One of the trends in TV over the past few years has been the emergence of “boy soaps”: Smallville, The O.C., life as we know it, and so on. It’s not completely clear whether this trend is the result of an effort to attract a broader male viewership, a backlash against the girl-oriented dramas of the 90s (My So-Called Life, Buffy), or a sign of the emergence of alternate gazes (female or gay), but whatever the reason, shows featuring cute, angsty boys are in.
The Formula:
Supernatural = The Hardy Boys + The Exorcist + Renegade
The WB’s latest entry into this arena is Supernatural, a show about two brothers who hit the road in search of two things: evil, soul-sucking ghosts, and their absentee, monster-hunter father, in accordance with The Field of Dreams Law: all stories about men are ultimately about their fathers. As they travel from town to town in search of scary demons to purge, cocky Dean (Jensen Ackles) and angsty Sam (Jared Padalecki, who played a different Dean on Gilmore Girls) have their fair share of male-bonding moments, most of which seem to involve calling each other “bitch.”
If the series’ setup sounds pretty straightforward, that’s because it is. The scares are little more than the usual, boring “ghost jumps out, says ‘boo,’ and splatters some blood” variety, and the brothers are little more than a couple of actors from the WB stable playing a couple of stock bad boys. In a season that’s full of spooky mystery shows, and a TV landscape that’s full of boy-centric dramas, Supernatural doesn’t offer anything to distinguish it from the pack.