| So this project is not actually a traditional rewatch like most people blog about because I've actually not watched Supernatural before. I got about six episodes in and then forgot to watch one week and just never remembered to catch back up. But tumblr, once again, convinced me to give it another shot. That and we needed something to take the place of Revenge. So I'm going to try an experiment and actually write this up like a rewatch blog. We'll see how this goes and how long it lasts, right now I'm only committing to the first season for now. I'll try to do two episodes per post. |
Pilot
It's pretty weird to see these guys so young, but that wears off pretty quick and you end up along for the ride. The pilot is a little weird for me to watch because I have such patchy information about what happens later. So I ended up annoying my best friend by asking her a ton of weird questions.
It's great to see a pilot that really works. We meet the characters, we establish their personalities quickly, we reveal their history (at least as much as we need). We give them a long standing goal (find their father/figure out what killed their mom).
We even establish Sam perfectly as our reluctant hero, and give him motivation to go on the quest. I mean, you know even without knowing anything about the show that Sam isn't going back to law school. But you have to give him the reason WHY. Also, whoever came up with that visual of the woman on the ceiling catching on fire? Two gold stars for you.
One thing I loved was that right off the bat the show was willing to use more obscure mythology and dig into other supernatural phenomena for the stories. This more than almost anything sold me on it, we didn't jump straight to standard ghosts and demons (though it still didn't take long).
Wendigo
One thing that struck me about this episode was that Supernatural is a show that actually does a pretty good job with the set up and pay off. It's nice that it gets that from mystery shows or procedurals instead of just following along the paths of most sci-fi or paranormal shows where they just suddenly hit you with a "Oh, he had it all along" excuse when it helps move the plot along. "How are we going to get out of this one?" "Oh, just give him a screwdriver." "Where would he have gotten a screwdriver?" "Who cares?"
Anyway, Wendigo actually reminds me a bit of The X-Files, basically because that was another show that starts off strong with the pilot and then just had a relatively tame monster of the week second episode. Of course, most shows would be lucky to be as good as X-Files, so that's not a bad thing.
To be honest, there's little about this episode that sticks out. I get the sense that we're going to have a revolving parade of random girls that show up for one episode and we never see again. I'm not sure how I feel about that. It feels a bit patronizing "oh, girls, I know you don't have a female lead on this show so every episode we'll give you a random chick so that you'll keep tuning in, 'kay?"
One thing I do appreciate them getting away from is the dynamic of the "one skeptic among believers" thing that so many shows *coughOnceUponATimecough* have been playing lately. Sam and Dean both believe. They've seen it. Sometimes there's a side character that doubts them, but in general (at least in this episode) people are like "actually, this doesn't make sense and these guys seem pretty confident so let's do what they're asking for now at least." Which is pretty refreshing.
