Supernatural Virgin Diary – And so we begin

Considering how little “new” television the summer brings, I always enjoy participating in CliqueClack’s Virgin Diary series. I generally try to take on two shows, one more serious and one less so. This summer, I’m watching Supernatural – and The Wire, but that starts next week.

Like most of the shows I eventually tackle for the Virgin Diaries, I actually tried Supernatural when it premiered, but didn’t last past the first episode. From the opinions of my friends, it sounds like what I found to be a fairly formulaic “crime” fighting drama evolved into something with a much deeper mythology, which is right up my alley. Each Thursday, I’ll attempt to knock out about four episodes – though that number will go up or down based on all types of factors (It is the summer after all).

I hope the show lives up to everyone’s recommendations – especially Deb’s, who caught up on Supernatural a few years ago by doing her own Diary of a Supernatural Virgin!

“Pilot”

Everything I remember about not liking the Pilot was still there, except this time the memory of how much I disliked Jensen Ackles from his time on Smallville the previous TV season didn’t weigh so heavily. In fact, I liked Dean a great deal more than Sam: one was badass, and one was a whiner.

It’s always fascinating to look back at shows from ten or so years ago and look at their guest stars. I’m sure I’ll get a chance to talk about Adrianne Palicki later, but there was also a post-Alias and pre-Life Sarah Shahi as the Woman-In-White. But if you were paying very close attention, you might have caught one of my favorite guys from Stargate: Universe, Jamil Walker Smith, as Sam’s buddy from the bar.

“Wendigo”

I wondered how long it would take for Sam and Dean to let finding their father be only one of their goals. Using his journal as kind of a Wikipedia for ghoul hunting, driving the countryside looking for evils to fight kind of has this The Incredible Hulk/A-Team vibe that really works. I’m sure that the show’s deeper mythology will be explored as time goes on, and while I’d rather skip ahead to that, a show like this has to establish its universe first.

I hope I’m not spending a paragraph on guest stars each episode, but “Wendigo” required a follow up. Of course there was the Battlestar Galactica contingent in Callum Keith Rennie and Donnelly Rhodes. Harper’s Island fans will even recognize Gina Holden. But only the most talented guest star hunter would have caught Glee’s Cory Monteith as the first guy the Wendigo killed.

“Dead in the Water”

One of the things that has interested me the most so far about this season is the family politics of the Winchester brothers. As much as Sam tried to escape his family’s history by going to Stanford, that history chased him there and killed his girlfriend – the same way that his mother was murdered.

But it was Dean whose “family” connection was greater in this episode. I know he’s not that much older than Sam, but you get the feeling that he played surrogate father quite a bit while Daddy Winchester was out hunting. He may have been awkward with Lucas, but it was interesting to see that dynamic play out. Dean has quickly emerged as a much more interesting character than Sam in my eyes; things like this are the reason why.

Agents Ford and Hamill? Yeah, that Star Wars reference didn’t pass me by. Almost as good as Amy Acker character’s line about Dean “finding his way to a pickup line.”

“Phantom Traveler”

It didn’t take long for me become frustrated with one-off ghoul-of-the-week cases. One of the things I’ve always been interested in is the mythology of the show. I get bored easily with stories that don’t really seem to be a part of a greater arc (This is why I struggled with shows like House and Grimm).

The possessed co-pilot’s comment about knowing how Sam’s girlfriend died was interesting. This seems to indicate that there is some time of connection between the ghouls across the country. That could be something as simple as a little gossip between evil friends, or it could mean something deeper: interconnectivity on a much greater scale.

And there was the bit at the end of the episode. Sam and Dean now know that their father is alive, or was alive, recently enough to have changed his voicemail message. That’s good in that it adds an additional – more reasonable – source for the boys to get their cases as well as giving them hope that they can still rescue their father.

Clacked by Ivey West
on May 31, 2012 @ 13:00 EST5EDT