Supernatural: Please retire the old horse

The news is out. Supernatural is getting renewed for yet another season. Now let’s get one thing clear, I LOVE Supernatural, it's been my favorite show for years and has forged some great friendships, I’m sure my good friends Kat and Laura will attest to that. But with Season 6 approaching its finale I am ready to say it: enough is enough. The show’s creator Eric Kripke had only planned for five seasons and I too had had my share of Supernatural once the world was saved from Satan, Sam was dead, and as sad as that was, it was an ending that had the pathos and hope required for the end of a fantastic show.

 For me now, Supernatural is a beloved house-guest that has overstayed their welcome; As much as you love them they are just getting in the way, the jokes are becoming tiresome, they keep borrowing your toothbrush and leaving the fridge door open.

SUPERNATURRAAULLL! You left the door open, AGAIN!

In season four the show took a new turn and started paying homage to its fans with episodes that incorporated them and their fandom into the show. My mind was blown when this first happened, but as Supernatural breaks down the fourth wall the cleverness has become trite and these meta-episodes are too out of sync with the rest of the plot, whereas before they were smoothly tied in. I don’t know about anyone else, but the recent episode where (spoilers) Sam and Dean were transported to our world and forced to live the lives of  the actors, Jared and Jensen, looks like it was great fun for the cast and crew to shoot, but I struggled to find any of it funny beyond Misha Collins' attempt to portray himself.

Ever since season two death has had no meaning in Supernatural, both Dean and Sam have had resurrections, twice for Sam in fact. There is no sense of peril anymore; I find it impossible to care about what happens to Sam and Dean and anyone else now.  Not that there is anyone to care about; very few members of the supporting cast have survived the show, with Castiel and Bobby being the unkillable satellites forced to orbit the endless "Wincest" (that’s Winchester incest apparently).

I get that there is a loyal fanbase out there, but true loyalty is only found after a show has ended. All those Firefly fans who campaigned years for a movie, or the Jericho Rangers who sent nuts to CBS until they got a second series. Both fans and the CW need to stop flogging the pony; you’ll only end up with that dead horse analogy. Instead retire the show and let it canter round a paddock in peace. Then you fans can look back on it and say, “Wasn’t Supernatural fantastic? - Hey, did you ever read my Bobby/Castiel fanfic?”




Comments from Facebook:
Fellow TV critic Ian has this to say:
You had to have seen this one coming though? Supernatural still gets better ratings than newer CW shows like Hellcats and Nikita. Plus it's going to pair well with a couple of CW pilots if these get picked up for full series. Either The Secret Circle (witches) or Awakening (zombies).

Lone Star: The greatest TV show you’ll never see

193 days ago I lost all faith in television.

In September Fox cancelled a fledgling drama called Lone Star to the dismay of the 7 people who actually watched it. You see, Lone Star, the tale of a Texas conman living a double life, received such low viewer ratings that it was cancelled after its first two episodes had aired.

So why am I blogging about this? Because in the last few months I have picked up new shows and watched old favourites but nothing has felt right, as though all the joy has gone from television. I lost my passion for blockbuster films when I was still at school, and maybe go to the cinema only once a year, or whenever friends are going. I find modern British drama and comedy to simply be a shadow of its former self, and being a uni student without a TV licence means that I never watch it anyway. So, with my love of US TV fading I feel that my days of screen bliss are truly numbered and  Lone Star may have been the nail in that coffin.

The trailer for the show, watch it!

Lone Star was one of the few shows that had me hooked from the opening minute.

A bag of clothes lies open on a bed whilst a child frantically packs it. 

“Damn, here he comes! Hurry up Bobby.” His father shouts from the other room, locking the door.

“You think I’m stupid?” A voice angrily calls from the other side, banging on the door.

“Tommy, Calm down.”

Bobby continues to pack clothes, ignoring his own toys. His father rushes over and picks up the bag.

“Keep your life in the case and not in the closet,” he reminds his son before tossing the packed bag out of the open window.

Bobby is panicking and his father bends to face him, “now then- hey you’re gonna be fine. I’m gonna be right behind you.” He says to his son and hands him a set of keys. “Start the car, okay?”

Bobby nods and his father picks him up and slides him out the window: “feet first, feet first.”

The shot focuses on the nearly empty wardrobe, “ONE, TWO, THREE” – in the distance we hear the door being kicked in.

The shot changes to a packed wardrobe - “Twenty years later” the caption reads. Lone Star begins.

I was hooked. I had met Robert Allan.  He lives in Midland with a woman called Lindsay, selling leases in wind and gas energy. 400 miles away in Houston he is married to Cat and works for his father-in-law, an oil tycoon. He has two wallets and two mobile phones. His lives are perfectly divided across Texas. So what’s the catch? The catch is that he wants to live both of them for real. But in the two episodes aired he has to deal with his father, an old-school con artist, as well as past cons coming back to haunt him. There a so many what-ifs that will never be answered here, the plot sets up so many strands that have been forever left loose.

With its Mumford and Sons soundtrack, beautiful  Texas setting and well structured plot Lone Star achieved critical success but not commercial. A myriad of reasons are suggested for this, here are a few:  It was competing against House for ratings, it had limited marketing, it was on a network station which had higher viewer quantity requirements and perhaps the most interesting of all: it portrayed cheating as a good thing. The trailers and advertising both showed a man clearly enjoying having two lives and shagging two women, something which simply didn’t go down well with our friends across the pond. Of course this was clearly not a situation that was built to last and the fireworks from its destruction were inevitable, but it is an overt presence in the aired episodes.

What is most tantalising is that there are four unaired episodes that still exist somewhere and the shows creator Kyle Killen fought valiantly to find them a home after the cancellation but it was hopeless. Established shows like Jericho or Firefly managed to scrounge a new season or a movie after a cancellation, but Lone Star simply didn’t have that grounding. So TV-land has moved on and I guess I’m probably the last person in the blogosphere to publicly lament its loss and I will do so for a long time to come. But there is a light at the end of the tunnel, at least for me. Where Lone Star died (at 9 p.m. on Monday nights on Fox) a new show has risen: The Chicago Code, a high powered police drama that has grabbed my attention and refuses to let go, it will probably be making its way to UK screens later this year and hopefully will go some way to restoring my faith in television.

A salute to Lone Star - the greatest TV show you'll never see.