Monsters of Television

“Every legend has a source, a place where it all began.”

“Sometimes bad things just happen.”

This post was inspired by the episodes “Bloody Mary,” “Skin,” “Hook Man,” and “Bugs” found on disc 2 of the first season DVD set.

So instead of doing a blow-by-blow of each episode on the second disc of Supernatural season 1, I’m going to do a sum-up post since my notes on each episode tended to be roughly the same due to the trends present in each of the episodes. I’ll try not to make a huge habit of doing this kind of a post since I think there’s some value in addressing each episode individually, or, at the most, paired, but I make no promises. (It’s also Christmas, so I figure one long entry may be a nice break from dealing with whatever you happen to be dealing with today, be it family or boredom or both!)

In any event, at this point in the season, I think I can address one of its big central premises: myths happening in every day life and most of us simply aren’t aware of it. More importantly though is that these myths aren’t occurring in big cities. Despite the claims of Toledo and St. Louis, we’re clearly in the suburbs of those cities, so how is it that the urban myth is now a suburban one? Read more »

Figures the very next episode would go and poke a hole in my emphasis on “the local” argument. But I’m okay with that because “Phantom Traveler” is terrific episode that deals well with a sense of a place and applying the horror genre within it, especially in a setting that doesn’t often get horror applied to it: airplanes.

Airplanes, and airports in general, are anxiety-filled places. There’s people rushing to make a flight, people nervous about flying, people anxious about getting felt up by the TSA (or looking forward to it), and then there’s just the massive amounts of waiting that happens at airports that can be anxiety-inducing in other ways (“Can I take a nap? What if I sleep through my connection?” “Why is a single beer $12?”).

Read more »

“Man, I hate camping.”

You get a twofer this week since I’m feeling generous. And because what I could say about one episode I could pretty easily say about the other, so it just made sense to combine the two into one post. This isn’t a bad thing, either. Both episodes reflect what I can only assume is the template for most of the upcoming episodes, and it’s a template I’m perfectly happy with. Read more »

I know next to nothing about Supernatural. I know it has Dean from Gilmore Girls. I know it involves Dean and his brother (who is also named Dean, making this very confusing) hunting demons. I know at some point a giant teddy bear tries to commit suicide. And I know one episode takes place in a haunted hotel that is hosting a Supernatural fan convention, and people assume the two brothers are actually cosplayers, not the actual brothers. But that’s about it.

So I approach Supernatural with practically no biases or pre-conceived notions of what the show is, except for thinking that Jared Padalecki is dull to watch (he is on Gilmore Girls anyway). Unlike The Wire or Mad Men, both of which I watched this year on DVD, Supernatural wasn’t something people thought I needed to watch to be a knower of all things in contemporary American television.

And that’s exactly why I selected it. So each week (or perhaps more than that), you’ll get treated to my impressions about the series as I go through it. I’m suspecting it’ll be an episode a week, unless I’m just not that busy during a particular week, and the posts will probably go up on Saturday afternoons. So this won’t be like my Mad Men recaps which were often just impressions on a whole season. Also: Karen will be chiming in occasionally as well to give a Supernatural veteran’s take on episodes. This will hinge entirely on her interest in the episode and her schedule, but I look forward to her contributions.

So without further ado… Read more »

“With you or without you I’m moving on. And I don’t know if I can do it alone. Will you help me?“

I ignore my epiphanies for the sake of dramatic conflict

This, for those who want to manage their reading, will be significantly shorter than my season 1 recap. Part of this stems from the fact that I just have very little to say, on the whole, about both seasons. A large part of this lack of thought goes back to the issue of quality I discussed during season 1, and seem little need to recover that ground.

Of the two, I’d rather watch season 3 than season 2. As Jeremy Mongeau pointed out, season 3 at least remembers to be entertaining, whereas season 2 is very much about how much QUALITY and IMPORTANT MESSAGES and SYMBOLIC WALKING INTO THE BEACH TO CLEANSE AND BE REBORN can be squeezed into 13 hours of television. Season 3 has some of this (could Betty’s couch have been any more symbolic?), but it also has a guy’s foot getting lopped off by a riding lawn mower, complete with excellent blood splatter reaction shot, so it balances out.

There were things I did like about season 3, including Sally Draper (the only truly interesting character on the show), “My name is Peggy Olson and I’m here to smoke some marijuana.”, and all the scenes of “Shut the Door, Have a Seat” that didn’t involve Don and Betty’s relationship. But, all in all, I’m kind of glad I’m not reviewing Mad Men for the site. Read more »