As usual, I’ve been neglecting my blog something fierce. No excuses, except lethargy, a bout of writer’s block, and suddenly being allowed out into the world again has distracted me from all my usual pursuits. I’ll try to make more of an effort in the future, but for today, we’re going to do something completely different! 😀
I recently finished binge-watching the entire collection of Supernatural. I’d started it years ago, actually, when it was on Netflix, and then it was pulled from there. I picked it up again on Prime Video when I signed up for that, and voila! I finished it. (Side note: I’m actually rewatching a lot of the early stuff now, since I resumed watching on Prime somewhere in the middle where I’d originally left off, and while the gist of the show is still there, I wanted to get caught up again, so to speak. Also, it’s a fun show, so why not watch it again? :))
If you have watched the show, you might know there’s a ridiculously huge fandom to go along with it. Mostly benign, kind (I was given a ‘Supernatural’ survival guide meme when I first started the show, including tissues, salt, holy water, etc.) But there is also a huge discussion/divide over certain aspects of the show, as well as a collective disappointment in the ending. I wanted to write a bit about this because the show as a whole (and the ending) has stuck with me in the past few weeks since I finished it and I like to discuss things with others. (Usually books, but I love talking about movies and shows, etc., which you’d already know about me if you’ve ever spent time reading this blog or following me on Facebook.)
Warning now, there will be so many spoilers in the following, so if you haven’t finished the show, or don’t want it ruined, then please stop here. Otherwise, let’s get into it.
If you’ve never been into the show, I understand if you don’t want to continue reading, and that’s perfectly understandable. In case you’re curious though, Supernatural is a show about Sam and Dean Winchester, brothers who spend their lives driving all over the USA in a black ’67 Chevy Impala, investigating, fighting, and killing monsters (such as vampires, werewolves, poltergeists, djinn, ghouls, and so many more I could never hope to remember.) They have a loving and dysfunctional relationship, and always, always have each others backs.
Now, in general, I do not like scary movies or shows. I will never say, “Hey, let’s go see the latest horror movie in theater.” (If I ever do, you’ll know I’ve been possessed or compromised in some way, and need help.) So in all honesty, I struggled with the early episodes of the show. Now, on a second viewing, they’re not nearly as scary as I originally thought. There are still some startling moments, but since I now know how everything turns out, and what all the monsters are, it removes a lot of the viewing terror for me. (Go ahead, call me a wimp, I can live with it.) That being said, they did do a wonderful job of setting up suspense in the episodes. They also did well considering the show aired on a network channel, with all the restrictions that go along with it. Of course, early episodes didn’t have the budget the later ones did, so some special effects, or lack thereof, also took away some of the fear factor. For me, that’s a bonus. 🙂 The early episodes also have an adorable campiness that you can’t help but love, again, helping to erase any fear over watching them, especially now.
One of the main things I enjoyed about the show was their ability to mix so much light-hearted humor with the serious and often terrifying situations the brothers find themselves in. I know there are some critics who say that the campiness and humorous episodes turned the show into a parody of itself, but I disagree. All the best shows combine levity with the sober reality of whatever world is being portrayed. I could name a few dozen examples, but the most well-known is probably the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Every movie is a world-ending/saving event, and I laugh as much as I cry during each. (Of course, my saying the ‘best shows’, is merely my opinion, as is this entire post, so if you don’t agree, don’t get all bent out of shape.)
Some of my favorite episodes of the show involved more laughter than fright, and maybe that’s because of my aversion to horror and suspense. Okay, it totally is, but still, why can’t a dramatic show have smiles and laughter alongside bloodshed and dismemberment? (That’s not a euphemism, by the way. There are so many beheadings and general body parts flying off in this show that I think it’s desensitized me completely.)
Here’s a quick list of some of my favorite episodes:
Season 1, episode 4 – Phantom Traveler
S2, E2 – Everybody Loves a Clown
S3, E11 – Mystery Spot
S4, E6 – Yellow Fever
S5, E17 – 99 Problems
S6, E15 – The French Mistake
S6, E17 – My Heart Will Go On
S7, E5 – Shut up, Dr. Phil
S7, E14 – Plucky Pennywhistle’s Magic Menagerie
S8, E20 – The Girl with the Dungeons and Dragons Tattoo
And a smattering of others from the last seven seasons… I cut myself off here, but it might actually take less time to list the episodes I absolutely did not enjoy. Again, this is merely a selection of the episodes I enjoyed more than others, not that I only liked these ones. There are many episodes that were fun, scary, tense, and made me cry. Most of these ones had more laughs than the others, but they still dealt with very real deadly monsters, which is the point of the show, and proves that you can have levity and danger together in one package.
Now, on to the main characters… Sam and Dean Winchester. Sam is the younger brother, by four years, and Dean is the over-protective eldest, played by Jared Padelecki and Jensen Ackles, respectively. (Side note: I have been a fan of Jensen Ackles from the first day I saw him on Days of Our Lives. Go ahead, laugh. However, way back in the olden days, I didn’t want to watch this show because I hated Padelecki’s character on Gilmore Girls. It’s a testament to his acting, I suppose, but it made me hesitate to watch Supernatural at first, because I didn’t want to even look at him. Once I first got into the show, I got over my aversion and his new character did grow on me over time.)
I think they were very well cast as the leads. Both big personalities, with big smiles, and miles of testosterone, which is important for a show like this – I suppose. 😉 But they also had incredible chemistry together, and with each side character they came in contact with. There were a smattering of secondary characters that they came across, or up against, who didn’t gel but for the most part, everyone seemed to mesh so well. That’s a credit to the casting agents, and each actor, for sure, but in a show that ran for fifteen seasons, you’d almost expect to have more duds or more scenes fall flat than they had here.
We’ll come back to these two dudes in a bit…
Some of my favorite secondary characters were not in nearly enough episodes, in my opinion. Probably my favorite was Donna, a police officer from Minnesota. She showed up in season 8 and popped up in several other episodes. Another favorite was hacker extraordinaire, Charlie, first appearing in season 7. Neither were around nearly enough for my liking, along with so many others, but the thing with this show that makes it difficult for secondary characters, is that the show is in essence, about the two brothers. Now, you can’t kill them off (though they certainly do, and often, but it never takes) but you can remove the people that come and go from their lives. It’s heartbreaking but again, gives the show that dose of reality in between all the resurrections.
It’s also a recurring theme in the show, that the ‘hunter’ life doesn’t lead to old age and retirement. It’s a lot of danger, blood, death and loss. The brothers do their best to protect everyone they meet or come to care about, and in turn, these people do the same for the Winchesters. Unfortunately, it leads to more than a few devastating losses, for us the viewers, and for the brothers. The other main recurring theme is to carry on in the face of that loss, that there’s always another fight, another monster, another world-ending event to be averted.
Some secondary characters do stick around for longer than others, and appear in more episodes than the ones I mentioned above. There’s Crowley, demon/King of Hell, Bobby Singer, a father figure to the brothers after their own biological father kicks the bucket, and Rowena, witch/adversary-turned-sometimes cohort and friend. And of course, there’s Castiel. (We’ll come back to him later.) But again, all of these characters are not the Winchesters. They may last through many seasons, appearing in many plot-twisting episodes, driving the plot themselves, but the show, at its core is about the brothers and their fight. Does that diminish what the other characters bring to the show? No. Without the influence and interaction with everyone else they come across, they wouldn’t become the characters they are. It’s human and natural to meet, fall in love, fight, and lose many people in the course of your lives. Fictional shows don’t have to follow those same rules necessarily, but being human is a huge part/theme of the show as well.
Now for some cons of the show. In dealing with anything fantastical, sure, you can make it all up as you go, but you do need to follow some rules as you go along. It’s known as ‘canon’, in the literary or entertainment world, but you probably already knew that. The show, for the most part, does this well, considering all the monster types and plotlines they follow. However, on a second viewing, I’m finding a few inaccuracies. None of this detracts from the show as a whole, not for me, but it can happen, even in the most well-meaning shows. Now, maybe some of these things I’m interpreting wrong, and it could be. It’s an expansive show and I’m far from the type to make notes on each episode to follow the canon and find the mistakes.
One of the more noticeable ones was in Season 4, in episode 22, when Castiel is helping Dean to escape confinement. Castiel, an angel, uses his blood to cast an angel-blasting-rune on the wall (don’t ask me what it was called, I can’t remember those specifics) and blasts away (and by blasts away, I mean sent far away, not killed) the ‘bad angel’ in the room, but not himself. Now, at this time, you might not think much of it, as it’s the first time this rune is employed (I think) but in later episodes, the same rune is applied in other situations, and always, always blasts away even the angel casting the rune. Like I said, it’s minor, and in no way detracts from the overall show, and it’s only on second viewing that I’m even noticing any of these derails. Still, for those who are sticklers about this kind of thing, it might be a sore spot.
There were other things about the show that bothered me, particularly the end game seasons. I really could have done without season 14 altogether, honestly, aside from a few episodes. The character of Jack was handled so badly, and the whole apocalypse world addition did not work for me. (Really, the apocalypse/parallel worlds arc just felt like a way to bring back characters and villains who were gone in the ‘main world’, and didn’t work for me.) It felt like as the show toddled on, the writers or showrunners were literally running out of ways to have the brothers face world-ending events, or world-hungry monsters. Each season came up with stronger and darker overall arcs and villains, but they steadily painted themselves into a corner, or it so it seemed. After the events of season 11 (which I absolutely loved), with the Darkness/Amara arc, what could possibly be worse than that, right? Well, they really couldn’t come up with anything. The British Men of Letters arc in Season 12 was all right, as it was a new foe, so to speak, and definitely a threat to the Winchesters and their way of life. But after that, there was nothing worse that they could come up with, and really, after facing off against God’s sister, what could be worse? Turns out, it was facing off against God. But then, how do you win? It ended up concluded, in a way that followed canon, but could have gone so many different (better?) ways. Again, this is all just my opinion. I have no experience working with a show, or with story-telling on that scale, and have no ideas of the challenges faced from all sides.
A couple thoughts though: Jack should never have come out fully-formed. There were so many other options with him as a baby. One of my main annoyances with the later seasons was how no one treated him like the child he truly was. He sprang out as a teenager, and everyone started treating him like an adult, and never discussed another way. Another annoyance was the introduction (re-introduction?) of Mary Winchester. IMO, other than being a shocking last-minute scene at the end of Season 11, there didn’t seem to be much reason to have her there. This isn’t a strike against the actor, just a feeling like she didn’t really belong except to get the brothers even more entangled with the British Men of Letters.
And God. They should not have brought him back as a foe. Yes, it’s the sort of all-powerful end-game foe they were looking for, and as I said above, after everything, what else could they face? And I honestly have no better solutions. I’m not that smart or creative, but I would have wished for something else.
That all being said, within the storylines they did use, the introduction of Jack, Castiel as a pseudo-father, and the brothers finding out their free will wasn’t so free after all, I do think the show was wrapped up to a satisfying conclusion, all-in-all. (I’ll come back to the final episode later.)
So, speaking of Castiel, he first appears in Season 4 and lasts throughout the show, becoming a sort of third brother – or more, depending on who you ask. So yeah, lets get into that. I have thoughts of my own to share. 🙂 From the first, explosive appearance, Castiel is established as someone not to be f*cked with, and it’s amazing. He’s a great character, and cast to perfection again and the chemistry he shares with the Winchesters is off-the-charts. Particularly the chemistry with Dean Winchester.
Now, on my first viewing of the show, I’ll be honest, I didn’t get much more than a best buds vibe from them. Someone did ask me early on if I got the subtle ‘other’ vibes, and I honestly didn’t. Maybe it’s because I’m CIS-hetero and don’t look for or easily recognize those cues. However, as I went on, I did get more of a sense that it was more than a simple best buds/bros relationship. The main reason I found it was different, was because it was different from every other relationship Dean Winchester had on the show, even from his relationship with Sam, or the one between Sam and Castiel. They were all three of them close, no doubt, but Castiel and Dean were just… different.
That being said, does it automatically make it a romantic relationship? Not in the course of the show – don’t get mad, it’s just my opinion. (Also a good moment to remind you about spoilers here…) But that third-to-last episode, holy sobbing tears Batman. Castiel, in an effort to save Dean from certain death, lays it all out on the line, and gives his life for him. Love? Yes. Romantic relationship to follow? Not on the show, not that we saw.
Now, there is a myriad of differing opinions on their whole relationship. I get it, to a certain extent. As I said, I’m a stereotypical hetero woman, so I don’t know or have any sort of insight into the intricacies of a relationship outside of what I know. That being said, I absolutely can get behind a bi or gay relationship, men, women, or anything in between. I’m an avid reader, as you know, and I’ve read so many books outside my own scope of knowledge and comfort, and enjoyed so much of it. Romance is romance, doesn’t matter who the participating partners are, and slow burns are among the most romantic of romance, and this, the relationship over 12 years between Dean and Castiel, was the slowest of slow burns. That it ended in sadness and despair wasn’t wholly unexpected though, and if you are of the opinion that they were robbed, yes, they were. But in the canon of the show, it absolutely fit. (And I’m not going to get into all the moral quandries about the nature of a confession of love followed by death/super hell, because I can’t speak to the impact of those things. I’m merely sharing my opinion of the show as it was laid out for me to view and what I took away from it.) However, if you think Dean was too scared to admit his feelings in return, or that the writers robbed him of it, I disagree. The moment it was going down, with Death literally banging on the door, Dean knew he was about to lose the love of his life. He knew it the same way he knew every other time someone he cared about was lost to him. And he was absolutely wrecked afterwards. In the course of so short an episode, unfortunately, there was no time for him to come to grips with it, and as always, he fell back on what he knew: carrying on, the fight wasn’t over. Again, could it have been handled different by the writers and showrunners? Yes. Does it detract from the truth of it all? No. Does it diminish the 12 seasons leading up to it? No.
Further, Dean is not the type to make endless confessions of love or even affection. He honestly rarely hugged anyone, right? Even the ladies in the show. He certainly never had a relationship last for very long, including Lisa, who he was with for little more than a year. (In modern day hetero life, that’s not a long time, not really, not to me.) And I don’t think he ever even said ‘I love you’ to Sam, who he definitely loved. We all knew that because of his actions and behavior, right? So why can’t the same apply to his relationship with Castiel? He absolutely loved him, of course he did. Did he need to say it out loud for it to be canon? No. He didn’t need to say it out loud to Sam, and we all still knew he loved him. And yes, I know it’s different kinds of love, but the rule applies to both. So if you believe Castiel and Dean loved each other, and not as bros or buddies, then they did. Just because the writers or showrunners didn’t lay it out for you doesn’t make it not true.
As to the specific point of whether or not Dean is bisexual, he might be. Certain events on the show certainly speak to that, and definitely could mean exactly that. Just because he’s only ever shown on screen kissing or sleeping with women, doesn’t mean he’s not on the spectrum somewhere. (I don’t mean to diminish this for those who identify as bisexual. I read once that it can be viewed as a sort of a spectrum, you can be 100% hetero, or 100% gay/lesbian, or fall somewhere in between, which is the case for many, many people.) It also means Dean was hesitant to ever say anything out loud because of his upbringing, or the life he leads now. Remember what I said above about testosterone? Well, it has an effect on the characters over the course of the show, it’s a fact, for better or worse.
Here’s something I want to share, that may seem a little off-topic: I am Dean Winchester. Stay with me… 🙂 I obviously don’t mean in the literal sense. I am dark-haired, with hazel-green eyes, an Aquarius (my birthday is two days after Dean’s), shorter than my brother, and I am not overly effusive with my affection, except with a very select few people. I have difficulty making prolonged eye contact with anyone, aside from my immediate family, and my SO. I also tend to fall back on humor in uncomfortable situations, or when my emotions are getting the better of me. Anything to cut through that thick, tense feeling, I will do it. When I’m hurt or hurt someone else, my first reaction is anger, with myself, but it makes me tend to lash out, even if I regret it immediately after. I also am something of an empath. I struggle with being around other people for prolonged periods of time, and I tend to feel the things they’re feeling, cry when they cry, and would cut out my own heart to make things better for the people I truly care about. In addition to all that, (which I’m hoping seems familiar in the context of discussing this show and Dean Winchester) I love fried foods, classic rock, and muscle cars. I love quoting movies, make pop culture references, and I love to drive fast.
None of this is anecdotal, and I only outlined it to demonstrate that I understand Dean Winchester on a different level. Not that you don’t, if you do, but it does mean my view of the show and all of his relationships is colored differently for me. Same for Sam, when it comes down to it. Where Dean lived in different shades of grey (or pink and purple), Sam was the epitome of hetero-normative. He wanted a wife, a kid, a white-picket fence, and never looked twice at another man. Does that make him more or less than Dean? No, just a different character, with a different arc, as we ended up seeing in the final episodes.
The biggest thing I found and loved with this show, aside from being able to relate to Dean in so many ways, in spite of the number of losses over the years, was the found-family aspect. The brothers were orphans, in essence, and yet they had a network of friends and family who would, and sometimes did, lay down their lives for the brothers. I think it’s a wonderful theme and something I love to see in any show or novel I read. What’s that quote…? “Family don’t end in blood.” 🙂
That being said, this show was never going to end completely happy for everyone. It was set up from the beginning to be about love, loss, and living. It’s about being human, at its core, and having free will, the choice to say yes or no to anything that comes your way. Those same themes run through every episode, every season, and across every arc in all fifteen seasons. But over and above everything, this show was about the brothers, Sam and Dean. Yes, they had other loves and friends and family come and go from their lives, but it was always, always about the two of them. Would I have loved to have seen a different reunion for Dean when he got to heaven? Yes. Bobby is great, but he should not have been the one waiting for him there. Or at least, not the only one.
Which brings me to one final opinion to point out. If COVID hadn’t f*cked the world up, the final few episodes would have been completely different. I believe that, even if the showrunners never admit it. I think they were hogtied by the situation (travel limitations, health regulations, timelines, contracts, and the main actors all obligated to report to new jobs over a certain schedule) and it sucks, but it did change the final scenes we would have been able to see under any other circumstances. So, in my mind, it may always play out differently at the end, and I’m sure the same can be said for many of you who watched the show all the way to the bitter end. Does the way it ended take away from the show overall? Maybe a little, but my overall enjoyment of the show remains, no matter what.
So there you have it. I rambled on far longer than I thought I would, and if I lost you a few hundred words back, I don’t blame you. If you want to share your own thoughts or opinions, please do so. Like I wrote above, I love discussing books and shows like this, so feel free to reply.
I’ll be posting again soon with some other news, and publication links, but like I mentioned at the beginning, things aren’t flowing as well as they were. I’ll do my best though, so stick with me.
As always, take care and happy reading. Or viewing! 😀
Tamara Clarke 