The CW Publicity team sent out an e-mail with the subject line “CW’s OMG Moment of the Week”. I was like, “eh, whatever Gossip Girl or 90210 or Vampire Diaries or perhaps even Melrose Place moment they are celebrating will be completely lost on me…”
But inside the e-mail was…Supernatural!:
Wow, maybe hell has frozen over and that was the reason Lucifer wanted to leave.
Too funny!
Herplexia was funnier, much, much funnier.
I agree, Herplexia was funny! But I guess with the PTC breathing down the CW’s neck, they don’t want to promote that they parodied a commercial for genital herpes.
Hell Knight Rider was also funnier. Especially as Dean is basically pulling things out of Sam’s ass.
im a HUGE fan of Supernatural altho i admit sometimes the episodes get alil weird, they can be very funny!..Jenson is hillarous!..hes grown so much as an actor since his Days of our Lives days…Thursday nights are a def ‘must watch’ for me, with Vampire Diaries (love Damon!) & Supernatural!!! Keep up the awesome work!! ~Muah~
But that probably wouldn’t go over very well either.
If I had the power to make one show gain 5 million viewers out of nowhere it would be for Supernatural. This show gets no respect and when Lost isn’t on it is easily the best show on television in my opinion. Not since Buffy/Angel and X-Files has a sci-fi show been able to blend so many different elements of humor, drama, suspense, and angst as well as Supernatural does.
I know they planned out a 5 season arc but the show has really hit its stride in S4 and S5. I really don’t see how the struggling CW doesn’t at least try to get another season out of it paired with VD next fall.
It was sweetly ironic that a show like Supernatural, which sits squarely in the fantasy realm, could poke fun at the “unreality” of a show like CSI Miami and particularly the Horatio character played by David Caruso.
But to be honest, the character is such a self-parody that it’s hard to exaggerate its ridiculousness.
The only thing more nausea-inducing than the ubiquitous cop procedurals would be reading a psychological study of why people are motivated to keep watching them. I mean, a season or two, I can understand. And the original CSI still manages a few bits of cleverness here and there and its cast is first rate. But taken as an aggregate, they give “tired” a whole new dimension and are now the poster children for TV “comfort food”.
Argh.
Well i keep watching procedural shows beacause they keep me entertained. Simple as that. But then again i ask myself: why would anyone watch SF shows over and over again? You really cannot find a more stupid TV show genre. So there you go: everyone with its own opinion. Why the need to bash people based on their TV preferences?
CW promoting Supernatural? Really? Who woulda thought? That show gets no love from its own network. If ever a show deserved more (any) promotion from its network, it’s Supernatural. But it’s always mentioned as an afterthought. The TV spoofs were funny, but the last 20 minutes of this episode were some of the best of the season so far.
@Robert
Hey, no offense intended to you. I was saying I don’t understand how people can watch these shows and how they make *me* sick. That’s just my opinion, not an absolute judgment on their worth. How the heck would *I* know what they’re worth? If total viewers is the measurement of their worth, then they’re among the best shows on TV.
What I would ask of you, though, in the spirit of truthfulness, is *why* they keep you entertained. Sure, you can sit back and just say “because they do”. Or you could deflect the question. Or you could keep mum. But those actions are answers as well.
I mean, really, what is psychologically satisfying about what happens in a typical procedural? Specifically?
Aardvark, I know you weren’t asking THIS Robert (me), but who are you to ask? Why isn’t “it entertains him” (and millions of others) a psychologically good enough reason for you?
I like to watch football on TV, and I don’t care much about soccer. But I don’t question why anyone who enjoys soccer enjoys it. I just accept that they and perhaps BILLIONS around the world DO enjoy it.
@Robert Seidman
It’s certainly a good enough answer, nothing more needed.
I was just hoping he’d elucidate, because having watched most of these on all four major networks at one time or another, I’ve developed a few theories on what buttons they push on their devotees. And I wanted to see if they matched up with his answers. Curiosity, I guess.
That doesn’t mean I’m judging you because you aren’t curious about why people like soccer. I’m willing to leave that question unanswered as well.
Cop procedurals are just mystery shows. People watch them because they like to try to guess “who did it”. After one hour the bad guys are caught and the story is resolved. You don’t have to remember what’s going on from week to week and you don’t have to invest years to find out how the story ends. It’s not that hard to understand why people like them.
@Rose
Thanks!
That was concise and informative. You gave five reasons in four sentences. Bravo!
Do you think the “bad guys are caught” part speaks to a feeling of insecurity among an older demographic?
I think the “bad guys are caught” speaks much more to our innate desire for justice than any insecurities. Mystery stories have been popular for a wide range age groups for generations, so I can’t see how one could draw the conclusion that it is related to any insecurity among older people today.
@Holly
Thanks as well!
I agree, we all have an innate desire for justice, regardless of what demo we belong to. It must be other factors that are skewing the law enforcement procedurals older.
To me, shows like the CSI’s, Criminal Minds, Cold Case, The Mentalist and the NCIS’s have established a template so recognizable that if you swapped out the actors, characters and locations you would still be able to tell it was a CBS procedural.
But back on topic, the last episode of Supernatural was really entertaining, and it’s great to see inspired creativity expressed by the show runners this many seasons in. If only this type of risk taking were rewarded monetarily as well as critically, it could well kick off a new renaissance period for television.
Jackpot!!
“I like to watch football on TV, and I don’t care much about soccer. But I don’t question why anyone who enjoys soccer enjoys it. I just accept that they and perhaps BILLIONS around the world DO enjoy it.”
Gore Vidal said that the most dangerous word in the English language is “Why”. He’s also written that reporters will cover the who, what, when, and where, and sometimes the how, but never the why.
Per your example, if we questioned why billions of people enjoy soccer, we could understand it. Maybe we could incorporate what we learned into baseball and get a “world” series that didn’t consist of America and one Canadian team. (It cracks me up that the horses running in the Breeders’ Cup races today and tomorrow have more claim to the title of “world” champions than the Yankees who were labelled such today pre-parade.) Maybe we’ll even learn that billions of people enjoy soccer only because they’ve never heard of what “hands” are and what they can do for you. Perhaps a worldwide hands-awareness campaign (lead by the CW’s PR team) will be implemented, and people will learn that basically every other sport on earth, from American football to tiddlywinks, involves the use of these “hands” things. Global consciousness will be changed, all because people asked why. Ponder your legacy, Robert: Because of a question raised on your website, people all over the world may start touching their balls for the very first time.
So, for the sake of this outcome, I support Aardvark.
The other Robert wrote: “Well i keep watching procedural shows beacause they keep me entertained.”
Said answer is sort of a tautology. That much is assumed – I think Aardvark wanted to know what specifically you found entertaining/holds your interest.
“Simple as that. But then again i ask myself: why would anyone watch SF shows over and over again?”
I believe the unspoken premise in Aardvark’s questioning was that procedurals are, by definition, procedural… or rather, the application of the same procedure to a different example. They also share many other traits in common – law enforcement officer characters, crime committed, solved in one episode, etc. Science fiction is speculative and wide-open, not lending itself to a procedure of any type and not limited (but certainly can be) to a standard set of characters/situations. Lost, Heroes, Fringe, Terminator, Battlestar Galactica and Stargate (whatever) are all SF, yet each is set in different locations and with a variety of time periods and alternate realities represented. Asking why do people watch SF shows over and over doesn’t have the same impact as Aardvark’s question because a trait of SF is its application of imagination and what-if scenarios to create situations different from current reality. They’re far more varied than the current crop of procedurals, so watching more than one would not be as surprising as watching all the CSIs and L&Os.
Rose, in general I’d agree, but in regards to mysteries, I’d say there is a distinction. Murder She Wrote, Father Dowling, Matlock, Rockford Files and even Pushing Daisies were mysteries, but not really procedurals. Encyclopedia Britannica has a whole article about attempting to provide a textualist definition of a procedural, but I like this sentence from it the best: “For the purpose of this study, the procedural is a variant of the detective story, which is itself a variant of the mystery, globally speaking. Procedurals filter the ratiocinative action through characters who actively investigate the mystery for the viewer, following procedures that are prescribed by their professions (e.g., police detectives, forensic scientists, etc.).” I’d add that all the procedurals I can think of running on broadcast tv today have law enforcement settings. They also break down the episodes’ actions as follows:
“1. Victim is involved in some mysterious occurrence.
2. Victim is discovered.
3. Investigators are made aware of the case and are provided background information.
4. Investigators relocate and begin investigating.
5. Investigators discover partial answers or snares by physically searching and/or questioning informers/misinformers/ experts.
6. Informers/misinformers/experts provide partial answers and/or snares.
7. Investigators/experts reveal/recount the discovery of partial answers or snares.
8. Investigators identify a perpetrator/false perpetrator.
9. Investigators apprehend and question the perpetrator/false perpetrator.
10. Perpetrator/false perpetrator provides partial answers and snares.
11. Investigators elucidate the case, identifying the perpetrator as true or false. If the accused is determined to have been falsely accused, then the case is not fully elucidated and the narrative typically returns to the phases of the investigation.
12. Perpetrator is removed from society.
13. Investigators assess the case.”
I think it’s a fairly legitimate (and answerable) question why one would enjoy several seasons’ worth of episodes that all followed this format, and a definitely legitimate question why one would want to watch several shows at the same time with this specific and undeviating plotline.
That was a scalpel-sharp dissection, Joseph.
I stand in your shadow.
Joseph, the problem with the 13 steps you cite is you put all the focus on the procedure and almost none of it on the characters (”characters” is almost a throw away reference in the sentence you liked best). While some variation of those steps is almost always at play in criminal procedurals (and you could probably write a version for hospital shows) the bottom line when it comes to why people like those shows is people like the characters and the situations they are in. That’s true for both serial and procedural shows, and science fiction, whether it’s House & NCIS or Fringe and Supernatural.
I think the whole serial vs. procedural thing is greatly over emphasized in most cases, at least based on comments on our blog. House is as serialized as Fringe is! But it’s still a hospital procedural. You could tune in after not watching for a long while and not be lost, but the same is true of last night’s Fringe. You didn’t need to know anything about the serial arcs in Fringe to understand last night’s episode. Some things are deeply serialized, but are NOT as complex as LOST. I watched the first four episodes of season two of Sons of Anarchy because I was able to enjoy it right out of the gate with the “previously on Sons of Anarchy”. I went back and watched season one because I really like the show and wanted to see it. But not seeing season one took nothing away from my enjoyment of the first four episodes of season two, even though it is a serialized show. That’s just like people could’ve watched the fourth Harry Potter movie (or read the book, for that matter) without seeing/reading the first 3 and still enjoy it. The experience might not be 100% as rich as it could be that way, but it’s not like “What? I don’t understand what’s going on here!”
I hadn’t watched any of this season of Heroes other than the first half of the season premiere until Monday’s episode. I wasn’t lost at all.
I like sci fi (I’m a big Supernatural, Fringe and of course, Lost fan), but science fiction isn’t the only genre that stirs people’s imaginations and offers what if scenarios.
By the way, Matlock, The Rockford Files, Murder She Wrote, Magnum PI…all procedurals. Serial elements, but procedurals. And I support Aardvark’s quest to understand, if that’s really what it was. but I don’t support him doing that sort of research on THIS blog, especially when it comes off like “why do you like the stupid, repetitive boring stuff you like?” And so it won’t seem like I’m putting words in his mouth, here are his words (from above) directly from him:
The only thing more nausea-inducing than the ubiquitous cop procedurals would be reading a psychological study of why people are motivated to keep watching them. I mean, a season or two, I can understand. And the original CSI still manages a few bits of cleverness here and there and its cast is first rate. But taken as an aggregate, they give “tired” a whole new dimension and are now the poster children for TV “comfort food”.
I wouldn’t mind the elitist aspects of it but to say Fringe and Supernatural aren’t comfort food is folly. You might prefer meatloaf to mashed potatoes, and that’s fine, but in the end, it’s all comfort food. so to act like you have some superior high ground is a joke. My belief is Kripke was mocking people like Aardvark with the spoof rather than agreeing with him. But I could be wrong. I loved the episode either way.
Robert, I think Kripke and Co were tweaking the noses of THOSE fans as well. What’s more, I think they deserve to be taken down a peg or two.
Oh, BTW, while I love Supernatural, and Fringe, I also love CSI (original) House and Bones.
Robert, it’s a fair point that you don’t want me asking questions of other commenters on your blog. I’ll cease and desist that activity.
In terms of the rest of your rebuttal, you missed the most important part of it – which is ironic since it’s part of the caption on the Supernatural screen shot at the top of this article.
“There’s like 300 of them on television and they’re all the freaking same.”
This is the popular impression, IMHO, which is why it was in the script. Dean’s character just expresses the frustration of some creative people in the industry that these cop procedurals chew up a lot of air time and aren’t very innovative (innovation being part of the creative process, after all). Imagining it’s an ever so clever reverse jab at the people who mock those shows seems like a reach.
While Joseph spent some effort differentiating SF from the cop procedurals, I’m comfortable with calling all television comfort food. Heck, you can even call it mass narcotic if you want. This is a red herring. I’m not trying to defend any specific show – they all have warts.
Clearly, shows like CSI Miami and NCIS resonate with a lot of people, and unless I’m misreading your own tables the bulk of them are at the high edge or beyond the 18-49 demo. Those same people pretty much ignore L&O which has a similar formula but not the CBS one. Maybe it’s just me but I find that discrepancy interesting.
And while I apologize for not always being tactful when expressing my own opinion of some of these shows, it wasn’t my intention to offend but to simply understand how people could *keep* liking the very same thing churned out episode after episode, show after show. I think it’s mind-numbing and I remain curious about it.
Jensen was right, procedual cop shows are TOTAL CRAP. And they are ALL THE SAME. here’s how a cop show will pretty much go down for every single one of the 239248972368902489 episodes that have airred since 2000.
- Cops find and body and act all dramatic about it, despite the fact it is their JOB to go out and find dead bodies.
- 35 minutes of running into dead ends
- In the last 7 minutes or so, they writers will find some miracle to wrap up the case and have the cops either catch the killer(s) and arrest them, or they will blow the guy(’)s brains out.
Literally, you’ve seen one you’ve seen EVERY one. The only difference I see in the episodes of CSI today and the CSI from 2002 is the hair and the mobile phones they use. I don’t really know why people tune in week in week out, must be ALOT of dumb and uneducated people in the world.
aznfratboy wrote: “Literally, you’ve seen one you’ve seen EVERY one. The only difference I see in the episodes of CSI today and the CSI from 2002 is the hair and the mobile phones they use. I don’t really know why people tune in week in week out…”
The differences you see may be not the differences others see, and the sameness you see may be what attracts. Vive la différence et vive la même chose.
is the CW promoting my favourite show supernatural?? No way!! no.. it’s true.. OH MY GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD!!!! its the first time they choose supernatural over … what?? one tree hill, smallville? they are the only ones which don t get the e-mail.. well its not so weird, supernatural now is the second best rated show after The Crap Diaries.. its so sad it received a little promotion in the final season.. anyway……. omg!
Aardvark, what you missed are several interviews with Kripke where he laments the fans lambasting him for “monster/demon of the week! it’s all the same!” Of course, on the flip side, lots of people are complaining about the current, more serialized story arc. He can’t win!
And your mind is already numb if you think “I’m curious to know why you like mind-numbing crap?” isn’t offensive and insulting.
Perhaps tangential but germane to the discussion of this Supernatural episode’s meta-textual content nonetheless: I viewed Dean and Sam’s mid-sitcom complaints of “How long are we going to have to keep doing this?” “Maybe forever” as being commentary on viewers’ insatiable desire for more even when actors, producers, and writers have grown weary of a show and are ready to finish.
As for what attracts viewers to one show and not another? In my opinion, almost purely personal taste, with demographics factoring slightly as well. At this point, television is still the pablum of the masses, and claiming “good” taste because one enjoys serialized dramas or “bad” taste because of a preference for crime procedurals seems more than a trifle pretentious and farcical.
People complain about certain genres being predictable as if being predictable is a bad thing.
Its not.
Sometimes I like to just sit down and watch something where I know what I’m getting –if that’s ‘comfort viewing’ then I guess I’m guilty. Similarly, I don’t tune in.
I hate medical shows – because I hate the melodrama involved with the disease of the week. I don’t care for that emotional rollercoaster.
To me, Supernatural has a great mix of ‘comfort’ episodes and rollercoaster episodes. And a wicked sense of humor always.
I LOVE Supernatural and always loved MOTW stories. Serial arcs are great, but once you have miss a few episodes, it’s hard to catch up. I really am not into procedural cop shows, but they do have an advantage in watchibg a show once in a swhile and not being lost. z
I still don’t see what’s the reason for the angel. This episode showed how useless he is.
Here there are all these funny Sam and Dean bits, as doctors or cops, and then that annoying angel keeps showing up for no reason. He looks so stupid and out of place.
I wish the Trickster made him disappear forever.
Robert, fortunately Kripke isn’t frustrated with me since I haven’t complained about either MOTW or serialized episodes of Supernatural. I thought the last episode was noteworthy because of its clever parodies of various TV shows/genres. It was great because it did something different.
Other than that, you seem to just be lashing out defensively now. At least Mel, Marrel and Sara addressed the issue about formulaic shows. News flash: I’ve watched every episode of CSI and Criminal Minds and have watched most of CSI:NY, although I can no longer tolerate CSI:Miami. When “Eleventh Hour” was on, I watched every episode of that.
So, I guess, using your interpretation of what I’ve been saying, I’m calling myself an idiot for watching mind-numbing crap. Yeah, that makes perfect sense.
I’m not defensive, and it’s s not an interpretation of what you said. It’s what you actually said:
The only thing more nausea-inducing than the ubiquitous cop procedurals would be reading a psychological study of why people are motivated to keep watching them. I mean, a season or two, I can understand. And the original CSI still manages a few bits of cleverness here and there and its cast is first rate. But taken as an aggregate, they give “tired” a whole new dimension and are now the poster children for TV “comfort food”.
And this:
I was saying I don’t understand how people can watch these shows and how they make *me* sick.
I agree if you actually watch a lot of procedural shows that it does seem like you are calling yourself an idiot for watching mind-numbing crap and that it doesn’t make much sense. But we’ve seen crazier on this blog
Self-induced sickness.
That is just C-R-A-A-A-Z-Y!
Maybe some people get motion sickness from watching the dynamics of a show they expect to be the same old stuff, episode after apisode. Heck – I get sick from watching most football games, when after an eternity of posturing, hugging, holding and walking around, somebody breaks free and scores a touchdown. It’s worse in ML baseball, with the current average of 4 runs per game. That’s about 1 run per each hour of watching grown-ups spit. Fortunately I like watching the Red Sox: their players don’t spit, and I only become half-sick.