Supernatural Review

I have been intrigued by the paranormal for most of my life. When I heard about a new TV show on the WB called simply, "Supernatural", my ears immediately perked up. What? A show about one of my favorite subjects? Say it isn't so!

I read the premise online and was immediately curious. So what if the actors were not ones I knew well, or the creator.... Everyone starts somewhere,right? When they announced that the pilot episode would be streamed on Yahoo one week before it aired on television, I decided to get a jump and watch early.

I was hooked in the first five minutes. 

I've been hooked ever since.

This show had and still has everything I've been searching for in my television shows: humor, shock, drama, horror, mythology, music, pop culture references, and let's admit it, two good looking main characters.

But if all they had going for them was looks, I'd have tuned out seasons ago. Jensen Ackles (Dean Winchester) stepped into a character that, at first glance, is very much the stereotypical "Han Solo"-esque "guy". He's brash and sometimes crude. He likes classic rock, a cold beer and a warm woman. And pie. Don't forget his pie. He's a soldier in a war, ready to kick demon butt and take names. The guy who sleeps with a knife under his pillow and one eye open.

But over the course of four (now going into five) seasons, he's developed into a complex character. This is the man who would lay down his life for anyone, but especially for his brother. In four years, we see that under that armor of leather and bravado lies a man who was forced to grow up hard and fast, his childhood lost in a string of new schools, demon hunting and, sometimes, poverty and neglect.

In comparison, Jared Padalecki (Sam Winchester) starts out the clean-cut, "aw shucks" upwardly mobile law-student to be. The black sheep of a family that lives largely "off the radar", he leaves home to live his version of a "normal life". It doesn't last. Padalecki grows into the character as the character himself grows. The Sam Winchester at the end of Season Four would surely not be recognizable to the one who appeared in that first pilot episode.

As solo actors, each has a feel for the depth of his character, but as a duo, the two have a chemistry and real-life friendship that carries over into their on-screen brotherhood. Combined, the two play well off each other, in a way that would lead many to believe they truly have known each other all their lifetimes, rather than a few short years.

Adding in the work of Jeffrey Dean Morgan as their father in early seasons, the duo becomes a trio that heats up the screen with long-simmering anger and resentments. Removing the occult mythology that drives the show's initial premise, you can still find them a believable, though broken, family - one that still struggles to relate to each other over twenty years since the event that damaged it to begin with.

Each season "ups the stakes" from the season before, and it's no doubt Season Five will be much the same. What was once a "Monster of the Week" with a loose connecting storyline has become a complex story of epic good vs. evil proportions - and it's difficult at times, much as in real life, to tell on which side a person genuinely lies.

Add to this a soundtrack of songs that are instantly recognizeable, and often deeply entwined lyrically with the action. 

It's not a show that is for the faint of heart. It is, after all, at heart, a horror/paranormal series. But, if you are wiling to give it a shot, it could very well be the show you enjoy most every week. After all, it's in an unenviable position - a lesser known network, in a time slot that puts it directly against the two most-watched shows every week.

And yet, it's still here. Five years later. If anything speaks for the quality of this show, let it be that. It's still here.