by Garner » Sat Oct 14, 2006 11:47 am
I have watched the show since the start and like it quite a bit, but didn't think it was the type that would appeal to a lot here. I find it a very unusual show for today's TV as it is a male buddy show (brothers, but still...) and that is mildly rare (nowhere near as rare as say, Willow and Tara, a loving lesbian couple, but we won't get into that). I also find they have a slightly unusual pacing that is not the norm for TV shows right now, which I like quite a bit.
Here is the deal with the show, WARNING SPOILERS for season 1 and a bit for season 2 are included. Nothing grossly specific, except one major point that you should already know if you watched Amber's ep.
The idea is that Sam (Jared Padelicki from Gilmore Girls where he played Dean) and Dean (Jensen Ackles from Smallville. Having him be Dean is just messing with us, I swear) are brothers. Their mother was killed by some demon when Sam was 1-2 and Dean was maybe 6-8. The mother ended up on the ceiling, blood dripping down, and then burst into flames. Since that point the father John Winchester, an ex-Marine, probably Force Recon which is Marine special forces, started hunting supernatural creatures to find out what killed his wife and get vengeance on it. He compiled a journal while he did so, and ended up taking the boys along and eventually teaching them to hunt as well. Dean took to it very well, Sam didn't get along with his father well, and eventually wanted something more and left to go to school at Stanford, where he got a girlfriend and a more normal life.
The show started with Dean looking up Sam and telling him their father was missing, which hadn't happened before. They look for him, don't find him, solve a case and then Sam returns to college, only to have his girlfriend die in the same way as his mother. So he and Dean get back together to find their father and hunt what killed their mother and his girlfriend.
Along the way on the hunt they discover that John is alive, they actually find him midway through the season though he leaves because he feels the demon is also hunting them and they are safer apart, but they run back into him again later. It is discovered that Sam has some sort of psionic powers, low grade empathy maybe, object reading maybe, it isn't clear yet the exact nature of his powers, but the demon seems to want him and children like him for some unexplained purpose.
At the end of the last season they find the demon, aren't able to kill it, and Dean gets really badly injured. The father at the start of this season makes a deal with the demon to give it a gun that can kill anything (only 1 bullet left) and his life if it will save Dean, which it does and he dies. Sam and Dean do not know about the deal, and both are dealing with their Dad's death, badly, in their own ways.
By and large the show is hunt of the week style, where the brothers go to a place based on some odd death or disappearance, do some research on the critter, use their father's journal for information as well, and then confront it. Normally there are some nice twists of the "well it should be this and we need to do such and such," but it turns out to be that instead and something different is needed. The show tends not to forget what the brothers know about putting spirits to rest, they salt and burn a lot of bones and use a shotgun with rock salt that can sort of stun and disrupt ghosts a lot. The show reminds me a lot of early X-Files in that it is dark, sort of creepy, and self contained with some conspiracy (suprenatural not alien) going on in the background.
Oh, and they encountered vampires last season in a very cool episode and gave the run down on how their vamps work which is much different than normal and I liked it as something different.
I really like both actors, they play off each other well, and having a brother 3 years younger than me they get the brotherly interaction very well for two that really do like each other, instead of the "I hate my brother" routine. There are some holes here and there, but they prefer adventure and some action over anything else. Right now it is one of my favorite shows.
Garner
Amber makes a good vampire.
Thanks!
