some supernatural family stuff

It’s less that I’m cheating on Buffy than that I’ve found I have lots of room in my heart for tales of post-adolescent demon-hunters. My heart, it turns out, is slatternly capacious. And while the Buffy door has shut a bit, if only because I know the stories so well, so inside and out, each poof! of each vampire dusting, each moment of apocalyptic brinksmanship with one paranormal creature or another—vampire, Frankensteinian demon machine, God—each romantic turn and triangle, each one of Buffy’s often lustworthy outfits.

I find I can’t watch another episode of Buffy right now. I am full, full to the nasal cavities, with Sunnydale. I have been watching Angel halfheartedly. I appreciate the innate, if sublimated, goofiness of Angel and his crew, and I do love the demon karaoke host who pops up all green and pointy in the second season, but I’ve never been as captured by Angel as I was by Buffy. Watching Angel has always felt like an exercise in nostalgia—those moments when one or another of the Sunnydale crew appears  make me light up for the span of that episode, and the rest of the time I find I’m merely biding time.

But really if I’m going to be honest, and I do try to be here on my pretty dumb things, I’ve abandoned Sunnydale and all of its denizens. I’ve left them, and I’ve found in its stead, Supernatural.

Parallels abound between Supernatural and Buffy and Angel. Line those three shows up and you’ve got a straight-shot wide-lane expressway of parallels. All three deal with tortured souls who find it their mission to hunt down the things that go bump in the night. All three turn on characters who can’t reveal their identities without risk. All three have main characters who find themselves in evolving families not necessarily related by blood. All three have narratives that center on irreparable loss. And all three star preternaturally good-looking humans who make you think not which one you’d fuck, but in which order you’d fuck them.

And because all three are grounded on supernatural phenomenon, they are also based on metaphor. Buffy traverses the dangerous ground of girlhood to womanhood as its titular stakes the beasts of the night. Angel’s LA setting makes it a metaphor for young adulthood in the gritty city and the perils of finding who you are in the lonely, disconnected and plastic dark. I’m saying nothing new here. Whole books have been written on these shows, whole academic conferences held, whole passels of pasty-faced geeks like me have argued passionately the meaning behind these stories they know and love.

At first, I couldn’t see the metaphor in Supernatural, the story of two brothers who travel cross-country in a 1969 Impala to root out strange occurrences and kill their uncanny perpetrators. At first, I was willing to see the unfolding saga of Sam and Dean Winchester as just being what it seemed to be: two hott brothers in a sweet ride loaded with cool pointy weapons and their dad’s vendetta against the demon that killed their mom. How could there be a metaphor in that? I asked myself. It’s window-pane clear.

And then I’d pop in another DVD and sate myself with the smooth-skinned testosterone-fest that is Sam and Dean, lulled as I was by the cheeky classic rock soundtrack and crepuscular lighting. Hour after hour. Demon after demon. Wisconsin, New York, Texas, Illinois, California: I let myself ride spectral shotgun in the guys’ Impala and let myself be borne away by them, mindlessly, unthinkingly, uncritically.

But only for so long, because as lovely as Sam and Dean are—and can I just interrupt here and aver my very creepy crush on Jenson Ackles who plays elder brother Dean, because yowza, the boy can’t help it, he was born to please, and what I could do to him in some sweet eternal afternoon would be nearly unspeakable—I just can’t turn my brain off for long. The thinky parts start whirring and sparking and spitting out ideas and before you know it I’m ripped out of my lovely passive fantasy and into waking thought.

Supernatural, unlike Angel and Buffy, is specifically concerned with family connections and origins. While Angel gestures at his long-dead family, his anger at his repressive father and his guilt over his murdering them, and while Buffy evolves from adolescent at war with her mother, while she retains the pain of her father’s abandonment, and while she grows into being a mother to her sister, the two brothers in Supernatural never leave the burden of their family. In fact, who they are in relationship to each other and to the rest of the world underlies the show every single moment. You never forget that they are brothers or that the demon they seek changed their family forever.

In many ways, then Supernatural’s metaphor is one of family origins and secrets—of those things from which you were supposed to be protected in the dark—and of which you, piteously small in your narrow bed,  always knew were out there lurking and waiting to spring to light.

It’s no real surprise I’d be attracted right now to a story about family, about the unexplained connections between people, and about the unspoken violence that rips a family apart. In many ways, watching these two guys riding around in their big car, bickering complacently, afraid in their moments of solitude, feeling things they can’t name and seeing things they can’t talk about, feels very familiar indeed. It feels familiar, and comforting too, for in Supernatural, questions, however eldritch and weird, always have answers, if you keep watching long enough.

I need to thank Karl Elvis who gifted me my first taste of Supernatural in DVD form. Supernatural is on the CW network. You should watch from the beginning and just skip through the annoying "previously on" bits.

Comments

[mj]

Yep, family in all its dysfunctional complexity is one of my themes too. Whatever you think of Martin Amis, I found his autobio "Experience" to be interesting in that way (found a cheap used copy, I was never a particular fan of his before) in his realization of how certain themes of missing family members in his work tied back to his own family. That made me realize just how much, like you, certain things resonate with me for personal reasons as well.

[jeffliveshere]

You may or may not want to know this, but Joss is putting out "Season 8" of Buffy (his phrasing) in a comic book--the first three issues are out already. It's pretty good.

[Chris]

Have you checked out Torchwood, Chelsea? It doesn't have so much to do with family, but it is kinda like a polymorphously perverse version of the X-Files, and has great way of integrating sexuality naturally into storylines. It might fit well on your list of "Buffy" followups. If you're ever interested, let me know and I'll burn you a few DVD's.

[seany]

Buffy is really a medieval morality play in disguise, so it's understandable that many get sated on that sort of material. Sometimes you just have to take a break.

Angel, the series, was never quite as developed as the Buffy series in terms of self-contained universe. Plus, Angel's character has gone through so many changes, it's hard to understand what he truly believes in. He has less control over his destiny than Buffy ever did.

[Mark]

Eh. I kind of like the "Previously on Supernatural" intros; they put me in the right frame of mind for the episode to follow, if they are done correctly.

[Karl Elvis]

Thank you CG. You managed to capture what I've been wanting to say about Supernatural, and failing. The fact that it looks all surface and humor and horror cliche over-shadows the fact that's it's a very good piece on families and tragedy. It's a much deeper, more complicated story that it appears.

It's also just about the coolest show on right now - the coolest car, the coolest heros, the best weapons (god I love me some bowie knives and sawed-off-double-barrels). And it has the soundtrack from my youth, and the car I would kill to own.

It just got renewed for a third season; time for everyone to go buy the DVDs or seasons one and two.

[Austin]

About Torchwood, it's a spin-off of the new Doctor Who, which is amazing in itself.