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The "Supernatural" Fan's Strike Surival Guide

* By CP Cochran
* Published Yesterday
* Television
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CP Cochran


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Are Sam and Dean on a highway to rerun hell?


If you're up to speed on Supernatural, you know the mytharc has been brewing and bubbling away in Eric Kripke's cauldron, the show has been bringing the scares, and the brotherly interaction between Sam (Jared Padalecki) and Dean (Jensen Ackles) Winchester is more complicated than ever as they travel the country saving people and hunting evil things. But this winter, an impending writer's strike could interrupt season three.

Unless a hoped-for resolution happens over the weekend, the Writer's Guild of America is set to begin a strike at 12:01 a.m. Monday. The way seasons are produced, most shows have enough episodes in the can to last well past November sweeps, but networks are expected to hold back episodes to have enough for February sweeps. Which means a long, cold wait for fans in December and January. After February, it's a big question mark.

What's Supernatural's status? According to the L.A. Times, Supernatural has at least up to 3x10, possibly as far as 3x12, already in the can, and maybe five other scripts completed. So if the strike is a long one, Supernatural fans could (but we don't know for sure) get through episode 3x17 before the worst hiatus in twenty years sets in. The bad news is that while Supernatural's ratings are looking solid and holding steady, they're relatively small and the show can't afford to lose even a small portion of its audience. The good news is, the series has devoted viewers who will wait...and definitely return (I know I will).
And almost all prime-time scripted shows will be in the same boat, even the ones with huge audiences.

The other good news is Supernatural has a thriving, creative online fandom. If the winter hiatus gets too long, there are plenty of fanvids, fan sites, fanfic, artwork, and analytical discussion to keep interest high and stave off Winchester withdrawal symptoms. So with a strike probably looming, here are some portals to Supernatural fandom worth checking out.

First up is the livejournal community spndirectory, which lists livejournal communities by category for every type of creative fan work, and has subcategories for every kind of taste. Also on livejournal, there's the comprehensive Supernatural newbie guide, which includes several links to fanfic archives beyond livejournal. Both directories include links to communities for fanfiction, discussion, fanvids, graphics, as well as communities dedicated to specific characters, pairings, and genres. There's also information on plenty of Supernatural fan meet-up opportunities and conventions all over the country, and the world.

Thursday, December 6, 2007
Supernatural Preview: A Special Holiday Episode, Season 4 and More
by Ileane Rudolph
Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles by Patrick Ecclesine/The CWJared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles, Supernatural
Ho, ho, ho, Deaniacs and Samaholics, Supernatural (9 pm/ET, CW) hasn't forgotten you at you at holiday time. Exec producer Eric Kripke is gifting you with a very gory Christmas episode tonight and he's telling us all about it — there's some revelations fans should eat up — as well as offering up some hints of episodes to come.

TV Guide: So what is the Supernatural take on Christmas?
Eric Kripke: I grew up loving Christmas specials; Rudolph, Santa Claus Is Coming to Town. I got it into my head that I wanted to do Supernatural's version of a Christmas special. We wanted to be the first — and I'd imagine only — Christmas special complete with impalements, cannibalism and torture scenes. [Laughs] What I really rub my hands together in glee about is that we are far and away the most violent Christmas special in the history of television. That's really fun. As we researched legends for the show, we came across this worldwide one about an anti-Claus — if God has the Devil, then Santa Claus has this creature. He stuffs his victims in sacks and takes them off to eat them.

TV Guide: Oh no, a really, really bad Santa!
Kripke:.One of the things I'm really proud of in this episode is that the legend is one of our most accurate, not just in discussion of the anti-Claus, but also when you research Christmas you discover that the vast majority of Christmas traditions are actually pagan. So is Easter.

TV Guide: Isn't that a little gutsy of you to point out on American TV?
Kripke: [Laughs] We just report the news.

TV Guide: Where do the pagans fit into the story?
Kripke: The implication of there being an anti-Claus means that there actually is a Santa Claus and the writers and I couldn't quite bring ourselves to say that there was such a thing as Santa Claus. So we moved on to the Pagan god, which is called Hold Nickar. Generally thought to be the precedent to Santa Claus.

TV Guide: You have the violent cynical pagan holiday story but then you have moving flashbacks to the young Winchesters, don't you?
Kripke: Yeah, it felt like such a natural to tie it into the Christmas episode. Those kids — Ridge Canipe plays Dean and Colin Ford, Sam — are-terrific. We love exploring the childhood of the boys and to be able to tell the story of the day that Sam lost his innocence not just that there was no such thing as Santa Claus but that there was such a thing as everything else, was too good an opportunity to pass up.

TV Guide: What kind of revelations are there in the boys past?
Kripke: It explains where Dean got his necklace that he wears in every single episode. It explains the beginning of Sam's estrangement from his father and his indoctrination into the supernatural world. It's quite a big moment.

TV Guide: How many episodes do you have left?
Kripke: Christmas will be Episode 8 and we will have four more before we go into repeats. If it ends in December, I think we'll be able to pick back up in January without missing too many episodes, only one or two. If the strike heads off into January or God forbid, February, then we really need to have a conversation about how scaled back the season is going to be.

TV Guide: Will Sam's quest to keep Dean alive be ongoing in those four episodes?
Kripke: Yeah. We actually spend a little more time with how Dean himself feels about going to Hell because right now he's accepting that he's going to Hell and he's unwilling to do anything to stop it. That changes 180 percent in Episode 10. Something big happens to him that makes him realize he desperately wants to live and he desperately doesn't want to go to Hell. We also have a great Groundhog day episode coming up.

TV Guide: Where a day keeps repeating itself?
Kripke: Sam basically wakes up every day and it's the same day and Dean dies at the end of every single day. It's actually quite funny. Dean dies maybe 10 different ways on camera, and off camera, maybe he dies 200 different ways. Sam doesn't go through just three or four Tuesdays, he goes through something like 150 Tuesdays. We have a great witch episode and we have a big mythology episode where we pay off the Agent Hendrickson storyline in a very climactic way.

TV Guide: What's happening with Ruby and Bella?
Kripke: Ruby is appearing in that episode with Hendrickson; she's also appearing in the witch episode. We reveal something pretty surprising about her backstory. She's a demon, and we learn a lot about demons and how they came to be demons. Bella makes an appearance in a dream episode, where Sam and Dean take this medicine man drug where they go dream walking, which is going into other peoples' dreams. So we spend the majority inside Bobby's dreams, inside Dean's dreams,

TV Guide: Your fans seem to hate any woman who comes on the show. Are they coming around?
Kripke: My fans are a protective bunch. I hope we're winning them over. Last season, they had such issues with the character Jo. And privately, I thought the character as we wrote her wasn't working out. This season, I love both these girls and both these characters. They're really interesting and bring something different to the table.

TV Guide: I have to ask you about Katie Cassidy's (Ruby) arrest-underage drinking, lying to a cop. How has that affected the show?
Kripke: I don't have anything to say about that. It hasn't affected the show at all.

TV Guide: Are you planning for Dean's future to be resolved this season? If the strike allows it, of course.
Kripke: We have this storyline that we're building towards — whether Dean goes to Hell and what's really happening to Sam, dovetails together in a really surprising and satisfying way. If we have a full season, Dean's time will come up and we'll definitely answer what team Sam is going to be fighting for. If we have a half a season, stay tuned for Season 4. So we're excited by that story and we hope to tell it this year.

TV Guide: What can we look forward to with post-strike eps?
Kripke: There's a fun one where we bring back the Hellhounds, the bumbling ghost hunters back from Season 1. The whole show is an episode of their reality show. So we're shooting an entire show on hand-held video Blair Witch-style. Like when X-Files did their episode of Cops. It's our loving tribute to Ghosthunters on Sci Fi.

The CW is shaking up its schedule, relocating the Monday comedy block to Sundays and putting freshman dramas "Gossip Girl" and "Reaper" on new nights.
...
Meanwhile, "Reaper" will return at 8 p.m. Jan. 15 before moving to 9 p.m. Thursdays on Feb. 28, leading out of "Smallville." "Reaper," which had previously led out of "Beauty and the Geek," will replace "Supernatural," which is taking a break from the schedule.

"We're trying to give 'Reaper' a chance as well, moving it away from (Fox's) 'House' on Tuesday (at 9 p.m.) and seeing if we can find a bit more of a compatible lead-in in 'Smallville,' " Kahl said.

Furthermore, "Reaper" will return to the schedule on Tuesday, January 15 at 8:00/7:00c before sliding to Thursdays at 9:00/8:00c on February 28. ("Supernatural" will have completed airing its first-run episodes by said date.)

Here's the link of the Petition to save Supernatural !

http://www.youchoose.net/campaign/save_supernatural

Description:
Supernatural has a huge fan base in Bulgaria, which adores not only Jensen and Jared but love the work that the crew puts into the making of each episode too. Unfortunately, not one Bulgarian Television has planned to air it which can only make us miserable.
We hope that with this petition we'll show the World and mostly the people dealing with Television in Bulgaria that there are a lot of Supernatural fans and that they deserve as much as the other fans of shows, such as Heroes, Lost and Battlestar Galactica, to be rewarded with their favourite 40-minute piece of television time called Supernatural

Q: Will Jensen’s audition be included in this season’s DVD set?

EK: I actually do not know the answer to that question. (comment from the audience: ‘the answer is yes’) Oh, okay then, I guess the answer is yes! (chuckles)

Q: Can you give us any idea of what we can expect of the Season Three DVD extras?

EK: There’s actually going to be a really cool feature regarding Ivan Hayden and all the visual effects on the show. And rather than whole episode commentaries we’re doing favorite scene commentaries. I’m doing my three favorite scenes of the year, Sera [Gamble] and Ben [Edlund] are doing a bunch, as are the team up in Vancouver. And of course, there will be gag reel!

Q: Have Jensen [Ackles] or Jared [Padalecki] expressed an interest in directing and would you let them? EK: It’s possible, but they haven’t expressed it. It would be challenging and hard because they really bust their butts already since they’re practically in every scene and working all eight days of each show. But they haven’t brought it up yet.

...

Q: In the second episode of this season, we were introduced to Ben, the possible son of Dean. Will he be brought back again, will that question be brought up again, and will there be any more offspring?

EK: Well, I can say for a fact that he’s really NOT Dean’s kid. That having been said, if you see in Dream a Little Dream, that is the family that Dean dreams of. Underneath this swinger type of shell who just wants to hook up all the time, what he really wants is a safe, traditional, suburban family, which is the one thing he never had. And this is the thing that he also dreamt of in What is and What Shall Never Be. We may see them again because they exist in my mind as the paradigm of what Dean really wants, so it’s possible to see them again. But if we do, [Ben] would be a step-child, if they end up hooking up — which they won’t any time soon.

Q: In the episode Bloody Mary, when a character sees Bloody Mary their eyes would bleed if they had a secret. Dean’s eyes bled, and we still don’t know why…

EK: Right, I know. It’s just one of those things. As a writer you know things about these characters; you have histories and backstories. And there IS a real secret to Dean’s character that we know and that we have; it’s not core or central but it’s there. It appears that the fans have latched onto that and it’s driving them crazy, and at some point before the show is over we’ll need to reveal it, but not now (audience groans). And the more time that passes the harder it gets to revisit.

Q: Where did your inspiration come from for Lilith because it appears that Lilith and Sam are the two opposites that are supposed to lead this demon army and she’s this little girl and he’s this big, tall man such that it looks like Mighty Mouse versus the Jolly Green Giant… EK: But she’s got skills!! …She’s this adorable little girl with the creepy white eyes….

[spoiler warning!] EK: Currently that’s just the meatsuit she’s wearing. The reason we were inspired by Lilith is that we’re moving up the demonic hierarchy. Lilith is higher than Azazel, Yellow-Eyes. She’s a pretty high echelon demon, you don’t get much higher than her until you start digging into Lucifer territory. So don’t be fooled by the little girl… she will leave the girl and go into somebody else and go into different characters. Because we actually have references - (pauses in thought)… actually I’m going to drop that because I would spoil too much. But she’s a demon whereas Sam is human. Heck, if I was a demon, I would follow the other demons! So Sam has his work cut out for him and he has some twists and turns about what his destiny might be and whether or not he achieves it.

...

Q: Dean always seems to struggle with religion and believing in God, whereas Sam seems more readily to do so. How can Dean struggle with that and yet use a rosary to create holy water, or use <christo>, or other religious tools?

EK: I think that is something very interesting about the core of the character. He is ultimately pragmatic and says that he only believes what he can see. He doesn’t really have faith, he doesn’t believe in destiny and he only has what he can see with his own eyes. But he tends to see all kinds of crazy stuff and he uses the religious tools because he has seen them work. He doesn’t think it’s the power of God making it work, for all he knows it might be some occult spell. All he knows is that it works. He’s practical, therefore uses it. He believes in demons because he has fought them and uses those tools against them. But because he has never seen angels or God, and has no direct experience with them, he just doesn’t believe in them. What makes the character so interesting — because in my mind HE’S the hero of the show in so many ways, so my apologies to the Sam lovers. Whereas Sam is that very classic Joseph Campbell with the prophecy and all that, Dean is the character who doesn’t believe in that stuff yet he keeps coming across it. So how he deals with it and how he reacts to it is interesting. At the end of the day, the soul of the show is about humanism, humanity, and making your own destiny. Basically Dean says f— all that prophecy crap, we’re brothers, and I love you. (loud cheers) And that’s basically the core of the character.

...

Q: Are you ever going to throw us a bone about how it was that their mother Mary knew who the demon was?

EK: Yes, 100%. It was going to be included in this season, but the strike delayed it. But I promise it will be in next season. There’s going to be a big episode with all that mythology and how Mary knew the demon

...

Q: I’ve read your interviews where you have stated you have the entire storyline and you anticipate ending in five seasons, so I was wondering if you would think a little harder about maybe ending in say, 7 or more seasons. There’s so much more to explore out there!

EK: Yes, there is certainly more to explore. But we sort of have this 5-year map. And Jared and Jensen like the idea of a 5-year map because we work them so hard. It’s possible, but I don’t know. I make the same joke in all the interviews that in Season 6 you can start expecting all the weddings, Raven Symone will show up, an episode will be in Hawaii, and Dean literally gets on a motorcycle and jumps the shark tank. But a lot of these issues are beyond my control at the corporate level with ratings, etcetera. But my personal feeling is that I still want to go out in year five (audience awws and disappointment), It’s better to go out strong and on top than to be 8 or 9 years into a piece of sh#&. You want conclusions… you want to end it. It’s an epic story and epic stories deserve a good ending.

...

Q: Since you have all been given an early pick-up for Season 4, just how bad of a season cliffhanger will you be giving us?

EK: (very gleeful) It’s going to be a real bit#&! You guys will hopefully be biting your nails. Sorry, it won’t be a restful summer. But for the record, I was going to give you this cliffhanger even when we =didn’t= know we were coming back and you guys would be saying (multiple expletives). But now we all know we’ll be back and it will all be resolved, so you’ll see.

Underground, guerilla-style
Eric Kripke recently answered fan questions about Supernatural at TVGuide.com. Among them, he revealed a few things about season 4. Due to the writer's strike, Supernatural will have only sixteen episodes this season. There had been some speculation from the showrunners on the different ways season 4 might compensate for it. Sadly, Kripke revealed that The CW only ordered the usual 22 episodes for next season.

The studio has also cut the show's budget -- which may not necessarily be bad news. As a result, Kripke says, "We'll be employing all kinds of tricks next year — the war will be smaller, more contained, underground, more guerrilla-style. I actually think it'll improve the show. Looking back over Season 3, the spectacle and size is never as interesting as the episodes that focus on the brothers."

Also, when it comes to scares, Supernatural often follows the principle that what you don't see is scarier than what you do. Against the backdrop of demons, ghosts, and scary places, it's the small moments between Sam (Jared Padalecki) and Dean (Jensen Ackles) -- such as Dean teaching Sam how to fix the Impala at the end of "Fresh Blood" -- that's the engine of the show.

"There will still be the [demon] war," Kripke adds, "but we'll be presenting it in our scruffy, angsty, Supernatural way, and we'll return to concentrating on the relationships and the characters." TV Guide also delivered the scoop that with the reduced budget, the character of Bela, the mercenary without-a-heart-of-gold, will be gone next season.[/b] At Creation Entertainment's Salute to Supernatural in Los Angeles at the end of March, Kripke talked about what he thought went wrong with the character. "She made the boys look stupid maybe once or twice too many, and she was never tied into the mythology."

Kripke told TV Guide that the show is and always has been intended to be "the saga of the Winchester clan...an epic, emotional family story. Beyond that, story elements come and go, some are introduced, and others discarded." He said the writers consider various factors in what characters and stories stay and which get cut: actor availability, their own judgment, and, he adds, "Yes, at times, the opinions of the fans." He warns that this applies only for non-core characters and story arcs and that fan response "never alters the core story and central mythology.
"

In an interview with Firefox News, producer and writer Sera Gamble indicated that Ellen Harvelle (Samantha Ferris) would be returning for the season finale. However, it seems negotiations fell through, as the actress subsequently reported on her blog, so fans probably won't see more of Ellen anytime soon. The show has a mixed track record with its supporting characters. At the Creation Convention, Eric Kripke also mentioned Jo Harvelle, Ellen's daughter, whose character, like Bela, didn't play out the way they'd hoped. Ava, Andy, Jake, and Lily, Sam's fellow psychic-kids, were all killed in season two's finale "All Hell Breaks Loose." Ellen and Jo happily haven't been killed off, they have simply faded from the show, and haven't been mentioned. The quirky computer genius Ash died when the Roadhouse burned down. Agent Henriksen, a very popular character, fell victim to the demon Lilith at the end of "Jus in Belo."

Ruby the demon for the moment seems to have some staying power -- at Creation, Eric Kripke joked "if you don't like Ruby, tough." The reliable, caustic, and much beloved Bobby (Jim Beaver) also seems to be sticking around as far as we know.

So, Supernatural fans, are you glad that the budget cuts will lead to a return to a tighter focus on the brother interaction? It's true the show is best when it's about Sam and Dean. However, supporting characters add a new perspective on the Winchesters, and can be fun characters in their own right (I love Sam and Dean, but I confess, I have a weakness for the supporting characters). There are some it seems hard to imagine Supernatural without.

Who would you like to see return? Anyone you think should stay or the show should do more with, even while the main focus next season stays on the brothers?

Samantha Ferris had this to say in tribute to Ellen: "She is unlike any character I have played and I am proud of her. She was tough love, fiercely loving, and loyal to the death. I don't think that more Ellen's out there would be a bad thing. Someone that I could throw a beer back with. I loved the cast and crew, the producers and writers, and my connection to all of them...Thank you for digging her and understanding her as much as I did."

Not only did Supernatural creator Eric Kripke confirm that Dean Winchester is alive — though not too comfortably since he's in hell — he spilled next season's plans for the beleaguered Winchester brothers.


TVGuide.com: You weren't lying when you said you were hoping to make your fans really angry and full of anxiety all summer!

Eric Kripke: [Laughs] It was a fun way to end the season. Dean meat-hooked in the center of what looks like a thousand mile spiderweb of rusty chains. Sort of M.C.Escher meets Hellraiser.



TVGuide.com: Why did you send Dean to hell?

Kripke: Everyone expected Dean to be safe! That's reason enough to send him to hell. But also, in ways I can't reveal, it's a turning point for Dean. You need huge moves to happen that can cause radical shifts in the characters, that set them off in a new direction. So what happens to Dean in hell and how Dean gets out become primary concerns of Season 4.



TVGuide.com: So you'll have scene set in hell?

Kripke: I can give this away. Dean spends a lot more time in hell than anyone's probably thinking. Dean could spend — in human time — six months, maybe more. In hell time, who knows how many years or decades that might be. [Laughs] I won't tell you how he gets out, but he will emerge to a different landscape. A lot has changed since he's been away, and he has to readjust to his loved ones after being gone for so long.



TVGuide.com: Is he still human or… part demon?

Kripke: It takes hundreds of years to be burned away into a demon. Dean won't be a demon, but there will be an ongoing mystery. When he gets out of hell, he'll have little recollection of what happened to him down there. That's one of the mysteries of the season.



TVGuide.com: Speaking of demons, will Ruby be back? And any new characters?

Kripke: Ruby will be back, and we're introducing a new supernatural species. We intend to bring back Steve Williams, the old embittered hermit hunter Rufus.



TVGuide. com: Let's get to the heart and soul of the show.
How will Dean's hellish sojourn affect the relationship between the brothers?

Kripke: It will affect it massively. We'll slowly unfold Dean remembering what happened in hell, and that will drastically affect their relationship. Dean is basically a POW coming home from the worst hellhole — literally — ever. How do you reconnect with your life when you've been through something that horrific? That becomes one of his issues. But don't worry, he's still the same smart ass he always was.



TVGuide. com: What's grieving little brother Sam been up to? In the finale, we saw some of his power in his fight with über demon Lilith.

Kripke: We presented him as immune to her powers. We have some twists and turns in store with that. Sam promised Dean right before Dean died that he wasn't going to pursue any of his powers in terms of discovering his potential. Upon Dean's return, Sam tells him "I promised I wouldn't head down that road because you made me promise," but we begin to wonder if indeed that is the truth. For whatever it's worth, the writers have never been this excited about a season. We have some really exciting plot twists.



TVGuide.com: Maybe they'll be exciting enough that this won't be your last season?
Kripke: Maybe. But you write every season like it's your last and hope for the best.

When do you go back to start shooting [Supernatural]?

Jared Padalecki: The strike is a huge issue, but as of right now, we're supposed to start first week of July. They want to have it airing with SMALLVILLE and SMALLVILLE starts shooting really early so they want us to start shooting really early also so they can air new episodes of each together.

Supernatural Lets Katie Cassidy Go

080623katiecassidy.jpg
Katie Cassidy by Sergei Bachlakov/The CW
Sexy Supernatural thief Bela (Lauren Cohan) has already been sent to hell — unlike Dean, she won’t be released — and now the show’s creator Eric Kripke tells TV Guide it’s bye bye to sexy demon Ruby (Katie Cassidy) as well.

“She’s great, but this was unfortunately a financial decision — purely budgetary, because creatively she was terrific," Kripke said. "I have nothing but great affection for Katie, and she was great for the show. It was a very difficult business decision about the realities we are in." Though the budget’s the same as last year, the show films in Canada and is suffering from a lousy exchange rate.

There will be female characters, Kripke promises. But expect more of the love ‘em, leave ‘em or kill ‘em variety. “We have a plan that’s as exciting as any we’ve ever had of how to thread new characters in some unexpected ways,” he said, adding that the season opener will have a couple of “bombshells that will set the show off in a new direction.”