Why Supernatural is so good, and a few Chuck updates

I was planning to write about Project Runway today, but as the internet appears to be unusually withholding in that quarter, it’ll have to wait until later. In the mean time, allow me to briefly express some further appreciation for Supernatural, which may not have the flash of Big Love or the epic complexity of Lost, but it continues to do what it does very well.

Last night’s Valentine’s themed episode was a great example of the show firing on all pistons. It began with a super creepy, gore-tastic opening scene where two cute people on a first date start to make out and then transition into actually eating each other to death. It followed that up with some humor, a guy who killed himself by using a toilet brush to cram himself full of Twinkies, the arrival of Famine (of Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse fame), and a brief but moving exploration of Sam and Dean’s evolving, twisted relationship.

Supernatural isn’t built to be a powerful, world-changing television show, but it’s so consistently effective at being scary, funny, and thoughtful that it’s head-and-shoulders above other, similarly lowbrow shows. Perhaps more than any other positive feature, Supernatural is just exceptionally good at balancing its conflicting story demands. The usual strain between week-to-week episodic stories and the long arc apocalypse plot is almost absent, letting minor ghost problems and the end of the world get all mixed up together, to the benefit of both plotlines. It’s also reliably fun, which is more than I can say for The Vampire Diaries.

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A few updates on the crazy Chuck-pocalypse:

There were a lot of great things written about the whole shipper angle of the blow up, particularly this piece by Linda Holmes, and this one on Cultural Learnings. This blog also got a link on the LA Times Show Tracker blog, which was pretty cool. Most importantly, though, this interview with Chuck creators Josh Schwartz and Chris Fedak addresses both the special relationship between Chuck and its fans, and gives Schwartz and Fedak an opportunity to mildly reassert that they are actually the ones in charge of the story. Shipping can be positive and build loyalty to a show, but a show’s plot is not a matter for popular vote.