One of the strange things about reviewing television series DVDs is that sometimes quality can be so wildly divergent. One episode is killer, whilst another just unpleasant. And that’s the path that Supernatural will follow–Warner Brothers sent me a copy of the complete first season, and parts of it are great, while others, not so much.
Supernatural’s first season on the Warner network the CW follows brothers Sam and Dean Winchester, who are out to find their father who in turn disappeared in the midst of a hunting trip. This being a show called “Supernatural”, of course, he didn’t get drunk and wander into a swamp. See, the elder Winchester was a hunter, all right–but a hunter of ghosts and demons and assorted paranormal whatnot. Now, the brothers Winchester are taking up their father’s mantle as hunters of ghosts and demons and assorted paranormal whatnot to find him. And when the brothers find out what happened to their dad, well…things are really going to get strange.
Strange? Or maybe just lunatic? I don’t know. But I’ll say this for at least the first season–there are some pretty scary moments in here. Of course, this is a television show, so naturally, it’s brought to you in “Totally Neutered For Family Viewing in Full Accordance With Any and All Applicable FCC Regulations”-vision, so you can forget about anything really unpleasant here. But they’ll still do a nice job of bringing the scary, and yes, there will be (at least some) blood.
I love using that pun.
At any rate, Supernatural’s complete first season is a surprisingly rich experience, though it’s not a continually rich experience. It’s pretty much a standard of most any television series–some parts are better than others, but it’s all about how the average works out. And the average here works out pretty good. Horror on television is pretty short on the ground (anyone else remember Fear Itself? Wow, was that unpleasant), but Supernatural does a pretty fair job of bringing some scary, along with some action.
Thus, the Screenhead Ten Scale gives this mostly solid package, with some side trips into unpleasantness, a seven out of ten. What better for a show that’s good three times out of four?
