Monsters of Television

I know next to nothing about Supernatural. I know it has Dean from Gilmore Girls. I know it involves Dean and his brother (who is also named Dean, making this very confusing) hunting demons. I know at some point a giant teddy bear tries to commit suicide. And I know one episode takes place in a haunted hotel that is hosting a Supernatural fan convention, and people assume the two brothers are actually cosplayers, not the actual brothers. But that’s about it.

So I approach Supernatural with practically no biases or pre-conceived notions of what the show is, except for thinking that Jared Padalecki is dull to watch (he is on Gilmore Girls anyway). Unlike The Wire or Mad Men, both of which I watched this year on DVD, Supernatural wasn’t something people thought I needed to watch to be a knower of all things in contemporary American television.

And that’s exactly why I selected it. So each week (or perhaps more than that), you’ll get treated to my impressions about the series as I go through it. I’m suspecting it’ll be an episode a week, unless I’m just not that busy during a particular week, and the posts will probably go up on Saturday afternoons. So this won’t be like my Mad Men recaps which were often just impressions on a whole season. Also: Karen will be chiming in occasionally as well to give a Supernatural veteran’s take on episodes. This will hinge entirely on her interest in the episode and her schedule, but I look forward to her contributions.

So without further ado…

“When I told Dad I was scared of the thing in my closet, he gave me a .45.”

Pilots are tricky businesses. As we’ve discussed with The Walking Dead during the podcasts, they tell us what we can expect from a show. They set the tone and the style for all episodes that come after, and sudden changes in those aspects can lead us to feel betrayed or confused about a show that we’ve tuned in for.

The pilot for Supernatural works very well in establishing its tone and I would assume episode-to-episode structure. It’s opening, for example, is all the right level of creepiness, even if they’re old hat: flickering lights, creepy Walkie-talkie static, and the low glow of a black and white movie on TV. But Supernatural makes these staples of horror feel rather scary (putting a baby in danger certainly helps), and by the time we see Mary engulfed in fire on the ceiling, I’m properly freaked out and intrigued.

The rest of the episode unspools in a satisfactory manner. I enjoy the ease at which the show introduces the demon hunting lifestyle that Dean and Sam have lived. While trying to draw back in a retired partner is old hat for procedurals, I appreciate the off-handed nature of the brothers’ conversation (“What about that demon in…” or “Remember that time when…”) that very simply tells us these boys haven’t had a super-great life by normal standards. These post adventures can be fleshed out when appropriate to the story, and I like the economy of storytelling.

But I also enjoy the show’s procedural aspects, which should come as no surprise to anyone who’s been reading with us for a while now. I love the box full of federal IDs and poorly thought out credit card names, and I enjoy the beats of getting information from the cops, talking to family and friends, doing research at a public library (happy to see that Sam knows how to use a search engine better than his brother).

The episode also demonstrates a fine finesse at setting up its arc (no idea if this is seasonal or series-long) about finding John since he went missing, supposedly on the hunt or run from something bigger than the Woman in White (nice to go with a relatively unknown, but widely told, spirit story for the first episode). Again, as regular readers know, I like for a show to balance the serial and the episodic in smart, engaging ways. Burn Notice doesn’t do this. Terriers does. As I moves forward through its seasons, I hope Supernatural does do the same.

FINAL THOUGHTS

• “Highway to Hell.” Cute.
• Super awesome creep-tastic effects with the Woman in White getting sucked back in hell by her demonic children. Likewise, the show’s use of glitch cuts and special effects is great. Doesn’t look cheap, creates real fear.
• So is the John that rescued the younger versions of Sam and Dean really John? Because it looked like he got swallowed up in a big ball of fire with his wife and wouldn’t have had time to get out of the house to grab his kids from the lawn. (This is a rhetorical question.)
• Clearly who/whatever burned up Mary is really after Sam for some reason. Interesting…
• I’ll do more thoughts on the brothers as I watch the show, since their’s will be the central relationship, but I Jensen and Padalecki have far more chemistry than Padalecki ever did with Alexis Bledel.