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t was the perfect family portrait—a loving mom and dad, their young son, Dean, and their newborn baby boy, Sam; all posed to live happily ever after. But then one night the mother wakes up to hear the baby in the next room. She gets up to find a man at her Sam's crib, a man who at first she believes to be her husband. But it's not her husband.
John Winchester (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) fell asleep watching TV. He wakes up to his wife's screams and goes running to their baby's room only to find his wife dead and fire spreading out from her body. John and his sons barely escape the flames.
Twenty years later, Sam (Jared) is estranged from his father and brother. He's about to apply to law school and is living with his beautiful girlfriend, Jessica (Adrianne Palicki). But one night Dean (Ackles) shows up and tells him their father is missing. Sam is skeptical at first. His father has been missing before and has always made it home. Then Dean tells Sam their father was on a hunt.
Sam and Dean grew up knowing that there was a reason to fear the dark. Their father has been looking for the thing that killed his wife since she died. John trained his sons to be warriors who could fight the monsters that live in the shadows, and they know that most urban legends are true. Sam is reluctant to run off on yet another hunt even to find his father, but he finally agrees to help just this once.
The brothers drive to a small California town where they believe their father was investigating the disappearance of several men. Once they get there, they discover another young man has gone missing, and their father appears to have vanished as well. It doesn't take long before they run into trouble or before Sam finds himself at odds with the life he wants to have and the fact that he knows monsters are real and they are killing people.
Spooky, good-old-fashioned fun
The WB's Supernatural is something we don't see a lot of on television these days. It's scary, funny, well-written and, beyond that, just good-old-fashioned fun. Forget the season-long stories of Lost and the procedural distance of C.S.I. This show offers up two cute guys in a cool car, driving through the back roads of America hunting monsters and updating every urban legend you've ever heard of along the way.
We've all heard the urban legends told around a campfire or during a sleepover, and it took root in our minds when we were kids. Be it the Hook Man or Bloody Mary or the Woman in White, there is something primal inside of us that wants to be scared.
Leads Jared Padalecki (The Gilmore Girls) as Sam and Jensen Ackles (Smallville) as Dean are primed for their own television show, and they couldn't have picked a better vehicle. These two look and act like brothers, and the chemistry is perfect. They tool along in their car filled with weapons and fake I.D.s with the full knowledge that they're going to break the law when it suits them, because they have to and because they can. They are heroes and antiheroes all mixed up in one.
As for this pilot episode's script, Eric Kripke has done a terrific job taking the spirit of the old Route 66 series and infusing an effective horror story into it. The dialogue cleverly lays out the story, telling us everything we need to know to get hooked into these brother's lives while still making the action compelling. Many new series take several episodes to gel. Supernatural gels right out of the box.
Seasoned director David Nutter has added his touch, and we get the right mix of subtlety in the beginning to create the mystery mixed with enough special effects at the end to pay off the horror story. All the way around, it's a great start to this new series.
I don't know if Supernatural is scary enough to make you want to leave the lights on at night. But this first episode has a couple of jump-worthy moments that make you laugh and take you back to those moments around the campfire when you wanted to be scared. —Kathie
Also in this issue: 2005 Fall SF TV Preview: Part I, The Exorcism of Emily Rose and Loonatics Unleashed Series Premiere
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