14.07 Unpleasant Almond (pt.1)

Join us in covering S14E7, "Unhuman Nature", or the one where Sam is the glue that holds this sad face clown town together, Dean and Jack enjoy a day in the sun, and Cas delivers more eyerolls than is generally healthy. Tune in for more Nick thoughts than even the hosts thought they had to give.

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Remmy: Hello, everybody! This is (No) Chick Flick Moments, our Supernatural watchcast, and I am your co-host, Remmy.

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

Remmy: And today we are discussin’ [clears throat] discussing.

Bea: Discussin’. Just shooting the s***.

Remmy: [laughs] And today we are discussing season 14 episode 7, “Unhuman Nature”. It was an episode written by Brad Buckner and Eugenie Ross-Leming, and directed by John F Showalter.

Bea: All right.

Remmy: The description for this episode — and bear with me on this one, guys, because whoever wrote this description does not know how a comma or basic sentence structure work. And I'm taking these descriptions from the official CW release, not those truncated Netflix descriptions, so...

Bea: Okay, yeah. I'm sitting on IMDb, I'm double-checking your homework here.

Remmy: [laughs] But the description for this episode is: Sam and Castiel track down a Shaman who may be able to help a friend. Nick continues to spiral down a dark path as he looks for answers surrounding the deaths of his wife and son. Jack turns to Dean for help enjoying the human experience. [laughing] I wanted to put so many ‘and’s in there and —

Bea: Mhmm, yeah.

Remmy: Jack turns to Dean for help enjoying the human experience. End scene.

Bea: We have a lot of people showing up here again.

Remmy: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, this is — well, this is one thing that we've kind of talked about — touched on before, about the full cast and crew of these episodes — of season 14 in a way that we haven't seen before, this almost ensemble format for these episodes. We're taking the load off of Jensen and Jared as the sole camels [laughs] carrying the weight of the show.

Bea: All scenes, every scenes.

Remmy: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we cut down the number of episodes, which allows for more stars in every given — any given episode, I should say. It's just a little different this season and it's something that I'm here for, honestly.

Bea: Yeah, I'm enjoying it too. And, I mean — [I'm] constantly putting on sad faces thinking that next season is the last season, [because] it would have been nice to see how this format could have changed the show as they went on for a couple more years. But...

Remmy: I mean, it took us only two episodes in this season for me to think, "Wow, we're really shaking it up a little bit and I like it."

Bea: Same here.

Remmy: Having these full cast [episodes] and including everybody and it's just — I dunno, it's good twofold, like I said, both for J2 and for the number of episodes that we have. It allows for more people. Anyways, anyways. Episode 7.

Bea: Yes. So right off the bat, we are beginning with Nick in a kinda fancy looking room, and he is monologuing about how he should stop what he's doing but it just feels too good.

Remmy: Oh my God.

Bea: As the camera zooms out, we find out that he is interrogating — Artie, his former neighbor — Artie's priest about what Artie's confession was regarding the night that Nick's family got killed. So there's a lot of busy that is happening right here.

Remmy: I mean, we open with this, like you said, this kind of fancy room. The only thing that’s truly catching my eye, which I think is meant to catch my eye, is the stained glass window behind Nick in this shot. He's got this red and yellow halo of stained glass behind his head, and it's very Lucifer-esque, if we're talking cinematography.

Bea: Ahh, cinnamon topography. [laughs]

Remmy: Yeah, but pretty much my only thought on this scene was: We open up and it's just, Edgelord Nick.

Bea: Mhmm. I was feeling knock-off [NBC's] Hannibal vibes. There's a bit of that whole therapy, trying to do a therapeutic session, confessing these things out. It didn't ping for me right away — ah, church — and I really needed to see the dead priest that was being crucified to be like, oh, okay. This is a religious thing. [laughs]

Remmy: [laughs] Well, even on the re-watch when I'm like, okay. I know that he’s monologuing at this crucified priest in this room — it was a reveal in the first watch, but it's something that I knew on the second watch — and still I'm like, this isn't even a confessional, you know? I think that it should have been more confessional in nature. His...

Bea: Yeah, yeah.

Remmy: I don't know. It's just one thing where I thought the dialogue was trying to hit that theme, that beat, and it missed it.

Bea: To have him just sitting there and talking about, like, "I know the Devil exists and we should try and fight him, but sometimes we just can't," it just didn't quite click, and even seeing the priest there I was like, you pinned him up in the doorway? That's mighty inconvenient. I don't know enough about the church scene to be like, okay, would other people be around while you're just hitting a hammer into the wood, no questions —? [pause] I'm thinking too deeply.

Remmy: I have no idea. Yeah. It was just ... I guess the only thing to take away from this scene is that where we left Nick last time, a few episodes ago, it was, “Nick murdered his neighbor,” but I think that it was framed as a snap, you know? A break.

Bea: Yeah, that he felt maybe justified because he found his neighbor backtracking on what he said, and this backtrack is affecting Nick's ability to find justice for his family. So Nick, rightly or wrongly, just pushed forward with that aggravation and then killed Artie with it.

Remmy: Right, and I'd call it a crime of passion. It was something that just happened. Now here — with Nick, now, in this opening scene, we're getting those Hannibal, serial killer vibes.

Bea: Yeah, he's talking to a corpse. That's no longer heat of passion. That's no longer a crime of passion.

Remmy: Right? And he says, "I hate that it feels so good." Okay, Nick, bye.

Bea: Okay. Yeah, go have your Edgelord nut somewhere else, I don't need this.

Remmy: [laughs]

Bea: I'm sorry!

Remmy: You know what I need? You know what I need? Glowy-hand Cas.

Bea: [gasps] Glowy-hand Cas! That's coming right up, I gotcha served here, Remmy, because right after this bit here we have Jack and he's laying down in bed, and Cas is watchful in his room. He's trying to heal Jack, but Jack is just twitching through it and then he just coughs more blood.

Remmy: Yeah. Yeah, Cas is — I read that note more of a diagnosing, because we then go to Sam and Dean in the hallway. We have a couple worried hallway dads. Dean is just pacing, and he says, "What's taking so long? What could possibly be wrong with him? What's going on?" And, "This is no big thing. It can't — kids get sick!"

Bea: Yeah. Yes, he's trying to mitigate it down. He's like, okay, coughing, bloody noses. This happens to kids, and kids have weird s*** happened to them all the time. "Can't this just fall into that category?" basically.

Remmy: He's talking to himself out loud to try to, like you said, mitigate his own worries, and Sam is there, the silent sentinel. He's just — I don't even know. He's, I think, a bit more...

Bea: He feels like the calm stone that Dean's waves are crashing on. He's just being this stable foundation in the moment and processing what's happening, but not really letting it loose. He still is very locked tightly within himself.

Remmy: So I think they're both in denial here.

Bea: Oh, yeah.

Remmy: Well, not even in denial. We don't know what's happening yet. So yeah, Cas comes out —

Bea: [They're] just trying to be like, “It's fine. It's fine.” And yeah, when Cas comes out, he just says, "I don't know what's wrong," and that's not a great answer, clearly, when you're talking to worried parental figures. They don't have much of a conversation before they hear the sound of Jack collapsing in his room, and he's on the ground and he's seizing, foaming at the mouth.

Remmy: And for Cas to come out and say, "I don't know what's wrong," that's very concerning on two levels. One, we still don't know what's wrong, and two, this is Castiel, Angel of the Lord. If he cannot heal, if he cannot diagnose what's wrong with Jack here, then this is not "some kids get sick."

Bea: Yeah. You have a celestial figure that has had aeons of experience and it's going, "I don't know." It's like [grimace] that's not a good feeling.

Remmy: Right, right.

Bea: So, with Jack there, fish-flopping on the floor —

Remmy: [surprised laughter]

Bea: — they're like, okay, this has crossed into "What The F*** Is Happening" territory. They load him up into the Impala, and the Impala rushes off to this East Plains County Hospital, and they bust in the door. Dean is yelling right away, "We need a doctor!"

Remmy: Yeah. Yeah.

Bea: And, lo and behold, they're not the only ones.

Remmy: Yeah. We're in this very busy emergency center waiting room, and we cut to — and, an admittedly comedic exchange, a breath of comedy in this tense situation — where we have Sam, Dean, and ... Sam? No. Sam, Dean, and Cas talking to the nurse at the front desk, trying to get down Jack's information for admittance.

Bea: And you can tell it hasn't really been on their forethought before [now] to be like, okay, what is our cover story for this kid? Because we got his first name down pat, like, boom! But last name? We gotta make that up. Birthday, we know. Birth year — question mark.

Remmy: [laughs] I did like — I did like that. We kinda — you know, one thing that I did think was fun with the nurse asking of Cas, Sam, and Dean, "Okay. So what's this birthday?" Dean's like, "I don't f****** know!” But Sam says May 18th. Bing, bang, boom. We got it. But then it was Dean that had to be the innovative one and say, “1999. No, 2000.” It was more — I don't know. I just thought it highlighted there, the brothers' difference in... intelligence? If that's the right word? Where it was like Sam is the person —

Bea: Well, the beats that they hit.

Remmy: Yeah. Sam is the person that has the concrete facts, and Dean is the one who has the emotional intelligence to say, "Okay, we can't say he was born two years ago. He was born in 2000."

Bea: Yeah, and our mutual friend, Maria, she brought up the fact that Dean was sitting there and hedging between 1999 and 2000 because he was working out on the fly which age would give Jack the age of consent — which one would make him age of majority, that's the one! And so he first went with 2000, couldn't quite figure out that put him at 17 [or] 18 based off the May date, went back to '99 but no, no, 2000 is good enough. So even in this moment, Dean is trying to set up Jack as an adult, and Maria was just [pointing out] — giving Jack that autonomy.

Remmy: I just think that's some sharp on the fly thinking on Dean's part, but they're still — I don't know. It's different.

Bea: Yeah. Cas has the cute little funny beat of being like, "Well, his father was stabbed through the heart and exploded." Like, okay. Cool, cool, cool.

Remmy: [laughs] Yeah, but Dean rolls with it. He's like, “You know what, this doesn't f****** matter. His name is Jack. He was born on May 18th and his father exploded. Does this matter?”

Bea: “Are you happy now?” [laughs]

Remmy: Yeah, “Are you happy now?” Aaand Jack collapses.

Bea: [laughs] Yeah, Jack is done with this conversation.

Remmy: Jack's like, "Does this matter? How about this?"

Bea: [laughs] "This is my punctuation at the end of this conversation." One big exclamation mark thudding onto the floor. And he gets rushed off on a gurney. The three of them are following, doing their little run. He gets pushed out of the room into an ICU unit. And yeah, the nurses and all the medical attendees are keeping Sam, Dean, and Cas out of the room, but Dean yells to Jack that, "We're right here," and then they watch from outside as he's examined and hooked up to monitors.

Remmy: Well, we have Sam also — when they're running through the hallway with Jack on the gurney — we have Sam who is keeping physical contact with Jack and saying, "We're right here. We're here for you. It's going to be okay, it's fine." And when we go into this ICU room, we have all three of them crowding around Jack's bed. [They] don't want to leave, you know, but we have this great shot — I just like the shot a lot — where we have a nurse just, as one, ushering Sam, Dean, and Cas out of the room, and them all just physically straining towards Jack in their worry.

Bea: Yes, they're like leaves being scooped up off the top of a pool, just one fell swoop. They're being pushed out, "No, I don't want to go."

Remmy: Yeah, and then we have the doors slam shut on — they are — now, there's nothing more they can do.

Bea: Yeah, and so we are left on that beat kinda wondering, waiting, and we go over to Nick's story line again. He is sitting at the Ovaltine Cafe, where this woman enters and she approaches him, introduces herself as Diane Fargo. She is a — well, she was a crime reporter back when Nick's family died, and she currently works in Bloomington at the Tribune — but she remembers Nick's story.

Remmy: And, I mean, this is kind of the theme for Nick, but he's just uncomfortably intense with this reporter through this entire conversation. I'm just like, Nick... creepy. Nick, just stop. But we power through, and we learn that, as you said, Diane was the crime reporter in Pike Creek and Nick tracked her down. He wants to know — "You were the crime reporter. You are familiar with the beat cops or law enforcement in Pike Creek at this time. Who was the first responder at my family's death?"

Bea: Yeah, and Diane is basically saying there was hardly any evidence. The cops had nothing. She knows the names still, after 9 years. I'm like, good on you for your memory there!

Remmy: I know, right?

Bea: She says, “Frank Kellogg,” and she even knows where he is right now, at Montauk.

Remmy: I know, right? [laughs]

Bea: She just — maybe she has a photographic memory. I don't know.

Remmy: Yeah. She's like, "Yeah, I think it was Frank Montauk —" no, sorry " — Frank Kellogg of Montauk —"

Bea: [laughs] Frank Montauk of Kellogg.

Remmy: [laughs] Anyways, anyways. So now we in that scene with Nick's little, like, twirling his villain mustache: Frank Kellogg at Montauk.

Bea: And there was — I mean, I don't wanna say it's heavy-handed, but my God —

Remmy: [laughs]

Bea: She says she's moved on, but he's like, "I can't," and then: "The demons will disappear once I know what happened." What was that? Demons, you say? In this show? In this show, the demons are never metaphorical! But anyways, I'm fine. We're fine.

Remmy: [laughing] We're all fine.

Bea: Yes. Back to the ICU. Dean's pacing, Sam is standing there, and Cas is the sad puppy dog, basically, up against the glass, watching Jack. Here, Dean is going through saying that he never expected this to be what got Jack. He thought a vampire or a ghoul, but he's just a kid.

Remmy: It just brings me so viscerally back to the "mundane deaths" that we've seen of the Winchesters. Season 2 — no, season 1, excuse me — where Dean gets that shock from a run-of-the-mill rawhead case, the faith healer episode, and he's dying, his heart is failing, but he's dying slow and it's just like — the episode was framed as this mundane death, as something that they didn't expect. Or look at season 12 — season 11, [laughs] I'll get it right one of these days on the first try — season 11 with "Red Meat", where they're on a vampire case and Sam gets shot and he dies from this bullet wound — "dies", if you could hear my scare quotes there — from this bullet wound that was just almost incidental within the case. It's just like yeah, no, they don't have to worry about pneumonia. They have an angel in their back pocket. They don't have to worry about getting shot by Walt or —

Bea: Roy.

Remmy: [laughs] I'm so glad you know that, I love you so much.

Bea: [laughs] I'm sitting here, I'm like, "Sam gets shot in season 12??" but oh, yeah, Roy? I know that name. [laughs]

Remmy: [laughs] Yeah. Sam. — Oh my God, I. Okay. Okay, just —

Bea: I'll get there. I'll get there.

Remmy: Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God.

Bea: Keep calm. Keep moving.

Remmy: But, but — listeners, I just want you to know that it hurts me every single day —

Bea: Slap a f****** Band-Aid on that, okay? We are moving on!

Remmy: [laughing] Yes, ma'am!

Bea: [laughs] I'm gonna watch it eventually, I swear.

Remmy: We need to watch it together. We need to — we need to put up a survey, a poll, and I want to know, dear, dear listeners, if we should recap seasons 10 through 14, or — no, wait, where are you at? You're at 9, aren't you?

Bea: No, b****, I'm on 7!

Remmy: Aahh! If we need to view 8 through 13 with Bea fresh off the tap, or as an SPN veteran. Let's find out.

Bea: Hmm. Yeah, 'cause you know, you do have a — I shouldn't say “rare opportunity”. There's plenty of people who haven't watched — but we can do [Remmy] as the veteran, me as the fresh-face just coming in.

Remmy: I think it would be — I think it could be fun. We'll find out.

Bea: Yeah, so that was a tangent there! But, um. Dean and them, they're all approached by the doctor, and she comes up and she says that all the tests are negative and initially they're like, “Well, that's a good thing, right?" and she's [like] no. No, no, it just means we need more tests.

Remmy: Well, I was like, [this is] some Dr. Sexy soap opera writing, right?

Bea: Yes!

Remmy: I'm like, what tests? What tests are you talking about?

Bea: There was a CT, because we saw the brain scan that was going on with Jack, and then there was all the electro boops on his head. So there was science happening behind the scenes. [laughs]

Remmy: [laughs] Yeah. So I just — I think that we, as the audience, we're in Sam, Dean, and Cas' shoes, where they're like, “Okay, the test came back negative, but what is wrong with him?”

Bea: Yes. I'm like — sidebar, but I totally love that as soon as it's a medical area [of expertise] they're like, what does it mean? Whereas the supernatural, they're like, "Oh, yeah, that's fine." Just thinking of last episode, Dean: "You just take some silver and you stake 'em in the heart. You put 'em on his grave. It's fine." Whereas here, it's like, "What do you mean that there was tests? Negative is good?" I don't know. I just like that this is an area of life that is just a bit out of their comfort zone.

Remmy: Right, right.

Bea: And yeah, poor Jack is having a total systemic failure.

Remmy: Right? So Sam says, "What's wrong with him, right here, right now? You're saying that you don't know what's causing it, but what's wrong with him?" And she reluctantly admits he's dying.

Bea: Yeah. That [his] body is going through the Windows shutdown mode.

Remmy: Oh. Ohh. Bea.

Bea: Whoops.

Remmy: I both love — no, I was gonna say, "I both love and hate," but no, I just straight up love your [laughs] analogies.

Bea: You're fine to hate ‘em too, let's be real. [laughs]

Remmy: No, no. [laughs] They bring me so much joy.

Bea: [cringe laughing] Yeah. So. Cas goes and sits by Jack and, outside of the room, Sam and Dean are discussing what they should do next. Like, how many more tests should we go through? And they basically decide that this isn't their wheelhouse, and a Nephilim is certainly not within the medical [world’s] wheelhouse, so they'll just go home and deal with it.

Remmy: Yeah. Yeah. Dean and Sam say, "You know where I'm sitting right now? We can't — how much longer should we wait? We shouldn't."

Bea: Yeah. Dean brings up the prospect of bringing Rowena in and Sam's like, “Don't worry, I already got that on the go.”

Remmy: Yeah.

Bea: And they take initiative and they start getting Jack ready.

Remmy: Yeah, [laughs] and we have that same doctor from before — sorry, that was my "Coatless Cas" laugh.

Bea: Yeah, I knew it was too! I was just like, "Remmy, are you going to share with the class?" [laughs]

Remmy: [laughs] We have the same doctor that shared the diagnosis with Team Free Will, and she comes in and she says, "What are you doing?" And they say, "We're taking him home." We're taking Jack home. And we have this really — I don't know. It's a tension-filled moment between Jack's physician and Jack's dads, but it's — I just thought it was really tender and sweet and soft in that we have Dean holding, you know, supporting Jack as he's coming off of his hospital bed, and we have Cas, who removes his coat and is giving it to Jack to cover over his hospital gown, and we have Sam on the foot of the bed with a duffel bag and he's pulling out boots —

Bea: — helping Jack get his feet into them.

Remmy: [sighs] It's so good.

Bea: They've come around Jack like a trio of phalanxes and they've just sort of — it almost feels like an us-versus-them moment of, "Your medicine really isn't going to help so we're leaving," like, “Thanks, we gotta go now.” That's it.

Remmy: And it just really brings me around to, you know, Sam and Dean and everybody, they're not unaware that they are committing a social faux pas here. They have to extract themselves from the situation and, like you said, it's us versus the quote-unquote real world. And, I don't know, it's just — I have my face in my hands now.

Bea: Yeah, it's Dean earlier being like, "Kids just get — they have coughs, they get bloody noses." And then now, "Okay, an angel isn't able to handle this. Well, maybe medicine will know something that we just can't tell," and then, “Nope, that didn't work. Let's go back to what we know." Like, they are really grasping at straws. They're doing their best to try everything within reason and even Cas echoes later, like, "We need to try everything." Just shots in the dark.

Remmy: I just want them to have the good things, and they can't have the good things, and it's just like...

Bea: I mean, if it's any consolation, Remmy, we get some really soft, domestic-y things later this episode.

Remmy: [laughs] We do, we do. That's true.

Bea: I mean, they get cut short, but enjoy them for the six minutes they last.

Remmy: [sighs] Before we move on: Coatless Cas.

Bea: Coatless Cas. Any time that trench coat comes off and you get to see his — I'm like, I forgot he's wearing a suit!

Remmy: [laughs]

Bea: It's usually like, I don't know, my brain — as you know, what your eyes see and what your brain retains, it's not at all the same thing — so, I'm just like, "Man with a coat fused into a white shirt." Local Idiot Bea forgets that suits are a thing.

Remmy: [laughs] They are — I liked this scene a lot because we have Sam, Dean, and Cas really just taking care of Jack and —

Bea: I'm like, bangs the table, tender!

Remmy: [sighs] Exactly. Exactly.

Bea: Family moments in this show get me. I just like when you feel the relationship that the characters have with each other, and the care that they show one another. Gimme. Gimme. Gimme. I'm a greedy little goblin and I'll take all of those nuggets up.

Remmy: Yes. Yes. I'm sinking into the wall. Yes.

Bea: Yeah. Oh, my arms are crossed over my body and my chin is touching my chest. I look like a two-year-old that you just told couldn't have cake for supper, or like —

Remmy: [laughs]

Bea: Just stress and... Okay. So yeah, so they've made their way back [home] and we go to the next scene, which is Sam basically welcoming Rowena as she comes into the bunker. She drops a bag on to the war room table and she's saying that she brought the Book of the Damned that she "borrowed" and she's really worried. "How sick is Dean?"

Remmy: [laughs]

Bea: Sam, you little dog!

Remmy: [laughs] Well, to Sam's credit, he can't keep up the lie. He says, "Well, about that..."

Bea: Yeah, we got you here so we might as well confess.

Remmy: Aww. But she was — oh my God, she was so gung ho to jump to the defense of Dean, or to jump to the chance to —

Bea: Jump to the aid, yeah.

Remmy: — Yeah, jump to the aid of Dean and then, as she sees Sam hemming and hawing, she says, "Samuel?"

Bea: "You pulled the rug out from under my feet!" And we get a little bit — do you feel it's retconning that she doesn't know Jack well, or does it make sense?

Remmy: Don't ask me that, because I had the exact same thought when we were watching this episode. [laughs]

Bea: [laughs]

Remmy: And I was — no, literally I was thinking: Wait. In what scenes was Jack present, and in what scenes was Jack not present, y’know? Apocalypse world versus not apocalypse world.

Bea: The one thing that I am falling back on is when Rowena, in the tail-end of season 13, had Lucifer hostage and was slowly bleeding out his grace. She made a point of taunting Lucifer, saying "Jack and his three fathers," like, “You aren't one of them,” you know?

Remmy: Ohh.

Bea: So I sat on the fence here. It's not that she doesn't know Jack exists. It's just she doesn't know Jack as a person. So, I do feel it is retconning like they forgot what they've established as the relationship, but I'm also like hey, here are my mental backflips! Here's my gymnastics routine to make that okay. [laughs]

Remmy: [laughs] Because they — again, Ruth, you are [kiss noise] perfection.

Bea: Yes. Stars in my eyes.

Remmy: She says, "Samuel, what's going on?" And Sam says, "Well, okay. It's not — Dean's fine. Dean's fine. But you know Jack, our friend Jack?" And Rowena just as like, "N-no, no. No?"

Bea: The thought is not even out there before she's like, "I'm packing up my bag. Goodbye, b****."

Remmy: Sam says, “He's this kid that we've been looking after. He's a great kid — Lucifer's son — but he's a gem, yeah.”

Bea: Cough Lucifer cough.

Remmy: [laughs]

Bea: And she seems to be pissed that Jack even exists and, lo and behold, Jack just shows up in the moment and is like, "Yeah, you might be right that it's better off that I die." You know, people have strong feelings about Lucifer, but Jack is trying not to be like him. He's doing his best. [voice softens] Baby.

Remmy: Right, because Rowena said, "Lucifer's son, sick? Dying? The sooner, the better."

Bea: “All of these things sound great.”

Remmy: “Sayonara!” And Jack comes in.

Bea: Jack shows up and he's so soft.

Remmy: And says, you know, “I understand that people have strong feelings about Lucifer,” and it I think that there is a true "I understand" there, which is what sells Rowena when Jack says, "I don't expect anything from you, but I did want to say thank you for saving me and all of my friends from the apocalypse world. Without you, it wouldn't have been possible."

Bea: Yes. Yeah, so he's absolutely earnest, but there is this degree of buttering Rowena up to it too. I'm like, bless your acting chops that you can pull that off there, Alex. Again, kudos on you guys.

Remmy: He's so earnest. He's so Jack. He's so good.

Bea: Yeah, and he does a little Victorian-waif cough in that moment, and Rowena's just — she bends, she kowtows to this. She's like, “... Fine.” And they go over to the infirmary, and Jack is laying out on the bed and Rowena's doing some spellwork. Jack sits up, asks how he is, and Rowena just has a brave face.

Remmy: Aww. We know it's not good, lads.

Bea: Yeah, that's not a face you want to have when you're like, how healthy am I on a scale of one to ten? It's like [yikes noise]

Remmy: And Rowena goes out to the hallway. And now we have three worried hallway dads.

Bea: Yes, and Rowena basically breaks it down for them, the fact that Nephilim are delicate. They have these very particular balances within them and their grace is necessary to hold that balance. I thought it was — I don't know what I thought when she said that Nephilim are an unnatural presence on the earth.

Remmy: Well, it's a callback, because the only thing that we knew of Nephilim was what we were told by angels of the Nephilim. We have only ever seen one Nephilim before and really, the narrative was and is, up to Jack's birth, that Nephilim are abominations. Nephilim are — they will go insane, y’know, that is the lore. That is the biblical definition — the biblical history, I should say — of a Nephilim.

Bea: It sounds like an awful lot of angel bigotry.

Remmy: It was.

Bea: They're like, "Don't be f****** the humans. We have a whole bunch of scary stories about it." It's like, “Oh my gosh, really??”

Remmy: Yeah. So the whole season 12 front half was —

Bea: Aww, S***, She's Pregnant: The Storyline.

Remmy: [laughs] Yes.

Bea: Sorry.

Remmy: No, it's — Oh, Bea, shame on you! You made me have a giggle.

Bea: Oh, yeah. Goddamnit, who wants to make their friends laugh? Nothing but shenanigans.

Remmy: So I think that it's more just... laziness? I was going to name names, but I won't.

Bea: It's okay.

Remmy: So for Rowena to say this creature is an abomination and unnatural and not fit for this realm, it was a callback to the narrative that we've been fed up until the existence of Jack. But it was a bit reductive, I think.

Bea: Yeah, and it also might be them trying to establish or reinforce this narrative that we haven't really seen to this point, but could be a looming threat, I guess, that Nephilim are dangerous. I'm like, as soon as we saw baby Jack show up, I was like, "Awww, he's my fave," and I couldn't buy into that anymore, but they're trying to remind us, like, banging on the drums: Hey, remember what we told you about Nephilim?

Remmy: Yeah. Yeah.

Bea: Anyways. So yeah, Rowena has been talking about the nature of Nephilim and that grace is necessary to keep them from destabilizing into chaos. And Cas is like, "Ooh, what's that? Grace? I volunteer," and she's like, "Slow down there, boy."

Remmy: “I volunteer as tribute!”

Bea: [laughs] Yes, “I volunteer as tribute.” Yeah, but she says that it needs to be archangel grace. His wouldn't be enough. It's in this moment that Dean's vision starts swimming, and he is — his hearing doubles, and he's having this weird moment.

Remmy: Yeah, Dean just kind of swaying on the spot. “Stroke? Is this a stroke? What —?”

Bea: Yeah, "Is this what stress does? I always thought bacon would get me."

Remmy: [laughs] He — yeah.

Bea: Through the double-talk, Rowena is saying that Jack is entering a critical phase and she doesn't know how much longer he has, and... yeah. Eugh.

Remmy: And not to just skim totally past Dean and his moment of...

Bea: "Whoa."

Remmy: “Whoa,” yeah. But my thoughts go, of course, instantly to Michael.

Bea: Yeah. When I first saw that, I was like oh, there some hokey business happening with Michael here, right now.

Remmy: Right, because we were — two episodes ago, we were introduced to this — we had the seed planted in our minds, that Michael is not gone from Dean. And to see Dean kind of lose himself in this moment, it definitely is bringing us straight to Michael.

Bea: Yeah, because they haven't had a whiff of where Michael is right now or what his plan is. The most that they found out was from that djinn, so it was just like a heebie-jeebie moment of "Is this the moment that we find out that Dean is compromised?"

Remmy: Yeah. Yeah.

Bea: [mournful] The next one is Nick.

Remmy: [laughs] No, I know. And then we cut to...

Bea: Yeah, and then we cut to Nick, and he is outside of a club debating whether to get out of the janky car that he is in.

Remmy: [laughs]

Bea: He's telling himself not to but, regardless, he approaches this young woman who is on her phone outside of the club.

Remmy: And you know what? I think that on first watch, I actually gave this scene more credit than it was due.

Bea: Yeah?

Remmy: Yeah, where I saw Nick outside of this club and we had — the last we've heard is that in his next lead was to track down Fred Kellogg.

Bea: Yeah, cereal man.

Remmy: [laughs] Who was working private security in Montauk and — Frank, not Fred. Anyways. Same diff.

Bea: Archie?

Remmy: Archie is [laughs]

Bea: Marty??

Remmy: Marty, Martin, and [sighs]

Bea: Remmy, I love it. I'm usually the one that's bad with names, so I'm excited to see someone else in my boat. I'm like, come sit with me!

Remmy: [laughs] [Someone] who can trump you. Anyways!

Bea: [laughs]

Remmy: So last we heard of Nick, he had gotten this new lead on Frank, and now we see him outside of this club. He's in this creepy alley and he is creeping creeper grossness on this girl, this woman who walks out of the club. She's on her phone, and we have this "what are you going to do Nick" moment now. Like I said, I think I gave the scene too much credit on my first watch, where I was like, "Okay, so private security Kellogg man — is he manning the back door?"

Bea: "Is he a bouncer?"

Remmy: If he kills this girl, as he obviously wants to do — as he is fantasizing about doing...

Bea: Oh, yeah. He takes his knife out as he's talking to her and like — okay, backing up. He does the most serial killer introduction ever, like, "Oh, you're here alone?" And she's like [nervous laughter] and he's like, "I just mean be safe, be safe," and I'm like: Girl, run.

Remmy: Oh, yeah, f****** [cringes]

Bea: He played his cards for you from the get-go! Be safe. Pepper spray. Bye.

Remmy: But no. But no, she continues to talk to him and he pulls out a knife, hiding it behind his back. And again, it's just this whole, will they-won't they? Oh God [cringes] I hate that I even said that. No, it's this whole "will he, won't he" on this. He wants to kill this girl and —

Bea: For no f****** reason!

Remmy: Well, I'm wondering at the reason. I'm trying to apply reason to his reason, and I'm like, "Okay. So is this Frank gonna jump out from the shadows?" Does he have a reason or does it just feel so good? Eugh.

Bea: Eugh. She turns around! She was on the scot-free and then she turns [back] around like hey, do you want to come in? Girl! He's like 20 years older than you! Why do you care [about Nick] when he did the serial killer introduction?

Remmy: And. Yeah. So.

Bea: Eugh. [Nick] takes out the knife and then, "No, get away, I'm hideous!" Like, goes full emo. She goes running and he's yelling at her. It just makes me wonder why this scene is here, because you can show that Nick is struggling with the need to kill, but I feel like having a scene like this would make more sense after how this episode ends.

Remmy: I'm just dead-eyed staring at the wall. I can't.

Bea: Because up to this point we've been told that Nick is in pursuit of quote-unquote justice for his slain family. And so this scene just feels like a step sideways. It doesn't feel like it carries him forward through that plot. It just feels like this extra moment where we're like, "Hey, he's kind of murder-y now." Like, you're going to do that later. You didn't have to do this now.

Remmy: Exactly! Oh my first watch I was trying to draw those threads. I was trying to connect those threads. I was like, oh, okay. So he's still trying to draw out the bad guy?

Bea: Yeah, Nick is solely in pursuit of this one goal, so why did we do this tangent?

Remmy: Well, I thought — I was trying to connect the scene to his pursuit of the goal. But on the second watch I was like, no! We were given nothing in this scene. Frank is not stated to be the bouncer for this club who would come to investigate the murder of this woman in the back alley.

Bea: Nick is just doing some Ted Bundy cruising.

Remmy: [exasperated cringing noises] Sorry for the noise.

Bea: No. Correct. It should sound like a garage door slamming shut and putting that garbage behind it. Remmy, you got it in one.

Remmy: [laughing] You can't make me laugh when I have Coke in my mouth.

Bea: You — I'm not in the room there, sweetie. I can't tell when I'm going to accidentally kill you [laughs]

Remmy: Yeah... What were we — what were we talking about?

Bea: We've said this scene happens. Moving on.

Remmy: [laughs] This scene happens.

Bea: Next scene: Infirmary. Dean bringing in a sub sandwich and some milk for Jack, but Jack is out of bed. He's packing a bag and he says that he wants to go see Vegas or Tahiti, and Dean's just like, "Is now the best time?"

Remmy: Well, he says, "Okay, nice," but like, "Good instincts, there."

Bea: Yeah. Jack is just saying — Jack's little speech here is very heartbreaking, because he says, "Everyone thought that I'd be special and I'd live forever, and I'm done being special. I just want to live my life. I want to do simple things," like, these human experiences that he hasn't had.

Remmy: And Dean really connects with that. Well — so Jack says, "I don't care if you disagree, I'm going," and Dean kind of stops him and he says, "Did I say I disagree? Did I say this is a bad idea?"

Bea: Yeah, he gets it.

Remmy: Yeah, he does. He does. And we cut to —

Bea: Well, I'm like — season 3 Dean, when he had —

Remmy: Oh my God. You're not allowed —

Bea: — when he had a clock —

Remmy: No, no, no, no!

Bea: No, I get my 20 seconds! Now let me!

Remmy: No! No, no, wait until we get Sam's face in the next scene.

Bea: No.

Remmy: [laughs]

Bea: [laughs]

Remmy: Okay, you can do it now, because I have the same notes about this scene.

Bea: Go ahead. Go ahead then.

Remmy: No. No.

Bea: No, I'm totally fine because I'm dumb as s*** when it comes to it, so.

Remmy: [laughs] You know what? I'm — I'm done. No, no.

Bea: [pause] So the next scene. [laughs]

Remmy: [laughs] The next scene, we have Sam on the phone with Ketch, and he is talking about or he's getting information about this Shaman — this healer, Sergei. He gets off the phone with Ketch and he relays the information to Cas and Rowena. Rowena, who has also been on the phone trying —

Bea: Yeah, she's going through the spell telephone tree like, "Hey, Magda! I know we're not BFFs anymore, but can you please pretty please help me out here?"

Remmy: Yeah, "I've got a wee Nephilim that's feeling pretty ill."

Bea: Headaches, fever, and a chill.

Remmy: And so they are just contacting everyone, trying to get anything, anything — again, this brings me to straight back to season 2 faith healer Dean. No, sorry, faith healer and Sam, who brought Dean to the faith healer despite Dean's reservations on it. So, Sam has a line through Ketch on this Shaman who can answer the unanswerable, who can get in — who has a solution for any problem, who can answer the unanswerable. And Cas says, "Okay, okay, I'll go. I will follow this up," except he's... intercepted by Dean, I guess?

Bea: Yeah, the three of them are really moving in quick circles, and they all are coming up with [the fact] there's nothing that they can do but follow this Shaman lead. Dean has shown up here, and his vision starts swimming as he is watching them move around. So this is our second kind of pulse of Michael, question mark, question mark.

Remmy: Yeah, and I mean, we're not really getting too deep into it, but for anyone who's watching along I would encourage you to think about what conversations Michael is tuning into here, if we're going to code this as Michael within Dean's mind.

Bea: Yes.

Remmy: What are the subjects of conversation.

Bea: Because it is curious moments, that it's in this episode when Dean starts doing the wavering, and it's — it didn't happen before, when they were just looking at case, or even came face-to-face with a creature that knew Michael. It is when they're talking about Jack and the likelihood of this enemy of Michael's passing away, basically.

Remmy: Not to bring up any within the episode spoilers, but I think that I was maybe connecting what I know about the episode to what I'm told previously within the episode, which is that Dean fuzzes out when we're talking about Sergei and Sergei has possession of archangel grace, even though we don't really know this yet. But Sergei has possession of this archangel grace, and I tied that in with when Dean fuzzed out the first time, which was — we were talking about [how] we need the archangel grace to possibly heal Jack because Castiel, you can't. You're not going to cut it.

Bea: Can I fire off a salt round?

Remmy: [laughs] Yes.

Bea: If Sergei had archangel grace and Ketch knew that this guy was a contact, then how come in season 13, when we were all pissing our pants, trying to find some archangel grace, was this not brought up as one of those grasping-at-straws things that they could have done?

Remmy: You don't wanna — you don't want me to shoot you down? I'll shoot you down.

Bea: Go ahead.

Remmy: Line it up. Here's the shot: Ketch was in the apocalypse world.

Bea: Even before?

Remmy: No, Ketch was in the apocalypse world!

Bea: I'm sitting here like, he wasn't born in the apocalypse world. He went over there.

Remmy: [laughs] Anyways!

Bea: I'm sorry, I'm like —

Remmy: No, no, no, I think you're right, which [laughs]

Bea: I'm staring into the darkness.

Remmy: [laughs] I'm trying to figure out the timeline.

Bea: I was sitting here like, "Ketch tried to convince them that he had an evil twin."

Remmy: [laughing]

Bea: — and it f****** blue screen of death'd my brain. I had to wait for that to reboot and I was like, no. That was also the same writing team, wasn't it? It had to have been.

Remmy: Um. [laughs]

Bea: My husk, my corpse, is ready to move on. Yeah. Oh my God.

Remmy: Where were we?

Bea: I don't know, I was just being a salty a**hole for a second [laughs]

Remmy: Just a second.

Bea: So yeah. Tangent —

Remmy: [drawn out] What were we talking about?

Bea: We had a tangent about Dean and his vision. We had a tangent about Sergei the ex machina, and now Jack actually has entered and Rowena, Sam, and Cas see him in decidedly not hospital-level wear. He is ready to go and Dean is basically saying, "Oh, yeah, we're just going to take Baby out for some exercise," and Sam does that moment of, "Are you sure that's a good idea?" and Dean just affirms.

Remmy: Yeah, Dean is backing Jack up on his decision to strike out and say, “This is my hospice, and I choose what I want to do with the last weeks of my life.”

Bea: Yes.

Remmy: And Cas is a bit more combative. He says, "You're leaving? Where?" But when he's confronted with Jack — to his credit — when he's confronted with Jack, he does back down. But what strikes me the most in this scene and what just shoots me straight in the heart is Sam. When Dean says, "We're just going out for a while," and, to me, to see Sam's face in this moment, is him having the realization like, "Oh, we're done now. We're giving up." This is when, Bea, you're allowed to talk about your Dean season 3 feels. [laughs]

Bea: I totally forgot I had those.

Remmy: Because Sam's face in this moment is when I had the just, oh my s***. It was Sam's acceptance moment. It was Sam looking to Dean and acknowledging this is — we're not moving past this. This is my farewell tour and we're going to respect Jack's farewell tour.

Bea: Ah, s***. I didn't even think of it in this moment.

Remmy: And to me it seemed like Sam had that moment of realization that brought me straight back to season 3, when Dean just wanted to live his last year. He was — he wanted to be happy with his last year. He wanted to be content with, "This is my lot in life," but Sam wouldn't let him, even though Sam did recognize that Dean wanted Sam to just go with —

Bea: Support.

Remmy: — support his "Make a Wish" —

Bea: [surprised laugh]

Remmy: [laughs] But Sam's face in this moment, it just seemed like a revelation to me.

Bea: Oh s***. Yeah. I — I didn't even think of that in this moment because he was just like, they're head down in the books, they're on the phone, and it's like a moment where Sam realizes, "Oh, right. There is a person that is in the center of all of this, and this person has needs and wants, too." And tying it in with what you're saying, it goes back to, "I need to respect these needs and wants. As much as I want to fix things, I don't have an answer yet. And so we still have to live in the meantime, and how do we live?"

Remmy: I can bring this right back around to a later scene, and I will bring it back up again. But we'll do that in a minute.

Bea: Okay. I just liked how it was Dean basically being like, "Yeah, we're going on a field trip," and then the other three parents are like, "Did you get the permission slip signed? Are you sure that's a good idea?" And he's like, "I got this. We're going."

Remmy: [laughs]

Bea: And sure enough, the two of them have left and they've gone over to this Rollin' Thunder Burger Bar. Dean tosses Jack the keys, and he's carrying a takeout [bag] and two drinks. Jack is just a little wary, saying, "I don't know how to drive, and I don't drive," and Dean going, "Well, now you do."

Remmy: Yeah. Yeah. And we get Jack behind the wheel and, oh boy.

Bea: Dean teaching him the ropes. D is for 'drive', R is not for 'racing'. [laughs]

Remmy: [laughs] And slowly but surely — and it is this prolonged scene. It is this extended scene of Dean just step-by-step trying to get Jack to put it in drive. I just appreciated that we didn't cut away from this moment.

Bea: Yeah.

Remmy: This... I talk about Sam's face, but Dean's face...

Bea: Yeah, like last episode, we had [a] discussion about the way that Dean was in a mentor moment, when he was teaching Jack about this hunt, and here he is again. He is very suited to this mentor — this parental role.

Remmy: And we know this. I mean, Dean has always connected with kids. To be honest, my only note here on this scene is 'Dean with the kids feels'. It just kills me. It kills me, just because this is what we know of Dean. This is what we consistently see of Dean. He connects with children and —

Bea: He has a really nice spot. Yeah.

Remmy: Yeah. Kind of reluctant to label Jack as a child, but...

Bea: Well, Dean does keep saying, he's a kid. He's a kid. He doesn't really...

Remmy: Yeah, and I mean, he is. I mean — we joke and we say all the time —

Bea: "He's a literal toddler!"

Remmy: A literal infant, yeah. But Dean, just in this teaching Jack to drive, singing, it's just [sighs] slaying me with the Dean kid feels, and also Jack.

Bea: He's so happy. Simple joys.

Remmy: "This is the best day ever!"

Bea: [sighs] "It's like I'm you!" "No." And even here, he's still imitating Dean's posture, like the second episode where Jack was introduced as a person. He was imitating [then] and he still is imitating Dean. And my notes for here is, I said: Dean — [laughs] You're really feeling Jensen bleed in here. I was feeling in this moment Dean's voice was more Jensen's voice, just the way that he's smiling... all these things. I'm feeling Jensen in this moment more than I feel [Dean]. Jensen's love for the car is trumping anything in that moment.

Remmy: [wails] Yeah, my face — my face hurts from the smiles.

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(pt. 2)