The Vessel

*This transcript is produced using transcription software and reviewed for quality. Despite our best efforts, some passages may be incomplete or contain errors due to audio quality or software limitations.*

Krissy:
Hello and welcome to…

Both:
Gank That Drank!

Krissy:
A supernatural drinking game. It’s the podcast where we make up drinking game rules for our favorite episodes of our favorite show, Supernatural. We tell you the episode along with how the drinking game rules played out. We score our drinking game, and then we tell you what’s up for next week.

Nate:
Bam, that’s what we’re doing here. That’s what we’re doing here.

Krissy:
That’s what we are doing here. But who is that over there? Well, that is none other than Nate McWhortor, a performer and teacher at the Neighborhood Comedy Theatre.

Nate:
Thank you. Thank you. I hear all the applause through people’s cars and various listening devices, and doing our wonderful intro, as always, my dear friend — the owner, proprietor, teacher, performer, director, doer of things at the Neighborhood Comedy Theatre in downtown Mesa, Arizona. That is Krissy Lenz. Yay!

Krissy:
Hey, hello. I’m so excited for today’s episode. I was a little dubious when I read the description of it, but it’s a great episode. It’s a little forgotten gem, and it’s so myth-heavy and steeped in the tea. I never would have chosen it, but I’m so glad you did.

Nate:
Well, one, I feel like we’re not doing our job if we don’t try to tick off as many Dean-wearing-a-uniform episodes as we can.

Krissy:
And Dean traveling through time, right? It kind of has everything — which is unfortunate, because that even means Nazis.

And there’s so many Nazis in this season.

Nate:
There’s so many Nazis in this season, and there’s so many Nazi flags. Yep.

Krissy:
It’s like the episode we did a couple weeks ago where there were so many Confederate flags. It’s like, oh man, the poor set decorators had to be hating themselves as they went to the prop cages and were like, “I need a whole bunch of Nazi uniforms and flags.”

Nate:
Show me the Sound of Music collection, please. And now the producer’s collection. All right, great. I would imagine in the prop warehouses in Hollywood — not necessarily the to-buy stores, but the prop warehouses — there’s probably way more Nazi stuff than there is Confederate stuff. I just feel like there’s not as much made about the Confederacy as there is about the Nazis, so swastikas are probably plenty and not hard to come by.

Krissy:
It used to be my job when I was an intern at Mad TV to go to the prop houses and order props for the different episodes and sets we would do. I never had to book anything with Nazis or Confederate flags — good. But I once had to replicate the set of Frasier, the set of Friends, and the set of the Wayne Brady Show in one episode. So I was shopping for various and sundry couches, and they all had to look exactly like a couch from the show. That was super fun.

Nate:
The Frasier set. That’s awesome.

Krissy:
Yeah, it was really fun. And it was so cool, because — this was in 2004, so I just had printouts of what the set looked like. It’s not like I could go to the internet and zoom in on a clock.

Nate:
What clock is this? It was printouts of screenshots. That’s kind of awesome.

Krissy:
It was crazy, yeah.

Nate:
It was very challenging, but I love that so much. But yeah — this episode is Season 11, Episode 14. Aired on February 17th. The title, by the way, is “The Vessel.” The Vessel.

Krissy:
Oh, international titles include “The Boat” from the Germans. The Hungarians — “Secret of the Depth.” Love. And the Italian — “God’s Hand.” It’s fine.

Nate:
It’s a little dark for my taste, but I’m gonna go with the Hungarian — I like that. “The Vessel” is fine — it’s obviously a double entendre, both for us being on a ship for a good chunk of it, and for Lucifer being inside Castiel. Really, inside Jimmy Novak.

Krissy:
Inside Jimmy Novak, yeah.

Nate:
Or Jimmy Novak — I forget that all the time, it just goes by the wayside constantly. Air date: February 17th, 2016. Written by Robert Berens and directed by John Badham. Krissy, our rules for this evening — lay them on me. Anytime the Hand of God is seen or said, take a drink. Take a drink when Dean is salty about coffee, or lack thereof. Take a drink anytime someone says “gams.” Take a drink for a Flash Gordon reference. Take a drink when we see some warding. Take a drink anytime we get some palm cutting. Take a drink anytime someone says “Men of Letters” — that is the same thing.

Krissy:
I also counted “Women of Letters.”

Nate:
Yeah — “Women of Letters,” “them, the letters,” all the different variations they kind of say, or “man of letters” as well. And then, take a drink anytime we hear Lucifer say “doggy.” Doggy. And that’s the rules.

Not many, but some of them hit quite a few times, so it’s a good little game, I think — we’ll discover at the end. Krissy, are you ready to get into Episode 14 of Season 11? “The Vessel.” The Vessel.

Krissy:
The Vessel.

Nate:
Like wants to defeat Amara, but also just wants to be a chaos agent.

And has a great vessel from which to do it, and can be all undercover about it, too. So it’s also just about how Dean can’t kill Amara — how he’s tried twice and can’t bring her down, because he’s madly in love with her. They’re also kind of connected because of the Mark, and everything, so we get all that stuff in the Then. We also flash back to the Thule — these German Nazi necromancers we’ve dealt with in the past, in a previous episode, I believe, even an episode we’ve done. Yeah, and they come back again. The first appearance of the Thule since “Everybody Hates Hitler,” according to the wiki. And then Crowley’s also just Lucifer’s caged pet. So that is the Then — but we don’t go to a Now.

This is my second episode in a row not going to a Now. We go to 1943, to Nazi-occupied France. We hear Edith Piaf playing — everyone’s favorite Edith Piaf song, you all know the one — and we have some sort of Nazi brass who’s doing some business. He’s got this old, decrepit-looking box, and in walks a French seductress, his mistress, who says, “Are you telling me you didn’t occupy my country just to meet me?” He’s like, “No, Fräulein, this is the thing we came here for. This is the whole reason.” I love it when we rewrite history like this in Hollywood. The whole reason we did the war — this is so Tarantino. It’s for this special weapon. And we get — so she says, “Oh, please, please, just show it to me, just a little peek.” He’s like, “All right, fine, a little peek, because you’re so sexy and I want to be with you.” And she gets the little peek, and — in one of the cooler Supernatural kills, I think, or not a kill, I guess, but what we think at the time is a kill.

Krissy:
I mean, it still counts as a kill, even though it’s necromanced back to life.

Nate:
She pulls the needle out of her hair, lets her hair down, acts all sexy, cozies right up to him, and then stabs him through the neck with it. I don’t know what you call the hair needle — I’m not up on whatever that is.

Krissy:
I think it’s a hairstick.

Nate:
Hairstick — she takes the hairstick right through the neck, then takes a knife and stabs him, and says, “I’ve had a terrible life, but these last few months with you have been the worst — so I’m looking forward to killing you.” She stabs him and says, “The Men of Letters send their regards.” Take a drink. What a sick opener.

I love it. So then we get supernatural — Sam and Dean have basically discovered that this thing called the Hand of God could be used to defeat Amara. It existed, and the Men of Letters had traced it — basically rehashing what we just saw: that the Nazis had it, that it was stolen by this agent Delphine, and that it made its way onto an American ship. But the American ship never made it to America — it was a submarine, and it was bombed by a German destroyer and sunk to the bottom of the ocean, but no one ever found the wreckage. Dun dun dun. So the Hand of God is lost, and Sam’s like, “Well, I guess we’ll have to find another way,” and Dean’s like, “No, no, no, sir.” Also, coffee — isn’t it, this is where Dean gets real irritable about the coffee. He comes in, there’s no grounds. Sam’s like, “Oh yeah, I killed it last night, I killed all the coffee.” And he’s like, “What the heck?” And then Sam starts spouting off all this Nazi stuff, and Dean’s like, “Isn’t it a little early in the morning for Nazi stuff, especially with no coffee?” So — take a couple drinks, because Dean is salty about coffee. I also love that.

I also took a drink when he goes to drink from a coffee mug that has nothing in it, and just goes, “Oh, son of a bitch” — but he doesn’t say anything, he just looks at it, like, “God dang.”

So the boys are doing research to see if they can locate — they know the exact time the ship went down. So Dean’s idea is: we have Cass, who can send us back in time, because he’s done it before, even though he doesn’t have his wings right now — so I don’t know what the logic there is, terribly. I know they explain it away, or Lucifer explains it away later on, but just the initial thought — I was like, that seems a little far-fetched, but sure. So, yeah — let’s get Cass to zap us back to before the ship is sunk. Dean can grab the Hand of God, get back to now-times, and we can use it to defeat Amara. That’s the plan. But we gotta call Cass — what’s Cass up to? Well, as we mentioned, Cass is now Lucifer — aka Luciel, at the moment.

Krissy:
Which I absolutely adore. I just love seeing Misha chew the scenery — he makes a meal out of every line. It is perfection, and I just love Luciel.

Nate:
I love Luciel so very much, for exactly the reason you just said, but also because he takes Mark Pellegrino’s interpretation. He’s not doing a Mark Pellegrino impression or anything, but he’s definitely taking a lot of the mannerisms, and the writing is very consistent — so I love how you can see the Mark Pellegrino in the performance of Misha Collins.

Krissy:
Which I just think is incredible. They do such a great job — any time it’s someone who is inhabiting, or someone playing someone else, this show does a great job of, like you said, sort of doing a version of each other, but not doing straight impressions. I think they just know each other’s performances so well that they can do that, and it’s so impressive.

Nate:
Yeah, I love it — I love it so much. And also just for me, to get a chance for Misha to not be all gravelly voice and Castiel.

Krissy:
But when he switches into his Cass voice, it’s so good, it’s hilarious.

Nate:
Right — but that’s the thing, is it feels inauthentic enough. Like, it’s so funny — he’s doing Cass, but not doing Cass at the same time. It’s so good. I really enjoy Misha, and this is why I was excited to do this episode, especially on the heels of the episode we just did before this one.

So after this, we really get to see the evolution — or de-evolution — of Luciel. So Luciel is down in hell with all the demons, who are like, “Hey, do you want an update on Amara?” And he’s like, “Yeah, sure.” They’re like, “Never mind, we don’t have anything, there’s no update.”

Krissy:
He’s like playing Fruit Ninja or something.

Nate:
Yeah, he’s playing some sort of game on the phone. This is when Crowley starts whining from the kennel, and it’s revealed that Crowley has become Lucifer’s little pet doggy. This is where we get a couple “doggy”s from Lucifer, so take a drink. Crowley has clearly become — or at least we’re supposed to believe — a broken person, a broken demon who only lives to serve Lucifer now, and he tells the other demons how ungrateful they are that they talk to their master like that. So that’s kind of our first glimpse into Crowley’s situation, and Lucifer, and what’s going on in hell, back at the bunker.

Then the boys are still trying to do some research. This is where Dean comes in with a beer, and Sam’s like, “Dude, it’s noon,” and he’s like, “Well, we didn’t have any coffee, what do you want me to drink?”

Krissy:
What do you want me to drink? Water.

Nate:
So — take a drink, because Dean’s still salty about the coffee. So the boys call up — they call Cass, who of course is Lucifer. I love the scene between him and Crowley — he’s calling Crowley “doggy” over and over, but he’s like, “I still smell that whiff of defiance on you — you still think you’re gonna get out of here, aren’t you?” And Crowley’s like, “Yes.” I love the interplay between the two of them. But then, as he’s mentally torturing Crowley, he gets a call, and he’s like, “Oh, it’s showtime,” and puts on his Cass voice.

“Hello, Dean.” It’s such a great scene — again, I love it. Goes from real arrogant to right back into Cass. So we cut to now — Cass is at the bunker, and they’re giving Luciel the whole breakdown of the Hand of God, of course. Lucifer’s sitting there like, “Heck yeah” — like, these guys have no idea who I am, so I’m just gonna be here and get the inner workings of Team Winchester — and he’s really eating it up.

Krissy:
I love every little moment where they’re bickering and he rolls his eyes, or —

Nate:
— puts his —

Krissy:
— hands —

Nate:
— grimaces, buries his face in his hand. So good. Every time Sam’s like, “No, use me, do it,” he’s just like, “Oh my god, these two, they’re so insufferable.”

Krissy:
Sam is being so dumb the whole time — Sam is just being like a dumb puppy, ignoring all the red flags, and being like, “Oh, you can touch my soul, you know.”

Nate:
And it’s also just like — how do you guys not pick up on some of these things? He’s barely acting like Cass at this point, even. Like, it’s really not — anyway. So, yeah — this is the plan, and Luciel’s like, “Okay, sure, why not, let’s do it. Let’s zap you back, you’ll get the Hand of God, I’ll somehow finagle it away from you, and then I’ll be able to go beat Amara and be king of everything” — because that seems to be Lucifer’s plan. So, “Here we go, saddle up, I’m just gonna zap you right now.” Again, no one is really thinking about — but you don’t even have your wings, this shouldn’t be possible — but here we go. Dean makes it onto the ship, the USS Bluefin, a submarine. But Lucifer does not make it on.

He ends up on the ship all alone. He’s trying to scramble, hide, and stow himself so he doesn’t get seen — these guys come in for a shift change. I love the set — the submarine set, the bunks on top of the torpedoes. They went all out on two, three sets — you have the little canteen area where they’re held, you have the bunks, and then you have the bridge, I guess is what it would be called. They went all out on three sets, but they did a great job. They did a great job. Yeah, 100%.

Krissy:
It’s really immersive.

Nate:
Yeah, you feel like you’re there. So Dean ends up commandeering — attacking one of the guys with a cool quarter trick. The trick being, he flips a quarter out there, and the quarter is 1996 written on it, and the guy’s like, “1996?” And then he asks, “Where’s the broad?” — because he’d overheard them saying they’re all of a sudden on a whole different mission, because of some broad. Dean’s like, “Ah, that must be who I’m looking for. Where’s she at?” Cut back to the bunker, and Sam’s sitting there, and then Cass comes in all sopping wet.

Krissy:
It’s so funny. He is soaking wet, and you just know poor Misha had to be in soaking wet clothes for so long. He is literally dripping. That means they’re dousing him with buckets — they’re like, “Okay, everybody back to one — can we douse Misha again?”

Nate:
It’s so good, and he gets to play all grumpy, because Lucifer is grumpy about it. And I guess my other thing is — okay, so obviously Lucifer doesn’t make it on because of the warding, so he ends up just being in the ocean. How does — I guess, but then wouldn’t he end up in the ocean back in time?

Krissy:
Yeah, but he just popped himself back.

Nate:
But again, with no wings, which Sam knows. He has no questions — also how he made it back to the bunker so quickly. He has no questions whatsoever.

Krissy:
Right, that’s what I’m saying — he’s being such a whiny, stupid dum-dumb in this episode.

Nate:
This — right, this is the point, though. When he walks in soaking wet, Sam has to be on alert, like, “Well, how’d you get back here so fast? Why weren’t you stranded back in time?” So many questions need to be answered before we even attempt to move on. But Sam — nope. He’s just like, “Well, we gotta get rid of the warding, we gotta clear the warding, there’s gotta be some way, maybe there’s some magic, maybe the Men of Letters know” — and he’s trying to find out. And Luciel is just over it, like, “Oh my god, just give it a rest, this is obviously a dude mission — Dean’s gonna go down with the ship, there’s nothing we can do, let’s just move on.” And Sam’s not saying that, but the air he’s giving off — sighing, putting his face in his hands — he’s like, “Why?” — and he’s looking baffled at Sam, like, “I can’t believe this,” but then, “I guess this is what I signed up for when I decided to take this gig.”

Krissy:
This — this is how the other half live.

Nate:
Back in 1943, Dean is wearing uniform — he’s in a tight Navy sailor-boy outfit. That guy definitely is not as huge as Jensen Ackles, and he’s not really fitting in these clothes, but that’s okay. He’s trying to get some information, trying to find out where Delphine is. He finally finds her — but as he finds her, that’s when they have this great moment where she’s like, “No one on the ship knows my name — who are you?” and puts a knife to his throat. This is a great scene between the two of them. Delphine, by the way, is played by Weronika Rosati — who I swear, I meant to look this up before we started recording. I then saw her, I think, in a Law & Order episode or something I was watching.

Krissy:
Like, you know, Supernatural, you do a Law & Order, a hundred percent.

Nate:
I just watched an episode of Law & Order where a very small bit part — just a guy in jail who gives a little bit of information — was played by the guy who plays Omar in The Wire.

Krissy:
Uh, Michael K. Williams — oh, The Wire. Don’t watch it, we’ve talked about this — it’s too sad, it’s way too sad. But yeah, shout out Omar. Always love Omar.

Nate:
So — just as Dean and Delphine are confronting each other, that’s when the guy Dean got his clothes from comes in, like, “That’s the guy, this guy who took my clothes — Captain, get in here!” Now we’ve got a whole scuffle, everyone’s coming around, and they search Dean and pull out a phone — which, any time someone’s time-traveled, or gone to a town that’s sent back in time, for some reason they pull out the phone. I love the reaction — “What is this? It’s a phone.” “What are you, an alien?”

Krissy:
In your pocket, yeah.

Nate:
Or you’re from the future — and he’s like, “I am, I’m from the future, and I need your cargo, I need what she has, because we’re fighting a big biblical-style war.” And even though he might need this weapon to win his war — even though that’s not what would happen — “Anyway, we need it in my time, so I’m here to take it.”

Krissy:
And he’s basically like, “The ship goes down in about an hour — I’m really sorry to tell you that, but you’re all gonna die, and this thing’s gonna be lost to time, and we need it now. You’re gonna win the war, don’t worry, you’re gonna win the war — but I gotta take this for our war.” Right.

Nate:
I love — and then I love how this doesn’t land right away, but — then the dude, God, what is that guy’s name? The guy Dean takes his clothes from. I don’t — do they ever even say his name?

Krissy:
I don’t know that they say his name — he’s just the soldier. I think it’s Petey —

Nate:
— is his name, if I’m reading this right. Yeah, Petey, played by Grant Harvey. So he’s like, “Who won the World Series in 1944?” and he’s really pestering Dean about it, and Dean’s like, “I don’t know, dude, baseball’s not really my thing.” So he’s like, “Okay, well, who’s the next president?” and Dean’s like, “Eisenhower — wait, no, no, Truman.” Which I just love that he gets it wrong at first.

Krissy:
Yeah, yeah, yeah — he’s like, “I don’t know, no one has to —” “I don’t know.”

Nate:
“I don’t know.” Just by the way — the St. Louis Cardinals won the 1944 World Series. They actually won it against the St. Louis Browns, and the teams shared a ballpark. But World Series that took place during World War II are always a little dubious, because most of the players were off fighting in the war. Not many of the best players were playing in Major League Baseball in 1944.

So Dean’s getting quizzed, and he’s trying to convince them — he’s like, “You’re about to have a German destroyer on your ass,” and sure enough, as soon as he says that, they come in like, “Captain, a German destroyer is on our ass!” And he’s like, “Oh, all right, this guy might be telling the truth.” So we start going from there.

Meanwhile, back at the bunker — Castiel and Sam are — Sam’s found, he’s done some research. It’s amazing how quickly they find some of this stuff in the Men of Letters library, I’m always shocked.

Krissy:
They need a secretary who’s constantly inventorying and rolodexing things, but you know.

Nate:
Ooh, I did love — earlier, we saw the way they find when the ship went down is that there’s correspondence between Delphine and some American Men of Letters, and the letters between them are all in French. So Sam scans the letters and puts them into some sort of computer program that gives him an 86% accurate translation — it says right on the screen, even, “86%.”

Krissy:
Yeah, I like that too. And I like Sam shopping for electronics — he’s just like, “I need this,” or he emails Charlie and says, “Charlie, can you get me one of these?”

Nate:
And she sends it to him. This is a cool little tool they’ve got or whatever — but yeah, imagine now, with AI, how easy the Men of Letters library would be to search. They’d have to obviously put all that info in — but that’s the Supernatural we are robbed of, one that deals with artificial intelligence.

Krissy:
Yeah — where the AI goes bad.

Nate:
Where the AI is the bad guy — we never really got an episode like that, I don’t recall. So, yeah — Sam’s like, “Oh, look, there’s this spell — it’s never been tried, it’s real dark magic, but it could possibly work.” Then, “Oh, here’s the reason why it’s not gonna work — it requires the power of an archangel,” flips the book, slams it closed — and Luciel’s like, “Well, we should just try, you never know.”

Krissy:
“Let’s just try — my strength might surprise you. Let’s just give it a whirl.”

Nate:
“Let’s just, why not just try” — which is, again, a red flag for Sam. Cass is never “let’s just wing it, let’s just try it” — this should have been the red flag from the initial get-go of sending him back in time. There’s no pushback on this — this can’t be Cass. And he’s like, “Yeah, let’s just do it.” But Sam storms out of the room, Lucifer opens up the book, and is like, “What do I need?” Obviously he needs a seahorse corpse, because that’s one of the things he’s cutting up when we cut to him — which is kind of gross.

So, meanwhile, Dean’s down in the submarine, back in time, and the Germans are on them — they’re taking evasive measures, they’re diving. Meanwhile, Dean’s convinced Delphine of who he is — he’s like, “I’m a Man of Letters, you gotta understand, we really need this,” and she’s like, “Well, it risks falling into the hands of the Germans, and we can’t have that.” So Dean’s like, “You gotta clear all the wardings so my ride can get here and I can get out of here and take it.” We’d seen warding at the very beginning, when Dean got on the boat and was hiding under a bed — we took a drink then. But why didn’t he just scratch it out? He does — they show him scratching it out first.

That first one — he’s like, “I already took it out, I already took the warding I saw.” Yeah — she’s like, “But if there’s any more, you gotta go clear them, because I don’t know where they are, you’re the one who did them.” She — and I love that moment, this is right when he’s being interrogated about the World Series, where the guy’s like, “Who won the World Series?” and he says, “I don’t know, the Rangers,” and the guy’s like, “The Rangers? Who’s the Rangers?” — the Rangers weren’t a team in the ’40s, they wouldn’t come along till the ’60s. But while he’s saying that, she’s explaining, “Your warding, it prevents evil things, which is what your old compatriot who taught it to you told you it would do — but also keeps out angels,” and she’s like, “Angels — that’s not real.”

Krissy:
And it’s like, “You’ve got a Hand of God — so you believe God is real, but you don’t believe in angels? Get a grip.”

Nate:
“You’re being chased by Nazi necromancers, and you know that.”

Krissy:
It always just frosts my cookies — like, all this other stuff is real, but this thing can’t be real? How do — everything’s a thing, right? Everything’s a thing. What does Sammy say in the Dragons episode?

Nate:
I think he says, “It’s too many things are things.” So, yeah — I love what I love about that moment is he’s being interrogated about a baseball team that doesn’t exist, and then they say the name of another team that doesn’t exist yet but will — the Angels. It would have been funnier if that’s what he’d said when asked about the World Series, but — anyway.

We also — when it’s revealed that Dean is from the future, we get one Flash Gordon reference. The guy says, “Oh, you’re like Flash Gordon.” And then later, when he’s realizing Dean’s a good guy, he’s like, “Yeah, I read a little Flash Gordon.” So we end up with a couple little nods there.

So, yeah — Delphine’s like, “Look, you have to kill me, you gotta stab me — I’ve already carved the sigil into my chest, you gotta stab me and take me out, it’s our only way off this boat.” And she’s like, “I can get you boys your first German boat, I can get you, Dean, with the Hand of God back home, and also take out the crazy Nazi necromancer — we can have it all.”

Krissy:
We can have it.

Nate:
Dean’s reluctant. Rolling in the deep, they were — rolling in the deep, away from the Nazi destroyer. We then get this great — I love the “American submarine” bit.

Krissy:
“American submarine — hello? Is anyone home? American submarine — knock knock.”

Nate:
“We would like the girl, please, come to the surface, or we’re gonna keep depth-charging you.” They’ve already depth-charged them once, and then the ship is taking on water, and someone’s crying for a medic. I don’t know why they didn’t just fire the torpedoes — oh, because they couldn’t find them, they pulled a weird trick where they were hundreds of meters out.

Krissy:
They’ve got a necromancer up there.

Nate:
Yeah, so he says it’s a ship full of Germans with extraordinary capabilities — so we’re assuming they’re all kind of extra-human sorts of deals going on. This interplay is really fun — “You have three minutes to come to the surface and surrender the girl and the cargo, or we’re gonna depth-charge you into the seabed.” The captain, James Dearborn, says, “Our mission was to protect you and the cargo — surrendering it was never even a thought.” So we get this — the captain’s like, “We’ll take it to the bottom of the ocean if we have to.” Obviously, the guy from the future says they go down, so we already know how this is gonna end up, which is such an interesting position to be fighting from.

Krissy:
It’s like — okay, so there’s a whole subgenre of World War II submarine movies and TV shows. “U-571” is something that just pops to mind immediately, where they’re all — they really freak me out. And of course, they’re a beautiful tribute to the bravery of the men and women who fought in World War II on submarines, and locked themselves into shoddily made metal tubes and sailed around the bottom of the ocean — and that’s a beautiful thing we should immortalize. But God, does it freak me out — I love it, but I get so claustrophobic and scared. And they’re so freaking brave — they’re just like, “Yeah, we’re gonna go down, it is what it is.”

Nate:
Yes, I a hundred percent agree — the submarine seems so cramped, the claustrophobia — I definitely never could have done it. No, I know — shut myself in a sub and gone — and yeah, even in a sub by today’s standards, even what would probably be a luxury sub compared to back then, I would get freaked out on the Little Mermaid, slash Finding Nemo, sub. Oh, I don’t like Disneyland.

Krissy:
I don’t love it — “fighting Nemo.”

Nate:
I know, it’s Finding Nemo now, it used to be Little Mermaid. Too many people and too tight a space. But yes, obviously, what it took to win World War II in general was incredible. Anytime I’m watching a documentary about World War II, I’m just like, gosh, the sacrifices made by everyone in this country — we’ve had many wars since World War II, but none of them have been a war like that, and there’s never been the domestic impact like there was for that war. Hopefully there never will be.

Krissy:
Yeah — let’s thank our lucky stars, and, of course, always thank the brave men and women who volunteer to fight for this country, in wars both just and unjust. But think our lucky stars that there are people brave enough to do it, because I’m not one of them.

Nate:
No, nope. Also, a lot of them didn’t volunteer.

Krissy:
They — well, in World War II, of course — but now they volunteer. Yes, now they volunteer. But most of these guys probably didn’t — ’43 was probably a higher percentage of draftees than later on. But yeah, so everyone’s ready to make sacrifices, including Sammy, who’s back in now-times with Luciel, who’s saying, “Look, if you need to use me, Cass, as an extra battery” — like, I remember when he did this the first time, he needed to use Bobby to retrieve us — “if you need to touch my soul to do it, I’m willing.”

And he’s just so whiny about it.

Nate:
Oh, so pathetic and terrible.

Krissy:
The turn that Luciel takes, where he’s like, “I don’t need you anymore — why, yes, Sam Winchester, I will touch your soul” — it’s so masterful. It’s the finest moment of this whole episode.

Nate:
It really is. And he’s like, “I don’t — and when I bring your brother back and he sees this place covered in your guts, I’ll tell him” — and he stops himself, changes to Cass voice — “I had no choice. He made me do it. He knew the risks. He insisted. He wouldn’t take no for an answer.” Oh, it’s so good, it’s so deliciously good.

I love it. So then Sam’s like, “Uh oh” — and here goes Luciel, starting to touch Sam’s soul, definitely gonna kill him — except Cass actually shows up and saves the day, well, sort of saves the day. Cass shows up and starts stopping Lucifer, and he’s like, “Sam, it’s me, it’s Cass. I’m fighting him — it’s taking all my strength to keep him from killing you. The problem is, we need him — he’s the only one who can get Dean back. So I’m gonna have to relent here. Also, by the way, I chose this. I volunteered myself as Lucifer’s vessel to try to beat Amara, so don’t try too hard to get me out of this.”

So Sam realizes Cass is right — Lucifer’s the only shot they really have. But they don’t really show the moment where Cass — or Lucifer — comes back and decides not to kill Sam. I don’t know, they don’t show the decision. It just — he just appears, as everything starts happening on the submarine.

So back on the submarine — time’s up, they’re gonna start depth-charging again. Delphine is ready to make the sacrifice — she takes out the Hand of God, take a drink — and she just holds it, which we learned earlier: if you touch it with your bare hands, that’s literally the power of God.

Krissy:
Yeah, it’s like an infinity stone, basically.

Nate:
So she touches it, and starts turning all glowy — and as she’s doing this, Luciel pops in behind Dean, observes the scene, and just makes a face. I love the face he makes — like, “Oh, all right, that’s how this is going.” He zaps Dean back, right as she’s starting to really blow up. Dean grabs the Hand of God as she drops it. Dean’s zapped back — as soon as they get back, Sam looks and goes, “That’s not Cass,” and Misha makes this very cartoony face.

Krissy:
And he says, “Cass?” Cat’s out. I love it, I love it so much.

Nate:
It’s a good one — it’s like a rack zoom in on his face, too, so cheesy and campy, but so brilliant, straight out of a cartoon — it could have been a panel in a comic book. It’s beautiful. Yeah, it’s absolutely wonderful. So Lucifer starts throwing the boys around the room now, because the cat’s out, and he goes to grab the Hand of God, and Dean’s like, “No, no, no” — it’s kicked away. “Who’d have thought,” I think Dean says —

Krissy:
— it, who’d have thought the Hand of God was a one-theater [weapon]. There’s some good lines in this.

Nate:
We didn’t mention it because it’s one of the rules, but when Dean’s finding Delphine, he bumps into Simmons, I think is the guy’s name, or Harrison or something, and he says, “I want to hate the dame, but have you seen those gams?”

Krissy:
And Dean’s like, “Oh yeah, she’s a real hottie.”

Nate:
“She’s a real hottie” — and the guy’s like, “The fuck did you just say?” and he’s like, “No — gams, yeah.”

Krissy:
Gams, yep — the gams.

Nate:
So back in now-time, the boys are getting their ass kicked by Lucifer, who’s mad that the thing is tapped — and that gives the boys just enough time. Sam slices his palm open in order to start drawing a sigil — take a drink — enough time to draw the sigil, and as Lucifer’s stepping up to really obliterate them, Sam banishes him with the sigil. Time to ward the bunker, guys — like, “In the name of Cass, we’ve really let this thing slip” — time to ward the bunker, I’d say, so Lucifer can’t get in.

So then we get our kind of final — I guess it qualifies a little bit as a B-scene. Not a whole lot of melodrama going on, but Sam does have a bandage on his hand.

Krissy:
We see the wards, and I always appreciate that when they slice their palms open — but good, and then they’re like, “Ow, I have hurt the meaty center of my hand, and now it is wrapped.”

Nate:
And they’re out at some lake or something that looks cold and Canadian.

Krissy:
I didn’t know where they were — I was like, where are they?

Nate:
I don’t know — I’m guessing some lake by the bunker, but it looked cold and Canadian, that’s all I know. It sure did. Dean is talking about how, back in time, everything was so pure — it felt like everything was more real, or honest. I was like, well, let’s not go too far down that road, Dean. Yeah — let’s pump the brakes on that. And I swear there’s a nice little wrap-up line or something that they do here that I didn’t write down. But basically, they’re like, “We’re gonna have to go save Cass — we’re gonna have to trap Lucifer and save Cass, and then we’ll deal with the Darkness.” So now there’s a new side quest, essentially. And Sam says Cass may not want that.

Krissy:
He said he chose this, and Dean’s just like, “Shut your fucking mouth.”

Nate:
Yeah — “Okay, what he wants, we do things our way.” But yeah, that’s — the boys are in a precarious spot here. They’re without their angel friend, and they don’t have any way of defeating Amara, and things are looking bleak — and that’s kind of the end of this episode. So that is Season 11, Episode 14. The Vessel.

Krissy:
The Vessel.

Nate:
Krissy, how do you think the rules played out? I think it was okay — we’ll discuss it here.

Krissy:
Well, yeah, we’ll discuss it. All right — the Hand of God, scene or mention, how many did you get? I got seven times. I got twelve. Twelve.

Nate:
Okay. I thought I definitely missed some, especially on the “scene” part — same thing happened to me while playing this game as when making the game, I got really caught up in the episode

Krissy:
and forgot to watch for things. All right — obviously, I got “Dean salty about coffee” four times, in a short little time.

Nate:
Oh, I only got two.

Krissy:
Yeah, see — I counted him looking at the cup as a non-verbal, and then he makes two comments right away, then there’s the cup thing, then there’s the beer, when he’s gonna be —

Nate:
I think that’s what I got — the initial one, and then when he brings it up again with the beer.

Krissy:
Yeah.

Nate:
“Gams” is said twice. We get two Flash Gordon references. We only see warding twice — once when Dean first sees it, and then when he’s scratching it out.

Krissy:
If you count the warding on her chest, it’s seven times.

Nate:
Seven times — I don’t know, I got too caught up. The warding on the chest — I knew I made that rule for a reason. “Cutting” only happens the one time. “Men of Letters” — I got twelve. I got thirteen. Okay. There we go — so close. And I got five “doggy”s.

Krissy:
I got five “doggy”s too, which gave me a total of 42 drinks.

Nate:
Hey — Pat Tillman, let’s go, Jackie Robinson.

Krissy:
Life, the universe, and everything.

Nate:
It’s the answer.

Krissy:
I give this game — because it was so few rules and yet so many drinks — I give it five out of five Hands of God.

Nate:
Well, thank you. Apparently, if I had been keeping up with the warding, I probably would agree, but I obviously slacked on that quite a bit. But yeah, I thought it came out better — I threw in “Men of Letters” and “doggy” at the end, because I was like, those are words I heard said a lot during this episode, I’m just gonna throw those in to save this sucker, because I was way too into the episode.

Krissy:
That theme continues into our next episode, because I too was so caught up in the episode, it was hard to make rules — and also it’s just a hard episode to make rules for. It’s a great episode — this next episode we’re doing is the most X-Files-y of all the episodes of Supernatural of all time. It was a tough one, so as you’ll see — next up, we’re doing Season 13, Episode 11, “Breakdown.”

Nate:
Go ahead, give it to me. Okay. “Breakdown, won’t you take me through the night?”

Krissy:
Donna does Donna, take a drink. Donna does not Donna, take a drink. So if Donna is being classic Donna, take a drink — and if you’re like, “That’s not Donna,” take a drink. If someone says “the butterfly,” take a drink. Take a drink if someone says “the midnight runner.” Take a drink if someone says “Tinker’s Dam.” Take a drink when Doug gets the talk. And take a drink when someone says “hungry hungry hippos.” Do you know this episode?

Nate:
I mean — this isn’t — no, that’s “Plush.”

Krissy:
I’m like filing through Donna episodes in my head — but this is Doug — this is new Doug, right?

Nate:
Not new Doug — yeah, this is new Doug, but it’s Doug from “Plush.”

Krissy:
Doug from “Plush,” but like, good — it’s our Doug.

Nate:
Yeah. It’s not ringing a bell off the top of my head, though. Okay.

Krissy:
Then I won’t spoil the surprise. But this is a very dark episode — but it’s a very good episode.

Nate:
Well, I’m excited to watch it.

Krissy:
Are you looking it up?

Nate:
You’re looking it up right now. I can’t tell you — no, I’m not.

Krissy:
You are too, you can’t lie to me, Nate McWhortor.

Nate:
Okay — just by looking at thumbnails and everything, I still don’t super recognize it, so I won’t look any further. But the fact that you tease it as the most X-Files episode, I’m excited about.

Krissy:
It’s a really, really good episode, but my drinking game sucks, so we’ll discuss what better rules I could have chosen. But we’ll see. Thank you so much for listening — thank you, friends, for being part of Gank That Drank, a Supernatural drinking game. We love you. Nate, tell the people where they can find us in the real world.

Nate:
En el mundo verdad, you can find us — that’s not how that actually translates, but loosely. You can find us at the Neighborhood Comedy Theatre in downtown Mesa, Arizona. We do shows Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights, at various times depending on the night you’re going. And you can find those times and ticket information and all sorts of stuff at nctphoenix.com. And if you come to a show, and Krissy or I, or both of us, are there, and you tell us you listen to Gank That Drank, we will buy you a drink at the Sacred Pink.

Krissy:
Buy you a drink. We’ll gank you a drink. We’ll sit and gank a drink together, and we’ll discuss our favorite episodes of Supernatural. Won’t we have fun? Won’t we have fun?

Nate:
We will have to do that, we will have fun. One of the favorite conversation topics that people at the Sacred Plaint love — some of the regulars, whenever I show my head in there during a show, or before or after a show — they know they can get me talking about the Fast and Furious movies.

Krissy:
Oh yeah, great passion.

Nate:
And so they start — there’s like one guy who keeps asking me about Fast and Furious movies. But I would love to talk Supernatural at the Sacred Pint. So come on down.

Krissy:
Come on down. And you can find me on The Most Excellent 80s Movies Podcast — it’s the podcast where a filmmaker, a comedian, and their fabulous guests trek their way through the ’80s movies we think we love, or might have missed, with grown-up eyes, to see how they hold up. And that is also a product of TruStory FM, available wherever the fine podcasts are stored. So if you want to support the podcast, we would just love that.

We would just love that — rate, review, subscribe, tell a friend, tell a neighbor, tell your friend who you think might be secretly inhabited by Lucifer, and let them know about the podcast. If you want even more from us, you can have it — become a member at TruStory.fm. You get every episode a week early and ad-free, baby — it is the bee’s knees. So get on that. And when you’re out there in the world, saving people and hunting things — you know, the family business — keep the Gank That Drank motto in mind. Be excellent to each other, and…

Both:
Party on, dudes!