TVLINE | This week’s episode is “Time After Time After Time.” What are some of your favorite moments from it?

One of my favorite moments is just the moment that Eliot Ness (played by Nicholas Lea) walks in the room. Philip Sgriccia, our executive producer, directed it, and he clearly watched a lot of movies from the time period. It just looks fantastic! It’s quite an entrance.

TVLINE | The episode description says Sam is “surprised by the reappearance of an old friend.” Is that ghost Bobby? Or someone else?

You’ll see on Friday. Sam’s problem is every bit as bad as Dean’s because Dean is stuck. So Sam is pretty frantic. Part of the fun of this episode is they’re often in the same place, just in different time periods.

TVLINE | What is this about Sam getting beaten up by clowns?

Yep, Sam gets beaten up by clowns in an upcoming episode. [Laughs] We’ve been looking forward to doing that to him for some time. Andrew Dabb and Daniel Loflin, two of our longtime writers and producers, wrote a really twisted episode in which Sam and Dean have to investigate a series of murders that bring them to a kids’ restaurant called Plucky Pennywhistle’s Magical Menagerie, and it has a clown theme.