Supernatural

I'm a bit late to the party on this, but I only just discovered the TV show Supernatural.

It's been running on the CW for years, then TNT picked it up in re-runs. Since they ran it every day, I blew through the first four seasons in about two months. Now I've been waiting for CW to re-run season five from the beginning.

Supernatural reminds me of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, but with two brothers, Sam and Dean, traveling around the country hunting demons, ghosts, vampires, werewolves, shape-shifters, ghouls – you name it. Then there's a whole subplot about how Dean made a bargain with a demon to save his brothers life, and spent forty years (hell-time) in hell. Then he gets pulled out by angel Castiel, only to find out there's a “greater purpose” for the brothers (isn't it always like that though?). In this case, it's to prevent the end of the world. Of course.

The end of last season Sam was tricked into releasing Satan from hell and - you guessed it – brought about the apocalypse. So now they're working with a rogue angel to find out how to stop it, and in the meantime, try to find out where God went - because it would seem he's missing.

The first season wasn't so hot, and the stories a little flimsy, but once the show got going, the writing improved dramatically. And it's quite funny. If you've watched Buffy, it's similar to that. It's all scary stuff, with clever one liners mixed in:

Dean: Where's Cas?
Chuck the Prophet: He's dead... Or gone... The archangel smote the crap out of him, I'm sorry.
Dean: Are you sure? I mean, maybe he just vanished into the light or something.
Chuck the Prophet: Oh, no. He like exploded... Like a water balloon of chunky soup.

The summation at the beginning of every episode is quite cool. It's called “The Road So Far”, a collection of previous clips detailing what's happened in the previous episodes, scored to excellent classic rock music.

This is the opening for season five, which is so neat, to AC/DC's Thunderstruck. I tried to embed the whole video, but the party-poopers are insisting it be viewed thru YouTube. (I can alter the code so it'll play here, but I don't need any copyright grief.) Anyways, you'll get a message, but then click again and it'll take you to the folks at YouTube and it'll run there. It's worth it.