I saw a
post about this television show I watch called Supernatural on The Internet
today that made me angry and annoyed, which turned into me looking up other
things on The Internet about this show that annoy me and start a vent session
in my head and then suddenly I remembered something.
I don’t
just have to vent in my head, I have a blog. That I rarely ever utilize. Let me
utilize it for a vent session about this show that I both hate and adore.
So this is
my love hate blog on a CW show called Supernatural.
I think
most people have at least heard of this show (Lord knows if you know me, you’ve
heard plenty about it) but if not, allow me to provide a brief description.
Supernatural,
boiled down, is a show about two brothers, Sam and Dean, who travel around the
continental U.S. hunting down general evil things such as monsters and demons
and the like who are pestering or killing humankind. In the first season, John,
the father of the brothers, goes missing while searching for a demon that
killed the boys’ mother, and Dean and Sam team up after several years apart to
find him, and along the way, help people who have encountered evil in various
forms.
That is the
show I fell in love with.
I fell in
love with Dean Winchester, the older brother, who is protective of his brother
Sam to a fault, willing to do literally anything to keep his brother from harm.
I fell in
love with Sam Winchester, who was raised by his older brother Dean, and looks
up to him and loves him even when he can’t stand him.
I fell in
love with the relationship between the two brothers, how they bicker just like
normal siblings, how they tease and make fun of each other, how they depend and
rely on each other for everything because they are pretty much all the other
has.
These two
characters Sam and Dean have become my best friends in a way that only
fictional characters can. I have obsessed over their lives, writing too many
fanfictions to count about them, read too many fanfictions to count about them,
imagined on a regular basis what it would be like to travel around with them
and hunt monsters with them, and just in general fallen in love with these two
brothers.
I applaud
the writers of this show for taking the time in the earlier seasons to develop
these two characters, revealing little by little who they are and what they
have been through. And I applaud the writers for the small, subtle things they
do in the later seasons that give us character development.
But therein
lies the problem.
Fictional
characters should be constantly evolving, just like real life human beings.
They should change and learn from their mistakes just like real life human
beings. This is how we relate to the characters, how they become real for us.
And yet the
writers of the show insist on having Sam and Dean make the same mistakes in
season 9 as they made in season 1. Or we see character development and get so
excited only for the development to seemingly be forgotten in the very next
episode.
Someone on
The Internet made the best and worst comment summing up the development of
Supernatural the other day: “This episode again mentioned the great water
pressure of Sam and Dean’s new bunker. Meaning the water pressure in
Supernatural is the most consistent thing in the entire series.”
In no better
way is this proved than in Dean Winchester’s sex life.
From season
one, the viewers are aware of Dean’s promiscuity, of his jumping from bed to
bed, of his hitting on quite literally any girl that comes his way. This is who
Dean is. Or so we think.
About
halfway through season one, the viewers learn that Dean in fact was in a
committed relationship for a time when Sam went off to college. He was so
infatuated with this girl that he even told her the “family secret” about
hunting monsters, a thing that it is inferred he has never, ever done before.
And we also learn that this girl broke his heart and dumped him. Meaning that
yes, Dean Winchester can in fact have a serious relationship.
After this
episode, I, being drawn in to an obsession with this show, began to think about
why Dean hops into bed with numerous women. And it occurred to me that he never
was told not to.
Dean and
Sam’s father, John, was incredibly absent from their lives as kids, dumping
them at hotels alone for days on end to hunt for a demon that killed their mom,
leaving a very young Dean to take care and raise Sam. Through different
flashbacks in different episodes, we learn that John was never there for Dean,
missing birthdays and Christmases because he was too busy hunting, leaving Dean
to raise not only Sam, but also himself. Dean never got a parent growing up; he
had to learn to be his own parent. The closest thing he had to a parent was
Bobby, a family friend who would occasionally watch the boys for John.
So did
anybody ever tell Dean how to behave like a gentleman? He certainly never saw
any examples of healthy couples: His mom died when he was four, and Bobby’s
wife died before Dean met her.
I’m not
excusing Dean’s multiple sex partner lifestyle – we all have a moral compass
that tells us right from wrong. I’m just pointing out that there are so many
reasons why Dean might have chosen this kind of promiscuity in his life.
But over
the seasons, I feel like we find out all these things about Dean’s love life,
and we realize there is so much more to him that just an a-hole who sleeps
around a lot. In one season, we even see him attempt to settle down with an old
girlfriend Lisa and become a father to her son. Lots of dramatic things happen
with that, and he ends up having all of their memories of him erased so they
can live a normal life. And we see how devastated he is that he has to do this
because he loves this family he’s formed.
And slowly,
season by season, we see Dean sleeping with less and less girls. We still see
him flirt, but we don’t see him jumping into bed quite as often. We see him
making more lasting relationships, like with Lisa, and even see him become
actual friends with girls (Charlie and Jodie).
What I took
from this is maybe sleeping around for Dean was a way of coping with things in
his life. He knew his dad would make him move around so much, so just having
casual sex was a way to avoid getting hurt by having to tell girlfriends
goodbye. Or maybe he was trying to prove to himself that he didn’t need people
since everyone, even his family, left him, so he didn’t need relationships, he
was fine with just sleeping around. But then, the less we see him sleeping
around, the more he becomes depended on real relationships with others. I don’t
think it’s going too far to say that Dean was learning to respect women more.
This, my
friends, is character development.
And then.
Randomly, in a recent episode, we see Dean have sex with a random girl,
basically out of nowhere. And the reason he has sex with this girl? Bad
writing. The writers wrote themselves into a corner, honestly, and needed Dean
to have random sex with this girl in order to continue the plot.
Not only
did Dean just have random sex with this girl, it was a girl who had taken a
pledge of celibacy for several years. And with a cheesy pickup line and a wink
from Dean, she forgets her vows and hops into bed with him. Dean knew she had
taken this vow, but he didn’t care. He wanted to have sex, so he did, without
thinking of anything but his groin. And after they had sex, the girl was never
mentioned again. Ever. Dean felt no remorse for what happened, and it was never
talked about again.
So after
nine seasons of character development, the writers destroyed everything.
The Dean I
had come to love and respect, the Dean I had seen change so much in his love
life, was gone in a heartbeat because the writers needed an out.
How is this
at all respectful to the character? How is this consistent? How is this fair to
Dean, let alone to me as a viewer?
I don’t
know of anything that disappoints me more as a writer than when writers are not
respectful of their own characters.
There is a
difference between having a character make a mistake and learning something
from it and bad, lazy writing.
And lately,
bad, lazy writing sums up Supernatural pretty well.
Don’t know
what to do with this one character? Let’s just kill him and say it’s to advance
the plot. (I will never, ever get over Kevin Freaking Solo’s death. IT WAS THE
MOST UNNECESSARY CHARACTER DEATH IN THE HISTORY OF CHARACTER DEATHS.)
Don’t know
how to show the brothers have issues? Let’s just repeat THE SAME STORYLINE
WE’VE ALREADY COVERED FOUR TIMES of having Dean so utterly dependent on Sam he
does whatever it takes, regardless of Sam’s desires, to save him. (Hey,
writers, remember in season two when an overarching theme of the whole season
was when Dean told Sam that what was dead should stay dead?)
Don’t know
how to show Cas is trying to figure out being human? Let’s just have him jump
into bed with a girl for honestly no reason whatsoever.
Don’t know
how to bring in more viewers? Let’s just give the show a weird religious
agenda, amp up the violence, and hope for the best.
Allow me a
moment to state that my favourite episodes have always been the funny ones,
ones where Sam and Dean encounter a monster who is turning a town into a
literal Looney Toons cartoon town, complete with falling anvils and dorky sound
effects. The ones where Dean dies 108 times because they accidently end up in a
Mystery Spot town, and Sam gets stuck in a loop where Dean dies every day in a
Groundhog Day esque style episode, and Dean dies in the most hilarious,
outrageous ways possible. The ones where Dean gets transported to 1940 and
discovers his inner fan girl for ganster policemen and nice suits. The ones
where the only witness to a murder is a dog, so Dean takes a potion that turns
him into a dog for 24 hours and hilarity ensues.
These
episodes prove the writers know how to write comedy. But lately they just seem
to refuse to do so, rather writing about things like nuns becoming demons or
angels turning evil and murdering priests.
If I wanted
to watch scary religious things, I’d just watch The Exorcist.
And let’s
not forget Dean’s drinking problem.
Remember
how I spent the majority of this blog talking about Dean’s love life? There’s
also the issue of his drinking problem too.
I think Sam
said it best in like season five: “No premarital sex and no alcohol? Dean, this
town’s just cut out like 80 percent of your character traits.”
Over the
seasons, we saw Dean’s drinking get worse and worse. The writers made an effort
to point it out to us, proving time and time again that Dean dealt with
problems by drinking and having sex. It was hammered into our heads that Dean
was an alcoholic.
And then
Sam and Dean found themselves an established home in season eight. They found
out they were Men Of Letters and found the abandoned Men Of Letters Bunker and
moved in.
They had a
home, something Dean hadn’t truly had since he was four years old.
The writers
made a point to show us how important this was to Dean, having him unpack and
move into his own room, setting up pictures of his family, getting on Sam for
not making his room feel homey.
In the
first season, we saw Dean sleeping in his boxers and T-shirt, but as the show
progressed, we would see Dean sleep fully clothed, even with his shoes on, a
gun under his pillow. But when they moved into the Bunker, the writers made a
point to show us a sleeping Dean in his boxers and T-shirt again, even have a
scene with him making coffee in the morning in a robe.
They made a
point to show us Dean drinking coffee, not alcohol. We saw him cook dinner for
Sam, even going so far as to have Dean say in one episode that he was “nesting”
and liking it. We see him having a beer with his homemade burger, as if to say
he drinks a beer with dinner, not twenty beers to drink away his sorrows.
And then.
As if
because the writers weren’t sure what else to do, they wrote in Dean getting
the Mark Of Cain, a special weapon that would allow him to kill one of the main
baddies of the season. The Mark began to take over him. And how did we see it
begin to take over him?
We began to
see him drinking again.
After all
this time, after all the things the writers intentionally showed us to prove he
was better, Dean begins drinking again.
And not
just drinking.
It’s like
all of the sudden, his alcoholism is back in full swing. We see him drink an
entire bottle of vodka (or some kind of alcohol) in basically one sitting.
To some
extend, I understand what the writers were doing. They were trying to show how
the Mark was changing Dean, that it was corrupting Dean. They were showing how
Dean was letting it because he was willing to go through any kind of self
mutilation in order to rid the world of a bad baddie.
But
writers, I want to scream, we established that back in season 4! And again in
season 6! And again in season 8! And remember that one season where Dean went
to Purgatory and was basically okay with it?
Why must we keep rehashing the same
story lines over and over and over again?!?
Don’t even get me started on the
sexism on the show, how the writers think good writing is killing off or
getting rid of literally every single love interest for both Sam and Dean.
Before Lisa, Dean had a sort of thing for this one awesome girl hunter named Jo
Harvelle. But heaven forbid we allow Meagan’s ultimate OTP live – we must kill
Jo now!
And don’t get me started on side
characters, which the writers also seem to think is synonymous with dying, even
if their deaths are THE STUPIDEST, MOST OBVIOUS EXAMPLE OF LAZY WRITING IN
EXSISTENCE, cough Kevin cough. Let’s just list a few side characters that I
have been in love with over the seasons who the writers have killed off: Benny,
Samandriel, Death (yes, Death was a character and he was awesome), Anna, Jo,
the entire Harvelle family, Bobby, Kevin, John, Bela, Adam, Chuck, Gadreel,
Balthazar.
Just to name a few.
Yes, there are more I could name.
So here’s what all this ranting and
raving has ultimately been about: I love Supernatural because the writers have
an uncanny ability to create characters that are wonderful and complex.
Seriously, do you know how hard it
is to write a character that is a human turned vampire pirate who loves killing
baddies in Purgatory but when he comes back to earth he is sweet and kind and
steals blood from blood drives because he wants to find a way to be “human”
because he saw what being true to his vampire ways did to his once girlfriend?
Do you know how hard it is to write this kind of character without it being as
cheesy as it sounds when I write the description? Do you know how hard it is to
write any “vegetarian vampire” character without it sounding like Edward
Cullen? Benny was only in six episodes, but my love for that character is so
strong it’s up there on the list with Sherlock Holmes.
So I watch this show because of
these characters, because they have come alive and become my friends, and I
don’t know how to abandon my friends.
But the way Supernatural has been
going, especially this past season, I might have to see my friends in
fanfiction form only.
When writers of fanfiction handle
character development and respect for the characters better than the actual
writers of the show, you know something has gone terribly, terribly wrong.
Whew.
That was a mouthful.
Sorry not sorry.
