Why I love Supernatural

In honor of tonight’s premiere, here are the top 10 reasons to watch this show. I know there is lots of TV competition on Thursday night. Trust me; it is better to spend an hour watching Supernatural than Grey’s Anatomy or something. It is better for your mind, body and soul.

1. It isn’t about dating or fashion or superficial stuff. The main themes are family and good vs. evil.
   
   
2. Good and evil aren’t shown to be simple constructs. Navigating the grey area makes it additionally compelling. Many friends of mine didn’t like the depiction of Angels last season, but you know what---they were willing to do anything to rid the world of evil—isn’t that the kind of Angel’s we want?
   
   
3. Dean’s car has become iconic. It is a perfect vehicle for the quest they are on and not the latest bit of product placement from automobile manufacturers. The “Metallicar” is another character and really part of the narrative—not just a prop.
   
   
4. Sibling rivalry is portrayed as healthy and normal. Even though the brothers have disagreements/annoy each other there is still a whole lotta love (needed a Led Zeppelin reference here).
   
   
5. It makes it cool to like 70s-80s hard rock.
   
   
6. Supernatural takes urban legends and other postmodern fears and flips them into new and compelling stories.
   
   
7. Every film studies geek, knows that road movies are the best means of expression to show a journey as a transformative quest for self discovery. Mythology students can see Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey as Sam and Dean loosely follow that model as they fight against evil.
   
   
8. I love that they never added a third character to go on missions with them. I wouldn’t like someone riding in the backseat.
   
   
9. The story keeps evolving. The new season shows an epic battle with demonic evil and surely evil’s ass will be royally kicked.
   
   
10. The main characters are hot boys. Jensen and Jared are very good looking guys. They also have great on screen chemistry.
    

I'm turning a 2007/2008 paper I wrote on Supernatural into a future post. I’m taking out some of the academic stuff and stripping it down to its essential message, plus I’m added stuff about the newer seasons. Some of the paper’s ideas inspired the list above.