"No, it’s exactly what you meant. You want to know what I confessed in there? What my greatest sin was? It was how many times I let you down. I can’t do that again" - Sam Winchester
So the show I am going to be talking about today is very near and dear to my heart, it is the only show I have watched from the very first season (I usually come in after I know a show will last because I'm am very sensitive when my favorites get cancelled). For the past 9 seasons I have tuned in and I am still in love with show, even as we are nearing the 10th season in October. This show, as mentioned above is Supernatural which airs on the CW network (which I am not usually a fan of). Supernatural is the story of two brothers who hunt all things that go bump in the night in order to save innocent people... at least that is the line they feed people. The truth is they are on a revenge mission to find the "thing that killed their mom" and then the "hunt" becomes all that they know. Before I really get into the show itself, I want to discuss how happy I am that it is still on the air. This show truly is amazing in my opinion, but the creator had planned out the show for 5 seasons and was afraid it would start to drag if it went on any longer (he was quoted as saying "like Smallville" another CW show, which really did drag), but due to the high ratings the network bought him out and kept the show on the air. The fifth season ended with Sam dead/not dead and Dean living with some girl he had spent one weekend with. Needless to say, I would have been devastated if the show had ended at that point.
While we are on that subject, lets just take a minute to talk about the women of Supernatural and how they never quite seem to last long. The very first women we see in the very first clip, dies in a fire, suspended from the ceiling. The next women we see, Sam's college girlfriend Jessica and she dies the same way. Next women we see is actually an evil demon who comes and goes. And it just goes on and on from there, Whatever reason they give, the females characters are always gone before long. The question is why is that? And the answer is actually pretty hysterical. The main fan base of the show is women, and apparently the idea of one of the two leading men having a long term female companion is too much to handle! I'm just going to run that by you one more time, the female fans of this show are so fanatical that even the thought that these two fictional characters could be happy in the long term with a woman that is not them, is just too much to bear to keep watching. The whole concept makes me laugh, not because I have not had celebrity crushes or anything (I mean have you seen the men on this show?), but I am not convinced that the only thing keeping me from dating them is that they have a girlfriend or their character has a girlfriend. There are plenty of other reasons like: we will never meet in real life, we possibly have nothing in common, they probably would not find me attractive, we may not have the same sense of humor, ect. However the two brothers, Sam and Dean, and the angel Castiel are really nice to look at.....
Now onto the fun stuff, the characters in the show. Obviously Sam and Dean are the main characters and the best, but the angel Castiel has certainly changed things in the show since his arrival. In the very first season the show had a bit of a "freak of the week" vibe which was really good. The show was more like a procedural than it was a drama, but it certainly evolved over that first season into the drama season that it is today. In the beginning the brothers, Sam and Dean, lose their mother in a horrific supernatural accident and the father begins to hunt these things, (ghosts, demons, ect.) and he drags these boys along with him as he goes and teaches them how to hunt these things from a very young age. So the entire first season is basically the boys searching for their father while he searches for the "thing" that killed their mother, known as the yellow eyed demon at this point. At the end of the season they find the YED and a way to kill him, but they do not succeed because they would have to kill John in the process and Dead refuses to allow this (which is what started my love affair with Dean). The season end with them in a car accident, which then opens the second season with Dean dying in the hospital. At the last minute Dean is saved by his father making the first demon deal of the series, his life for Dean's (which was the only time I liked their father John). The second season still has the freak of the week feel, but the death of John leads to a more angst driven season as they continue to try to kill the YED. What is most interesting to me about the second season is that Dean is finally on the revenge train to a certain degree. Before it was Sam and John when wanted to find the YED for revenge (for killing their girlfriend and wife respectively), but now Dean is trying even harder to find and kill YED. However unlike Sam, Dean is not willing to lay his life or anyone else's on the line for the sake of revenge which I think is a really beautiful aspect to Dean. It is noted throughout all the seasons that Dean is far more like his mother and it shows when we meet his mother over the seasons, She is kind and loving, despite her growing up as a hunter and her biggest wish was that her children would not grow up the way that she did (which John ruins and that is one of the many reasons that I hate him). I think the fact that there is far more Mary in Dean than John, and that is what makes him such a beautiful kind person and the character that is always morally right in this series.
Towards the end of season 2, Sam is stabbed and consequently dies. Throughout the series so far we have seen that the only thing that is keeping Dean going: protecting Sammy, not vengeance. So in the finale of Season 2, Dean bargains his soul to save his brother, which leads to the entire 3rd season being about Sam trying to save Dean. This season is very bittersweet because the entire season, until about 3 episodes before the finale, Dean is convinced that he is supposed to be dead anyway and there is not reason to try to save him (because doing so could kill Sam). So finally when Dean decides that he is worth saving, it is too late and he dies anyway. Also, throughout this season an evil demon named Ruby begins to weave her way into Sam's mind, but she doesn't really show her sinister self until season 4.
At the beginning of season 4, Dean obviously comes back to life and he is determined to figure out how he came back. This is when we meet Castiel and Angels are now a part of the Supernatural fandom. Throughout this season and season, the demons are trying to raise the devil, while the angels are trying to stop it, but the most important piece to this whole season is the development of Sam and Dean's character. We discover that Sam was sleeping with the demon Ruby while Dean was dead, the demons are successful in raising the devil, the YED killed Sam and Dean's mother (which started all of this) to make him into a vessel for the devil (because the devil did not have a corporeal body) and Dean is the vessel for Michael and the two of them need to allow these entities to use them as vessels in order to start the apocalypse. What was really cool about both of these seasons is you really see the brothers argue over what is right and what is wrong while the devil and the angels fight over what is right and what is wrong. And throughout the whole thing you are taken to this beautiful gray area where you really have to think and consider what you would do in those situations. With certain things, it is really hard to say one way or the other.
Seasons 6-9 and awesome, no doubt, but they are all stand alone seasons when each season there is a different goal, whereas the first 5 seasons all tied together at the end. I think of those 4, the season that had the most depth, was season 9, particularly the end of season 9. At the end of Season 8, there is this beautiful moment between the brothers where Sam confesses that after all the bad decisions he has made, he feels like he cannot do anything right in Dean's eyes and Dean tells him to just let go of the past. I cried so many tears. But at the beginning of Season 9 Sam is still dying so Dean tricks him into letting an angel take over his body in order to heal him over time. Midway though the season it turns out this angel is the not so nice variety and hijacks Sam's body. Then Sam and Dean have to fight and eventually forgive each other for the whole thing, and Sam has to find his will to live.
And then in the finale, something amazing happened. As much as I love Dean, I could not be more excited for Season 10. In every season, the roles of the brothers has been clear. Dean is the moral, kind, compassionate brother who is rough around the edges, while Sammy is the moody brother who always seemed to understand the monsters more than he should and ended up crossing the blurred lines so to speak. But now, Dean has come back..... as a demon! So the whole dynamic of the brothers is going to change, not only as individuals, but also between the two of them. There was a cure for being a demon that was introduced in Season 8, however I don't think that they will turn Dean back into a real boy right away. It seems like all of the strife and all of the previous seasons have been leading up to this moment, Dean's fears from season 3 of becoming a demon are coming true and Sam is going to have to be the moral compass for the two of them. I literally cannot wait to see how this new storyline unfolds in October!
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