When academics go to Hollywood!
Supernatural is a versatile Show. It’s one of the things I love most about it; it’s part of what makes watching the Show live every week kind of like riding a rollercoaster in the dark. You can’t see the track, so you have no idea which way it’s going to toss you next. It’s both jarring and exhilarating, but it’s rarely boring. And yes, I love rollercoasters.
This week is the Popular Culture Conference in Chicago, which means I get to hang out with other academically inclined folks and have deep discussions about some of my favorite things – including fandom, the reciprocal relationship between fans and the things we love, and of course, Supernatural. That doesn’t leave me much time to do a review of this week’s episode (so this will be a briefer review than usual). But Robbie Thompson sure as hell gave me a lot to talk about!
I love meta episodes. Any time a character has mentioned “subtext” in the first minute of the Show (while breaking the fourth wall and staring into the camera, no less), I’m a happy camper. My daughter Emily, however, is generally not a meta fan. She likes Supernatural, and she loves to take it apart and critique it, but she usually prefers her characters not to talk back and the fourth wall to stay firmly in place. Imagine my surprise when we watched Show together last night and she announced, “I liked it!”
“For me, discovering this fandom was pretty much like getting kidnapped by a dragon. I didn’t expect being inducted into this world to be anywhere near as strange, wonderful or overwhelming as it has been.” – Misha Collins, in Fan Phenomena: Supernatural
We sat down for a chat with Misha Collins at the recent VegasCon. Misha wrote a chapter for our new book, Fan Phenomena: Supernatural, in which he talks about his experience joining the SPN Family and the way it changed his life, just as it has changed the lives of so many fans.
Misha had just directed his first episode, so that was foremost on our minds.