Entertainment Weekly: Ranking 199 Supernatural Episodes from Best to Worst!
This is clearly one of the more ambitious projects I’ve ever seen. Even I haven’t been brave enough to try such a thing. Samantha Highfill and a few of her colleagues at Entertainment Weekly have decided to actually rank all the Supernatural episodes! The results were published this afternoon, and no doubt they’re going to get a lot of debate.
Up first, the top ten worst. I agree with number one (although “Hammer of the Gods” is my number one, “Bugs” has always been up there), but “Clap Your Hands if You Believe?” That always makes one of my best! I love that episode! Ah well, wacky humor about fairies and aliens is an acquired taste. Plus “Man’s Best Friend With Benefits” didn’t make this list? I know it ranked low on the next list, but it should have been lower.
http://www.ew.com/ew/gallery/1,,20739757_20869844,00.html#30245707
(If you’re interested, here’s my top ten worst, which I did back in 2012. If I did an updated list, “Bloodlines would be #4. https://www.thewinchesterfamilybusiness.com/article-archives/top-ten-articles/17318-the-ten-worst-episodes-of-supernatural?showall=&limitstart=).
Now for the middle of the pack. The ranking is episodes 41 to 189. Anything glaring in here for you? I’m good I guess, although I’d have “Stairway to Heaven at 188, “Faith” in the top 40 and “On The Head of a Pin” in the top ten. Plus, “Season 7: Time For A Wedding” at 115 was extremely generous.
Finally, the top forty. I can’t argue with the top ten at all, and I definitely won’t argue with number one. The absolutely most perfect choice. (For the record, my past choice for #1 has always been “Mystery Spot” which did rank somewhat high on the top 40.)
http://www.ew.com/ew/gallery/0,,20739757_20869842,00.html?stitched#30244778
(Back in early 2013, myself and the other admins at the time counted down our top 15 day by day. Here’s our choices for number one. https://www.thewinchesterfamilybusiness.com/article-archives/top-ten-articles/17631-the-wfb-admins-top-15-qsupernaturalq-episodes-list-1)
I do accept that these lists are subjective, and everyone has their own loves/opinions, so there’s never a right or wrong answer to these. Kudos to Samantha and team for even trying. But it always makes for great debate. How do you rank episodes? What’s your best and worst?
I seem to be the only Supernatural fan who isn’t so high on Swan Song. I just can’t get over the fact that the big, final, apocalyptic confrontation was two dudes standing in a field on an overcast day with a bit of wind. All the buildup just fell flat to me. Not even any thunder and lightning? Come on. Buffy’s apocalypse had dragons. Poorly CG’d dragons, but they tried to give some sense of the epic scope nonetheless.
I haven’t really sat down to actually rank episodes, but Mystery Spot, Faith, Crossroad Blues, Nightshifter, What Is And What Should Never Be, and Born Under A Bad Sign would be up there. I uh… really like season 2, if you couldn’t tell.
I agree with Alice i would put “Man’s best friend with benefits” in the ten worst instead of “Clap your hands if you believe. In my honest opinion Wendigo is bad but it doesn’t deserve the #2 spot in the worst. There is two episodes that i have no desire to watch again and that is “Man’s best friend with benefits” and “Roadkill” its just so boring, it doesn’t even feel like a Supernatural episode. I have never watched “Bloodlines” and all the reviews i have read about the episode were negative so i believe it should have been in the worst list too. Lastly, my favorite episodes are “faith”, “Lazarus rising”, and “What is and should never be”.
It is almost impossible to pick a best (worst is easy, Bloodlines) There are so many that are fantastic. How do you choose a hilariously funny episode over a punch you in the gut tear jerker? Fortunately for all of us fans we have going on 200 episodes to choose from. Everyone gets a favorite.
I agree that both Man’s Best Friends With Benefits and Hammer of the Gods are on my worst list and Clap Your Hands is high on my good list. I’m not sure what else I would throw out to include both. Unlike you, I have some affection for Bugs. Insta dawn and bad effects aside, it gave some insight into how Sam viewed their childhood and I liked his relationship with Matt. It isn’t a good episode, but I don’t hate it as much as fandom does. It belongs pretty low on the list of episodes, but there are others I hate more.
I loved Faith, A Very Supernatural Christmas, Heaven and Hell, Mystery Spot, and The End. I don’t even think of Bloodlines as a SPN episode. I didn’t mind Bugs and unlike everyone else I never cared for The French Mistake. Any episode involving a dog hits my low end. Most episodes hit a middle ground where I liked some parts of the episode for various reasons. When the show ends I’m going to rewatch the whole series on DVD, with no commercials and no hiatus. The J’s have grown up so much it’s hard to believe they are the same guys that are in the pilot episode.
Different strokes. I don’t dislike Hammer of the Gods. I quite enjoy that episode with the exception of Gabriel’s death. Same for Bugs. I love the brothers in Bugs. We learn a lot about their family in that episode. Kripke hates that he wrote Wendigo. I love Wendigo. We get “saving people, hunting things, the family business” from that episode. And the boys are just gorgeous in it, sigh! In fact, every single episode from the pilot to Lazarus Rising are most loved by me. Every single one of them!
It’s easier to pick the ones I consider the worst. Bloodlines is number one. Bitten is up there, and Man’s Best Friend with Benefits is so out there I have no desire to ever watch it again. Death’s Door (Bobby’s death) upset me so much I can only rewatch it with Rufus and Bobby’s comments on. But that wasn’t because it was bad, but just too too sad and a very bad decision from Sera Gamble to kill off the boys’ Bobby. Never liked Repoman just because the bad guy killed an adorable sweet little dog in it. The one with Osiris (can’t remember the name of it) could have been great, but was completely wasted, though I loved seeing Jo again.
There is no reason Clap Your Hands should be on anyone’s hate list. i just love that one! In fact, when we found out Sam had no soul when season 6 started, I really enjoyed the soulless episodes immensely.
I have too many number one favourites to even attempt a list, as my top ten would have over a hundred episodes in it. For example, Faith, Devil’s Trap, Scarecrow, The Benders, What is and What Should Never Be, In My Time of Dying, Born Under a Bad Sign, BloodLust, Bad Day at Black Rock,
Supernatural Christmas, Mystery Spot, Jus in Bello, First Blood, No Rest for the Wicked, On the Head of a Pin, It’s a Terrible Life, Live Free or Twi Hard, Clap Your Hands, The French Mistake, Changing Channels, The End, etc etc. Any of those I can’t rank above the others, and the list could go on and I know I’ve missed a lot of my top tens.
Only episodes I refuse to watch again are Bloodlines and Man’s Best Friend with Benefits. Not bad, for the little show that could.
Thank God for Eric Kripke!!
This might have been ambitious but is futile by the nature of this being very subjective; some of their choices downright bizarre. We all have our favorite / least favorite episodes; if I listed in my 20 favorite episodes, and you asked me to do the same thing a month from now, 1/2 of the entries would probably be different.
I was a little (OK, a lot) surprised after reading EW’s SPN Top 40 that [i]Hammer of the Gods[/i] made it but [i]What Is and What Should Never Be[/i] didn’t.
That encouraged me to come up with my own Top 40 and there were some significant differences, proving both the subjectivity of these lists and why it’s impossible for showrunners to please everyone. 🙂 And only in some wacky alternate universe would anything written by Ben Edlund appear on any of my “Worst of” lists. :p
My Top 10 right now are:
[list=1.]
1. [i]Lazarus Rising[/i]
2. [i]Mystery Spot[/i]
3. [i]In My Time of Dying[/i]
4. [i]Changing Channels[/i]
5. [i]What Is and What Should Never Be[/i]
6. [i]All Hell Breaks Loose Pt. 1[/i]
7. [i]On The Head of a Pin[/i]
8. [i]A Very Supernatural Christmas[/i]
9. [i]Swan Song[/i]
10. [i]Everybody Hates Hitler[/i]
[/list]
If anyone is interested in reading my Top 40 list and the reasons for each choice, it’s on my LiveJournal ([url]”http://scullspeare.livejournal.com/20524.html”[/url]) here.