The TV series supernatural started back in 2005 and I watched it simply by chance and was very surprised by how good it was. It was something similar to shows like “The X-Files” but it was self aware. It knew the subject matter of monsters, vampires, and ghosts was silly and the characters pointed that out. The two brothers, Sam and Dean, went out each week helping some poor damsel in distress with her ghost or monster problem. Ultimately each season led up to a larger storyline and a final big baddie for the brothers to fight. By season three the larger story arc was becoming a very well developed war between heaven and hell with Sam and Dean right smack in the middle of it. In season 5 the war culminated in a final showdown between the Devil and the Angel Michael. Sam sacrifices himself in order to trap the devil back to Hell in a final moment of brotherly love. Dean survives to go live a normal life with a woman he was in love with. It was a perfect ending for the characters. Dean who always had the weight of the world on his shoulders and desired more than anything to have a normal life. Sam who always rejected the life of a hunter and left his family behind to attend school realizes family is everything and dies to protect his brother and the world. The series could, and should have, ended right there but it didn’t.
Series creator Eric Kripke left the show satisfied with the story he told for 5 seasons (as he should be) and handed the reigns over to new producers and writers who came in to soft reboot the series. Season 6 found Sam resurrected from Hell and Dean eventually pushes away his girlfriend to re-join Sam and be a hunter again. The show slowly became more about jokes than storylines and I found myself increasingly dissapointed in the episodes. The snappy one-liners that once so complimented the series darker storylines now become the focus of the series. It wasn’t nearly as good as it was the first 5 seasons but it was still entertaining.
At the end of Season 6 it started to look like the next big bad was going to be chthuhlu but that didn’t pan out. Instead we got a crappy race of creatures called Leviathan that were hell bent on making Americans fat and eating them. They’re leader was a walking parody of a Republican named “Dick” which led to Sam and Dean making Dick jokes the entire season. The Dick jokes got old about 2 episodes in. Dick was a boring villain and the Levithans plans got increasingly ridiculous as they were revealed each week. They were fattening up americans with food additives at fast food restaurants just so they could eat them. Then by the season finale they were trying to figure out a way to kill skinny people with fast metabolisms because they suddenly don’t like eating skinny people?!
The season finale was a mess of convenient things happening in the nick of time so the boys can kill the Leviathan and wrap up the season. With very few exceptions season 7 was a massive failure. The show was always funny but it used to know how to balance that with story. But season 7 became too meta for its own good and it lost a lot of what made it work well in the past. The Leviathan plot was too silly and ultimately dumb.
Amazingly season 8 begins this fall but I won’t be there to watch it. The show has lost the magic that made it work and I don’t want to watch it wimper and die. So long Supernatural. We had a lot of fun but its time to move on.
