Highway To Hell: Supernatural

By Jemiah Jefferson

Sam and Dean Winchester are insanely attractive twentysomething brothers who roam the back roads and byways of the United States, acting as de facto supernatural investigators and monster hunters. When they were still kids, demonic forces killed their mother, launching their dad John into a nomadic life of arcane study, occasionally interspersed with some good-old-fashioned buckshot-and-salt, silver-bullet battles for immediate survival. John Winchester trained his sons from childhood to be superlative badasses like him, and continue his quest to defeat the demon who stole away their normal lives, and any other demonic bad guys they run across.

The brothers drive around in a totally sweet black 1967 Impala, listening to the greatest hits of seventies and eighties classic and hard rock, living by their wits, sleeping in a different shitty motel room every night, squabbling, eating in diners, and, as is appropriate for any TV brothers, having each other’s backs. Spooks, demons, ghosts, and local law enforcement can’t keep a good team down, even if they’re severely annoyed with each other half the time, and genuinely scared of each other now and then. Add frequent use of impossibly hot young women in revealing clothes, a constant barrage of in-jokes and movie references, and at least one moment per episode of bloody, over-the-top gore, and you’ve got yourself a pretty damn entertaining television program.

Taken at face value, Supernatural is a fine monster-of-the-week, teenager-friendly adventure show that teaches the young a healthy appreciation for classic cars and classic rock. For the viewer who takes the time to watch more than an episode here and there, however, richer and more compelling themes arise which thread throughout the entire series.

Familiar obligation and the guilt that results whenever the individual tries to assert himself provide a lot of material for interpersonal drama. Dean, as the older, more grounded of the two, has a stronger connection to their father, and his stubborn nature keeps him from questioning or examining the motivations behind John Winchester’s goals and methods, even when the goals lead Sam and Dean into danger, and when subtler methods would be a better approach.

Sam, the more sensitive, psychically-gifted (or cursed) brother, actually tried to leave the hunter lifestyle, and have something like a normal life; in the pilot episode, he is in graduate school with the goal of eventually taking the bar exam and becoming a lawyer when Dean shows up in the middle of the night to drag him back into the fray. While Sam eventually gets his head back into the game, he is never quite able to completely shake the resentment he feels for having been robbed of his chance at happiness. Still, though, as Dean points out, Sam never did have a choice in the matter; he would never have been able to have a normal life. They are demon hunters; that’s what they do. The life chose them.

Later seasons explore the concept of free will versus the will of a distant and uninvolved god (the word’s still out about whether or not that’s a capital G god) as the mythology expands itself, delineating different ranks of demons, and later, different ranks of angels. The angels, perhaps taking a page from Neil Gaiman’s Sandman and Steven Brust’s novel To Reign in Hell, are far from being the good guys; they are just soldiers with their own jobs to do, and their own ways of doing them. The angel assigned to get involved in Sam and Dean’s path, Castiel, is one of the better, more fascinating characters on TV; not only is he extremely good-looking, he has a world-weary countenance that invokes Humphrey Bogart’s in his saddest and most doomed noir roles. Castiel is just as much of a sucker as Dean and Sam are, and has just about as much of a chance to make his own path. I mean, how do you give God two weeks’ notice?

While sometimes quite sad and dark, more than anything, Supernatural is a lot of fun. It’s designed to be like a mini-horror movie per week, and for sure, there are enough scary goings-on to satisfy any casual viewer. Sometimes the show ups the shock factor, providing shriek-worthy moments of bloodshed and brutality. Most of the time, though, there is plenty of snarky dialogue, compelling mystery, and intensely beautiful young women for the brothers Winchester to interact with. On top of all this, there’s regular recurring character Bobby, played by the wonderful Jim Beaver (who you may remember as Mr. Ellsworth on Deadwood), who acts as the oft-ignored voice of reason and general home base for the brothers. They can’t lean only on each other all the time, after all; sometimes, one of them is dead (even if only for a short while).

The upcoming fifth season of the program has been described by show creator Eric Kripke as “the fun apocalypse.” Were this any other show, I wouldn’t believe this description; but since it’s Supernatural, we can take this as the literal truth.