The Family That Watches Supernatural Together Stays Together…At Least Until 10pm

-dom (or sub, if that’s your gig.)

When the shit hits. Recently, our fearless leader kindly suggested that with the approach of our favorite show’s 100th — wait, let me retype that in a much more striking cavalcade of caps with exclamation point sprinkles — ONE-HUNDREDTH!!!!!! — episode, we contribute something celebrating, dissecting and/or anecdoting fandom, whether general or personal.

Oh, shit.

Unlike Alice or Jas, I’ve never been to a Supernatural convention but I’m not jealous grumble, and the first article I ever wrote for this wonderful site was on the inexplicable paucity of my gender in the audience, so that idea is out the window to smash on the pavement. Then again, AC/DC and Motörhead essentially record the same album over and over, right? But the more I thought about, what could I possibly say that hasn’t been said, isn’t being said, or will be said about the brilliance of this work of art so near and dear to our hearts and universal remotes? Each and every one of us is quite familiar with the rip-roaring action, tension-filled set pieces, endless parade of one-liners and dramatic scenes that keep Kleenex in business.

Yes, yes, they’re pretty, oh, so pretty, but I’ll leave the squee up to you ladies.

So, why am I a fan? I firmly believe that what drives Sam and Dean (and Bobby and yes, even Castiel in his own way) in their quest to save individuals and now the entire planet is, despite emotional ups and downs, that multifaceted, maddening abstraction called love. Now, my wife and I are, if not the exact opposite of the staid, uptight Cleavers or acid-laced hippies throwing hugs around like they’re the newest retro craze, then about 132° from, and I’m usually brooding and/or muttering under my breath about something. But like Big John Winchester, underneath my somber exterior lies a sentimentalist, and through years of carefully cultivated sappiness and constantly spinning DVDs, I was able to convince my sometimes-better-half and our youngest daughter to take a joyride in a very cool car with very poor gas mileage. I’m sure the potential for squee helped them along a bit.

Forty minutes later, they were hooked.

Going back in time, though my wife was, and still is, a fan of The X-Files, I was far more religious about gluing myself to the couch and she never watched Millennium until after its release on DVD and our daughters were either not born yet, too young to watch these shows or simply didn’t care to. Thus, in our household, Supernatural is the first program featuring real live human beings that we sit down to watch as a family. Save for our oldest, but she, unlike her father, is an oddball. So now, each Thursday at 9 we gather around this fantastical version of the Fireside Chat minus the fireplace and wonder

who’s getting a torso full of rock salt
will one or both Winchesters die yet again
will we get another Dean defense mechanism or ill-timed quip

Oh, I’d be remiss in failing to mention the collective groan each time yet another block of commercials rears its ugly, consumerist head. Can’t the CW get a federal subsidy? Make exceptional television, not war, especially since these exceptional forty minute blocks of enthralling storylines, three-dimensional characters and the occasional breaking down of the fourth wall is never, ever enough.