“I kinda feel good Dean” Says Sam at the end of the last episode of Supernatural and thank god. It's felt like for the past two or three seasons every other episode involved Sam and Dean in some kind of emotional talk, tears in their eyes, Sam furrowing his brows because he's conflicted at whatever the hell was going on and Dean talking about his daddy issues again over a glass of scotch. Perhaps this means we can get another few episodes into the season before one of these pops up again but with 23 episodes a bloody season lets not hold our breath.
I don't know how I started watching this show again. After season five I remember thinking enough was enough. The story lines had become too grandiose. Gone were the interesting and unique monsters, in were demons disguised as humans. They also seemed to have replaced the light-hearted fun moments of Sam and Dean on the road to Sam and Dean are on their periods having a good cry about their crappy lives, again. Plus, I have lost count of the amount of times the two brothers have died or made some kind of sacrifice. It seems the two have a competition to see which one can be more self sacrificing and, to be blunt, it gets pretty disgusting. Because half of the situations they end up in can be solved without one of them dying, but they have to act all noble and crap to prove...I don't know, that they're willing to die again? They've both even been to Hell once and suffered countless tortures at the hands of demons, Sam himself being tortured by Lucifer and Michael in 'The Cage' (the badass way of saying Hell).
Somehow, season six pulled me back in. The storyline certainly was an improvement but sadly, it can't hold up to the more grounded stories of the first two seasons. Essentially, they are Hunters, people that drive around and dispatch of all kind of nasties like ghosts, werewolves, shapeshifters and anything else that goes bump in the night. So it can be a problem in the later seasons when they're dealing with things they can't possibly kill. It's a shame since in the earlier episodes they would turn to their Dad's trustful journal, read up on what they were hunting and go and kill it. It was suspenseful because we, the audience, knew that they were doing a dangerous job and they could easily die. It was kill or be killed. Now the big monsters are things Sam and Dean have no hope of even hurting, never mind hunting down and killing. So we spend a lot of the time watching the brothers dick around and cry because their life is so hard, while red-neck Bobby gives them more beer and says something red-neck.
Since each season is over 20 episodes, this means a lot of filler episodes that are boring and don't add to the over-arcing story. Plus, as mentioned, the creature design has dropped to an almost shameful level where even the most basic of demons seem to be disguised as humans. It would appear the staff have given up on creative creature design and thrown all the budget at getting 80's rock ballads put into the show. Yes we know, Sam and Dean are deep characters that are multi-layered. They're tortured, tragic, brave and so forth. Can I not just see a demon with some horns? Christ, even Buffy managed to keep the demons in there all through it's seven seasons.
Whether this will be Supernatural's last season, I don't know. In American the show is on a Friday slot, the place where TV shows go to die. Perhaps that would be best as one more season wouldn't do this show any favours.
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