In lieu of our normal Monday news, I'm delighted to host author Theresa Meyers today. She's a great fan of Supernatural, and her upcoming book, The Hunter, is inspired by our favorite show. If I hadn't already decided to buy this book the moment Theresa told me about the premise, I'd be buying it based on the cover alone! Take it away, Theresa...Okay, I don’t know about you, but I’m a bit of a Supernatural nut. In fact my best friend (who is also addicted to the show) and I get along for the simple reason that she’s a Sam girl and I’m a Dean girl, so we don’t have to fight each other over the same Winchester when we’re watching the show together. Sometimes Supernatural is what gets me through a week of tough writing on the novel in progress.
One of my favorite episodes from this season had to be "Frontierland," not because it was the best written show of the season, but because it touched on some back story of Dean we’d never seen before – his love of all things western.
I know that in an earlier outtake interview (was it season 3?) Kripke talks about how he’d like to do something back in the Old West revolving around Samuel Colt. I think this was their shot at the idea. Did I love the whole idea of the Phoenix being a man that couldn’t die? Oh yeah! That was brilliant.
I also liked how Dean was almost *squee-fan-girl* over the whole chance to go to the Old West, but when he gets there it’s not nearly as romantic as it seemed. (Witness the whiskey that tastes like gasoline and the diseased saloon girl who freaked him out.) And in contrast Sam was totally out of his element (going so far as to try as scrape horse poo of his shoe and carry about his cell phone for comfort.)
Putting Samuel Colt and Elkins in there was a fantastic means to integrate the back story of the revolver (which is almost a character itself in some seasons) with the current hunt the boys are on, and I really liked how they discovered the journal in the Campbell family vault of hunter knowledge. The only thing that would have made the episode better for me was if Dean had gotten to collect the ashes of the Phoenix himself rather than having it all tied in a neat “back-to-the-Future-3” style bow where the ashes miraculously appear just on the right day and the right time after they’ve returned home from their visit to the wild west.
Another reason I loved the episode was because I wanted to see how close it came to the book I just finished writing that comes out in November. The Hunter, which is steampunk and best described as Supernatural meets Wild Wild West with a little bit of Indiana Jones for flavoring, features three brothers all out to unite the Book of Legend, which is kind of the compendium of Hunter knowledge and can help protect against the Gates of Nyx opening and letting all the Darkin into the world (think purgatory and Hell combined). Truth was, while my three brothers hunt down Darkin, they really don’t have anything close to the abundance of resources the Winchesters have. Sure they’ve got cooler steampunk weapons and the hero has a mechanical horse instead of a throaty muscle car, but overall, their world is just a little bit different because the society I’ve created is a little bit different because of the more advanced steam-powered technology. The Supernatural episode was gritty, real west, which I could appreciate. My stories have just a shade more sci-fi and romance.Sure there were other episodes that were better written than "Frontierland," and certainly those that gave us more eye-candy than others (Souless!Sam, I’m looking at you). But overall, after so many shows in several seasons, it was nice to see a little glimpse of the characters that we didn’t know. Those little nuggets of surprise are part of what keep me addicted to the show—okay, well that and my absolute adoration of Jensen Ackles as Dean Winchester.
So, in looking back at season six, what was your favorite episode?
