Supernatural (2005 - ?)

Recently, a friend and I got to talking about how the last two episodes of Supernatural hadn't really lived up to the bar none spectacular season the show has been having. It got pretty involved (as it often does), and I started thinking about this show I have come to love. Truly, it is one of my favourites.

My first taste was a preview recap that Demian wrote of the pilot. It sounded alright. I like Jensen Ackles; I like Jared Padalecki. I had asked Emily, after Angel was cancelled, where we were going to get our "supernatural fix." Still, it wasn't appointment viewing for me until "Home." It was a great episode for a variety of reasons: excellent work from the leads, solid Monster of the Week (MotW), tie-in to the series myth-arc. It was exactly the kind of episode that you want to use to hook viewers (like the season one episode of Buffy "Angel"), and it certainly worked on me. After that, I made a point of getting caught up and staying on track.

Of course, it wasn't always pretty. A scant four episodes later, "Route 666" was, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the worst episode of the entire series. It's so bad that I can say, "So, I was watching the worst episode of Supernatural . . . ," and another fan will interrupt to yell, "Racist truck!"

But look at it this way: how good does a show have to be that (a) I can easily point to one episode and call it the worst without any hesitation and (b) it happened three seasons ago? Supernatural is like Veronica Mars in reverse: it gets better with every passing season. Minus the last two episodes (but including the last five minutes of the latter one), this season, the fourth, is the best one that the show has ever had. It feels like everything is finally falling into place.

For seasons past, the majority of the episodes were MotW. There's nothing wrong with that. "Tall Tales," "Heart," "A Very Supernatural Christmas," and "Mystery Spot" are among my favourite episodes. The myth-arc centric episodes, while they were often very good, had a tendency to raise more questions than the show seemed interested in answering most of the time. It didn't much matter once you got used to the formula: hot guys, gore, and bittersweet endings. Good times!

Then at the end of last season, the writers went all in. Dean (Ackles), having sold his soul to Lilith in exchange for Sam's (Padalecki) life, actually went to Hell. There are two main characters on the show, only two, and they killed one and sent him to Hell. How ballsy is that? Sure, we knew there had to be a way for him to get out of there, but still. They went there.

That's when things got even crazier. On Buffy and Angel, they were sure about demons, the devil, and all manner of other supernatural being. God? The jury was out. Supernatural was also quick to sidestep that particular televisual landmine. Sam had faith, Dean didn't, they weren't sure where you went after you died, just that there was some place other than Hell for good little boys and girls.

All of that changed when the gorgeous Misha Collins stepped onto our screens in a blue suit that could have only been chosen to highlight his striking blue eyes and uttered, "I'm the one who gripped you tight and raised you from Perdition." No vomited up snakes or dark magic for our gang. An angel named Castiel marched into Hell on God's orders and pulled Dean out. Seems the Lord's got a plan for our boy, and it's got something to do with the coming Apocalypse.

This end of the world stuff is new territory for our writers, and, amazingly, they haven't (completely) botched it. Things are starting to make sense as they pit angel against demon, brother against brother, and Dean against Armageddon. What if we finally bottomed out Dean's self-loathing? What would be left? Apparently startlingly compelling viewing.

Dean goes from hating himself just about as much as anyone could, to finding out that God has a purpose so big for him that He’ll send an angel into Hell to pull him out, to both Sam and Dean thinking that angels are made of stone (in terms of their wills), to finding out that angels are far more human than they could have ever imagined (starting with Castiel’s confession that having faith can be hard and continuing into Anna’s reveal that she was willing to damn herself in order to give being human a whirl).

Guest recapper Cindy has compared the myth arc this season to racism, and it’s a comparison that holds. It starts out with this instant hate of the Other (Dean is automatically assumes that every supernatural being is bad news), moves othering the Other (they might not be bad, but they are certainly different), and has now started to reach an understanding that the Other is just Another You (but not in a cheesy “Angels: They’re just like us!” Us Weekly/Star magazine sort of way).

We know that Lilith has to break 66 seals, and the writers could have easily used that to fill out three more seasons of episodes without a second thought. I don't want to sound too ridiculous here, but they've boldly decided to put that aside in favour of deepening the mythos in a way that previous seasons would not have indicated that they were either interested in or capable of. They're reaching for grand and epic, and they're bound to fall a little short once in a while.

The show's not perfect, mind. It's not the bends in the time-space continuum, the circuitous dialogue, or the way that Sam and Dean seem to trade off days being stupid that really bother me. It's the anti-feminist current that seems to be at the root of every MotW. Women are either T&A, damsels in distress, or lambs for the slaughter, and usually they get to be all three. Rare is woman who is smart and capable in her own right, and even rarer is the one who is smart, capable, and gets to survive through to the end of the episode. I don't need all the fingers on one hand to count these women, and the only one to get moved up to recurring status (the totally bitchin' Ellen Harvelle as embodied by Samantha Ferris) mysteriously disappeared at the end of season two.

Still, you've got Ackles as the goofy brother who can summon heartbreaking depths of emotion week in and week out; Padalecki is the upright brother and talented physical comedian; and Jim Beaver, our erstwhile Ellsworth and now deadpan Bobby Singer, a brilliant character actor and the show's greatest resource. Even if the last two episodes went right off the rails, there's been enough A material this season to trust the show to right itself when it's back in the new year. And a show that's earned your trust? That's something else.