Review of the Supernatural pilot
I caught the premiere of the new WB show, Supernatural, the other night. This, unfortunately, put me behind on the second revision of my story, and now I'm going to get myself even more behind by writing the review of it. Be forewarned, there are spoilers below, but only for the first fifteen minutes or so of the first episode.
I've always had a soft spot for stories of humans against the supernatural. There have been plenty of TV shows on the subject, from Friday the 13th: The Series and Poltergeist: The Legacy (neither of which had any connection to the movies whose names they share) to Buffy the Vampire Slayer and The X-files. They had a wide range of quality and style. X-files and Buffy are two of the better known, and they take very different approaches. In X-files, the heroes were ordinary humans up against things they barely understood, while Buffy had heroes who were as supernatural as the enemy and who had vast stores of knowledge they could access to discover the villain-of-the-week's Achilles' Heel. Overall, I think I prefer the X-files take, although there the supernatural elements were rare intermissions from the uberstory of aliens and government conspiracies.
To give you a sense of the mood of this new show, let me describe the opening sequence, which begins twenty-two years ago:
That beginning was definitely disturbing and frightening enough to grab my attention. From there, the show shifts to the present day, where the younger son, Sam, is in college and preparing for a Law School interview. His brother, Dean, shows up in the middle of the night, asking for Sam's help to look for their father, who vanished on a "hunting" trip.
It quickly becomes apparent that what their father was "hunting" was ghosts. Whether or not he did this before his wife's death, in the years since he's become obsessed with tracking down the thing that killed her, along the way taking out any other supernatural entity he encounters. He trained his sons to do the same, teaching them weapons and martial arts in the process. As ghost hunting doesn't pay well (unless you get a show with the Sci-Fi channel), the three of them have supported themselves in some less than honest ways. And without the FBI badges which gave Mulder and Scully such access, they use a host of fake IDs and cover stories in their investigations. The younger son has been trying to find a normal life in college, and is reluctant to be drawn back in. Do I even have to tell you how successful he'll be at that?
We see how the two brothers approach the mystery their father disappeared while trying to solve, interviewing witnesses and researching history until they identify the type of menace they're dealing with, a type with which they're familiar, tellingly. Getting rid of it isn't a matter of choosing the right weapon, although bullets do turn out to be surprisingly effective, but of identifying the entity's weakness. I found the resolution very satisfying, although I thought the special effects involved were overdone. Subtle and sparing effects work well in this sort of show, and I was impressed with most of how they did things.
Overall, I really liked the show. It was both disturbing and scary, and managed to convey the feel of uncovering a dark mystery much better than shows like Buffy. Many series of this type start well, but quickly descend into a monster-of-the-week mentality, where dark and mysterious degrades into ugly and bizarre. I have no idea how well this show will manage, but I intend to keep an eye on it.
I've always had a soft spot for stories of humans against the supernatural. There have been plenty of TV shows on the subject, from Friday the 13th: The Series and Poltergeist: The Legacy (neither of which had any connection to the movies whose names they share) to Buffy the Vampire Slayer and The X-files. They had a wide range of quality and style. X-files and Buffy are two of the better known, and they take very different approaches. In X-files, the heroes were ordinary humans up against things they barely understood, while Buffy had heroes who were as supernatural as the enemy and who had vast stores of knowledge they could access to discover the villain-of-the-week's Achilles' Heel. Overall, I think I prefer the X-files take, although there the supernatural elements were rare intermissions from the uberstory of aliens and government conspiracies.
To give you a sense of the mood of this new show, let me describe the opening sequence, which begins twenty-two years ago:
A couple is putting their infant son and his four year old brother to bed in their home. As they leave the baby's bedroom and shut the door, the nightlight inside start flickering and the mobile starts turning on its own. Unaware of this, the parents go to bed.
Later, the mother awakes due to strange static-riddled sounds on the baby monitor. Her husband is not in bed with her. She goes to the baby's room and sees his shadowed form standing over the baby's crib. She starts to speak but he shushes her, so she heads back to bed, pausing along the way to tap at the hallway light, which is flickering. As she does so, she hears the TV going downstairs. Going to check on it, she finds her husband asleep in front of the television. In a panic, she runs back to the baby's room...
There's a scream, and the father wakes up from where he's sleeping in his easy chair, and he hurries up to the baby's room calling his wife's name. He finds his son awake but fitful, but no sign of his wife. He starts to tuck him in when a drop of dark liquid falls on the infant's blanket. He looks up...
His wife is lying on the ceiling as if gravity were reversed for her. Her eyes are wide and her mouth open, but the only sound she makes is a wheezing breath. Blood drips from some wound in her stomach. Even as he stares in shock, the ceiling behind her bursts into flame, the fire slowly reaching out to consume the woman as well. The father grabs his son, and when he finds his older child in the hallway, awakened by the commotion, he hands the infant to him and tells him to run. Then the father goes back in, and we see a rush of flame with a vaguely humanoid shape
The two brothers make it to the yard, where they are joined by their father, who was unable to save his wife.
That beginning was definitely disturbing and frightening enough to grab my attention. From there, the show shifts to the present day, where the younger son, Sam, is in college and preparing for a Law School interview. His brother, Dean, shows up in the middle of the night, asking for Sam's help to look for their father, who vanished on a "hunting" trip.
It quickly becomes apparent that what their father was "hunting" was ghosts. Whether or not he did this before his wife's death, in the years since he's become obsessed with tracking down the thing that killed her, along the way taking out any other supernatural entity he encounters. He trained his sons to do the same, teaching them weapons and martial arts in the process. As ghost hunting doesn't pay well (unless you get a show with the Sci-Fi channel), the three of them have supported themselves in some less than honest ways. And without the FBI badges which gave Mulder and Scully such access, they use a host of fake IDs and cover stories in their investigations. The younger son has been trying to find a normal life in college, and is reluctant to be drawn back in. Do I even have to tell you how successful he'll be at that?
We see how the two brothers approach the mystery their father disappeared while trying to solve, interviewing witnesses and researching history until they identify the type of menace they're dealing with, a type with which they're familiar, tellingly. Getting rid of it isn't a matter of choosing the right weapon, although bullets do turn out to be surprisingly effective, but of identifying the entity's weakness. I found the resolution very satisfying, although I thought the special effects involved were overdone. Subtle and sparing effects work well in this sort of show, and I was impressed with most of how they did things.
Overall, I really liked the show. It was both disturbing and scary, and managed to convey the feel of uncovering a dark mystery much better than shows like Buffy. Many series of this type start well, but quickly descend into a monster-of-the-week mentality, where dark and mysterious degrades into ugly and bizarre. I have no idea how well this show will manage, but I intend to keep an eye on it.
