Supernatural Season 1 review

At Comic-Con 2005, I sat down at a panel to see the premiere of a new show on the WB. Truth be told, I was just waiting for the Veronica Mars panel to start, but I figured that a show about solving ghost stories might be fun, too. As I watched, I found myself mostly disappointed. While the mystery was interesting, and one of the lead characters was both gorgeous and sarcastic, it was my opinion that the mystery-of-the-week formula wasn’t going to work for very long. By the end of the pilot, however, I had changed my tune a bit -- the show managed to connect an event from the beginning of the episode to a later event, and thus a story arc was born. I decided to give Supernatural a shot after all, so long as Dean Winchester (Jensen Ackles) continued to be gorgeous and sarcastic and the arc kept coming back.

Throughout the first season of the show, I found myself more and more disappointed. What happened to that intense story arc? Why was Sam Winchester (Jared Padalecki) so whiny? And why was I supposed to care if they ever found Daddy Winchester (Jeffrey Dean Morgan)? While I continued to watch the series, I found myself letting TiVo hold onto it for longer periods of time. Even though each time I watched Supernatural I enjoyed it, the show never sustained my attention long enough to get me to the next week. The formulaic approach (brothers travel to city, find demon, battle demon, finally kill demon in an anti-climatic moment, usually involving rock salt) did nothing to make me want to tune in the next week.

This problem is exemplified by the fact that only yesterday, approximately three months after it originally aired, I watched the season finale. My friends kept telling me how great it was, and since I was out of new Doctor Who episodes, I figured I might as well give it a chance. As I watched, I tried desperately to care about the fate of the Winchester family. But I found, still, that I just couldn’t. Even though the season ended with a wonderful cliffhanger, I still don’t really care about the men. And I finally figured out why, despite the likeability of these characters, I just can’t be bothered to worry about them.

In a television age where programs such as Lost kill off a main cast member once or twice a year, we know the stakes should be high. However, Supernatural suffers because we, as viewers, can feel fairly certain that the main characters won’t be in serious danger -- there are, after all, only two of them. While Daddy Winchester might not make it to season two, I’m pretty sure that the folks over at the new CW aren’t going to mess with the brothers too much and risk the viewership the series does have. Essentially, there is no tension in the near-death experience the brothers have each week. And, even though the season ended with a bang, it still lacked the conflict needed to make sure I’m sitting on my futon September 28th watching the season premiere.

Lucky for them, Dean Winchester is still hot and snarky. So TiVo will at least be there, even if I’m not. But if they want to sustain viewers through season two, they should up the ante and add some new life to this dull drama.