When Exactly Did SPN Go From Being “Pretty Good” to “Great”?

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When Exactly Did SPN Go From Being “Pretty Good” to “Great”?


I’ll be the one to finally say it: Supernatural, which wraps up its fourth season this Thursday night, is a great and wildly underrated show.

The CW series about two monster-fighting brothers has probably always been better than it’s been given credit for, with solid scripts and good acting, impressive thrills, and cinematography that rivals many feature films.


But this last season, with its backdrop of the battle between the angels and demons and an inner conflict between Sam (Jared Padalecki) and Dean (Jensen Ackles), it’s gone from being “pretty good” to “great.” When measured against the best fantasy-themed television of all time, it might even be approaching Buffy or Xena territory.

And yet, despite an enthusiastic fan base, Supernatural has gone mostly unappreciated in the industry and in the wider pop culture landscape.

Some of this is, no doubt, due to the genre. With a few exceptions (such as The Lord of the Rings), even the most sublime genre projects almost never get the respect they deserve.

And let’s face it: monster or horror-themed projects are often considered the lowest of the low-brow, necessarily exploitative, even within genre circles.

But part of the problem is Supernatural’s own damn fault. The show has always been “good,” but it’s gotten so much better this last season that it’s probably taking some time for the deserved respect and accolades to catch up with it.

From the start, Supernatural was obviously a quality show. But it sure didn’t seem to be breaking any new ground: it was a buffed-off Buffy retread, or a TV knock-off of the recent movie trend of “auteur” horror, or maybe just another excuse for the CW to feature more pretty boys.



The first season’s arc, establishing the major themes of the show, was fine, if unexceptional. But the second, all-too-earnest season spent the whole year promising an “apocalypse” if the gate to hell was opened.

Well, the gate was opened, but the apocalypse never really happened. Sure, there were consequences, but this viewer had the definite sense that the writers had bitten off more than they could chew.

The third season, which Dean lived as if he only had a year to live (because he did!), was much better, and ended with the terrific cliffhanger of Dean in hell. But the season also had a rushed, sometimes muddled quality — no doubt due to the writers’ strike, which required that the filmmakers lop off six episodes mid-way through production.

But then came this latest, glorious season.

Sam and Dean’s involvement in the epic battle between angels and demons is everything that season 2 promised, and more. There is a coherency to the dramatic back-drop (as well as a deserved sense of mystery), and there’s a well-earned sense that the stakes are real, and that they’re sky-high.



Most daring of all, the creators of Supernatural have created a primary dramatic conflict that has been dropped right in the middle of the show’s core: the relationship between Sam and Dean.

The world must be saved, but Sam and Dean have very different ideas on how best to do it. And not only do they both think the other is not only dead-wrong, they think the other guy is too weak to pull it off anyway!

There’s always been tension between Sam and Dean, but nothing like this.

Imagine how this might have gone over when the showrunners pitched this storyline to the network executives at the CW: “We’re going to take the two beloved characters at the center of our show and make them hate each other — and spend the whole season building to a chilling moment where they beat each other up!”

But by choosing to really “go there,” Supernatural has absolutely hit its artistic apogee. And why wouldn’t it? As much as we care about saving “the world,” what viewers care most about it, of course, Sam and Dean. If the creators wanted to get us to sit up and really pay attention, threatening that relationship is exactly the way to do it.

They’re not the first show to discover the artistic benefits of such an “internal” conflict. Ironically, Buffy and Xena also hit their artistic strides (in the fifth and sixth seasons, and third and fourth seasons, respectively) when, after seasons of cataclysmic external obstacles, the main characters finally had to confront the most difficult challenge of all: what happens when you fundamentally disagree with the person you love?

The problem, of course, comes after these ultimate “interior” conflicts are resolved; both Buffy and Xena struggled, not very successfully, to find story arcs that were as engaging as this – the genre version of “What do we do now that Sam has slept with Diane?”

Will Supernatural be able to avoid these post-artistic-triumph doldrums? Who knows? But for right now, the Golden Age of Supernatural has arrived. Let’s all enjoy.






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