***Half of me is expecting to be tarred and feathered by transient Supernatural fangirls for this. As you read (if you read), understand that I really do like the show. It’s just one of the most ludicrously frustrating things I’ve ever made an effort to watch on my own. This article contains spoilers and Team Daddy support. Also, this article contains an interesting Trent Reznor/Alessandro Cortini photoshop. IDEK.
I’m usually pretty darn open about my TV. I even watched three whole seasons of Lost, just swearing it would get better. I’ve heard that it has, but it’s from the same people who said season 2 was good, and, well, I don’t want to relive those shenanigans any time soon. To be more forthright about it, I watched five seasons of 24 before realizing “Oh hey! This is the same thing, with more ludicrous plot points!” I felt so free when I finally just hung my hat up on incomprehensible serial television. I still hold a great fondness for USA original shows, such as Monk, Burn Notice, and Psych.
I guess I’ve just come to the conclusion that the art form has overstayed its welcome. I was in high school – it was about 1996 or 1997 – when serial TV really became a huge thing. I’m not talking St. Elsewhere or Thirtysomething, and I’m not talking soap operas either. ER, The X-Files, Melrose Place, Chicago Hope…these were all big with my age group. For all I know, Twin Peaks wasn’t huge with teenagers when it aired. Thus began an innundation of the overarcing-mythology show (insert groan of well-deserved waryness). Things reached a fever pitch in 2006, when shows like Frasier, Friends, and Seinfeld just didn’t exist anymore and “prime-time TV” became the domain of the emotionally-draining, fan-driven, melodramatic one-hour serial.
I agree that your flaming bus ramp is impressive, Supernatural, but you still haven’t answered my question.
I used to watch more of these than I care to admit. Not just watch – keep up with, which is a whole other ball game. At my worst at least six shows were on my weekly “must-see TV” list. Somehow I managed to avoid Supernatural during this blitz. Probably because I was too busy using the WB’s only show I was interested in, ‘America’s Next Top Model’, to cool down after a long week. I didn’t want to watch what appeared to be the X-Files re-imagined by Abercrombie and Fitch models. Nothing about Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki stirred my interest, much less my loins. That they were the only fucking characters was even less appealing. Granted, I’ve never been one for the stereotypical fangirl-bait. I could care less for Matthew Fox on Lost, and back in the day I was ambivalent about David Duchovny but would have punched my sister for a chance at Mitch Pillegi.
So, I sort of sat back on the whole Supernatural thing. It lasted for a good two years. When I started to frequent the forums of echoingthesound.net, I noticed a vocal and hilarious group of Supernatural fans amongst the top e-brass of the forumgoers. In their honor I made this little photoshop (of which I’m still inexplicably proud), and a few days later I told them I’d borrow the DVD’s from a coworker and watch. It took me a couple of weeks to finally get the DVD’s, and when I did I was gung-ho to strap in for a new show. I was just starting to develop an interest in Doctor Who, but was still looking for my next Thing. I don’t know why I was looking for that.
I certainly wasn’t going to find it in Supernatural. I sort of knew that from the beginning. The show itself was good, and the concept was very strong. But I couldn’t get past the fact that something felt wrong. It was perhaps this tickle of wrongness that told me to loosen my belt and not strap in so hard, after all. I put the DVD’s on in the background and was able to say I legitimately watched the first season and a half or so. Or so. I’ll admit that I fell asleep watching episodes on more nights than I can really remember, most of the time with the volume turned down low enough that the METAL TEETH CHOMP orchestra hit before every commercial wouldn’t wake me up. I really didn’t watch the show per se, but I knew what was going on and I knew enough to say “yeah, I liked it!”
I did. Don’t get me wrong on that. But my suspicions had been completely correct – it was just The X-Files as realized by the Royal American Eagle Jeans and Douchebag Haircut Society. When they actually got to the overarcing mythology stuff (much like with The X-Files), I actually liked it. I also like that the show presumes enough to kill off the two main female figures within the first thirty minutes or so. Brilliant tactic, and some people wonder why this show has so many snickering incest jokes following it around (or, not exactly jokes, judging by the sexy party fanbase).
Sure, they try to play up the philandering and chick magnet aspects, but in the end it’s the same premise: Two douchebag brothers (we’ll call them Flippant Bitch and Whiny Jackass) drive a hot car around and look for supernatural baddies to kill. They sometimes do a pretty good job, sometimes make absolutely bonehead mistakes, and spend most of the time being bitchy and/or whiny with themselves and others. Oh, and the overarcing story? Has to do (at least at first) with the death of their mother by Gravitron-powered, ceiling-fire demon twenty-some years ago (22. Fine, 22. Every pre-credit sequence tells us, like those “previously, on LOST” things that told you exactly which character the episode was going to be about…only with Supernatural, you expect a pop quiz to tie in to how often you’re shown the pilot over and over) Now they’re on an epic quest to find out what happened.
Hot Car in one of its many sexually titillating long shots
This wasn’t their idea, though. They were only kids when mom died, and their Despicably Flawed yet Oh-So-Sexy Jerkass Father decided he was going to rededicate his life to hunting everything that could possibly be a Gravitron-powered ceiling demon. In the process he managed to be a horrible father. Ace. So he goes missing in the line of…um…demon-hunting duty?
Almost an entire episode of Whiny Jackass and Flippant Bitch yelling at each other later, we have a pilot. Almost an entire SEASON of Whiny Jackass and Flippant Bitch yelling at each other later, we finally get to meet Shut Up Daddy (because TWOP said it best). You’d expect him to be Jesus, the way they play him up, but instead he just seems to be exasperated by how annoying his own children are. THERE IS MORE YELLING. And personal space violations. Then some shit happens, nothing gets resolved, and a semi crashes into the hot car, arguably the most attractive member of the cast. What the Hell.
And that’s just Season One.
I rewatched the show in earnest this year because 1) I was bored and 2) my lady boner for Jeffrey Dean Morgan was going crazy and I needed another outlet lest I start to get a little too attracted to The Comedian. Immediately after hearing five minutes of dialogue, I let out a disgusted sort of sigh, like I knew what I was getting myself into but I was determined to take the damned medicine.
First of all, I noticed right away that this show is the most goddamned depressing thing to look at that I’ve ever seen. There is never a sunny day in this world of theirs, and if there is it’s shot through a blue filter anyway. Maybe if they solved mysteries in, say, Santa Barbara with Shawn and Gus, things would get more happy, they’d get more Vitamin C, and then they wouldn’t be fighting all the time.
Jared Padalecki, hangin’ out. I’m sorry, this screams “porno is about to happen”
Sometimes the fighting is humorous. The scripting of the brotherly interaction is my favorite thing about the show…sometimes. Occasionally the writers will throw in a quip that, god bless him, sounds 100% stilted coming from Jensen Ackles. And it’s always Jensen Ackles (Flippant Bitch) who sounds awkward. Jared Padalecki (Whiny Jackass) either gets more realistic lines or is just a better actor. I don’t want to believe the former and I’m on the fence about the latter. Of course, when an actor like Jeffrey Dean Morgan (Shut Up Daddy) can’t even stay on thematic task in your show, it’s time to blame the writers.
If the show were played straight, it would be passable. But it’s like a focus group nightmare. Humor tacked on that seems either inappropriate or, well, scripted, all that inappropriate touching, and bimbos, bimbos, bimbos! Yay, there are females in this show! Too bad they’re all flawless, single, one-shots that exist to fall in love with the leads. At least Doctor Who keeps one for a whole season. They must just not think the Winchesters (fuck, did I mention, that’s their name) are interesting enough on their own (for the first season, they’re not). They have to throw in third party characters to convince us that they’re great.
Here’s the fucking thing. And this is going to address fans of the show. The only demon hunter in this show with any shred of competence is John Winchester. I know he was a terrible father, I know he emotionally scarred the kids, but the asshat knew what he was doing. Besides, I think they play up the emotionally scarred thing just a liiiiiittle much. At least daddy KEPT you, kids. He wasn’t feeding you bees for dinner for twenty years. Without his presence, the show is just the boys going “DUH” until their dad’s Mysterious Journal That Holds All Answers To Everything Ever leads the way. Occasionally Whiny Jackass helps, because of his learnings and his laptop.
There has never been a better example of a DILF.
The fans haaaaaate John. He might as well just be the Antichrist, but never mind, they cover that with someone else in the cast. >_> In the immediate cast. >_________> ind of. Let’s not get into a tizzy over the definition of the Special Children. Anyway.Yeah, I wonder with this fanbase how far the Venn diagram between “loving Jensen and Jared” and “loving Dean and Sam Winchester” intersects. It seems to be a hella lot. I like Dean more than Sam, just because he at least tries to think about things. Sometimes. I still facepalm over most of their incompetence.
Incompetence is funny, when played for laughs. When not, it’s just tedious and I wonder what I’m doing.I don’t want to watch a show about demon hunters that are absolutely clueless in their field. Crack open a few books by Joseph Campbell! Christ, Frank Black would own your asses at this. “Let’s make a show about deep-sea divers who don’t know shit about deep-sea diving!” AWESOME!
All the characters have their own flaws, which is great because I love flawed characters. Dean is about ten seconds from being a totally identifiable and sympathetic character, always. But there’s that layer of DOUCHEBAG that pervades everything and keeps me from the fangirling. These two are every jackass on Panama City Beach who are out of college but not quite living as adults yet. Those guys piss me off. I still need to watch through the second season finale, because I don’t know, maybe Sam grew some magical sympathy and Dean eased off the testosterone a little bit, but I’m doubting it.
In later seasons, we get hot chick demon, hot antihero angel, and a fuckload of Judeo-Christian symbolism, as if there wasn’t enough of that floating around anyway. Through it all, the boys’ hair looks fantastic.
Regardless, Season One is worth a shot, because despite it all, John Winchester is a badass and Meg Masters is a fierce bitch. Oh, just invite a friend over and settle in – it’s fun to laugh at incompetence as long as someone else is in the room. Also, there has never been a better show (except maybe Heroes) to play into a fetishistic fanbase so well. With aplomb. Incidental characters make constant inferences, and not just with the brothers. It’s sort of creepy. And, okay, I’ll bite and admit that the whole show is a little bit hot. Because at the end of the day, as long as they’re keeping their mouths shut, Sam and Dean Winchester are attractive.
