Come for the prettyboyz, stay for the broken family.
Well, that was my reaction to watching Season 1 of SUPERNATURAL in its entirety for the first time.
Oh. My.
Look, I already knew about the pretty boys, their hot and wrongity-wrong subtext, the cool car, the demons. My first reaction, in fact, was to watch halfway through Season Two and say, "Oh, I get it. It's 'Pretty Boys the Vampire Slayers.'" Buffy, only not so well written. But I got pulled in. (The chemistry is undeniable, and as a slash fan and a fan of homosocial bonding in general I was pleased.)
Then I watched from the beginning. And my mouth fell open.
Eric Kripke gets it. The hallmark of the very best s.f., horror or fantasy is that it uses its otherworldly stuff to talk about us -- it's not just an excuse to put up a bunch of CGI spaceships, zombies or dragons that you can sell as video games to teen boys (*coughGeorgeLucascough*). But like Peter Jackson, Kripke knew that the cool-shit-to-look-at would fall apart if the story wasn't rock-solid and based upon very real characters.
Just as "Buffy" used vampires to talk about the very real crap that goes on in high school, "Supernatural" uses demons and werewolves to explore broken, dysfunctional families; the purpose of having children, the true hallmark of both being a good parent and a good child, the true mark of strengths in offspring.
Another meta-story told by "Supernatural" is the death of Middle America -- the deterioration of the American middle class, the rot consuming the infrastructure of this country from within. (It's also totally cool to see blue-collar redneck people from Big Rock, Iowa, matter-of-factly dealing in this stuff instead of pretty big-city West/East Coast folks with 6-figure incomes. (I just wish the show would occasionally show a woman who's bigger than a size 0 -- we DO exist, in considerable numbers in the heartland...)
...And it certainly doesn't hurt that the chemistry between the two lovely male leads is spot-fucking-on. (The actors' off-camera friendship adds warmth and depth to every scene between them).
Oh. And it can be frickin' scary. I mean, if you like that sort of thing. Which I don't. Or didn't. Dammit. I blame "Shawn of the Dead" -- my first zombie flick.
Bleah. Enough fangirling. On to Season Two.
Oh. My.
Look, I already knew about the pretty boys, their hot and wrongity-wrong subtext, the cool car, the demons. My first reaction, in fact, was to watch halfway through Season Two and say, "Oh, I get it. It's 'Pretty Boys the Vampire Slayers.'" Buffy, only not so well written. But I got pulled in. (The chemistry is undeniable, and as a slash fan and a fan of homosocial bonding in general I was pleased.)
Then I watched from the beginning. And my mouth fell open.
Eric Kripke gets it. The hallmark of the very best s.f., horror or fantasy is that it uses its otherworldly stuff to talk about us -- it's not just an excuse to put up a bunch of CGI spaceships, zombies or dragons that you can sell as video games to teen boys (*coughGeorgeLucascough*). But like Peter Jackson, Kripke knew that the cool-shit-to-look-at would fall apart if the story wasn't rock-solid and based upon very real characters.
Just as "Buffy" used vampires to talk about the very real crap that goes on in high school, "Supernatural" uses demons and werewolves to explore broken, dysfunctional families; the purpose of having children, the true hallmark of both being a good parent and a good child, the true mark of strengths in offspring.
Another meta-story told by "Supernatural" is the death of Middle America -- the deterioration of the American middle class, the rot consuming the infrastructure of this country from within. (It's also totally cool to see blue-collar redneck people from Big Rock, Iowa, matter-of-factly dealing in this stuff instead of pretty big-city West/East Coast folks with 6-figure incomes. (I just wish the show would occasionally show a woman who's bigger than a size 0 -- we DO exist, in considerable numbers in the heartland...)
...And it certainly doesn't hurt that the chemistry between the two lovely male leads is spot-fucking-on. (The actors' off-camera friendship adds warmth and depth to every scene between them).
Oh. And it can be frickin' scary. I mean, if you like that sort of thing. Which I don't. Or didn't. Dammit. I blame "Shawn of the Dead" -- my first zombie flick.
Bleah. Enough fangirling. On to Season Two.