On Television

[tiggymalvern]

Slasher friends have been trying to convince me for a long time to watch Supernatural. I had seen a couple of episodes of Supernatural, and left with the impression that it was a boring monster of the week show, and no thank you.

More recently, some of the SO's geek friends began telling him he should watch Supernatural. I said no, it's crap. The SO's friends insisted that it gets good. So we equipped ourselves with the first season of Supernatural, and a carefully hand-picked-by-the-geeks list of the episodes that were worth watching, because they were good, or related to the arc plot. Over the last couple of weeks, we watched 11 episodes of Supernatural's first season.

Conclusions: A 'good' episode of Supernatural is like a mediocre episode of the X-Files. After one particular episode, I remarked to the SO that it was like watching the Persuaders, only in the Persuaders the fact that they're incompetent is a joke, and in Supernatural we're supposed to take these morons seriously. The plots are utterly predictable, and vary from dull to annoying. The dialogue is trite.

The SO and I are unanimous: we're not prepared to sit through any more of this drivel just because the arc plot might get interesting round about season four. We were willing to stare through a few bad episodes of Spartacus: Blood and Sand with the assurance that it got interesting at ep 4 or 5, and were very glad we did. But writers - if it takes three series for your show to become bearable, sorry, we're long gone.


In stark contrast, last night we caught up with episode 3.10 of Breaking Bad (while watching Supernatural, we got a couple of weeks behind). It's a bottle story, in which two people talk about the long term plot and try to kill a fly. And it's mesmerising. It's awe-inspiring, how tense and involving that incredibly simple piece of television is. This was a series that grabbed me by the soul in episode one, just like The Wire or Pushing Daisies did, and they don't let go. Forget Supernatural, we're about to give Treme a whirl, with high hopes. And people - if you know any other series, new or old, as good as Breaking Bad or Pushing Daisies, you'll be telling me, right?

Comments

[tameiki.livejournal.com]

Supernatural, in its first three seasons was just good, mindless fun with an interesting plot hovering in the background. This last season and a half have really stretched my endurance for this show. Now, it's like watching a multi-vehicle car wreck where you just can't turn away. You have to stay and watch to see what's going to happen next. XD

[tiggymalvern.livejournal.com]

I'm all in favour of good, mindless fun - I'm just as enthusiastic a consumer of mindless trash as I am of the genuine quality stuff - but I just wasn't getting 'fun' from Supernatural. I was too bored by the predictability and irritated by the lazy writing to find any entertainment in there. If the series had aimed to be trash, it would have worked a lot better for me, but sadly the creators seemed to be labouring under the impression they were creating something deep and genuinely suspenseful :-(

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

I suspect it might have worked better for you if you were American, because some of the interesting bits called on American 'road' mythology and urban myths in ways that might not appeal in the same way to you.

Edited to change icon.

[andmydog.livejournal.com]

Oh hey, that's a really good point. Yeah, the entire premise of the show is, like, the wet dream of America, with ONE MAN (two, but who's counting?) taking on EVIL while listening to cock rock and cruising chicks in a hot car. Cross-country. Plus guns.

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

And they did a lot of stuff riffing on urban legends in the early days. (But we will not speak of the racist truck.)