After burning my way through the Joss Whedon catalogue a couple of years ago, I was in need of another good show. I remember googling “shows like Buffy,” and happily, Supernatural came up.
Whatever Internet wisdom linked Supernatural to Buffy was quite insightful. The shows share a similar tone, subject matter and sense of humor. Supernatural even pays homage to Buffy by casting stars like James Marsters and Charisma Carpenter in guest roles.
Like Buffy, Supernatural is a story about demon-fighting heroes. It centers on Dean and Sam Winchester (Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki, respectively), brothers who follow in their father’s footsteps to become “hunters.” Together they track down (and usually kill) monsters, ghosts, demons, and sometimes even angels who wreak havoc in the human world.
Amid the backdrop of the supernatural, Sam and Dean’s relationship is the most compelling part of the show. It is constantly evolving: they fight, separate, come back together and are willing to sacrifice their lives for each other. No matter what happens, the brothers’ bond never seems to break.Sam and Dean’s relationship is especially important to the show because the hunters are so isolated from the rest of the world. Their work requires them to live outside regular society. They have no real home, instead chasing jobs across the country and wandering from motel to motel.
Other characters come in and out of the story, such as mentor/father-figure, Bobby Singer (Jim Beaver) and rebel angel, Castiel (played by fan favorite, Misha Collins), but none of them are as important as Sam and Dean are to each other. The brothers live lonely, violent and depressing lives, and most of the time, their little family is all they have.
This rootless existence and the idea of two men spending all that time together in a car, references Jack Kerouac’s famous novel, On the Road. It is probably not a coincidence that Supernatural’s protagonists are named Sam and Dean, similar to Kerouac’s main characters, Sal and Dean. Like their progenitors, Sam and Dean live in a masculine-centric nomadic world, making few long-term ties. They occasionally try to settle down with women, but each time they get called back to their restless life on the road.
The road and travelling plays a crucial thematic role in Supernatural. The Winchesters drive a 1967 Chevy Impala, which is almost as important to the show as Sam and Dean. In the absence of a home, the Impala’s constancy gives the brothers some sense of stability.
The many driving scenes also allow the show to feature some great road music. This brings us to Supernatural’s classic rock soundtrack, which includes mostly 60’s, 70’s and 80’s hits. There is plenty of AC/DC, Bad Company, Foreigner, Creedence Cleerwater Revival, REO Speedwagon, Blue Oyster Cult and Lynyrd Skynyrd. Season finales are known to feature Kansas’ “Carry On My Wayward Son,” a song whose epic subject matter is always appropriate. Also, the titles of many Supernatural episodes include references to songs by Led Zeppelin, The Who and The Rolling Stones. If you’re a classic rock fan like me, the soundtrack is an added bonus to an already amazing show.
I’ll admit that initially, I was skeptical of Supernatural. I remember watching the premier years ago (eight, to be exact), when actor Jared Padalecki defected from Gilmore Girls to join this new WB program. Supernatural came on right after Gilmore Girls, so of course I was going to check it out. Unfortunately, this pairing was a less-than-perfect fit, and the 14-year-old girl who had giggled her way through Rory and Lorelei’s trials and tribulations wasn’t exactly prepared to watch a young mother burst into flames on the ceiling in the first few minutes of Supernatural.
Suffice it to say, I was jarred by my first Supernatural encounter. I wasn’t ready to give the show a second chance until much later, when I was safely out of middle school. But I started watching Supernatural a year or two ago when I was going through a bad case of Buffy withdrawal, and I’m very glad I did.
As usual, I began with the second season, a controversial habit I’ve developed from years of successful TV-watching. My more rule-abiding friends scoff at me, but I maintain that with most shows, the first season is crap, so I’ve found that if you start with the second season, you get right to the good stuff without missing much. And don’t worry, they cover the important details in the “Previously on…” segment. (Or if you’re watching Supernatural, it’s called, “The Road So Far…”) My technique is to start with season two, watch the subsequent seasons, and then if I like the show, I’ll go back to the first (usually messy) year of what I know will become a good series. I stand by this process, even though it might be cheating.
So this is how I approached Supernatural, and it was a good thing too, because the first season is pretty bad. But season two is good, and from there, it just gets better. Supernatural seems to challenge the trend of a show peaking around the third or fourth season and then steadily deteriorating.
Supernatural has actually gotten more adventurous as it has gotten older. It has always been daring, including some fun genre-themed and alternate reality episodes.
But in the fourth season, the show becomes especially meta; we are then introduced to an author/prophet who has been writing a cult book series about Sam and Dean Winchester since the events of season one. This man, Chuck, knows everything about the brothers, resulting in scenes of comedic frustration. But best of all, the series within a series allows the Supernatural writers to pay homage to the show’s eccentric fans. To Sam and Dean’s horror, they are the stars of a collection of books that have a small but rabid fan base, including obsessive fangirls and people who like to write slash fiction about the brothers having sex. It’s an absurd and potentially dangerous idea for a show to tackle, but Supernatural makes it work.
Later seasons include other excellent meta elements, such as the hilarious episode, “The French Mistake.” This alternate reality scenario puts Sam and Dean in a strange world where they are actors (named Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki, of course) playing themselves on a TV show called (you guessed it) Supernatural. It’s exceptionally self-referential and amusing, especially for long-term fans. Other Supernatural gems include spoofs on the Twilight phenomenon (“Live Free or TwiHard”), and episodes with meta titles like “Slash Fiction” and “Season 7, Time for a Wedding!”
It’s true that Supernatural is a dark show about lonely, isolated characters, but it’s also extremely funny and imaginative. It’s ready to take on any and all genres: cartoons, Westerns, hospital dramas (such as Dean’s guilty pleasure, “Doctor Sexy”) and classic horror movies. Supernatural is one of those shows that rewards its fans. It writes episodes about them and their strange obsessions and slips in little details they’re sure to pick up on. This makes sense of course, because the Supernatural fan base is particularly influential.
Despite the show’s lackluster ratings and brief exile to the Friday night time slot, enthusiastic fans have kept Supernatural alive for nearly a decade. In fact, this unlikely hit has recently been renewed for its ninth season.
Supernatural airs on Wednesdays at 9 pm on the CW network. The next episode, which is also the season finale, will be shown on April 3, 2013.
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