Score: 8 (Out of 10)

SUPERNATURAL Episode 1-01 ("Pilot") Review

W hen the WB cancelled BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER in 2001 I was enraged, but told myself “at least there is still ANGEL” (BUFFY, of course, continued on UPN for two years after that before officially ending). After they cancelled ANGEL in 2004, a string of foul epithets was heard from my house, and I vowed never to watch the WB again. So when SUPERNATURAL showed up on the network in September of 2005, I was at first able to resist it’s siren’s call. But then the WB closed operations, resurrecting a few days later as a joint venture with equally defunct network UPN in a new station called CW. Along with all of their other shows aimed at the 18-34-year-old demographic, SUPERNATURAL moved to this new venue. This was enough to justify my hypocrisy, and I finally checked the show out.

Damn them. It’s no BUFFY or ANGEL, but it is pretty damned good. Now I have a new show to scratch monster-mashing itch, at least until they cancel this show. Luckily, the track record is to cancel the shows at the height of their popularity, right around the 100th episode. So hopefully we have a few more years before we have to worry about that.

SUPERNATURAL tells the tale of a couple of demon-hunting brothers looking for their missing father. However, since their father also went missing while hunting supernatural beings, the boys are traveling across the United States looking for signs of unholy activity, hoping that they will find their father’s trail. And since a supernatural creature also killed their mother, making them not-exactly fond of the otherworldly, this usually mean finding the source of said unholy activity and destroying it. While in this manner it is similar to BUFFY, SUPERNATURAL’s more episodic nature makes it more similar in presentation to a show like THE X-FILES, where though there is an overarching mythology tying it together, the individual episodes usually can stand alone without the viewer feeling too lost. Thus most of the season is set out in a “monster of the week” format, with a few “mythology” episodes that push the story forward scattered throughout.

The series’ pilot episode, named, appropriately enough, PILOT, starts off 22 years before the present day and tells us how the Winchester brothers got started on their crusade. When Dean was four and Sam was an infant, some kind of otherworldly force consumed their mother right before their eyes. Their ex-marine father, John (played by Jeffery Dean Morgan) was also present when this happened, and from that moment forward pledged his life to finding and destroying not only the demon that was responsible for his wife Mary’s death, but also any supernatural menace that he should come across in his crusade. He also raised the boys to recognize and battle such menaces, teaching them both how to defend themselves not only with weapons and their bare hands, but also with mystical rites and rituals. As such the boys lived almost like Spartan warriors, getting decapitation lessons along with their milk and cookies.

But now, 22 years after the death of their mother, things are a bit different. Sam (played by Jared Padalecki) wants a more normal life. He and his father had a falling out when Sam decided to go to college; John felt that Sam was abandoning the crusade, and told him that if he left for school to never come back. Sam took this to heart, and so when Dean (Jensen Ackles) comes looking for him two years later, he is trying to lead a normal life. He has a ridiculously perfect cookie-making, super-supportive hottie named Jessica(played by Adrianne Palicki) as a girlfriend, and is getting ready for an entrance interview to get into Stanford’s law program. Unfortunately, Dean is there with the dire news that their father has gone missing while on a “hunting trip”. Sam agrees to go help find his dad, but only on the stipulation that he is back in time for his interview the following Monday. Yeah, I’m sure that’s going to happen.

They trace their dad to Jericho, California, where we meet our first phantom menace, an entity that the boys call a Woman in White. A Woman in White is based off of a few different sources in myth and folklore, primarily La Llorona (“the crying woman”) from Mexico and the Vanishing Hitchhiker stories, which have been reported from various cultures all the way back to ancient times. You know the one: some guy picks up a beautiful hitchhiker in a white dress who gives some story for being out so late at night, and asks to be brought home. The driver then complies, but when he reaches the house, the girl has mysteriously vanished from his moving vehicle. When he goes to the house to ask about her, he finds out that the girl in question died years before along that stretch of road, and that it is, in fact, the anniversary of her death. Anyway, by combining the more or less innocuous story of the Vanishing Hitchhiker with the more diabolical tale of La Llorona, they have created an amalgamation that is perfect for the series, both familiar enough to be recognizable and exotic enough to be exciting.

This show works off of an overlying mythology that is both familiar and unique, and works exceedingly well. It is great that the Winchester boys can usually recognize what “class” of demon or spirit they are facing, and how to fight it; unlike Buffy, these boys don’t need some British guy to tell them what they are up against, since they’ve been learning about them their whole lives. What’s more is that in the trunk of Dean’s black 1967 Chevy Impala is an arsenal of weapons both supernatural and mundane, from pistols and shotguns to swords and silver blades. And how do they pay for all of this? Dean, who doesn’t really have what the government would consider an acceptable career path, has quite the collection of false identities, from driver’s licenses and credit cards to an impressive collection of fake badges, from FBI to Fish and Game. About the credit cards, Dean says: “All I do is apply for them. It isn’t my fault that they actually send them to me”. Regardless, this allows the boys the mobility to move around the country looking for their dad (and for things to kill), while still giving them the weapons and the resources to do so. While not necessarily feasible, it isn’t too outlandish and certainly works perfectly for the show.

The acting is universally pretty good. The brothers themselves are charismatic, with unique personalities that come out over the course of the show. Jared Padalecki as Sam is as believable is possible for an ex-demon-hunter-turned-college-student-turned-back-into-a-demon hunter. His character is more serious and sardonic, and is obviously the brains of the operation. Since Sam was too young to remember his mother, the fight isn’t as personal to him in the beginning, and is only with Dean in hopes of finding his father. Predictably, before the first episode is over, the fight becomes a lot more personal, and Sam “gets in the game”. Jensen Ackles, as Dean, is the more outgoing and charming of the two, and is both the show’s muscle and most of its comic relief. He is a drifter and a scoundrel by nature, never settling in one place, or with one woman. In counterpoint to Sam, he is more of the “shoot first, second and third, and never ask questions” type. His philosophy seems to be if you shoot it and it doesn’t drop, you must be using the wrong ammo.

However, if I have a complaint about the show, it is that it obviously descends from the WB. By that I mean that the cast is almost universally pretty, and the world they live in is a little too glossy. The boys are both handsome Generation X types, looking a little too pretty to have hunting demons their whole lives. Where are their scars? Not to be too clichéd or obvious, but wouldn’t Sam have worked better as the archetypical nerdy type, to set him in counterpoint to Dean’s rough-and-tumble n’er-do-well persona? This “too pretty for the subject matter” problem extends to the rest of the SUPERNATURAL world as well. Even the Woman in White is a silicone-enhanced stunner(played by Sarah Shahi), and her tattered white dress looks a little too much like a nice white wedding dress prop that they strategically ripped to make it look more “authentic”. They need to dirty the world up a little, and give it more of a “lived in” feel, to fit the dark storylines. This is a small gripe, and really isn’t that much of a detractor from the show’s quality. The special effects are especially well done, and there are no real moments when the CGI being used looks out of place or too fake, which is quite an achievement. The show uses a blend of computer and traditional special effects, and all are pretty believable.

All in all, SUPERNATURAL looks more or less up to the task of filling the void left by BUFFY and ANGEL, although the quality of the writing, while pretty good, is nowhere near the caliber of that done by Joss Whedon and crew. In some cases, there are plot holes big enough to drive the Impala through (such as the fact that everyone seems to believe that a couple of pretty boys in jeans and leather jackets, driving said Impala, are actually Federal Marshals, or FBI, or any other kind of official). But for the most part it is a clever, unique show with an intriguing plot and likable characters. And that will do… at least until they cancel it in the fifth season.