Bea: Yeah, it's not supposed to be easy for us, and it's not supposed to be easy for him but, my god, you wish that they could catch a break.

Remmy: Yep, yep. Ash attack!

Bea: Yep, another dust bomb poof.

Remmy: Poof.

Bea: And we change scenes. We return to Dean and Sasha entering into the room where Mr. Rawling is being kept., and Neil is at his bedside. Dean is looking over the equipment that Neil has set up for Mr. Rawling, and it's in this moment that Dean recognizes it. He's questioning the transfusion equipment that is in there, and Neil goes, “Oh, no, no, it keeps him up on iron, y’know,” and [sighs] oh my god.

Remmy: [laughs]

Bea: Dean picks the worst possible —

Remmy: It was glorious.

Bea: Trying to find a subtle way to get Sasha to leave the room by like, “Hey, can you go make me a sandwich?” and I'm like, “You asked Sasha that??” and she's like, “B****, you make your own sandwich?!”

Remmy: And you could see the moment —

Bea: His face.

Remmy: — in the sentence when he's like, “Oh, f***. [laughs] I gotta commit to this.”

Bea: Yeah, he's like, “This was a terrible choice, but it's the choice I made.” [laughs]

Remmy: “Make me a … sandwich?” Sasha: “B****, please.”

Bea: Yeah, like, really? Really? In the year of our lord [laughs]

Remmy: [laughs] But Dean is total[ly] non-subtle in his “Get the f*** outta here.”

Bea: Yeah, he mouths, “Go,” and puts a headnod with it to boot, and it's like, you're lucky Neil’s just straight-up staring at Mr. Rawling right now, because otherwise that cat would be out of the bag.

Remmy: It was fun.

Bea: Yeah. As soon as Sasha leaves, Dean pulls out a gun and he trains it on Neil, who's surprised. But Dean says that he remembers that rig, and that Neil is taking blood, not giving it.

Remmy: He says that he remembers that rig — it took him a while to recognize it, because it's been a while — but he recognizes the rig as something that he was hooked up to a long time ago. Season 3 [cheers] Sorry, I like season 3 a lot.

Bea: Yes, yes, and lo and behold, the villain is a djinn. And so Neil reveals his eyes, and the tattoos show up on his skin, and Dean is immediately asking why he's going after hunters.

Remmy: Finally, an upgraded monster aesthetic that doesn't make me want to gouge my f****** eyes out.

Bea: You didn't want big prosthetics on a djinn too?

Remmy: [laughs] I was surprised that his eyes didn't slit and his ears didn't grow into points, but [laughs]

Bea: [laughs] They were like, “No, no, the tattoo budget is enough.” Dean asks the question, “Why are you going after hunters?” and Neil goes, “Well, because you told me to! Is this still part of the game? The test that you put out for me?” and Dean is playing a hundred question marks showing up in his head, and then it all boils down to — he realizes that Neil is talking about Michael.

Remmy: “You think I'm Michael.” And so Neil’s kinda narrative purpose here is to bring back to Dean those “Michael's actions are my own” [feelings].

Bea: That's what's happening here. This whole time Neil has seen Dean, perceived him as Michael, and has just assumed that there has been this elaborate ruse that has been going on. Neil is just doing his part, he thinks, by keeping up his end of the bargain, which is namely to find someplace quiet, to set up shop, and kill as many hunters as he can.

Remmy: Yeah, Neil has been put on this path by Michael, and even when Dean tells Neil, “I'm not Michael,” Neil accepts it like, “Oh, I was wondering,” but he still he doesn't actually separate Dean from Michael. He still frames everything that Michael has done for him, that Michael has done to elevate Neil and the djinn, he gives Dean the responsibility for it.

Bea: Yeah, it's a bit of a reflection, like you say, of how Dean is struggling with his own internal, “Is it Michael's fault? Isn't my fault?” Because here Neil is being like, “Well, you guys are one in the same.” [Neil says], “I'm going to hold up my end of the bargain because I found my powers extremely limiting before, y’know, the best that I could do was attack one person inside of their head. Now I can read minds, I can see nightmares, and I can bring these things into reality.”

Remmy: Yeah, and now we finally learned what these manifestations actually are. The three manifestations that we have seen — walker Rawling, the alt world vampire and Bobby's son, Daniel — those are all living nightmares for Rawling, Maggie, and Bobby, respectively.

Bea: Yes, and isn't that interesting that [that’s] Mr. Rawling’s fear. Neil puts it to words, saying that he just doesn't want to be alone, he doesn't want to die alone, and so Neil has been using [Rawling’s] own face to keep people away from the property.

Remmy: So this new djinn can bring these nightmares to life, and they're not even — the purpose of these nightmares is not even to torment the people that they're born from. They are just out in the world as these manifestations of fear.

Bea: Woof, yeah.

Remmy: Yeah, yeah, and Rawling’s biggest fear is that he is — I go back to Rawling because this is the monster that we've seen the most of — Rawling's biggest fear was to die alone in this house, and it was so — I like that we see Neil, who up to this point has been this happy-go-lucky, really quirky —

Bea: Plucky.

Remmy: Yeah, plucky, that's the word — this person who's just really interested in the historical society, and the history of the house and the grounds. For him in this moment to say Rawling's biggest fear was to die alone, unwanted, and to rot on this property… He says, “This house,” and, “this property,” with such derision that — I don't know, I just like that differential between the facade Neil had before until now, where he's showing his true colors.

Bea: I find that there’s a lot of background lift that was happening amongst the dialogue that is — I mean, it goes to show just how talented Meredith is as a writer, because there is so much minutiae that has to take place in this episode to have all of the events makes sense.

Remmy: Yeah, you said before, spinning plates, but similarly it's just all of these threads [and] that she doesn't forget a single one of them. Every thread is tied off and brought through the episode, and it's good.

Bea: And I feel like we don't often get to see a monster of the week that has a personality that speaks to what they're like in the day-to-day before Sam and Dean find them. We got with Neil and his interest, he says that he has a subscription to Architectural Digest. He was told by Michael to go find someplace quiet and basically lay a trap, and then this is the location that Neil chose. There are personality aspects that are coming up from his choices that we can just take on this subtextual level, because we're moving so quickly through this story. These pieces just shine through without having the light necessarily put on them.

Remmy: It's — we do not have as many monster of the week — I hate to call them “filler” episodes, because they're not —

Bea: There's arc and then there's standalone.

Remmy: Standalone, yeah. Me, five years ago, when I was watching — mainlining — seasons 1 through 10, I may or may not have skipped some filler.

Bea: [laughs]

Remmy: I've watched them since then! But it just kind of it highlights for me that the monster-of-the-week episodes of the past five seasons are so [different] versus the monster-of-the-week episodes that — it's a narrow window, because I don't want to say “of the first few seasons” because that was the foundation of the show, and they were good! But I'm off on some tangent that doesn't [laughs]

Bea: No, I can see what your tangent is though, because when we had the first five seasons you felt the arc very specifically in certain episodes, and in the other episodes it was barely there. I feel as Supernatural has gone on in Seasons 10 through 15 — let's just put that out there — that they have worked to weave the arc and the standalone episodes together, so it's not necessarily that you can pull any one piece out and still get the entire picture.

Remmy: I just — in the past few years, I give so much credit to the writing team, because we brought this show so much life. Again, I hate to say that we “brought it back,” but we kind of… brought it back [laughs]

Bea: It's really strengthened. The initial structure for [seasons] 1 through 5 absolutely worked for it, but I think that there is a strengthening factor in learning how to weave your episodes together so that altogether they are bringing you a story, as opposed to, “Here are the episodes to watch to understand the story, and then here are the ones to watch just for fun.”

Remmy: Meredith, good job!

Bea: Yeah, A+

Remmy: A+ [laughs]

Bea: So now that the cat's out of the bag and Neil has revealed what his plan is, the way that it works with Michael, he's like, “Okay, we're going to fight.” Dean has his gun out [and] Neil is unafraid of it, because he knows that a blade dipped in lamb's blood is the thing that will actually hurt him. But these, I'm pretty sure, could do some damage too.

Remmy: Well, well hurt versus kill, we've made — we are making that distinction here, because again, in the writing, I love this because when we [typically] approach a monster of the week, a lot of the times when we approach the monster we have to have our “silver bullet,” right? We have to have our …

Bea: Yeah, there's a bit of a song-and-dance involved to make sure that your characters have the elements that they need in order to solve the problem.

Remmy: Yeah, yeah. I feel like we sometimes approach the monster-of-the-week episodes with, “We have to have the ace in our sleeve,” you know? Which is true to an extent. We spend half the episode researching on the way to kill the thing, but I like that we subverted the narrative a little bit on this episode, with this monster. That where Neil is staring down the barrel of a gun and says, “You know as well as I do that that won't kill me,” and Dean says, “Doesn't have to kill you. I can sure as heck slow you down, though.”

Bea: Yep. Shoots him right in the leg, like, “It still hurts, doesn't it?” I mean [laughs]

Remmy: [laughs] Exactly, exactly.

Bea: But Neil is still keeping up that facade of strength, or at least superiority, over where Dean is right now. [He’s] saying, “You know, I'm curious, what are your nightmares?” He knows that Dean is Michael's “favorite monkey suit” and so he's not actually going to do any damage; he just wants to do a peek in[side Dean’s head].

Remmy: Yeah. Maybe no physical damage, but that doesn't mean psychological damage isn't fair game.

Bea: Uh-uh. And so this is another case where, already in this season, we have now a third figure that is entering into Dean's mind and pulling through information. Dean's eyes roll back, and Neil's powers are rolling out over his hands. [But then] Neil flinches back and it's almost like he is afraid of what he sees.

Remmy: I don't know. Does he flinch back, or is he pushed back? To me, it seems like — see, now, on my first watch I thought that he flinched back as if afraid of what he saw, but on this watch, the second watch, I thought that it was pretty explicitly that he was pushed back or struck back by something within Dean's mind.

Bea: Interesting.

Remmy: Yes, yes, because on the first watch I was like, “Oh, s***,” [but] either way I'm landing firmly on Michael. We saw Michael abandoned Dean but with no resolution, really, why.

Bea: Yeah — why, who, where. All of the questions that arise.

Remmy: Exactly. So that's at the forefront of my mind: what did Neil see in Dean's mind?

Bea: Yeah. There's something in there, and it does frighten Dean to see Neil's reaction to whatever he saw.

Remmy: I don't know. It just makes me wonder, how sure Dean is in his own [mind]. I mean, that's so terrifying to say, though, how confident is Dean in his own mind? Y’know, is Dean having these doubts or thoughts?

Bea: That just brought me to the quote from P.T.: The only me is me. Are you sure the only you is you?

Remmy: [desperate laughing]

Bea: Just that little bit of terror, to be like, “There's something inside of my mind that I can't even see, but this person saw and it terrifies them.”

Remmy: Yeah, yeah, just that one little kernel of doubt is all you need, because I think this is why even maybe Dean can't get over it, because…

Bea: It carries, it lingers. It's on him, it's infused in him.

Remmy: Right, right. He was so driven in the third episode looking for Kaia, he was go-go-go, “I need a resolution because right now I'm at loose ends.” He was left at those loose ends and he is still at those loose ends, and no, there's not going to be any resolution for him in his mind or in his peace of mind.

Bea: Yeah, he's going to continue to gnaw at this idea here. It's very difficult for Dean to let go of what he perceives as failures, or perceives as “loose ends” regarding something that is a threat out there.

Remmy: Yeah. I really do wonder what Dean's thoughts are in this moment, when he sees [Neil]. Because, in the moment, he takes the opportunity — when Neil reels back — to progress the fight because he has to, this is life-or-death, but oof. Just the thought of him, kinda hindsight this moment, spinning in his mind later when he's at home laying in bed at the bunker, “What does it mean?” Oof. Oof.

Bea: Yeah, this scene is so thrilling as an audience member, because you're sitting in the same boat as Dean and being like, “Well, what just happened? What are —” What, what, what, what.

Remmy: [laughs]

Bea: It just put these seeds of doubt into Dean, and I think that it's the last thing that he needs, to be questioning everything around him.

Remmy: Yeah, it's gives him something different to worry about other than, “Am I responsible for everything that Michael's done here?” Maybe he can turn those worries a bit more inward, but not that that's a good thing.

Bea: Well, I feel like — so okay, he's got this big puzzle, which is like, “What the f*** is Michael doing,” and Neil has basically been like, “Hi! Here's another puzzle piece,” and Dean’s like, “... Cool. I'm still panicking over this.” Like, “Thanks, I hate it.”

Remmy: Yeah. “Thanks, I hate it. I'm going to bash your f****** skull in.” God.

Bea: Yeah, I wrote down that he's like — he does the beat-on, and then he unload the clip into the djinn. It's one of those things where I'm like, “Okay, yeah, that might be the most efficient way to kill [him], but it can't be the only way.”

Remmy: I mean, we haven't seen a moment like this where — now back in the fight, we're wrapping up the fight — Dean does not have a blade dipped in lamb's blood, but he has a bookend that he can snatch from the desk behind him.

Bea: He has gumption. By god, he'll get it done.

Remmy: [laughs] And Dean bashes this djinn’s skull in and then, when Neil is finally unconscious, he unloads his clip in this djinn's face. This is not a level of brutality that we've seen since season 10, but I'm not knocking it, I'm not.

Bea: Before we wander too far from this, though, I want to bring up the last thing that Neil said, which is, “You think I'm the only trap? He made dozens of us, just waiting for you. Your family,” and Dean goes, “You don't know my family,” and then — boom.

Remmy: Yeah, yeah. So we are now — I don't know, we could also look at this as a kickoff of the monsters versus hunters.

Bea: It's really cemented at this point that not only are they out there, but they are laying their sights on hunters and have been given orders to get rid of them.

Remmy: Yeah, this is the first strike of Michael’s war, where the monsters are the superior race and hunters are the first line of defense. So we have some guerrilla warfare going on right now.

Bea: Yes, and I remember upon is initial watch that, this episode, it really raised the question for me of how they could pursue this train of thought, because this is just one of many traps. That brings the question of, “Well, what do the other ones look like?” It's not just a dozen djinn's sitting in fancy homes being like, “I sure hope a Preservation Society pretender comes by.” So, I don't know, it's just fun to speculate on what those other things could be.

Remmy: Yep, yeah. Well, I mean, look at how Maggie caught wind of this hunt. It was this news article that had this group of students “chased away by a zombie.” That's something that would catch the attention of a hunter, right? It's bait. It's bait. We're laying down bait.

Bea: Exactly. It's innocuous enough that a non-hunter would read that and be like, “Oh, kids these days,” but a hunter would be like, “No, we got to go check that out.” It's not high enough on the threat radar to have them bringing backup or anything like that.

Remmy: Right, right, we have to solo hunters that were both killed. It's a fly trap.

Bea: Mhmm. RIP.

Remmy: [laughs]

Bea: So now that Neil’s down for the count, now Dean is pulling out the equipment from Rawling. Sasha now finds out that her father will actually live, that he's not on death's door. It was just because of the situation. So now she has this whole new thing that she has to process, but she admits, “Okay, we can't change the past. We can only work with it,” and so she kneels down beside her father's bed and just says, “It's okay. I'm here.”

Remmy: Yeah, yeah.

Bea: And how did you feel about that as being the message here?

Remmy: I mean, do you want me to relate it back to the Sasha-Rawling Dean-John mirror or...?

Bea: Yes, but you have 30 seconds, so...

Remmy: [laughs] You're an enabler, Bea.

Bea: Absolutely!

Remmy: Oh my gosh.

Bea: “Oh wait, no, no. Let's not have an interesting conversation, Remmy. Let's just skip over that.” [laughs]

Remmy: [laughs] Yeah, so here now — Sasha, after all of this loss and —

Bea: Regret almost.

Remmy: Yeah. Distance, then loss and regret, she is given an opportunity to change that in a way — I'm not going to say she had to, y’know, she didn't have to take this as an opportunity to make amends. But as far as Dean and John, it really is — I think it ties into what Dean is saying here, y’know? He could be resentful and I think that he — growing up, he was never resentful, but with distance, after John's death, he grew resentful.

Bea: Yeah, with distance he gained further insight into what was going on, and with time he also got to experience — he started to realize that the skin that he was in was one that was chosen for him, and maybe it doesn't fit so well anymore.

Remmy: Yeah, yeah. I mean, throughout the seasons, we've had a lot of Dean lashing out at John or at his feelings towards John. Something that we wouldn't have — we never would have seen from him in season 1, 2, or 3.

Bea: Well, we saw only briefly in the early seasons.

Remmy: Right, right, right. Because he was still so close to the situation that he was brought up in. I don't know, it's [laughs] Episode 300, can't f****** wait! [laughs] But he is now walking away from that. He's dropping it, and he's moving past it. I think that — Bea, why do you do this to me? — so back in season 12 we saw him drop and move away from his resentments toward Mary that he's been carrying for his whole life. I think that was his turning point, season 12, and this moment with Mary, that was his turning point, where in doing that, in healing from his wounds from Mary, he can look to do the same with his wounds from John.

Bea: Yeah, he can get a flavor of what that healing tastes like, what it feels like, and say — I think with Sasha and her father as a mirror, it's not necessarily that Sasha has chosen to forgive her father for what has gone on. It's more, I feel, this balance between if you keep recycling your experience of the past, it doesn't really give you [the] opportunity to grow. Dean's not talking about needing to give forgiveness; he's just saying you can't change the past, so can you drop that weight from yourself. So I felt like this gesture that Sasha is making towards her father was more so an idea that she was trying to let go of all that hate and resentment that she felt.

Remmy: Yeah.

Bea: And you spoke about Dean with [the] John angle of it, but the Michael angle, it would be that Dean is also trying to just drop that baggage. He's not necessarily offering himself forgiveness for the choice that he made, for saying yes to Michael, or what Michael has done in the interim, but Dean is doing his best to say, “By wallowing in this, I'm not moving forward. I'm not doing anything of benefit, and so at least if I let go of this weight, I can move forward, and hopefully we'll do something productive instead.”

Remmy: Right. Well, we wrapped up the Rawling estate but those feelings and thoughts, and even vocalizations on those sentiments, do come later at the very end of the episode.

Bea: Yes, yes, because when we wrap up with Sasha and her father, we move on to the four hunters plus Maggie returning to the bunker. Upon seeing Maggie enter into the war room, the other hunters that are already within the bunker, they crowd around her. They're very pleased to see that she is happy and fine, and [are] giving her hugs.

Remmy: We get this very muted scene, where we've driven back and Dean and Sam — back into the bunker — and it's just bustling with this hunter hub activity and [sighs] so many people in the bunker, I just never get over. I love it.

Bea: Yeah, I continue to love it.

Remmy: And Maggie comes in behind them and, as you said, when the hunters that are here see Maggie, they crowd her in relief. She is greeted warmly by this whole community, and I just have in my notes — all caps — COMMUNITY.

Bea: Yes, and what Dean says about that, like, “You did this.” He says to Sam, “That it was — you got her home.”

Remmy: We've talked about Dean, but wrapping up Sam, we're bringing it around that yes, Sam is worthy. Sam is doing a good job, and Sam has built something incredible.

Bea: But Sam's face in this moment, you can still see that he's — he hasn't really connected with it, and he doesn't seem happy still. He's dwelling on the things that he regrets having happened.

Remmy: [whines] But I want to be happy [laughs]

Bea: I do too, and I'm just like, this poor guy. I mean, he's dishing out this advice to his brother, like, “You try to move on. You're not doing yourself any favors by beating yourself up,” and yet it's easier to say than do. You can see Sam is struggling through, beating himself up on what he perceives as failures nearly resulting in another hunter’s death.

Remmy: [groans] So I guess we don't really wrap up Sam. You're totally right but, I mean, poor guy, I just…

Bea: He's doing so much, and like Dean said, he's doing more than his best. He's doing better than his best. But Sam just hold such a high bar.

Remmy: He still feels like he's falling short. My baby! Come on.

Bea: C’mon.

Remmy: [laughs]

Bea: Yeah, and from here we go over to Mary with Bobby. She is treating Bobby's wounds [and] Bobby is just saying, “You weren't supposed to see Daniel.” That was something that was behind the walls that he had built. But Mary wants him to talk, and we now get to have the backstory of the other world Bobby.

Remmy: Yeah, yeah, where it's not explicitly stated but we can infer that Karen died in the same way that she did in our world, except for one key difference in that they did have a child together. We have a lot of history with Bobby and why he doesn't have children, but in this apocalypse world, in this other world, Bobby did have a son and his son also — Bobby had support in a way that he didn't have before — that he didn't have in our world. I keep talking past and present, but it's not past and present, it's an entirely different universe. But in this reality, Bobby didn't have the support of this son that we're introducing to the apocalypse Bobby's past, where he says that they buried Karen together.

Bea: Well, we're never told that it is Karen, just that his wife died unnaturally. We can fill in —

Remmy: Don't take Karen away from me!

Bea: I'm not! I'm just saying that she wasn't necessarily there on the page.

Remmy: Don't take Karen away from me! [laughs] Alright, well, his wife, and they hunted together right. I think it is implied that his history kind of played at the same way that — again, Bobby doesn't state that Karen was possessed — it fell on Bobby to kill her and that was what ushered Bobby into the world of hunting. But I don't know, I think that Bobby's history kind of falls parallel to our Bobby's except for this one key difference, in that he had an adult son through this.

Bea: Yes.

Remmy: I say adult son because we, again — the history of Bobby, even though I know this is not the same Bobby, but we [what] know of Bobby is that he did condemn John for bringing his boys into hunting. Bobby was the one who did his damnedest to try and give the Winchester boys what they were missing out on. Playing ball, or —

Bea: I'm not sure that I agree that it was an adult son.

Remmy: Oh, no. Don't [laughs] Okay.

Bea: Remmy, are you ready?

Remmy: No, I'm not. I'm leaning — Okay, I'm leaning back. If I'm distant, it’s just because I'm braced against the wall.

Bea: [laughs]

Remmy: Okay, hit me.

Bea: I feel like what we are seeing of the apocalypse world Bobby — I mean, I'm going to give you 20-second John feels — but that he followed parallel to the path that John followed in our world. That he had a wife who died unnaturally, and he had a young child, and he went down to hunter’s path with him. This path he followed without really any direction, because as soon as he got swooped up into the angel wars, as he said, he just went along with it and his son came with. When he and his son got separated from each other, then Daniel died, and basically that Bobby feels like he sent his son to die. [He] never knew what happened to him, but what he says at the end of this is that he never thought that he would be a good dad, but Daniel was the best thing in his life. And so, when I was hearing that I thought to our Bobby, and the fact that he wasn't a parent and yet he was brought these two small boys whenever John Winchester had to go spend time elsewhere, and that Bobby learned to be a father to them. So for me, when I'm hearing Bobby's story with Daniel, I'm also thinking about Bobby's story with Sam and Dean.

Remmy: I definitely saw those John-Bobby parallels. I mean...

Bea: Yeah just the imagery of him with his kid after his spouse passed away, falling into hunting and just making it their lives, I was like, “Mhmm, I've heard this song.”

Remmy: Yeah, I just — my love for Bobby wants me to think that he was better than John. Sorry for all the Salt Rounds on John, guys.

Bea: I mean, it is what it is.

Remmy: [sighs] Because I don't know, it's — okay. But we just have so much history with Bobby on not only — he said, “I never thought I would be a good father,” and we've had entire episodes dedicated to all of the Bobby things. His contention with Karen, the fact that she wanted children and he didn't because of his own issues with his own father, and how he never felt that he was going to be a good father. That runs parallel between our Bobby and this Bobby here, but even in our own universe we know — like you said — we know that he would be a good parent because we've seen him. He has two boys, y’know? Augh, so many Bobby feels. Yes, so he has his children.

Bea: [sighs] Yes, yes.

Remmy: [laughs] Did you just whisper gently into the mic?

Bea: Yes — well, it wasn't gently. It was the last breath of my soul leaving my body, like, “Aww.”

Remmy: [laughs]

Bea: Poor soul. But yeah, Bobby just figured that after the war he would keep hunting, and it was just going to end badly for him.

Remmy: So this ties directly back into what Mary saying. “I thought that we were close, but ever since we got back something's changed.” We are offered insight on that change here and now, and that in the apocalypse world, Bobby says, “This war took my son, and I always figured it would take me too.” But then when he left the war, when he was actually taken from the apocalypse world, he lost that set future that he had in his mind, and so here in this new world, he's jumped into hunting as a replacement to that. “Hunting ends the same way as any war: you die.”

Bea: Yeah, and he just doesn't know any other way to live, but Mary's offering a hand and saying, “Let's go find [it then].”

Remmy: Yeah, yeah, and they have their tender moment, of Mary rejecting that end for Bobby.

Bea: Yeah. It's the, “Do you stay and nurture your past, or do you try and find growth in your future?”

Remmy: I didn't think about that how it parallels to the whole overarching episode

Bea: I'll put my 11th grade essay on anything.

Remmy: [laughs] It was good.

Bea: And so after that scene, we go back to Sam. Dean is approaching him where he's reading in the war room. He brings out two beers and says, “Maggie's excited for the next case,” and, “you know she learned from the best,” and Sam is still struggling. But it's a kind gesture that Dean is making to try and reassure his brother.

Remmy: Well, I think that Dean sees that recalcitrance in Sam, that he doesn't want to — he still has his doubts, so Dean he's still in big brother mode.

Bea: Yeah, he knows that Sam still isn't fully feeling himself, but he's going to do his best to give [Sam] permission to take the accomplishments that he's committed.

Remmy: Yeah, and Dean is just trying to reassure Sam that Maggie is not broken from this. “You did a good thing today,” and I don't know, I mean — Sam is still not taking it, but we don't have time for Dean to call Sam out on it because Mary and Bobby come in.

Bea: Yeah, they're basically a “we need to talk” type thing, and it transitions quickly to Sam doing a call with Donna and getting insight into her cabin, getting permission for Mary and Bobby to go out there and figure each other out. Bobby calls aside Sam, and Sam is just like, “Forget about it. I mean, things were said, but that's it,” but Bobby admits that the job is no picnic, and, “You have it in you to be a leader,” whereas he didn't and kind of projected those same feelings onto Sam.

Remmy: Exactly, exactly. Bobby is here saying, “The fact that I was putting my own issues onto you was unfair, and I recognize that it was unfair. You are doing a good job here.” so where in the woods we had Mary with Sam, and Bobby with Dean, we flip it. We kind of resolved those two things, right, because Mary is now with Dean trying to — I really, really loved that she was trying to reassure Dean that, “I'm not leaving and I'm still here.” She's trying so hard to reassure him that this is not — “I'm not leaving like I did in season 12,” essentially.

Bea: Yeah. “It's only for a few weeks. Tell me if you need anything. I'll drop a hat and get there, y’know.”

Remmy: Yeah, yeah, so it's like Mary recognizes the damage that she did when she first came back and she just doesn't want to repeat it. She's being so good to both Sam and Dean in this episode, especially.

Bea: And Dean does such a nice little gesture here, to just, “Go. Be happy,” [and] gives her a hug.

Remmy: Yes, yes. We have this Dean — again, “Growth.” — we have Dean doing the same thing that Sam was doing when Mary and Sam were in the woods, in that they're encouraging her to go and fight for her happiness. “This is what you need. Go and be happy.”

Bea: Yes, yes. Such a great moment.

Remmy: Awesome.

Bea: Yeah, so Sam and Dean watch them go up the stairs and out the door, and we cut to the two of them now in the kitchen. They're making phone calls to other hunters, like, Garth gets name-dropped. But they're basically calling everyone that they know to warn them that Michael has laid out some traps for hunters, and it's freaking awesome.

Remmy: Oh yeah, it's so well done. So they're both on the phone, they're informing everybody. Sam is the last to get off the phone. He says, “So I think that's everyone,” and, like I said before, this seems to be the true kickoff of Michael’s war. We end on that note, where we're saying this is a battle that we're now fighting.

Bea: Yeah. “A strike has been made against us, and even though the hunter who died wasn't one that we knew, it was still a hunter. We need to look out for each other, so spread the word.”

Remmy: Yes, and Dean ends the episode with, again, bringing it back around to those Michael feels.

Bea: Yes. I really like how this one sentence went, that he was saying — he goes, “I know it's not my fault,” and he's trying to move on. But the way that he cycles through his phrasing, he goes, “From what I — what we — what he did.” It takes him practice, but you can see by the end, even on his face, he's like, “No, I'm affirming this is what Michael did. It wasn't me.”

Remmy: I pulled the same line in my own notes because that was so perfect. We see, like Dean said, trying, trying everyday.

Bea: Yeah, and he just is rueful about the fact that he was almost feeling like himself, and then here's this setback that comes, with all the doubts that Neil raised when reading his mind. I mean, they just never can catch a break.

Remmy: Yeah, he finally assures Sam that, “I've been trying to not forget, but to move on from what happened to me in this,” but now we have a new monster to face. It's very similar to — it's carrying forward what we had last episode, at the end of [the] last episode, that Dean is struggling but he is moving forward.

Bea: Yeah, it might not be at the pace that he wants to be moving at, but he is taking steps forward. Again, with any sort of recovery, it's just frustrating when you wish you could be going faster. But recovery takes time, and he has been spending the last several episodes learning that. It's not so simple, and you need to put in the time and put in the effort to actually improve from where you were at.

Remmy: Yep, yep.

Bea: Yep, yep, yep!

Remmy: [laughs] Okay, final takeaway. Who's taking the Mary feels and who's taking the John feels?

Bea: I'm dibsing the Sasha-Dean conversation as being a really strong way of giving a character of the week a sharp backstory, and the actress did such a great job with her role. It's not often that we get to see a woman in a reluctant/resentful caregiver position with a family member, and I just found that really refreshing. The fact that she was able to connect with Dean on a couple separate levels, like John and Michael, Dean struggling with it, was just icing on the cake.

Remmy: I adore Sasha as a character, absolutely. You talk about Sasha as a character of the week, but I'm going to take Neil as a monster of the week.

Bea: Hell yeah.

Remmy: It was just so — this whole episode, it was good.

Bea: Yeah, it's the bones that we're used to seeing, but it's not at all of the costuming.

Remmy: Yeah, yeah. I just love the djinn in general, and Neil was such a fun character.

Bea: And this power upgrade introduces so many questions that you could ask about now. How does that world work, where djinn are capable of doing this, y’know? Such an interesting twist.

Remmy: Yeah, and Neil was a character in and of himself. It was really fun.

Bea: Yeah, it's not often you get to know the villain has a Reader's Digest subscription, or an Architectural Digest [one].

Remmy: First Kip and now Neil. We're getting all the good villains.

Bea: A+. Loving it.

Remmy: Yeah, yeah. So yeah, guys, that was season 14, episode 5, and next week —

Bea: — we’ll be tuning in to “Optimism.”

Remmy: Yeah, episode 6, “Optimism.” I don't know what it's about —

Bea: Charlie, Charlie, Charlie, Charlie —

Remmy: — apparently Bea knows what it's about [laughs] I was going to say, I have no idea what it's about but I did see Jack in the promo image.

Bea: Me, yodeling, “Charlie,” over and over again.

Remmy: [laughs] If you guys enjoyed this episode, hit us up on Twitter or Tumblr either at @nochickflickpod for Twitter or nochickflickpodcast for Tumblr. You can email us at nochickflickpodcast@gmail.com.

Bea: And if you guys are listening to us on Apple podcast or Google play, or any of these other sites, we would love it if you could subscribe. We would also adore you if you could rate, preferably with a 5-star, but anything that you want to do will be —

Remmy: [laughs] 5 star!

Bea: You guys are listening, everything's out there. Please enjoy.

Remmy: If you enjoy it half as much as we enjoy recording it, it's 5 stars.

Bea: [laughs]

Remmy: I will see you next week guys!

Bea: Thanks for joining!

Remmy: Bye!

[post-outro stinger]

Bea: I'm eating an M&M. I'm so sorry.

Remmy: [laughs] It's okay.

Bea: I'm an idiot. I'm going to put these in a drawer [drawer opens, candy rattling noises] ASMR.

Remmy: [laughing] Are they in a f****** tin?

Bea: No! They're in a plastic container. I can't even sneak ‘em because there's peanuts in the middle, so it's not like you can just melt them.

Remmy: I was gonna say — I was just going to say, are they at least peanut M&M’s? Because those are the only M&M's [laughs]

Bea: Yes! I have taste, so [laughs] Okay.