QUOTE(starfkr @ Jun 29 2009, 05:47 PM)

Wow, another person who doesnt know stuff. Supernatural is not Science Fiction. Is Supernatural like the show Star Trek? Is it like Staregate1? Is it like Battlestar Galactica? -Because those shows are Science Fiction. Supernatural is in the Horror genre.
Supernatural doesn't have to be historically acurate because it's horror. If it was Science Fiction, then it would have to have a basis in Science, that is what might be possible through Science in the future.
Starfkr, it's good that you're schooling these rubes in the shortcomings of the genre. No, sci-fi is NOT horror: and "Supernatural" certainly mangles and twists the folklore. Samhain is certainly a festival, not a god; and they get a lot of other things wrong with their view of the cosmos, from a Christian OR Pagan perspective.
But that isn't the thing that bothers me the most. TV puts out lots of shows that present a distorted Judeo-Christian view of the world, that are (at best) parodies of the original folklore (Hex, Demons, Buffy, Angel, Wolf Lake, Vampire High, and unnameable others are just a few of the recent shows that twist the genre into something unrecognizable. Even True Blood does it, but not so badly as Supernatural). Even Stephen King has been known to bend the genre-rules a little bit.
What really bothers me is the timidity of the writing; and the poor story-arcs. While the characters are interesting (the minor one's even moreso): the dynamic of the two brothers taking turns sacrificing for each other in turn got old by the 2nd season. The writers seem to tiptoe up to a dramatic cliffhanger, only to run safely back to the same old, same old. I thought they had something, for instance, when the Yellow-Eyed Man escaped from Hell: but the writers threw out that opening by quickly killing the monster, closing the gate and having a quick moment with dead old Dad.
Stop...the suspense is killin' me.
They did the same thing with this "bar for hunters." It could have been an interesting point to meet; find allies for Sam and Dean, maybe do something that drifts off the standard formula. Instead they blew it up: lasted about 3 episodes, I think. The novelty of the place never set into the background, before the old, tired plot-formula bulldozed it all to a boring, flat plain. The Supernatural Formula goes something like this (with little variation):
(1. Evil Thing (or, "ET") kills innocents; 2. Cut to the Sam n' Dean Show, driving along and engaging in their usual tiresome brother-on-brother angst; 3. One of them discovers the Trail of ET while the other denies it for about 5min; 4. Our Heroes dress up as Official whatevers (with cute, Heavy-Metal bandmember names, as pseudonyms), questioning witnesses, to the hunt for ET; 5. Dean (80%) or Sam (20%) has an ambiguous fling with a girl that they forget by the next episode; 6. Sam, Dean, girl, potential-next-victim and ET meet up in the spooky house/sewer/closet and duke it out; 7. cut to Sam/Dean piling into the Chevy with Dean/Sam kissing girl goodbye.
Did I miss anything? No wonder the producers don't want to do a 6th season. After 5years' of writing the same show for a paycheck: I'm guessing that doing laundry must sound like a pretty creative event. Some things can practically write themselves, but when they get so formulaic that even the audience can start writing them, it's time to do something else.
My 2c.
QUOTE
The show Supernatural is okay, decent. It's not great. That's all I'm saying. It could be hell of a lot better if the writers actually do their homework.
Agreed on that, too. A well-researched show would make even the formula a little crisper.
PS One good note about Supernatural's plot-arcs, tho. I liked the notion of angels working for not-so-nice ends, acting more as spies, than avatars of goodness. It's been done before (eg, "Prophecy"); but the trick is to find the right actors to play the angels. The actors they chose were topnotch.
The demons, on the other hand, are your usual 2-dimensional cardboard-width baddies, as formulaic as the rest of the plot. Yawn. When's the next True Blood coming on, again...?