Join us in covering S14E10, "Nihilism", or the one where the boys MacGruber themselves an archangel capture, Dean grabs a drink and waits for the rain, and Maggie practices her Braveheart speech. Tune in for Michael smugness galore (though we love him for it.)

Remmy: Hello, everybody! This is (No) Chick Flick Moments. We are coming off of our one-week hiatus. Oh, by the way, I'm Remmy.

Bea: And I'm Bea.

Remmy: Hi, Bea.

Bea: Hi! It's been so long.

Remmy: [laughs] It's been 25 years! No, it's been like two weeks since we've recorded but for some reason I'm like...

Bea: We've gotten rust on our joints. We're like, what's going on?

Remmy: [laughs] And then I just had to go through like 25 minutes of audio f***ery, but beyond that.

Bea: [laughs] No big deal.

Remmy: Yeah, NBD. As I said, this is (No) Chick Flick Moments. Welcome back, everybody. This week, we are following up on last episode's mid-season finale —

Bea: And the cliffhanger that they left us with.

Remmy: The Thanos snap. We are talking about season 14, episode 10, "Nihilism" today. It was an episode written by Steve Yockey and directed by Amanda Tapping. As I was writing down Amanda Tapping, I was like, I know that name. Do I know that name? I think I know that name.

Bea: Yeah. I'm hearing it now and I'm just like, is that Naomi?

Remmy: It is! It is. Google told me that this episode was directed by Naomi's actor/actress, which is pretty cool. I didn't know that she directed.

Bea: That is so cool.

Remmy: Yeah, and the description for this episode reads: Michael has retaken control of Dean as his army of monsters continues to move in on our heroes. Sam devises a plan to try and reach Dean and stop Michael before anyone else has to die. I think — I feel like this episode is going to be a doozy.

Bea: Yeah. I remember coming off the hiatus not knowing what to expect and then having this episode be fast-paced, really crunching you through a lot of things, and wringing you out emotionally along the way.

Remmy: We talked about this episode. This is one of those episodes that just invited a lot of speculation, right?

Bea: Mhmm.

Remmy: We're answering some of our questions from coming off of a month of speculation with the hiatus and this episode itself, it was like — we had so much to talk about, and I hope that we can tap into even a fraction of it here. [laughs]

Bea: Oh, yeah. We might do it a bit more coherently this time because the last time was just, "Oh my God!"

Remmy: I don't know! I mean, I remember as I was watching — as I was rewatching — there were scenes, there were moments, and I was like, oh my God, we talked about this for 15 minutes. And then, of course, I was like, but what we what were we talking about? [laughs]

Bea: Yeah. Yeah. I'm sitting here. I'm like, I know there was a conversation. Like, touching the ground, "I have no memory of this place."

Remmy: [laughs] Exactly! Exactly. Okay, so kicking off.

Bea: Opening scene.

Remmy: Yeah, opening scene. Kicking off this episode, we have one of those moments where, I remember, we just talked about it. We talked it to death the first time, but we open with Rocky's Bar.

Bea: Yes. Starting in on Rocky's Bar, we are focusing in on a bunch of different elements here that are, I would say, a little kitschy or eccentric. There is a squirrel hugging a beer bottle. There are some slot machines. There's a pool table. There's a lot of eclectic decor, and there's a storm going on outside. The door to the front of this bar opens and in comes Pamela Barnes.

Remmy: Pamela Barnes. Oh my god. Oh, and as we're going through these Rocky scenes, you totally need to be my eyes and call me out some of our easter eggs in this setting, because we talked about how it's all eclectic and cluttered and such. I'm not going to give you my 20 seconds of feels on Dean and this being his comfort space, and Dean never being able to carry things [with him].

Bea: We're gonna be — it's gonna be 20 minutes, okay? Let's be real. [laughs] It's not going to be 20 seconds.

Remmy: Dean’s never been able to carry anything with him in his vagabond life, and for him to finally have a place that he can call his own and collect things around him? Okay, I'm fine.

Bea: It's just peacocking these elements of what you would see as roadside attractions, that when you were [a] kid and these are the things that stand out when [he's] going from one motel to another to another. Same road, different face every time.

Remmy: Oh my God.

Bea: And so he's just picked out all of these grotesqueries, or just elements that speak of something unique and having history to them.

Remmy: Yeah. Yeah. [laughs] But Pamela.

Bea: But we're not talking about that guy. [laughs] Oh, we're f***ed.

Remmy: Okay. Oh, no, we're fine. This episode's gonna be great, guys. You don't need to buckle in.

Bea: Yeah, we're not going to be emotionally ravaged by the end of it at all. [laughs]

Remmy: [laughs] That doesn't sound like us.

Bea: No.

Remmy: No.

Bea: Yeah. Pamela comes in from this storm outside, and she's talking about the end of days that she battled at the grocery store trying to buy the last bag of limes for the house special. We don't know who she's talking to at first, but when she sets the bag down and the hand comes and grabs it off the bar, then we see that it's Dean.

Remmy: Yeah. Oh my God, Pamela. She's so gorgeous. I can't. I can't function.

Bea: She hasn't changed a bit.

Remmy: [sighs] Pamela. I yelled when I saw her. I was freaking out. I should have watched this episode like five times because the first watch, I was just spiraling from the beginning. It took me 10 minutes just to catch up with myself because oh my God, I can't believe all this is happening right here, right now.

Bea: Oh, I know. You got these psychic punches of seeing Pamela on-screen and what the bar means and all of this, and you're reeling. You're trying to catch up.

Remmy: Augh. Yeah. So Dean says, "Yeah, I'm not going to make the house special without limes. What you — we're not heathens." He makes said house special, he — which I'm like, is just a tequila shot? [laughs] He slaps —

Bea: And a beer.

Remmy: And a beer. Yeah, Dean. All right. All right.

Bea: Simple man, with simple joys.

Remmy: Yes. Exactly.

Bea: Yeah, and we were talking about little details, like the bar that we see here. There is this heart carved into the wood and it has "Daphne loves Fred" inside of it. And the beers that are on tap. There is the IPA "Cosmic Cowboy" and "Red Fox", and we see this one that has the FB Beer Co. on it. I'm like, mhmm. There's a bunch of love being spread into the props and the setting. Whoever was in charge of the set design was like, "We're throwing [in] everything!"

Remmy: Yeah, which makes sense because as we're going through this scene, we keep getting dropped these little devastating but throwaway lines, where it's revealing that Dean is living out this story, this dream. "This is the dream," he says, more than once this episode. He is the proprietor and owner of this bar. Cas and Sam are out hunting. [Dean's] in the life, but out of it. This place is his own and he is so proud of it, and I'm getting a bit ahead of myself. So, let's go through the scene.

Bea: Yes, so after they've done their house special shot, this businesswoman enters from the storm and she has a briefcase with her. She's talking about trying to get Dean to sign some paperwork, and Dean is saying that he's not going to sell this place. No matter how generous the offer is that she's bringing. It's that one devastating line that you're mentioning there, like, "I've never had anything this nice."

Remmy: Uh-huh. Yeah. Yeah.

Bea: F*** me. Yeah.

Remmy: And, "Thanks for stopping by but not interested."

Bea: Yeah. And he's trying to be nice, like “Oh, stay. Have a beer.” She's just trying to cut to the chase and he's luxuriating in the fact that he is gonna say no, so he has all the time in the world to just irritate her out the door.

Remmy: [laughs]

Bea: And I noticed — okay, were you paying attention to Pam's outfit here? She's got this Back from Hell t-shirt. She's got a little pair of wings on her necklace. They have her going with this, I guess, afterlife vibe for her character. These elements that are doing a callback to where she actually is in reality.

Remmy: Yeah, actually, it wasn't just the way that she was dressed. I'm not recalling specifics, but some of the things that — some of her dialogue, some of her word choices, I think, also called back to her reality versus the dream. But I did notice both the shirt and the wings necklace. Like I said, some of the things that she said it pinged to me as, "Oh, no." [laughs]

Bea: Yeah. There's a layer to this.

Remmy: Yeah. Yeah, but of course Dean is not picking up on that.

Bea: No, and after this businesswoman storms out, we go to them in the back room. Dean is doing some paperwork and Pamela has come in with more shots. She's saying that she has a hot date tonight and Dean goes, "Well, how come you always have a boyfriend?" and Pamela retorts, "How come you always want what you can't have? Besides, you don't want me. You just like to flirt."

Remmy: But Dean, when that line — okay, okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay, it's fine. I'm fine.

Bea: Alright, alright. Alright. Alright.

Remmy: [laughs] Alright, so when Pamela said, "How come you only want what you can't have?" You know, I'm easy. I'm so f****** easy, but I just — I probably had to pause, I was so, whoa, did that just happen?

Bea: [laughs]

Remmy: Did she just — did he just — did that? What? No? What? Hey. [tsks] Guys, hello??

Bea: [laughs]

Remmy: Yeah. That was me. And Dean, he's like, whoa, he says whoa, okay, but his face in this moment. He wasn't offended. He wasn't taken aback. It was more like a —

Bea: It was like a touché.

Remmy: It was. It was a little bit of the touché and also like, "Oh my God, did you just go there?" But yeah, she just f****** with there and then she follows up with, "Besides, you don't want me," and I'm not going to get into the under layers of he doesn't actually want her. He just flirts for fun. And so for her to say, "Why do you only want what you can't have?" she's not talking about herself, really. On the surface, she's talking about herself, but underneath I don't think she is at all, and I think that Dean knows that. But it is not my destiel podcast so...

Bea: [laughs]

Remmy: I don't have one, but. [laughs]

Bea: Well, you're talking about these lines and elements to Pamela that are speaking to the fact that this isn't the Pamela that we know. To me, this little rapport that they have here, that was something that pinged for me, because when we were first introduced a Pamela in season 4 episode 1 "Lazarus Rising", she was flirty to Dean and Sam. I wouldn't say that she was [flirting] with any intention of following through on it —

Remmy: No.

Bea: — but she was definitely like, "Oh, I'm gonna be flirting with you to see if I can make you uncomfortable." But in this Rocky's Bar reality, what we have is sort of the opposite. She's saying, “Oh, I'm doing my own thing, and if anyone's making just pointless advances then it's you, Dean. You're the one who does this, and it's just because nothing's going to come from it.”

Remmy: Yeah, exactly. He does it because he knows — because it's safe.

Bea: Yeah.

Remmy: Because there's not going to be a follow-up that he has to, you know. Yeah.

Bea: Yeah, and I think that there's an element, too, of just allowing the audience to know that Pamela isn't here as the romantic interest. Dean isn't here with this fantasy of a wife; he's an entrepreneur. It's just genuinely [that] he has a place that is his own and it is populated by friends. It's populated by people he's close to. Pamela and him have a lot of overlap in their personalities, and so for her to be the choice in this bar, I really found that engaging.

Remmy: Absolutely, and that's a good point. Yes. I do appreciate that were putting forward that this isn't — this is not a romance. It's not romantic. Okay, sorry —

Bea: Yeah, Pamela's not the one that got away.

Remmy: Yeah. Pamela's not the one that got away. I remember, when coming off of this episode, I was thinking it was such a surprise — and such a pleasant surprise — to see Pam again, but then it was also the perfect choice and almost the only choice. I'm like, who would I have rather have seen walk through that door? Charlie? No. Kevin? No. Um — Benny. Never mind. [laughs]

Bea: [laughs]

Remmy: Okay. No. Okay, "rather" is too strong a term, but I would have died if it was Benny, okay.

Bea: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

Remmy: But anyways, I think — we all know how I feel about Dean and his friends and his relationships, and the people that he feel safe with and content with and — blah blah blah. The people that he can open up to and just be him[self], truly 100% himself with.

Bea: Yes.

Remmy: It just kills me every single time we get scenes like this and we see Dean's contentment, and it's supposed to. He says to Pam, "This is the dream. This is everything I've ever wanted," and it's [sighs] I'm — I'm dying and dead and bye. [laughs] Take me home. Take me away from here.

Bea: I'm definitely going to touch base on this a little bit later. But yeah, woof.

Remmy: Yeah, woof.

Bea: It's so good! I can't believe that this is the first scene, and we're not even done the first thing because Dean — we cut from the back room. Now he is going into the walk-in cooler and he's grabbing another case of Texan Star. When he steps out, Pamela is like a watchdog staring at the door. So I'm like, did she sense what was coming? But —

Remmy: Yeah, she did.

Bea: Basically, yes. So yeah, there — a vamp comes in and he said that he was from Sutler, and he has a bone to pick with Dean. There's been a drunk guy at the bar this whole time who finally rears up and attacks, and Dean jumps behind the bar. He tosses Pamela a shotgun, he grabs a machete, and then they kill both vampires in quick succession.

Remmy: Yeah.

Bea: And they wrap it up by wiping up the blood. [laughs]

Remmy: [laughs] Taking another shot, or pouring a beer. There they gleefully finish up this fight. They're riding the adrenaline high. They're just having a good old time, and Pam says, every other — "Seems like every other week there's some big bad that it comes out to get you." That's the — she doesn't say this but it's like, when you're stationary, when you have a name for yourself, then you're going to get that kind of trouble. Also, it was very old western, like him bursting through the doors. Very saloon-like, "I got a bone to pick with you," which is exactly Dean's scene. This whole — this whole sequence is really just like...

Bea: It's just the perfect fantasy for Dean.

Remmy: Right? Exactly.

Bea: Yeah, because he has a stationary place he's calling home. He has monsters dropping by on the regular that he can fight, but he's defending a territory rather than going out and seeking these things. He wraps up this like, "What can I say? I'm famous," and just this little kid grin. I'm like, oh my God, I've never Dean smile like this before. It's been so long.

Remmy: That was a smile. Uh-huh. We get that little grin and then we get the title card, because that was only the opening f****** scene!

Bea: Yes!

Remmy: And this is my life now.

Bea: You are basically — you get your legs kicked out of you at the very start of the episode, and then you're just trying to stand up because everything is moving so quick. Right after this title card —

Remmy: Talking about moving quick. Yeah. [laughs]

Bea: We have a return to Kansas City, and we now see Dean as Michael. Michael's all gussied up and doing —

Remmy: I'm! [laughs]

Bea: Augh. Doing his little villain monologue a little bit longer.

Remmy: We open back to Michael and he's got his whole getup on. He doesn't have the cap, but he's got the three-piece suit and the pocket watch and the tie.

Bea: Yeah, and the tie pins that he has to his collar.

Remmy: Oh my God. And I'm like, did he mojo himself into my fancy outfit? [laughs]

Bea: His f****** version of the Thanos snap is like: Dress. [snaps]

Remmy: [laughs] Yeah. Yeah. So with the Thanos snap, I can only assume he popped himself into his preferred dress. I'm like, okay.

Bea: Yeah, he's like, "Like f*** I'm wearing plaid."

Remmy: [laughs] Perfect. Perfect.

Bea: [laughs] And yeah, he's monologuing at this point. He's going, "Hope is an amazing thing. You had no chance, none, but you had hope," and that is the reason why they came to fight him. He's just constantly being smarmy and he's using his powers to crush them downwards, but Cas manages to get up and distract Michael long enough for Sam to throw this angel molotov on to Michael. He goes up in flames for a little bit, just long enough for Cas to throw on the angel cuffs.

Remmy: Yeah. I'm like, Cas, be careful. You're not supposed to touch the fire. Cas!

Bea: He's reckless at this point. He's like, you know what? F*** it.

Remmy: [laughs] Yeah, and like you said, Michael was just so smug. He's like, "You brought me my favorite vessel. You brought me the one weapon that could possibly hurt me. I'm so glad you're here to witness my —" whatever. His drama.

Bea: His quote-unquote ascent.

Remmy: Yeah, uh-huh. There it is.

Bea: And he could crush them. He could absolutely kill them. But instead he just chooses to force field them downwards and then speak at them for ages. He wants an audience.

Remmy: Oh absolutely, and he gets it, but he lets them get the better of him. Now he is caught in these angel cuffs — the cuffs that we mentioned Bobby had been working on trying to improve to hold an archangel. So the second that Cas gets those cuffs on Michael, both Cas and Sam warily back up a little bit. They're like, is this gonna work? Is it going to work? [laughs]

Bea: Yeah, yeah. We either are going to earn half a second of life or we have a lot more. Let's just see how this next half-second goes.

Remmy: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly, exactly. They've got their dental floss and bubble gum and it paid off this time.

Bea: They're MacGruber.

Remmy: MacGruber? MacGyver.

Bea: [sings] MacGruber.

Remmy: Isn't it — what?

Bea: From SNL.

Remmy: Oh, I don't watch SNL.

Bea: It's fine. It's at least 10 years old.

Remmy: [laughs] Okay. I was, Bea, do you have like a Canadian MacGyver I don't know about?

Bea: [laughs] It could be. I'm not sure if Will Forte's Canadian or not.

Remmy: Is that — is that what's happening here? [laughs] Um, yeah, so next? [laughs]

Bea: Yes. The cuffs are on Michael and they try breaking through to Dean, speaking to him, but Michael is just sassing back. Sirens begin sounding outside downstairs, and around this time Sam gets a phone call from Maggie, who is trying to track down what's going on in the city, but there's just so many monsters.

Remmy: Yeah. Yeah, it's chaos out there.

Bea: But no kills.

Remmy: No kills, yeah, just bites and scratches. It's almost like — and Maggie trails away, but we know and Sam knows, on the phone. They're not trying to destroy the city. They're trying to infect the city.

Bea: Exactly.

Remmy: And Maggie says, okay, we're coming to you, and Sam says no, be my boots on the ground. Just do your best to contain and control.

Bea: Yeah. Work on saving people. Don't worry about us.

Remmy: Right. He says, "We're here. We have Michael. we'll figure it out," and he hangs up and [laughs] Cas is like, "Okay, what's the plan?" Like, uhhh... [laughs]

Bea: "I was just kidding!" [laughs]

Remmy: Yeah, yeah.

Bea: They get this really roughshod idea that like, okay, we'll just get Michael downstairs. We'll get him into the trunk of the Impala, and we'll get back to the bunker. And Jack: "Garth's in the trunk." Sam: "It's a big trunk."

Remmy: There's so many great facial expressions this episode.

Bea: Yeah, like them thinking on their feet and then having these hilarious little beats that come with it.

Remmy: Yeah. Yeah. "It's a big trunk. It'll be fine."

Bea: Yeah.

Remmy: Except Michael, being the smug a**hole he is, they hear these disturbances outside the room and they all look as one to Michael, and Michael says, "Ah, the cavalry has arrived." He has called his monsters to help free him from this predicament. So it's not going to be as simple as just herding Michael downstairs and throwing him in the trunk anymore.

Bea: Exactly. "It's a party now."

Remmy: Yes. Oh my God, every line from Michael — and I don't have most of them written down, but — every line from Michael is so f****** smarmy.

Bea: Yeah, it's dripping with sarcasm, or this schadenfreude glee at what they are going through, because all he has to do is bide enough time to get out of these cuffs. He's like, "Oh, well, I guess this is what I'm doing for the next 15 minutes."

Remmy: Exactly. Exactly.

Bea: So Cas uses his powers to hold the door shut but it's not going to last for long, and so Sam comes up with another plan on his feet. He starts calling for the reaper Jessica, knowing that there was a specific Reaper assigned to him and his brother.

Remmy: Yeah. He's like, "Jessica —" and I'm like, who? Who dat?

Bea: [laughs]

Remmy: But Cas says, who dat, and then we explain. Okay. So Billie — Death — said that we have a Reaper assigned to us, monitoring us at all times. We have Sam calling for Jessica and someone shows up, but it's not Jessica. It's Violet. The reaper Violet.

Bea: Yes, and oh my God, she's fantastic.

Remmy: [sings] I love her.

Bea: She shows up and she's just like, "It's my shift. We have shifts now because you mess up so, so many things."

Remmy: [laughs] I know. I love her so much. It was great, and she has shown herself only to Sam, or has tried to show herself only to Sam, because Jack and Cas cannot see or hear her. Michael can though, and she seems a little — Violet seems a little intimidated by Michael, but she powers through. She's talking to Sam and only Sam. Sam says, "We need to get out of here," and Violet says, "And I offer my full emotional support in your endeavors."

Bea: Ohh, she's so good.

Remmy: And he says, "I don't need your emotional support. I need your actual support! Get us out of here, and she just...

Bea: Yeah, we need physical help getting out of here.

Remmy: She just puts her hands and she's like, "Sorry!" and he's trying to wear her down. He's like, don't feed me that bull crap "keeping your hands clean". Like, we will die and Michael will get loose if you do not help us right now. She's just like, "Ugh, I cannot." She segues from "I won't" to "I can't", except she seems to get a little phone call.

Bea: Yes, but before we get to that phone call, I thought it was really interesting that Michael spoke to her and said, "In my world we locked Death away and enslaved the Reapers." Like, just more insight into the f***ery that was the apocalypse world.

Remmy: Well, we know that even Lucifer did the same thing in our apocalypse, right? He bound Death and he had some semblance of control over the Reapers. Or actually, maybe the reaper-control is something of my own imagination. But Lucifer did bind Death. So maybe something similar happened to Michael and I don't want to get too much into it now, but you bring this up — you saying, Michael said, “In my world we bound Death and enslaved the Reapers,” — I'm going to revisit that "we" later. So...

Bea: All right.

Remmy: I have thoughts.

Bea: Okay. But yes, like you said, Violet basically gets a phone call. She's like [shushes] I'm listening, and then she changes her mind. All of these pleas that Sam has been doing, like, "You owe us for the Rowena thing," and she's, "Oh yeah, the Rowena thing that you started? Mhmm." But she drops them off at the bunker.

Remmy: Well, Sam says, "How did you do that?" Or I think it was Jack said, how did you do that? And Violet answers, "I didn't," and then she disappears. She poofs away.

Bea: Yes.

Remmy: But yeah, yeah. We're back at the bunker. We cut to black, but we come right back to Michael, now chained to a column in the war room. Yeah.

Bea: And my notes, they just have DUMB!!

Remmy: Well, I don't know, because we're —

Bea: If it's a supporting structure?

Remmy: Yeah, but with his powers bound — you're right — but with his powers bound, we can assume he doesn't have his super strength and he can't just fight them off or tear down the column. But this is the conversation that our heroes are having, right? We have Sam, Cas, and Jack, and they're discussing, "What are we going to do with him? Is this the smart move here?"

Bea: Yeah. "We have a dungeon. We have a perfectly good dungeon. How come he's not there?"

Remmy: Yeah, Jack says it. "Should we put him in the dungeon?" And Sam says, "These cuffs are all that we have. If he can break the cuffs, the dungeon's not going to hold."

Bea: Yeah, yeah. Like, we're boned regardless what setting we want to have the boning take place in. [laughs]

Remmy: [laughs] Exactly, and we're trying, trying. We need a plan. What are we going to do?

Bea: Yeah, and so Sam's calling back to his own experience. He's saying that when Gadreel had possessed him, it took Crowley's help in order to get him out; is there something similar that they could do to try and get to Dean and get him out?

Remmy: And they say, "Well, Crowley's dead," but any demon would do. They don't say this, but I'm thinking well, it doesn't have to be Crowley. Any demon can do. Possession or regardless, that is bringing us to, "Okay. We have to get into Dean's mind one way or another."

Bea: Yes, but we can't go too far along the line because Maggie has called again. So Sam's talking to her and just essentially telling her to, you know, "If you can go pop over to Hitomi Plaza, the Impala's parked in the basement and Garth is in the trunk. Love you, bye!"

Remmy: [laughs] Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Maggie calls and she says, "Okay. We're on our way to the plaza," and Sam says, "We're actually back in Lebanon," and she says, "... What?"

Bea: Yeah. "How the f*** does that work?"

Remmy: Yeah. And also, I'm like, are we just leaving the Impala there? We gotta get someone to drive it back!

Bea: I'm like, who's got the keys?

Remmy: Oh my god! Dean would have the keys. Where are the keys? He doesn't have his clothes anymore.

Bea: Oh my God. "And the Impala was never seen again."

Remmy: The Impala was never seen again and Garth suffocates in the truck.

Bea: [laughs]

Remmy: Oh no. Well, so.

Bea: RIP.

Remmy: Sam asks, how's it looking over there? And Maggie says the attacks have stopped and it seems like the monsters are leaving the city.

Bea: Yeah. Funny thing you should mention it: they are all heading west. And Michael's like, "Remind me, what direction is the bunker compared to Kansas City?" and they're like, ah, f*** this player's behind it.

Remmy: Uh-huh. Michael has called his monsters to again break him out of the situation and he says, right out, "Nothing has changed. I will still break out of these cuffs. One way or another — my monsters will liberate me or I'll break these chains myself — but one way or another, everyone tonight is going to die."

Bea: Yeah. "Tonight everybody dies."

Remmy: Yes. "And Sam? This smiling face is the last thing you're ever going to see," y'know, calling — evoking emotion behind "my brother's face is not my brother."

Bea: Yeah. "This pretty little smile as I rip you apart."

Remmy: Oh my God.

Bea: So he has done his little "y'all are gonna die" moment thing. And so the next scene is [in] the library, and Sam is rolling out the British Men of Letters mind-link device. He's thinking that they can use it to wake up Dean and force Michael out. Cas just says that, "If he can." I'm like [sighs]

Remmy: Yeah! But like — Cas, don't be a downer. Come on.

Bea: He's scared because of what Michael has said. He has given two monologues — two separate episodes, we have seen him being like, "I have crushed Dean into dust," like, I have drowned this f***er. I have buried him so deep he is not coming back. And so they are operating on the hope — the hope that Michael mocked them for — but there is still this hope without having evidence that it's going to lead to anything. I just — I felt that moment of fear and doubt that came from that "if he can," like if we go through all of this and Dean isn't too broken to put up the fight.

Remmy: "If we even can get into Dean's mind, what are we going to find there?" That's something that we actually revisit a little bit later as well. But yeah, it's a — there is a lot of fear there, for sure.

Bea: Yes. There's a lot of uncertainty but, like Sam says, this is all we got.

Remmy: And uncertainty — we jump back into Dean's mind, what they would find there. We're with Dean back in Rocky's [Bar]. And we're living a loop. We see now that this is a loop. He's not just living out — it's not a djinn dream. It's a...

Bea: It's an enclosed loop. Like you're saying, there is this set of events that — there's slight variations thereupon, but it's the same routine that he's playing through.

Remmy: And can I take a second to consider why [it’s] this sequence of events, right, to be a loop. In this one little one-hour sequence of events, do we hit on everything that Dean would need to be content and to stay content, and to stay under the spell of contentment and to not fight back? He never becomes aware enough to fight back because he never has a reason to want to. But in just this one sequence, we have Cas and Sam out hunting but safe and they're on the way back. We have Dean with friends — Pamela — and just enjoying [each other], not distracted by customers. Dean just tending the bar.

Bea: Well, and the businesswoman comes in and Dean gets to flex his autonomy. He gets to assert that this is what he wants. And so, like you're mentioning, "Okay, does this loop have everything he wants?" It makes me think about Heaven and what Heaven is like. Heaven is these contained moments and I would assume that they would loop as well. But the difference I would say is that Dean's little self-contained moment here, it has anticipation in it. Like, it's raining outside, and so we have to stay inside for now, but the storm will let up eventually. And Sam and Cas aren't here right now, but they're on their way home and they'll get here eventually. There is this thread of Dean's little vision with Rocky's Bar that has him being satisfied with waiting in the moment, because there's these things that are always just coming on the horizon.

Remmy: Yeah. Yeah, and rounding out the fantasy, we have Dean getting his own fix and satisfaction in killing the monster.

Bea: Yes. He still has his hunt going on. It's just come to him. It's delivery.

Remmy: [laughs] Not DiGiorno.

Bea: [laughs]

Remmy: Oh, no. Wait, that would be the other way around. Anyways.

Bea: But yeah, about his third time that we have seen this cut between events, this third loop, Dean has a moment where he's experiencing some déjà vu. And so it makes me wonder that even if Cas and Sam hadn't come up with this plan, how long would it be for Dean to realize that something strange is going on here, and for him to try and make his own move.

Remmy: Yeah. He has this little déjà vu moment and he shakes it off, but I looked at that in two ways. Either Michael only has had a few minutes to do this construction and put Dean in this place before he was bound. So is it looping because Michael is not there to build more, or is this just something that Michael put him in and had been planning on putting Dean in, but it's —

Bea: It's shaky or something.

Remmy: It's shaky but I think that, given time, Michael would have all the time in the world to make sure that Dean doesn't get suspicious. But in this moment Michael is otherwise occupied.

Bea: Yeah, that's a really good point because I do think that Michael would have pre-planned what this scenario is going to look like, but like you say, he was anticipating having more ability to glance over his shoulder and see how things are going back there and then make repairs as necessary.

Remmy: Yeah.

Bea: But he can't do that right now because the angel cuffs.

Remmy: Mhmm. And Michael — back at the bunker, Michael and Jack are having a little talk. Sam and Cas are working out this mind machine thing, and Michael says, "So they left me with you." It's almost insulting.

Bea: Exactly. He's insulted that someone of such a quote-unquote low power grade is watching him. Michael says, "You're nothing," and Jack turns that around, "That's not what you said before," and it comes back to that question that you asked at the end of last episode. Like, what was Michael's motivations when he tried to extend the olive branch out to Jack? Michael's giving his answer here, but even that I don't think is sincere.

Remmy: No, he says — he answers actually more in line to what I was asking: Is Michael just lonely? Does he actually, genuinely want to go through his eternity with Jack so that he's not alone in it? And Michael says here that to ask Jack to be with him, it was a moment of familial weakness, and it's not a mistake that he would be making again.

Bea: And I thought it was really interesting to have Dean's face being the one saying this to Jack. Like, the layers that come with having Dean being the one that Jack sees as saying, "It was just a moment of weakness, because I thought of you as family and that's not happening again."

Remmy: Oh, yeah, and — but him saying that, that's what I was leaning towards. Like, did Michael really want Jack to go with him? But you, counter to that, were saying Michael is just taking the opportunity to throw that out there and he's not really invested on what Jack says either way.

Bea: Yeah, and I still maintain that opinion even after hearing what Michael said here.

Remmy: I agree.

Bea: Because what we see of Michael in this episode is, he is trying to find the raw nerves within each of the characters and then just push on them. And so I think that Dean, as being the vessel that Jack is perceiving saying these things, it's going back to the rough ground that they started on. Dean and Jack did not start on great terms, and Michael continues hammering that idea home here, saying Sam is in over his head and Dean is under control and, "I know how sad he was when you died ... on the outside," but [Jack] is just not Sam or Cas. Jack is a new burden. And so I think that even his answer to Jack's question of, "That's not what you said before," it's just — it's feeding down this line because it is the weakness he perceives in Jack's relationship with Dean.

Remmy: Oh, yeah his — like you said, it wasn't a sincere response. I actually agree that it was a response chosen carefully, and chosen deliberately, to drive in this point here, which is to say that Dean doesn't actually care about you. "Dean wasn't happy when you died, but he just didn't care."

Bea: Yeah, he was just indifferent to your place in his life.

Remmy: Oh, oh — and like you said, let's take this here now. He says to Jack, "You're not Sam. You're not Castiel. He doesn't actually care about you. You're just a job. An unwanted responsibility." Now, let's take this — where he says to Jack, because he knows it's going to hurt Jack, "Dean doesn't care about you. You know who he cares about. He cares about his family and you are separate from his family."

Bea: Yeah, let's take that little moment here and like put a pin in it and revisit with Michael's conversation with Sam and Cas later, because you start seeing all the bulls*** that he's weaving.

Remmy: Yes. Yes, exactly. It's all bulls*** and it does not — it does not hold up under scrutiny. Yeah.

Bea: Yeah, but Jack is just getting this full wave and he's the first one, really, taking the hit individually. Cas comes in, calls Jack away, but it's like a bit of the damage has already been done. It doesn't matter that Cas is telling him don't believe anything Michael says, he's lying — and Michael, in the background, "No, I'm not. And I can still hear you." [laughs]

Remmy: [laughs] I know. I'm just like, oh my God. So many eyerolls.

Bea: Just this smarmy Hannibal Lecter.

Remmy: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, definitely good comparison. Good, good pull there, yeah. So we cut from here — Jack exiting and Cas coming in — and I'm already like, chinhands, what is Michael going to say to Cas? What are we gonna see? How is he gonna use Dean's feelings against him? But we cut to the side of a road, and a road sign that says "Welcome to Lebanon", and we see that Maggie and the hunters have blockaded this highway just outside of Lebanon. Maggie's on the phone with one of the other cars of this caravan of hunters, and the man that Maggie's talking to says, "They got ahead of us. They're coming your way. Big, black van."

Bea: Yeah, they're coming up the hell right now. And so Maggie's like, well, it's time to bring out the hero speech.

Remmy: Uh-huh. She's like [laughs] she's like, "Uhh, guys?"

Bea: "I know I didn't rehearse for this one, but I'm gonna give it my best shot." [laughs]

Remmy: Yeah. Yeah.

Bea: She's so earnest. Yeah.

Remmy: She really is.

Bea: She's giving a speech about how Sam and Dean have given them all a second chance and this is a way that they could repay them, by making sure that the monsters don't get to the bunker.

Remmy: And also, I mean, this is the bunker. This is the hunter hub, right? They're protecting their own territory. They are invested in this.

Bea: Yeah, this is their square zero too.

Remmy: Exactly. So they're all set up with our guns and we see the black van come up, but it stops and we cut on this Mexican standoff here.

Bea: Yeah, so there's next to no time and we cut back to Michael and Cas. Michael is trying at first to poke at the way that Castiel has been a quote-unquote nursemaid to a Nephilim. And I — we said earlier, okay, he's looking for weak points. He tried this one first and it goes nowhere. Cas is unshakeable there.

Remmy: Yeah.

Bea: And so then Michael is pointing out that this Castiel is anemic compared to the one from his world.

Remmy: Yeah, and that's another button that he's trying to push to — haha haha, because I'm not going to get into the other world Cas too much but we do know —

Bea: 20 seconds. [laughs]

Remmy: We do know that the alt Cas was a honed weapon, right? Cas, blinded in one eye was...

Bea: Yeah, it speaks to the physical tools they were using to make him how he was. That these lobotomies, these... Yeah.

Remmy: Yeah. And so Michael would know that the Castiel of his world, he was created to be this weapon. He was not inherently a follower of Michael's war, and I don't know. To have Michael poking and on that almost like, "Look at what you became."

Bea: Yeah.

Remmy: And Michael would know that that is not... [sighs] Oh man.

Bea: Well, what I'm hearing from you is that he was trying to say, "Who you are now is still malleable." Like, you might feel faith in who you are now, but you could have very easily gone a different path and there's no saying that I couldn't make you go that path. Just this sense of... He senses the certainty that Cas has, his faith in the family he's chosen on Earth, and he's trying to pick at it and still isn't quite working.

Remmy: No, because he can't pick at that faith.

Bea: Because Cas has grown so much this season! Just... claws my face off.

Remmy: And as rebellious as we can assume the alt Cas was against this apocalypse initially, before he was forced into this other thing, that Castiel did not have his family, did not have the Winchesters. [He] did not find the thing that he could have that unshakable faith in. And that's what Michael says next, isn't it? He says, "What is it about this world that makes you love it so much?"

Bea: Yeah. Cas had retaliated to these pokes by saying that he thinks that Michael's confusing loyalty and compassion with weakness. But Michael is combating everything that Cas is trying to bring to him, like, "Why do you hate this world so much you want to destroy it?" and Michael...

Remmy: Ooh. Yeah. Yeah.

Bea: This — I was like, finally! We get this laser sharp hone-in on Michael's motivations.

Remmy: And it's so good.

Bea: It is stellar, and the way that it plants questions that come up throughout the rest of this season, it's so good.

Remmy: We — oh my God. Okay. So in this Cas and Michael talk, we don't have Michael using Dean's feelings against Cas. Not yet. Here, we are opening the book on Michael's motivations, because Castiel asks, "Why do you want to destroy this world?" And Michael says, "Because I can." But then, instantly his face betrays his words.

Bea: Yes. This flippancy isn't sincere and he actually — it's like he craves the opportunity to actually spell this out, and he didn't do it to Jack, but here he has another angel who's sitting there asking him these questions of why. It's like Michael has decided that this is an audience that he can at least impart this to.

Remmy: And as much as Michael says, "I am the biggest thing there is and even angels are so far below me. They're not worth my notice." I don't know. Michael really puts down monsters and humans, "These are insects. These are atoms to something as me," and that's what he says to Jack. He's trying to explain to Jack, "You don't know what time it is, but you will." I think that honestly, with Cas, it's almost like, finally here is someone who could understand. Because he says, "In my world, me and my brother — me and Lucifer — what we did. We were not hindered in starting and finishing this fight. This apocalypse. And when we did, we expected — we thought that God would come back."

Bea: Yeah.

Remmy: "We thought that when we would destroy this Earth that God claimed to love, that God would come back and he would explain himself. He would tell us why he left. He would answer our questions, but you know what happened? Nothing. Nothing happened." And you can see in him that this is, like...

Bea: This is personal.

Remmy: Yeah, it's very personal.

Bea: He has spent a lot of time trying to act like he is above other figures, that he is superior, and yet here he has a moment to speak with one of his siblings and explain that what — in essence, it boils down to he wanted his dad to come home so he could talk to him. When that didn't happen, he's like, "Okay, you know what? I'm gonna throw a f****** tantrum," but he didn't decide to throw the tantrum until he was in Dean, and he got to have insight into just what exactly God's motivations were for keeping away.

Remmy: Exactly. Yeah.

Bea: And God's motivations were that "he doesn't care."

Remmy: I thought it was so interesting that in his world — in Michael's world — he ended that world and nothing happened. What he expected to happen, God's return, did not happen. And then he went to this world, this different world, and he was going to basically try again, but then in Dean — in possessing Dean — he got some of those answers. Dean actually knows more about God, Chuck, than this Michael did. God actually has revealed himself to us in this world, and we know — we have some insight into his motivations and who he is. As Michael says, "God is a writer, and I understand now that my world — this world. This, that or the other — they're all just drafts. The second that it starts to go not as planned, those drafts are discarded. God moves on because God doesn't care."

Bea: Yeah. He said that because God is a writer, and like all writers he churns out draft after draft, and the worlds are nothing but failed drafts. As soon as he realizes they're flawed, he moves on and tries again. I thought it was really telling that at first Cas tries to deny this, but he cuts off. He can't, and instead he asks why God would do that.

Remmy: Yeah, Cas wants —

Bea: He wants to defend.

Remmy: He reflexively wants to deny it. Yeah, but then you can see him thinking about it, and he has no argument against that. God is inscrutable, but this is kinda a seed of well, what else?

Bea: “S***, this sounds like the truth.”

Remmy: Yeah, God did abandon this world. There's nothing you can say to Michael that doesn't make that any less true.

Bea: And I — again, I thought that it was really insightful that Michael here gives a sincere, emotional reaction to Cas' question about why God would do that. Michael gets to this aggressive place where he says, "Because God doesn't care. He doesn't care about you, me, or anything. I initially thought that I'd try to one-up him," but now Michael just wants to burn through the world until he "catches up to the old man" and kills him himself.

Remmy: Yeah. Yeah. And I wonder when he made that decision. Because he says, "At first, I wanted to do better than he did. Be more God than God. Become the God of this world. But now I just want to burn it down," and I wonder when was exactly that moment? Did he come to this world to be more God than God, but then when he possessed Dean and he learned about Chuck, is that when he decided that he was going to destroy worlds until he could find Chuck? I don't know. I was just — I was thinking mostly about episode 1 Michael, going to killers and holy men and demons and asking them the question, "What do you want?" Was that him trying to figure out how he was going to make this world a better world, or…? I don't know.

Bea: To me, yes, he was still on the thought of being a better God than God at that point. I feel like it was at some point when he had stepped out of Dean and was possessing these other vessels that Michael soured to this initial [plan]. And it could have been that, "Hey, this is taking a lot more work than I actually want to put in." Like, the amount of effort that is required to be better than God. "What am I doing if that is my way of trying to one-up the old man? Am I just going to do that in perpetuity until he shows up? Know what, f*** that. No. I'm going to just crumple this draft up and I'm going to keep on ripping drafts out of the book until I find him." I think it was something along those lines, that he just — I don't know. He seems to be more attuned to destruction than creating and maintenance thereupon. And so I think that he just lost interest in the thought of being God

Remmy: And I think that the more time passed, the more he saw the flaws of the world. That was his thing in episode 1, right? He was going to these people and he was asking them, "What do you want?" and all he saw was lies. Talking about failed drafts, I mean, it's just like, yeah, he does just want to crumple up that page and move on, and as time passes he gets more and more angry at God and at all these unanswered questions. He just wants to catch up to God and demand those answers, and Cas says, "What would you do then?" and Michael finishes out to say, "Even God can die."

Bea: Yeah, I think Michael has a real confirmation bias in whatever he is working towards. He just has this axe to grind against God, and so his interpretation of everything that he's coming across on this world, he's going to bend towards that flavor. To have this quote-unquote captive audience in Cas, where he can finally speak to someone who would understand having faith in this father that will return someday after aeons and never seeing it fulfilled... Then he goes, "You know what? I'm actually going to do something about this. I'm going to make that f***er bleed."

Remmy: Yes. I loved it.

Bea: This makes him a very compelling character, because he was sort of obfuscated up to this point. Like, what is his motivation? We had a lot of question marks that came up, and so to have this opportunity to have him sit down with Cas and be like, "Here is some actual raw emotion and not just the bulls*** that I'm spinning you," that was really good.

Remmy: That exactly was my biggest beef with this character. I don't know if I talked about it overmuch in this podcast. I know I've mentioned it before: Michael, what do you want? But on first watch, I was really big on that. Michael, what do you want? Like I said, it was my biggest beef with the character. I was just — all these questions.

Bea: And now we have hindsight with this moment. Yeah.

Remmy: Yeah, this moment was everything I could have wanted. It was the best kind of payoff. It left me super satisfied. And it was a really good scene.

Bea: Yeah. I like anytime that a show gives you something that allows you, upon re-watching it, to get a deeper level from it. And so I think even if I rewatch season 13, there would be this new, compelling background for him too, that at that point he was still thinking of ways of how to just basically find his dad. It's during this season that he goes, "You know what? F*** the old man. I'm bringing a shiv and we're dealing with this old-school."

Remmy: And, very briefly, this is the "we" I was talking about. So Michael here, he says, "Me and my brother, me and my Lucifer, we thought that this would bring God back." So it was almost like — I don't know. It just makes me think of family, and it makes me think of um...

Bea: Yeah. That they allowed themselves to be pitted against each other with this thought of, “If we fight long and hard enough, maybe Daddy will return.”

Remmy: Right. Exactly. Just how much of this fight was honest resentments, or how much of this fight was playing out a role?

Bea: Yeah, and how did his Lucifer's death come about? Was it something that was done in cold blood? Was it something that was unintentional but happened? It raises that gray area too.

Remmy: And how does Michael feel about it? Yeah. So, so. When Michael said, “We locked away Death and enslaved the Reapers.” I don't know. It made me think of the Michael and Lucifer "we" that he's using here.

Bea: Yeah. Yeah, I would say that was more what it evoked too. I don't think of the "we" from his conversation with Violet as being himself and his squadron of angels. It seems to me that Michael is always someone who's trying to speak to those upper power grades, and so if he's saying "we" then he is referring to Lucifer or someone on par with him.

Remmy: Yeah. Yeah, and that's what — it's that same sort of thing speaking, to those upper-grade beings that I think is, in his mind, what made it okay to reveal so much of himself to Cas, and to want to. To almost be happy to open up.

Bea: Yeah. "I'm glad you asked!"

Remmy: It's like a craving for this moment of, "I can say this to you and you would understand."

Bea: Yeah. I'm gonna save us the air time of how we bring that back to his relationship with Jack, but there is this degree of — I'm almost stepping back on my initial thought. He does have some loneliness to him, but he's very selective in who he's going to allow to be in his audience. He's so warped at this point that if he views you as lesser then [you’d] just be used as a tool that he can bend.

Remmy: Yeah.

Bea: I feel like that's enough Michael feels. I think we have hammered that one to death. [laughs]

Remmy: Oh, no that — again, that doesn't sound like us at all. [laughs]

Bea: No, no no. I mean, we'd never said we were only going to limit ourselves to 20 seconds, so...

Remmy: [laughs]

Bea: So yeah, from there we go back to Maggie and the hunters. There's this black van approaching, or it's parked — I forget which one precisely happened.

Remmy: I think in the previous scene we saw it approaching and they had readied themselves.

Bea: Okay.

Remmy: But nothing had emerged from the van yet. So now we're back right where we were before. They're all lined up to fire on this van except nothing is happening.

Bea: Yeah, they approach on the van but there's no movement and indeed when they throw the doors open, it's empty. And so they circle around it and we have our one f****** chuckle hero. He's like, “I'm gonna go run off into the bush to see if they went in there.” It's like, "Buddy system! Sam said buddy system!" He's like, "No, I know better," and so he runs off.

Remmy: Maggie calls out, "Don't go in the woods aloooone... He's already gone."

Bea: Yeah, bye.

Remmy: Bye.

Bea: But then he pops out. He goes, "Nope. They went off on foot to the bunker. We better hurry back there. They got around us," and she's basically like, f***.

Remmy: [laughs] Yeah. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go.

Bea: Yeah, and in the bunker, Sam has set out the mind link device. Jack is asking if it's going to work and if it doesn't, well, he might be able to help if he uses some of his magic. Sam's like, "Dean wouldn't want to be saved that way."

Remmy: Right, because Sam says if you use your powers, your magic, then you would be burning your soul to do it, and that's not what Dean would want.

Bea: Yeah, but Jack still isn't super convinced that this machine is going to work, and he's trying to say, like, what happens — you have no idea what will happen when you get into Dean's mind.

Remmy: Right. We're revisiting that ‘assuming the worst’ right here. Sam says, "The last time that Michael had Dean trapped, Dean said it felt like he was drowning. This time it could be much, much worse."

Bea: Yeah, and they just they can't abide [by it]. Sam cares too much and he can't allow himself to have the room of second-guessing or doubting.

Remmy: Yeah.

Bea: So they have the machine set up and they are hooking up the little... electrodes?

Remmy: Nodes, yeah.

Bea: To Michael's head, and they are saying that if Sam goes in, Cas should be able to hitch a ride. And Michael: "Oh, Cas. I believe in you." I'm like, you... [sighs]

Remmy: Yeah. Yeah, and Sam is connecting the electrodes and Michael gives a little sarcastic shiver, like, ooh.

Bea: "Cool science experiment." I'm gonna f****** fight you.

Remmy: Oh my God. Yes. [laughs]

Bea: In the parking lot behind the school, where all the smokers are. Meet me there. I'm throwing fists.

Remmy: Well, also, we just saw some vulnerability from Michael, and now we're right back on the bulls***. So.

Bea: Yep. Conceal, don't feel.

Remmy: [laughs] And Sam hooks himself up and — oh no, it's Cas that has been hooking up all these all these wires, but they're in position and Cas has Sam by the shoulder so that he can, as you said, hitch a ride.

Bea: Yes. They've asked Jack to stand guard while they're in there.

Remmy: Uh-huh.

Bea: And Michael is trying to say, "Well, in there, you're all mine." Just this last little antagonistic nip before they flip the switch on and they enter into Dean's mind.

Remmy: Yeah. He says, "I'm all for it. Out here you have me bound by these cuffs, but in there, that's my playground."

Bea: Yeah. And again, this is Hannibal Lecter type s***.

Remmy: It's totally psychological.

Bea: It's like Rorschach in Watchmen, where he's like, "I'm not in here with you. You're in here with me." He's trying to pull, like you're saying, a psychological move on them.

Remmy: Yeah.

Bea: And so they flip the switch and they enter into Dean's mind. When they arrive in there, it's just a black room with Sam and Cas.

Remmy: Now, this scene is another ‘hit you in the feels’ scene.

Bea: F*** yeah. Brace yourself because —

Remmy: Holy hell.

Bea: Whoever was responsible for layering the audio.

Remmy: Yeah, whoever had to — whatever team had to go back and do these trauma moment/happy moment [clips]...

Bea: Just imagine that writers' team. Okay, they’re sitting in the room, they're like, "When were they the most miserable?" Like, oh I can think of so many. [laughs]

Remmy: Yeah. So this little — I don't know what to call it. It's not a montage; just these clips of —

Bea: Medley.

Remmy: Yeah, this medley of trauma. Well, we're getting a little ahead of ourselves. Okay, so we're in this blank, dark space and it's basically Sam and Cas walking through the darkness. It's almost that same thing, just total emptiness. And Sam says, "Where are we?" and Cas says, "In Dean's mind." Sam says, "Well, where is Dean?" and Cas answers, "That's a good question." And he, with his little glowy hand, starts scanning Dean's memories and he's looking for something specific. From the go, we are hearing these horrible moments.

Bea: Yeah, these real low points that Dean has been through.

Remmy: Right.

Bea: And that we as the audience can recognize.

Remmy: Yes. Dean in Hell. Dean when Sam died.

Bea: The vision that he had of his demon self before he was taken to Hell.

Remmy: Right. All of these Dean moments, or all of these low point moments.

Bea: Yeah, and Cas is just like, "Oh, such trauma, many scars."

Remmy: [laughs] But he's — yeah, and Sam can hear these memories that Cas is scanning through and he says, 'What is this?" and Cas says, "If I knew what I was looking for, then I could just take us there. So I am searching Dean's trauma to find where Michael buried him again," working under this assumption that, as Michael said —

Bea: That if they wade through Dean's most terrible moments then Michael — this current prison he's formed for Dean is somewhere within them.

Remmy: Right. Michael has said that he has crushed Dean so thoroughly, he would never fight. He would never be able to find his way out.

Bea: [sing-song] But Michael's a f****** liar.

Remmy: Well no, he has though! I mean, well...

Bea: Michael hasn't crushed him. Michael has put him in a place that he won't want to leave. It's very different. He spoke with the intention of Sam and Cas and Jack having no hope of rescuing Dean in any fashion, and yet they're still like, "Two middle fingers way up! We're gonna do what we want."

Remmy: And now, before we go to Sam reaching that conclusion — that maybe trauma is not what we're looking for — let's go back to Cas saying there's so much trauma, so many scars, and Sam says, well, yeah, this is...

Bea: "But Dean's strong."

Remmy: Yeah. Yeah, Dean can take it. And Cas says, "Dean is more than strong, and—” no, what does Cas say exactly?

Bea: No, that's what he says. He says, "Dean's more than strong. But if I knew where what I'm looking for, I could go there."

Remmy: And Sam says, "You're right. Dean would endure."

Bea: Yeah. Sam's saying that it's probably not trauma, because last time he fought. Dean thrives on trauma, it keeps him alert. And so if Michael wants him to be lulled or no longer fighting, then stick him somewhere where he's content and he'll relax. "So let's look through the good."

Remmy: Right? Right, right. Sam says if Michael would want Dean to stop fighting he would give him something that he had never had before, and Cas says, "Contentment." And...

Bea: [groans]

Remmy: [laughs] I know!

Bea: Hi, that was my kidney you just hit.

Remmy: Yeah, low f****** blow, man. Yeah.

Bea: Just that meme — "Is this contentment?"

Remmy: [laughs] But Cas says, "You're right," and he starts scanning those happy memories that we get some snippets, everything from perky nipples to —

Bea: Oh my God.

Remmy: Stripper Sam. [laughs]

Bea: I couldn't pick out any of the happy dialogue because I was like hmm [tsks] 404, footage not found in my head.

Remmy: [laughs] Well, okay, so I actually should have just rewound more. I didn't catch some of the things that were being said in Dean's happy memories, but it did seem like a dialogue was a bit more distinct. So I rewound and then I had the thought, "Oh, I'm going to turn the subtitles on."

Bea: A-ha!

Remmy: "That's what I should have done the first time," and so through the happy memories of subtitles on Netflix actually did tell me everything that was — all the memories that we're going through on the contentment, the happy memories scan. I didn't go back to the trauma just because... I don't know, 60% of it was "Sammy!" and then the other 40% of it was him screaming in pain. So. [laughs]

Bea: Yeah. There's just Name that Time and Place.

Remmy: Yeah. Yeah. But we had some more dialogue bits in the contentment, but it was just basically Dean uncomplicatedly happy, which has not been...

Bea: Again, I'm like 404.

Remmy: Yeah, exactly. And Sam starts to hear —

Bea: Some of the things that we heard at the start of this episode.

Remmy: Exactly.

(pt. 2)