"Fate is what you make it."
Hello everyone!
I've really been slacking in the movie department this spring time. I know it VERY well.
Problem is, there's just SO MUCH GOOD STUFF happening all over, whether it be on television or in the gaming industry, that it's hard to stay focused solely on what's on the big screen.
... come to think of it, I should probably do Top Gun and its sequel at some point, considering just how many times those have been watched in this household.
But that's beside the point.
I'm reviewing the first season of a really, really cool show tonight. Fans of Supernatural may know exactly what I'm talking about, but it's not actually Supernatural.
It's what happened BEFORE Supernatural - because everybody has to start somewhere, right?
Well, so did The Winchesters.
Pretty sure I don't actually have anything remotely connected to this in my repertoire yet, but I'll link you to my review of Walker: Independence since the two shows aired side-by-side for their inaugural seasons.
Any fan of Supernatural knows that Sam and Dean didn't just spring out of a hole in the ground a la Dwarf, right? They had a mother and a father, and their mom was unfortunately taken off the board really fast and really violently by a yellow-eyed demon.
But that's not where the story actually starts, because The Winchesters goes back even further, to when John Winchester (Drake Rodger) arrives home from Vietnam and runs into Mary Campbell (Meg Donnelly), who just so happens to be hunting a demon at the time.
Oh yeah, it was MARY who came from a hunting family, while John came from a different one - his dad was a Man of Letters, and apparently, Hunters and these MOLes (hey, that was how the people on the show called them, I didn't make this up) didn't see eye-to-eye on pretty much anything.
Welp, Romeo and Juliet in the making here, let me tell you, as the two are joined by Lata (Nida Khurshid) and Carlos (Jojo Fleites), also both hunters, as well as Ada (Demetria McKinney) and later on John's mother, Millie (Bianca Kajlich).
They band together to take down all sorts of monsters, from djinn to vampires to creepy ass clowns (listen, when the title song starts playing and the lyrics are 'Everybody loves a clown', it's about time to abandon ship and go ANYWHERE BLOODY ELSE), but through all this they discover they're actually a smoke screen for something else entirely.
Something pretty big.
See, they're also searching for Mary's dad, Sam (Tom Welling), who's missing, and this arc comes to a conclusion in the first block of the season when they also figure out that the threat that's been behind the smoke screen - the Akrida? Whoo, they're a bigger problem than they might have thought initially.
They kinda sorta want to take over the world. And they're digging up their Queen to do it.
To help these matters along, the hunters and Sam figure out they need to find a weird man from one of the photos Sam took, who just so happens to be the one who gave John a letter from his father when he was waiting for a train, and that man? Turns out to be Dean Winchester (Jensen Ackles).
Cue fan fainting if you're anywhere near Supernatural yourself; I have to admit I'm still stuck somewhere in season one, though I paid attention to the general storylines so I know what happened and what's what LOL.
Anyway, they need to find him because, apparently, the Akrida queen can only be killed by something 'not of this world', while her minions can be teleported back to their home world by a box the MOLes knew how to drive, the Ostium, which acts as a conduit between the two planets.
It also turns out the Queen is someone the Campbells used to know way back when, in the era of Conquistadors. She was a hunter, just like them, who lost her entire family, went batshit crazy and started consuming monster essence to make herself stronger, and decided the only way to protect the people she loved was to kill them. The hunters of the time banished her off the world, and she landed on the Akrida one.
And the Akrida? They were created by none other than Chucky boy from Supernatural, as a fail safe in case his plans went sunny side up, and since we know he eventually fails, that's why the Akrida are now attempting to eradicate humanity, in every single world of the Multiverse.
How do we know this? Because in the showdown against the Akrida Queen, the Impala suddenly pops up, and at the end of it all through a little back and forth of the portal, Dean himself gets out of the car; Bobby and Jack constitute as the peanut gallery.
Dean explains that, when he arrived in Heaven, the car was waiting for him so he just went for a drive, then took a detour, searching for a version of life where his family got a happy ending, and when he learned of the Akrida - which were then naturally threatening Sam, too - he geared up for one last hunt, so to speak, because we all know Dean.
Something even SNIFFS wrong in Sam's direction, the guy's gonna shoot it but good.
The story wraps with Mary and John taking to the road, she to figure out what she wants to do now that she's out of hunting (something she's wanted all season long), and he to work on his anger management issues, which crop up across the season quite regularly.
But don't be fooled, this isn't just a monster-hunting story. We get backgrounds on pretty much everyone, John's father and his relationships with his mother (not ideal, at that), Ada and her son born of a relationship with a djinn, Lata and the fact her father was abusive and killed their housemaid because she was nice to his daughter, and Carlos and his experiences in the Navy and Vietnam, because yes, he was also there.
All in all, this is a complex web of personal and monster-hunting stories, made better by the sprinkling of old Supernatural lore here and there (listen, even Loki makes an appearance, and we ALL know how much of a pain in the ass he was back in the day!), not to mention acting reunions.
Because I'm reasonably sure Tom and Jensen hadn't shared screen time since their Smallville days, but they definitely make it happen here, among others.
Since it's also set in the hippiest of eras, the show can get away with some really campy stuff, from costumes to plot lines, but to me that just adds to the magic of it all.
I loved it. It definitely has a lighter tone in comparison to the mothership, but they nailed it with the actors because you can see Meg and Drake both picking up characteristics made canon by Jensen and Jared and making them their own, which would then in a natural way pass down to their sons eventually. Dean is very much his mother's son, but Sam? Oh, Sam takes after dear ole dad to a T, and they found a really tall actor to make it work - then made him endearingly clumsy and awkward.
Listen, I just loved it, okay? I loved all of it. And I really, really hope CW picks it up for another season or shops it around - maybe to HBO?
Because it'd be such a shame if this was the only thing we got from the prequel when there's so much more story to tell, particularly between John and Mary. Sure they're now officially together and doing their own thing, but what happens next? We still have ways to go before Dean's birth, after all!
So make some noise, people. Let the CW hear you, hear us, that we want more than just the one season.
Maybe the Powers that Be will take pity on us, who knows?
Either way though, if you loved Supernatural, you'll probably enjoy The Winchesters, so why not go ahead and take a look? Bonus: you won't have to wait a week before future episodes drop, because the show season is over.
10/10 recommend!
xx
*images and video not mine
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