Supernatural and the end of an era
The Supernatural finale aired last week ending a fifteen year run.
While the quality of the show wasn’t always consistent, how could it be over so many seasons, I think it achieved quite a lot and has been part of my life for fifteen years. In some ways the show was like comfort food. I looked forward to every season from the start until hearing “Carry on My Wayward Son” at each season’s finale. The show provided an escape, solace through many difficult years. In real life the world went into financial turmoil, war, the disaster election of 2016, and this year the global pandemic, but for an hour each week I could watch a world where there were more tangible monsters that could be beaten. I needed that escape, and Supernatural has been there. While I think it was time for the show to end and it certainly had a great run, I will miss it.
The general idea of the show was that these two brothers travelled the country protecting people from monsters. Since they were initially themselves wanted men, this made it another example of the old Fugitive pitch: “It’s the Fugitive except…” In this case it’s the fugitive except it’s two brothers being hunted by the authorities while they themselves hunt monsters.
Although the show went on to have a story arc that developed and ran through the entirety of the show’s run, it’s the episodic monster of the week episodes that I’m already starting to miss, more so given the ongoing Covid crisis and need to stay home. There’s something about roadtrips, shitty motels, and greasy food that all has a tremendous if vicarious thrill right now.
From 2006 to 2013, one of my favorite writers wrote a couple episodes a season. That writer, Tick creator Ben Edlund, has a knack for writing quirky brilliant episodes for television. My all time favorite Supernatural episode, “Wishful Thinking,” was one of his. In this episode there is an enchanted/cursed wishing well. A boy wishes his teddy bear was real, and so the bear becomes animated and man sized and rapidly develops ontological problems leading to drink, pornography, and eventually a suicide attempt. “Tea parties. Is that all life is,” it questions before it blows its stuffing out with a shotgun. I loved this show partly for all these quirky episodes. In an animated episode they meet the Scooby Doo gang. In one show they come into our reality where Supernatural is a television show and everyone thinks they’re the actors. They had several of these fourth wall breaking episodes, which I love. Fourth wall breaks, boozing characters, and portals between worlds, it’s like they nailed my obsessions.
Like any good long running show it was the characters that made it so good. The relationship between the two brothers was effective throughout the series, and the actor who played Dean had particularly great range, especially for hamming it up for the comedic oneshot episodes. The rest of the cast was amazing as well. Jim Beaver has been a favorite actor since Deadwood, and hearing him call everyone “eejits” is something I often think about dealing with real people. Angels and demons, witches and gods, the show had a vast array of reoccurring characters all of who added depth and a sense of a fully realized world. What I like best about the characters though I think can be summed up in some of the final episodes: it’s the way that those characters sought to be their best and to bring out the best in others.
Apart from the realization that I will miss it, the thing I’ve really been thinking about is what a remarkable achievement fifteen seasons is. In this era of Netflix-two-maybe three-seasons-and-it’s-done, it seems nigh impossible that it will ever be done again. But I can’t think of another example of something that ran as long, not in the modern era since the switch to story driven television began. A google search shows me that there are procedurals that have run that long, but for a genre show with a truly ongoing story? Buffy’s excellent seven seasons are half that amount. Even if you add in the five Angel seasons, there’s still another three seasons to get to that total. X-Files might be the closest, but apart from being worthwhile as a means of getting us a brilliant Darin Morgan episode or two per season, as a series X-Files came apart at the seems, and still at eleven seasons, you could add in the Millennium seasons and still be short of Supernatural’s score.
I have wondered before if the CW is underrated. I don’t think they’re producing any Deadwoods or anything, but it does seem like shows like Supernatural or Buffy get a chance to build an audience and find their feet where they wouldn’t get that chance at FOX or Netflix or others who always seem to have expectations of ratings that don’t allow for time to evolve.
The finale was a bit odd. The internet hated it of course, the internet hates endings. But in this case it was all the weirder I think because the real finale of the show wasn’t the last episode, it was the second to last episode. That wrapped up the story and had the brilliant montage of past episodes combining the show’s history with the ending of the last season. The final episode was more of a denouement and a goodbye to the show from the show’s creators.
I am sad the show is over. This has been a tough year in a collection of tough years, and I’m thinking more and more about how there aren’t a lot entertainments that are as comforting as this show was. Having said goodbye, it’s already apparent as I deal with life’s stress that there is a hole where this show stood.
On the plus side, the show is currently streaming on Netflix. It may soon be time to take another roadtrip with these characters.
