Several years ago, I wrote a blog post about grief and bridging the gap between feeling too much and not wanting to think about it with popular culture. Following my first wife Cathy’s passing, that bridge was The Gilmore Girls. Don’t judge me until you read it for yourself.

As Sonya’s health declined last year, I found a lot of old feelings bobbing to the top of the water again: rage, helplessness, bitter disappointment, self-recrimination, and that perennial favorite, good old “waiting for the other shoe to drop” dread. A lovely salad of stuff I’ve still not completely processed…oh, and if that wasn’t enough, the guilt of feeling like I hadn’t taken good enough care of my dog—make that, mine and Cathy’s dog.

Thankfully, the situation was very different this time around. Janice grieved with me. She and Sonya got on great, and there were many days when Sonya would have rather dealt with her than with me. Janice was in the room with me. I wasn’t alone, then or now. We’ve had lots of talks, reminiscences, and shared stories with each other.

It was that healthy response to what we were feeling that allowed me to let go of Sonya a lot sooner. I was able to work through a lot of those negative feelings—which I know are all pretty much bullshit, okay? But when you’re battling depression, it’s hard to see past your own self-inflicted wounds and realize there’s nothing out there that can hurt you as deeply as you can hurt yourself.

That’s why I prefer a hard reset, especially when my thoughts go into a spiral. That reset involves cramming something else into my brain, like filling a shipping box with packing peanuts, until the lid is hard to close. In late 2020, it was seven seasons (plus a reboot) of Gilmore Girls. In 2023, it was Supernatural.

Another tentpole series from WB/CW—and I’d argue the most important one—Supernatural lasted a total of 15 seasons. In genre years, that’s 105 years of normal television.  For those of you who don’t know about the show for whatever reason, here’s the elevator pitch: two brothers from a family of monster hunters team up to go look for their monster hunting dad, who went missing, and in doing so, take over the family business: hunting monsters.

It’s simplicity itself, this pitch: The Monster of the Week premise is a time-honored tradition, going back to The Night Stalker, The X-Files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and so many others—including some shows from the days of radio. If you’re reading this post, you’ve probably got a favorite show or two in mind. I love shows like this. Why, then, you may find yourself asking, didn’t I watch it when it was on the air the first time?

I missed out on the first two seasons because of Robert E. Howard. In 2005, I was researching and writing the first edition of Blood & Thunder, and in 2006, I was doing a lot of promotion for the author’s Centennial Celebration, and this was after I’d moved to North Texas to work on acquiring the theater. There was a lot going on, and I didn’t watch a lot of TV for a few years. When I’d emerged from my self-induced cocoon, Supernatural was a going concern. I know this…because of the fans.

Dear God.

I’m reluctant to align myself, however obliquely, with a group of people who seem to be in the midst of a schism break, wherein they can’t determine the actor from the role they are playing. That’s a thing that goes all the way back to the 1960s, by way of Harlan Ellison in his book of essays about television called The Glass Teat. He recounts an anecdote told to him by Dan Blocker, from the show Bonanza, about being recognized on the street by people who called him Hoss Cartwright and would ask him what he was doing so far away from the Ponderosa Ranch. And when gently corrected that his name was Dan and Hoss was just a character he played, they’d reply that they know that, and then go right back into talking at him like he’s a cowboy. TV is weird like that.

Lots of people I knew—and still know—are/were/remain dedicated, nay, devoted, fans of the show. Now, I’m not going to generalize here, because they aren’t all women, but the majority of the fans of the show that I know just happen to be women. Not necessarily a red flag, you understand, but it was the way in which the characters of Sam and Dean Winchester, played by Jared Padelecki and Jensen Ackles respectively, were discussed, in language and terminology that very closely resembled the Team Edward/Team Jacob bullshit from the Twilight movies. When coupled with all of the bumpers that WB/CW produced for the show, wherein the two Winchester brothers stood, brooding, as fake thunder and lighting rained down around them, and then the show would cut to some stuntman dressed as a monster, baring his/her fangs, Hammer Horror style, and then smash cut to the two of them brooding in a scene together, well, what the hell was I supposed to think? I’m not a teenage girl. That might have been the directive for the network, for all I know: “Look, how ‘smoldering’ can you make our stars? We need everyone who watches the show to start ovulating.” Twenty years ago, there was no way in hell I would have watched any show like that, regardless of genre, if you had a gun to my head. In 2023, thank you sir, may I have another?

Full transparency, here: I had previously watched a few, random, scattered episodes of the show, most significantly the animated cross over with You-Know-Who (or maybe you don’t and that okay, I’ve not ruined anything for you; Netflix, however, will, if you look at the list of episodes). Isolated, and in a vacuum, I was bemused, but nothing else, really. You can’t watch a show like that and start in the middle of season 13 and expect to get any of the references or in-jokes.

Now that I’m twelve seasons in, I think I’ve got enough of a handle to write a few things down about this venerable series. I don’t know how spoiler-y it’s gonna get, so be warned. I’ll try to give you a heads up.

My Supernatural Critique
The first six episodes are a slog. It’s all about setting up the premise and that makes the show about as uncluttered as it ever gets. By the end of the first season (and these are old school “seasons,” 22 episodes, 45 minutes long), the hook is set and the big storyline that series creator Eric Kripke envisioned (that would take a lot of dips and dives and eventually end with season five), was off to the races. If you weren’t on board for that, you aren’t likely to jump on later.

Early in my binge, I was struck by how cleverly the series was produced and filmed. For wont of a larger budget, every angel is a person, and we never see their wings until they die, at which point they leave a burn mark in the shape of massive feathers. When they take off, there’s a quick cut to whomever they were talking to, followed by a “whoosh-flap” sound, and then the angle cuts back and we see they are gone. Smart. When hell hounds are introduced, they are portrayed as invisible. I love the hell hounds. They are legitimately terrifying. Lots of gore in the early seasons.

I’m not going to bother tallying up the death toll for the main characters, which eventually expands to include Misha Collins as an angel named Castiel and Mark A. Sheppard as a demon named Crowley. I’m also not going to bother with the number of world-ending apocalypses the brothers Winchester managed to stave off, put down, or keep at bay. It’s not worth counting. Suffice to say, these boys have seen some shit.

What completely won me over was the fact that the writers of the show were clearly my age, and every one of the references that comes out of the Winchesters’ mouths was an in-joke, snarky, Generation X-oriented dig. You first notice it when they play FBI agents to get into the crime scene, a schtick they do a LOT, and every time, their names change. One day, it’s Agents Plant and Page. The next day, it’s Agents Criss and Frehley. Jagger and Richards, Anthony and Roth, and so on, and so on. There’s not a classic hard rock band that doesn’t get a shout-out, and then some. When they deviate from that pattern, it’s like finding a unicorn in your backyard, and when you instantly get the reference, it feels like someone on the other side of the screen is sending you a little note in math class that says, “Yo, what’s up”

Not content to just say some names, the show also features some timely and timeless needle drops—not quite Scorsese or Tarantino, but still well-executed and always prescient. They make great use of the song, “Carry On, Wayward Son,” and of course, you will hear Thin Lizzie’s “The Boys are Back in Town,” because come on, these things write themselves at some point.

There’s more Gen X snark to be had, as well. Everyone on the show ends up with a nickname or two, or three. It’s their way of lightening the tension. These references are sometimes universal and sometimes so bloody specific that there’s no way a fifty-year-old man ought to be writing dialogue for a teenage girl who just saw her parents murdered by werewolves. But that’s what we have, and it’s pretty wonderful to witness. I can’t possibly remember them all, but my absolute favorite is the nickname Crowley gives the brothers. Padalecki is tall, as in, really tall, not “tall for an actor” tall. Owing to his height, and I suspect also a bit of his disposition, Crowley takes to calling him “Moose.” Ackles, of course, becomes “Squirrel.” Cracks me up every single time. Oh, and when Dean calls Crowley and he looks at his phone to see who it is, the name that comes up is “Not Moose.” This is very much like Lorelei and Rory’s dialogue in Gilmore Girls, too. I think that, while Millennials are featured in both shows, they were written by and for Generation X and all of the pop culture trappings we manage to drag through life every day.

The writers and the actors end up being very self-aware and not afraid to lean into the “Fan Favorite” designation, even as they waste no time in commenting on some fan’s more excessive behaviors several times, and very pointedly, at that. The first such episode is within the first five seasons, so it was a thing right out of the gate. It seems the fictional Sam and Dean are as skeeved out by slash fiction between the Winchester Brothers as any normal person in the real world. They break the fourth wall, speak in euphemism designed for the audience at home and no one in the scene, and it’s pretty obvious they are having a ball doing it. And yeah, the main characters do smolder, and glare, and glint, and brood, and look concerned with furrowed brows. But then the actor playing Castiel, Misha Collins, gets possessed by Lucifer, played by character actor Mark Pelligrino, and immediately drops his “angel voice” and starts imitating Pelligrino’s mannerisms and speech patterns exactly.

Supernatural is an idea cauldron. It’s a scratch pad for people who have these great concepts that they can throw out and develop gradually, as the fans wish. They play with the nature of demons, and they find a way to make vampires somewhat fresh, and while I don’t like how they portray werewolves in the show (think Henry Hull in Werewolf of London, only with less hair), I think their set-up for ghost hunting is pretty cool. Their use of folklore is extensive. At some point, we get to see that there was a monster-hunting secret society, about which I will not speak, because it ends up being a big part of later seasons, but man, is it cool. Some of their brilliant ideas go nowhere except to the end of the particular episode, and that’s also quite cool. Not everything is a recurring character.

Having said that, there’s an awful lot of recurring characters. It’s both a strength and a weakness, because so many of the supporting cast and guest-stars they run into are more interesting and engaging than the brothers, and that makes for high comedy, but also, a break from the brooding. Some characters end up in the rotating roster, and many of your favorites are going to die—and maybe horribly, at that. Welcome to the show, newbie.

I honestly don’t know how they kept it up all those years. Some seasons are better than others, which is part of the whole episodic TV experience to begin with. But I found as I watched the show, initially in the background, and eventually with intention, that there are enough constants and arcs and character development that plays out—maybe not so much with Sam and Dean, who swap places on the master plot sheet several times. First Dean is in trouble, then Sam has an existential crisis, then Dean has a thing they have to take care of, and to fix it Sam does something stupid that will take most of next season to address, and on and on and on. And the best way to kick that main plot point down the road a ways is to have Broody McBroodface turn to his brother and go, “I’m fine! I don’t want to talk about it.” And then they sit in a car for five hours. It’s just like life, y’all.

The fans kept the show alive. They hosted Supernatural-only conventions and the stars came out to be guests. They did San Diego ComiCon, and you know what that’s like. It was the fans that beat the drum, and the show responded in kind. Mind you, I still think that the hardest of the hardcore fans are, well, slightly bonkers, to be honest. I’m mostly speaking about the fanfic writers who insist that there’s a subtext in every brooding glance, and they write about those instances with fervor and elan. My advice for those of you who don’t want to see any of that is to simply not google it. Ever.

I Told You That to Tell You This
My grief over losing Sonya was worse than I expected, because it was tangled up with Cathy and her death and some real emotional baggage that I’d inadvertently saddled my dog with. She was ill-equipped to cope with my damage. The last year and a half of our time together was fraught with…well, it was fraught. Let’s leave it at that. I tried my best to take care of her, and I feel like in some ways I failed. I don’t think that’s rational or accurate, but my egocentric depression doesn’t care about such trivialities, not when there’s pork rinds to eat and episodes of Supernatural to watch.

Incredibly enough, despite all of that angsty baggage in the show, I’ve been able to process some of my pain. The show makes me laugh, and when there’s a good episode on with a neat premise, it activates my creative center and pushes guilt and sadness and loss onto the back burner, where it will continue to simmer until it eventually boils away completely. Regardless, I find myself grateful for the distraction, and I would hesitantly call myself a fan of the show. Just don’t make me read the fanfic.

And it’s totally a coincidence that Jared Padalecki just happened to star in Gilmore Girls, too. I’d completely forgotten about him being Rory’s boyfriend until I stumbled across a still from the first episode and thought, “What the hell is Sam doing in Stars Hollow?” Maybe Luke is a changeling. It would certainly make some of the crap in Gilmore Girls seasons four and five a little less jarring.