Supernatural Re-Watch

[swan_tower]

So I’m almost done with the revision of the third Memoir, I just turned in my next chapter for L5R, the number of pictures left to edit is down to two digits, and the next ten months are jam-packed full of time-consuming things I intend to do.

Which means it’s a perfect time to start a new giant project!

(Or at least it’s a perfect time for my brain to suggest a new giant project.)

I’ve decided I’m in a mood to re-watch Supernatural. And if I’m going to do that, I might as well blog my way through, because one of my reasons for re-watching it is to take a look at its macro-level narrative structure. Eric Kripke, the showrunner, did a remarkably good job of blending a strongly episodic, Monster of the Week format with a long-term metaplot and thematic development, and I’d like to take a look at how he did it. I won’t be blogging each episode individually, but rather commenting on structural stuff as it comes up during the course of the show.

This will involve spoilers. Lots of them. I’ll put everything behind cuts, but if you already know the show or don’t care about being spoiled, feel free to share your thoughts!

Before I get started on the actual blogging, let me share how I got into this show, and why I find it interesting enough to merit this kind of project.

Round about fall or winter of 2006, my friend k8 invited myself and someone we’ll call S over to watch a TV show called Supernatural. I had never heard of it; I was pretty far out of touch with anything currently airing, mostly picking up shows on DVD.

Honestly, I wasn’t that impressed. The show was mildly entertaining, but not anything special; if I were grading it, most episodes would have gotten a solid B, maybe a B-plus. (The exception? “Bugs.” Which is bad enough that I didn’t actually watch it: k8 showed us the two or three scenes that were relevant to character development, and otherwise fast-forwarded through it giving a summary of the terrible plot we were missing.) Had I been watching on my own, I don’t know if I would have continued, but I was enjoying hanging out with k8 and S.

k8 had seen the first season already, which turned out to be a good thing; S is also a writer, and she and I kept dissecting the show as we went. “Nah, A won’t be the villain. It’s too obvious. B? No, probably C, because of that thing in the last scene.” k8 said she would have axe-murdered us if we’d been spoiling things for her. But S and I found that the show held up to that treatment fairly well. It wasn’t that we couldn’t predict where a given plot was going; we could. There’s a difference, though, between “I can predict this because it’s trite and boring” and “I can predict this because I’m looking at it through a writer’s lens.”

And here’s the thing: over time, bit by bit, it started getting better.

We finished the first season and headed into the second. Those Bs and B-pluses started turning into B-pluses and A-minuses, and then got better still. I’d watched the entirety of The X-Files with a friend, so I knew how metaplot could go wrong; now I started to see how it could go right. Actions had consequences. Questions got answered, but created new questions. By the end of the second season, I was hooked. I moved to California and started hooking other friends in turn. My sister, who hates scary things, parked herself in my living room with a giant stuffed purple hippo clutched to her chest and made constant meeping noises, but kept watching. The show was rarely genius, but it was solid, in ways that were very satisfying to my writer-brain.

. . . at least, it was solid. I watched through the end of season 5, then stopped, then made the mistake of watching season 6. I know a lot of people still enjoy it, but for my money, Kripke was right: he planned it for five seasons and walked away when he was done, and tacking on new stories after that rarely ends well. This re-watch will not go beyond 5, though if anybody has seen anything from 6 onward, don’t worry about saying anything that would be a spoiler to me. I know some of it already, and don’t much care if people mention the rest.

The blogging won’t be happening on a regular schedule; posts will show up as I watch the show and think of things to say. I have no idea how long it will take. But if you’re interested, please join me for the ride!

Originally published at Swan Tower. You can comment here or there.

Comments

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Interesting! I stopped watching it because the structure got so ridiculous, mythology a mishmash that made no sense, to keep the boyz extra angsty.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Out of curiosity, do you remember where you stopped?

It certainly gets EPIC LIEK WHOA and highly operatic with the angst. And on a folkloric level, it's kind of hash. But I think the underlying thematic and causal structure is pretty well-done -- certainly better-done than any comparable show I've watched (X-Files, Fringe, etc).

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

I stopped at five? Six? A season or two after Casiel joined the gang, and I came to realize that the angels were purposeless people with powers. There was no "there" there. And some of the plots seemed needlessly convoluted in order to deal maximum angst to the boys. And no interesting women ever seemed to survive more than a few eps. Blarg.

I've never been able to watch X-Files, or Fringe . . . in fact I don't have much luck with TV sf, though I've watched Person of Interest intermittently.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Oh, jeez, yeah. Castiel shows up in S4, is a major player in S5, and then the show just goes off the rails after that, in ways that he is unfortunately at the heart of. I thought you meant you checked out somewhere in the five seasons Kripke planned, which are the part I consider good. It's no surprise that the structure and mythology started falling apart when other people took his idea and looked for ways to stretch it out further.

Edited to clarify: possibly you quit in S5, which is when the angels start being really relevant to the story. I think it's still good through there, because there's a coherence of thematic vision, but the angels are definitely not a world element that can be sustained for long without their narrative weaknesses becoming obvious.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

I was lukewarm until four, thought five had potential, but the second half looked like it was settling into same old same old, only with bigger monsters. I did love the couple of episodes with the comic book writer, the fun with meta, though. Even if that, too, finally never went anywhere interesting.

[tooth-and-claw.livejournal.com]

I will say that the show seems to be ramping up to be better again. I found season 6 a lot like season 1 for me-- mildly entertaining, but uninteresting over all, and then 7 was okay, but 8 was pretty good, and at the end of the last episode of that season, J and I were moaning that we didn't have season 9 at hand because we actually cared about the cliffhanger. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that The Leviathans are boring and terrible villains, and the show finds it's footing again when they give Crowley a real chance to shine as a bad guy.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

I've heard that, but frankly, I'm not going to watch a lot of bad eps just to get to the part where it's (possibly) good again. And it was getting self-indulgent in ways that actively turned me off, including the way it got too attached to certain characters (Castiel, Crowley) and didn't seem willing to let the story grow in new directions.

[yhlee.livejournal.com]

I can't remember when I bailed, possibly in S3, although in all fairness that was a re-try after bailing after the pilot episode, which I alternately hated like burning, thought was stupid like burning, and had too much burning of a female character like burning. But in the re-try, I was strongly left with the impression that the show worked much better for you if you felt some sort of connection to either Sam or Dean, or at least found one of the two cute. I was not particularly interested in either character and so I just never got there. That being said, I did really like Sam and Dean as portrayed in some of the fic--I kind of feel like my motivation for getting more acquainted with the show, at one point, was to have a better way into the fic.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Yes, much of it lives or dies by whether you attach to the characters -- which is true of many things with the "buddy" format.

Ironically, I can't bring myself to read much SPN fic because a) the Wincest thing turns me off completely and b) there's kind of a fanon characterization that is not what I'm looking for.

[yhlee.livejournal.com]

I have no problems with fictional incest, but then as some of my friends can tell you, I have very odd tastes in fic. *innocent* Joe lives in terror of the contents of my fic ereader.

I think my lack of attachment to the characters, ironically, lets me enjoy certain categories of SPN fic because I don't run into a problem of the characters feeling OOC, and I just go for what's interesting to me. There were some interesting AUs where Dean was trans*, etc.; I don't imagine they're remotely supported by canon but it was fun to read.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Most of my problem with Wincest -- apart from my problem with a lot of slash, which is that canon characterization has a tendency to get overwritten by the tropes of slash -- is that I really like the brother dynamic, and don't really want to see it changed. But that isn't unique to SPN; I often have no interest in seeing a particular dyad (siblings, teacher/student, enemies, etc) get sexualized. If I care about the characters, 98% of the time, I care about them as they are.

See also: why I also don't care about most AUs. :-P My tastes in fic are very canon-oriented in most cases.

[yhlee.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think my tastes are very different from yours! I am usually more interested in AU than canon unless there is a deficiency of canon; it's that desire to see something messed with and taken apart in a completely new configuration. I guess that's not surprising given that as a whole I am frequently more idea/world-focused than character-focused.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Well, my canon focus includes the world as well as the characters: I'm similarly uninterested in AUs that drop the protagonists into high school or a coffee shop or wherever. Given that I mostly like speculative settings, why should I still care when all the spec elements have been jettisoned? :-P My kind of AU is the sort that says "what if this plot event went differently and changed everything after it?" or introduces an element that interlocks well with existing material. (It's just that I'm . . . idiosyncratic about what fits into that latter category.)

For non-AU stories, I like well-done casefic, natural crossovers (e.g. Supernatural and Sleepy Hollow existing in the same world), backstory, or fic that fills in nifty gaps.

[wshaffer.livejournal.com]

Perhaps I will use this as an excuse to finally watch some Supernatural. Or perhaps I'll just read your blog posts and be grateful that you're watching so that I don't have to. ;)

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Well, "so that I don't have to" implies it's not a fun experience in its own right. And I do think it's fun. But maybe you just mean you don't have the time for it. :-)

[wshaffer.livejournal.com]

I think that should probably be parsed as "I'm hoping that when I try watching Supernatural that it will be a fun experience in its own right, but even if I find it isn't, I expect to enjoy your blogging about it."

Though I also really won't have any time for TV for the next few weeks at least.

[gollumgollum.livejournal.com]

You know, i've been considering a rewatch, even though i've heard that the Netflix versions don't have the right music, at least in Season one, which would be a shame. (I have one, three and i think four on DVD, although two was loaned out and vanished into the ether, but watching DVDs is currently difficult with my set up.) Hmmmmm....

(And yes. I would have murdered you both to death.)

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

!!! Not the right music? That is not okay. What did they do to it?

(And no jury in the world would have convicted you.)