Supernatural seasons 1-5 are extremely good television.

Submitted by forman98 t3_11e8do9 in television

I recently finished a rewatch of Supernatural's first 5 seasons for the first time in about a decade. I picked up on the show around 2010, right when season 5 was airing and binged it all on Netflix at that point in time.

I've watched seasons 6-15 and having now rewatched the first 5 seasons again, I can't believe what a steaming pile of crap the rest of the series ended up being.

Kripke's treatment through the first 5 seasons is consistent and coherent and builds to an appropriate climax. Those seasons tend to naturally break up into 3 buckets; Seasons 1-2, Season 3, and Seasons 4-5.

The first two seasons have a certain aesthetic that was never really recaptured in the rest of the series. They were still riding on the dark and grungy look of the early 2000's horror movies. Grey filters, night settings, rain. They did a really good job of shooting horror on a budget with mostly practical effects and camera tricks. The story line through those first 44 episodes wraps up somewhat nicely in the final episode of season 2 where they finally confront the yellow-eyed demon. I know Kripke somewhat wrote that as a close in case they never got picked up again.

Season 3 was shortened to 16 episodes due to the writer's strike, but looking back it seems the shorter season was a good thing. Many great shows are now producing fewer episodes with higher quality. This season didn't really move the overall plot forward much because it all ended up being for naught; Dean couldn't get out of the demon deal he made in season 2.

Season 4-5 are the first real departure from the Monster of the Week style that the show had been. People have mixed feelings about this departure, but I think the overall story makes up for that. This is when angels are introduced and the Winchesters find out about their true destinies. They harp on the symmetry between Sam/Dean and Lucifer/Michael and their absent fathers quite a bit. They string along the final battle throughout the last season and don't hint at the possible conclusion until the last couple episodes. The conclusion is very tragic, but very fitting to what they all went through over those 5 seasons.

Overall, it's 126 episodes of interesting TV with only a handful of duds. Sam and Dean are consistently the best part of every episode. It's often the side characters or the plots that make something meh.

I write all of this to highlight just how far the show fell after season 5. It ended up being a complete flip. Seasons 6-15 had a handful of really good episodes with a bunch of meh. Nothing made sense anymore, the canon and lore was progressively tossed out, and the campy side characters started taking center stage. Most of those characters worked in small doses, but they would consistently show up. So much of those seasons were cringy fanservice. The overall season plots were flimsy and rarely lead anywhere substantial. Sam and Dean just seemed to be there dealing with it instead of actually part of the story. The writers kept killing and bringing back people just to highlight how much pain the Winchesters have to endure. Sam and Dean would constantly go back and forth lying to each other and betraying each other. And ultimately the series ends on a dud. So much of a dud that it caused a lot of controversy in the fandom (who had already been heavily catered to for a decade).

The first 5 seasons work too well as a contained series and the remaining 10 seasons just served to taint that. If the show were to ever comeback in some form, I would only want Kripke to come back and begin with an alternate season 6 that ignores 6-15. Pick up with Dean 20 years in the future and Sam having been gone the whole time. I'm sure there's a good story out there, but for now I'll just keep rewatching 1-5 and skipping the rest.

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saufcheung t1_jacusof wrote

I agree, first 4-5 seasons were excellent. After that, it felt like they needed to keep increasing the intensity and made questionable decisions. This happens to many of these shows.

The procedurals like Grey's Anatomy, NCIS, etc have it easier.

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peon2 t1_jad6whl wrote

Yeah Power creep, they beat the devil so the next baddie has to be more powerful, and then the next one, etc.

I still enjoy the later seasons for the monster-of-the-week episodes but almost all of the plotlines are weak.

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Neoliberalism2024 t1_jadj75e wrote

I loved the series throughout the entire run, but the power creep was pretty hilarious.

They kill literal death, and eventually they kill the actual omniscient omnipresent God, despite having no actual powers.

Puts DBZ to shame.

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[deleted] t1_jadmor4 wrote

[deleted]

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Frisky_Picker t1_jaejpdu wrote

Yeah I was really hoping they were going to give it their all for the last season but not even close. After killing god Dean gets killed in a routine vampire hunt, something we've seen them do numerous times, and we end up with Sam wearing a cardigan, glasses and a shitty gray wig. Never seen a more buff grandpa in my life.

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KingSam89 t1_jadxhff wrote

It's so hammy and campy it's incredible imo. I loved when the show was more "grounded" but I equally love it for going so hard off the rails while being self aware and REALLY committing to it.

What other show has done that?

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tagen t1_jadhxpp wrote

Until eventually they literally killed Death, Lucifer, and even God. It got pretty silly (I still enjoyed the later seasons, but I also know they were ridiculous and not as good as the beginning)

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bbenjjaminn t1_jadx2vc wrote

I liked how they depowered them in the last episode or 2 of season15 but it felt like that could have come way earlier in the show to get them back to fighting more normal monsters.

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prailock t1_jaeffws wrote

The extremely meta "The French Mistake" in Season 6 is one of the best episodes of a show taking the piss out of its actors, storylines, and fans. There's a reason those gifs are still used today.

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forman98 OP t1_jad67hv wrote

I used to go on the subreddit and speculate how certain seasons would wind up, and I was always wrong because they would just keep getting more and more ridiculous and then a bigger enemy would emerge in the last episode and one of the brothers would disappear. That show had so much potential for good stories but it became fanservice schlock.

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Aeroversus t1_jad0mxx wrote

I watched every single episode of this series until the end. To me, it started to go downhill the Leviathan season and what they did to my Bobby Singer. I'm loyal, but I'm honest. There were ups and downs after season 5, but truly, the worst thing they could have done was what they did to Bobby. Ingents.

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SadSappySuckerX9 t1_jad4smt wrote

Near the end of the leviathan stuff is when I stopped, good to know I didn't miss out on anything.

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thistlebamboo t1_jadrgsq wrote

Yeah, that's when I called it quits as well. The leviathans were hyped up so much, then were completely depowered by the end of the season. The first red flag was when they pulled that same shit with Castiel already.

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rabid_J t1_jad6mfz wrote

Just think; that's about half way through the series. Woof.

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lxqueen t1_jaep9ai wrote

The single thing I recommend going back for is the Scooby-Doo crossover because it's a standalone.

No, seriously.

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tagen t1_jadi4ke wrote

And then they brought Bobby back! Not the same Bobby but still! I’m guessing they got a lot of backlash killing Bobby off (and the way they did it) and found a way to bring him back and thought everything would be square lol

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Petpati t1_jadorgg wrote

Yup. But I personally wouldn't have wanted it cancelled at season 5, cause we had some really banger episodes in later seasons (weekend at Bobby's comes to mind)

So now whenever I do rewatches I go straight through 1-5, then start skipping around to the good stuff for the rest

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Regula96 t1_jadx6fu wrote

''The French Mistake'', ''Baby'' and ''ScoobyNatural''. Fantastic episodes.

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hannahbaba t1_jaee00y wrote

I used to show friends who weren’t sure if they’d like the show 3 episodes: Mystery Spot, Ghostfacers, and French Mistake. Always a big hit.

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rex2k10 t1_jaf24l9 wrote

Hey it’s Tuesday! Pig’n’poke!

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connorroy_2024 t1_jacrcwr wrote

Yes. I truly pretend season 6-15 never existed and just appreciate seasons 1-5 for what they are. It’s a great five season arc.

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mattXIX t1_jadhb31 wrote

Seasons 1-5 are the Winchester Gospel. Seasons 6-15 are the apocrypha.

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forman98 OP t1_jad6qii wrote

I actually didn't finish season 15. I got halfway through and gave up when I heard the ending had been horrible. I read the synopsis of the remaining episodes and it was just a weird way to end it. Having rewatched 1-5, it makes way more sense to stop there and pretend it actually ended there.

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Regula96 t1_jadwphz wrote

The season 5 ending is the highest rated episodes of the show. The season 15 one is the 3rd lowest out of all the 327 episodes lol.

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forman98 OP t1_jadygpy wrote

That's ridiculous, lol. Can you imagine a world where seasons 6-15 didn't exist? With SPN having ended 13 years ago and just been one of those shows that faded into maybe cult classic like status? Going out on the highest rated episode of the series would have been great and people probably would have been discussing a potential continuation for the past 13 years. That's when you get them back together and you pick up with a limited new story and the whole point is to finally get Sam out of hell. Instead, they brought him back before the episode ended.

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Regula96 t1_jae00nh wrote

Yea I imagine there are a ton of people that never gave the show a chance because there's just too many seasons. Still, I'm happy for Jensen and Jared. They loved working on the show and not many get solid work for 15 years.

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kacihall t1_jadzyu3 wrote

I watched season 6, eventually. My husband watched every episode. Occasionally he would have me watch episodes that I would 'love' and he was mostly right - if I treated it like fan fiction and not canon. Scoobynatural was HIGHLY entertaining.

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jpk36 t1_jadqkmc wrote

The problem with the show in the later seasons is definitely the over reliance on goofy characters. In previous seasons, demons and angels were considered a threat and could be imposing. Then in the later seasons, they become ineffectual comic relief. Every side character becomes a goofy caricature with an over the top accent. The people they meet are cartoons for the most part and the acting is terrible. Sam and Dean also become a bit goofy as well, especially Sam, who’s acting method seems to be simply a large variety of facial ticks and stuttering grunts. Jensen Ackles has too much charisma to be too bad, he’s always watchable but for the most part he becomes a goofy guy as well. The beginning seasons have comedic moments that are pretty good and used sparingly, but they really lean into it in the later seasons and lose all the horror that the early seasons had.

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5370616e69617264 t1_jacz3f6 wrote

The first season is rough. I love it, I have seen it several times, I can watch any episode but the first season is rough. Like Stargate SG-1 it takes time until it becomes a diamond.

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eojen t1_jadf29h wrote

The problem with season one on streaming is that it’s the only season without the original music used in the show. So you’ll have moments of Dean rocking out to a rock song, but it’s the not the song that was originally in the show so they have to edit it weird.

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rabid_J t1_jad6168 wrote

After a quick scroll on IMDB i'll give you Bloody Mary, Hook Man, Bugs and Route 666 but I think the rest are watchable to great, even something like The Benders sets up the trope of human enemies always being gross bastards. 18 outta 22 ain't bad.

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farrandor t1_jae8yn2 wrote

Bugs was the very first episode I watched haha

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hannahbaba t1_jaecrqy wrote

And you didn’t quit there and then? I don’t think I would have been so strong, that episode is ROUGH.

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Hanifsefu t1_jad6mpl wrote

Yeah it took a while for them to figure out the right balance of monster of the week with serialized story. As a whole it's good but you can pick it apart pretty easily episode by episode and ultimately the monster of the week stuff just falls short. The real redeeming factor of the show was that serialized story and you sat through the monster of the week to see the weekly 5 minutes of progression for the overarching plot.

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austenjg t1_jadb4of wrote

You are correct and there is a clear reason for all of what you said: Kripke only planned the series to be 5 seasons. This is why people call the season 5 finale the “original ending”. But with Supernatural being CW’s most successful show, CW wanted the show to continue. Kripke obliged but he also stepped down as showrunner, and other people took over running the show post season 5. So seasons 6-15 is basically just repetitive season arc’s of fan service, whereas seasons 1-5 had a serialized story that all tied together. The only good thing to come out of seasons 6-15 is >!the confirmation that Chuck is God!<, a lot of fans theorized it before, but if the show had ended after season 5 we never would’ve known for sure.

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DarJinZen7 t1_jadx2us wrote

We went to a Supernatural fan panel at a convention. It was our first con and we thought it would be fun. I forget how my husband ended up with the mic, but he said, well we all know Chuck is God.

Holy crap was the response not what I expected. Half the room cheered in agreement, the other half grumbled and there were a few boos. One of the panelists wanted to know what led him to believe that. It was obvious she disagreed, and a guy in the audience went on about how how was a Christian and Chuck being God would be disrespectful to Christianity. All I could think was, do you even watch the show?

It was realty wild to see so many people refuse to believe it, and then the big reveal happened. I really liked Chuck being God. Everything after with his character was uneven to downright disappointing.

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idksomuch t1_jaf0b0w wrote

Rob Benedict confirmed that Chuck is God back in 2011 at a convention. He even said that Kripke and other writers/producers asked him how it felt to play God.

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DarJinZen7 t1_jaf2svk wrote

Rob Benedict would say at conventions that he thought Chuck was God but he never said yes or no for sure.

The convention I'm talking about was in 2013

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pardybill t1_jaei2mt wrote

The powerhouse they had at Thursday night I believe with Smallville leading into Supernatural made them a ton of money. It’s not surprising they would milk it even after the creators were out of story.

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Dim_e t1_jadi73e wrote

I was kind of obsessed at the time, and really worried they would cancell it before the planned ending on season 5.

Although, looking back, I think the introduction of angels took a lot of the original charm, it was really good TV

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jdward01 t1_jad48vh wrote

I always wish it had been cancelled after 5. It would have gone down as a great show, not hokey fan service. And maybe Jared wouldn’t have become so unbearable.

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Hibbsan t1_jaeffrw wrote

Honestly i disagree. While it obviously went downhill after season 5 we still got some amazing and fun episodes along the way up to season 15 that we would have missed. Like my all time favorite one "The French Mistake" in season 6. Just that episode alone makes Season 6 worth watching.

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NewWaveFan t1_jadomd7 wrote

I definitely grew to miss that really dark aesthetic of the early seasons. I remember a later episode where they're with Rowena rounding up souls in this suburban Canadian neighborhood and it was so bright outside. Like distractingly so.

(It was also one of the few episodes that was very obviously in Canada because the street signs were unlike any I'd seen in the US. But I digress)

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JubalHarshaw23 t1_jadziup wrote

They jumped so many sharks, they had to reuse sharks.

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chumchees t1_jaew0oa wrote

And one episode was called jump the shark.

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qp0n t1_jadxqbb wrote

Is it "extremely good"? Or is it "extremely good for a CW show"? There's a big difference. I remember this sub telling me The Arrow was 'extremely good', which caused all confidence in that channel to be lost.

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Petrichor02 t1_jae6tsc wrote

Extremely good for a network TV show, not just CW. If you have issues with network TV, those issues are still present. If you don't, it's a fantastic time.

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forman98 OP t1_jadzmjy wrote

You have a point, but I personally think it's just a solid show for any network (specifically season 1-5). There is a super cringe part of the fandom that overlaps with The Arrow fans that think that stuff was good. I gave The Arrow a shot after hearing the accolades and it was the most meh piece of TV. The latter years of SPN catered extremely hard to these cringe fans (where the early seasons actually made fun of them). I honestly think Twitter/Tumbler fandoms have ruined many shows because a show gets popular so creators turn to the internet to see what the fans are saying and the most hardcore ones are living there creating the absolute dumbest piece of fanfic possible with everyone praising it.

The WB/CW was a good melodrama network for teens and young adults and then it turned into PG13 Nickelodeon shows.

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Prefer_Not_To_Say t1_jaesilc wrote

I'm going through Supernatural now for the first time and I'm halfway through season 7 at the moment. I actually think season 6 is a contender for my favourite. Even though it's clear they juggled several plots that they struggled to interconnect, it has several of my favourite episodes of the whole shows, less Sam and Dean conflict (which was played out by that point anyway) and the best part: more Bobby. Bobby is far and away the best character in Supernatural, so having more of him was only a good thing. Season 7 is a noticeable downgrade.

There's a lot of season 1 and 2 that feels very simple, which is to be expected when you're starting a new show and building up a mythology. It's like early episodes of Buffy or The X-Files (and probably a dozen other shows), with the monster of the week format and finding out how to kill them. Kind of like a police procedural but with monsters. When they start to delve into heaven and hell, then I think it starts to hit its stride (Kurt Fuller is great). I'm a lot less interested when it's just constant brother drama.

The problem is that I don't really care about Sam and Dean (especially Dean) but some of the side characters are great. So far, I think the episodes and seasons focused on Bobby and Castiel are some of the best ones (which is why I like season 6 so much) and it's disappointing they didn't make the most of Ellen, Jo, Ash, Rufus and more.

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mr_math24 t1_jad1inh wrote

It's a good example of how to transition from "case of the week" to overarching storyline in a seamless and exciting way. Still a B-show at best for me, but it was fun when I was a teenager! I never continued after season 5.

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drogyn1701 t1_jad4qv2 wrote

With these long-running shows that went downhill in the end it can sometimes be easy to forget there was a time when they were excellent, and that's why they ran long in the first place. Looking at you Arrow.

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jfstompers t1_jad82th wrote

I know people love this show I just don't see it.

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Regula96 t1_jaduqb3 wrote

More than 10 years since I watched those first 5 seasons and it's still a top favorite of mine.

Somewhere around season 10 was when I stopped watching it weekly. I caught up whenever I had a couple of episodes to binge. After 11 I didn't want to continue anymore. I started a rewatch during that hiatus and I was shocked to finally notice how far the quality had dropped with those later seasons.

After that I came across youtube clips here and there so I have a general idea what the last 4 seasons were like. I did watch the season 15 penultimate episode though and it was just complete garbage. The cgi was so bad the show looked like shit. It looked much better in the earlier seasons. And that was 15 years earlier!

I still watch Kripke's run every other year or so.

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dreamwarrior222 t1_jae974q wrote

I hate how they literally wrote in plot armor for them into the series. It cheapened the whole series.

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Petrichor02 t1_jacwwhy wrote

Yeah, there's a lot of good stories that could be told post-Season 5, but the post-Season 5 we got usually just did the worst possible version of each of those stories. Case in point, how do you go bigger than the devil? You could go with the living embodiment of chaos, the Leviathan. And post-Season 5 of Supernatural did that! ...But it wasn't just the one Leviathan, it was multiple leviathans, and they had nothing to do with the chaos dragon of lore or any sort of leviathan mythos really, instead just being virtually immortal versions of an enemy the brothers have already fought multiple times.

What gets me though is that Kripke was still writing on the show in Season 6. Yes, he was no longer the head writer, but he was still consulting, directly writing a couple of episodes, and was apparently okay with all of the lore inconsistencies and plot holes that Season 6 produced (unless he only had knowledge about the episodes he was working on and not any of the others).

Because of that and the low points of the Carver era, I think I would still be skeptical of a post-S5 new Kripke era even though those first five seasons were amazing.

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forman98 OP t1_jad5uow wrote

I think post-5 Kripke was collecting checks and helping the team transition without him. I mean they literally kill him in one episode. After that, he seemed to just get residuals and drop in every now and then. The writing was just terrible after he left though. I know he didn't personally write that many episodes in 1-5, but his showrunning direction must have been what kept things grounded and on a consistent course.

He seems to be running the Boys like he did SPN and I think that's making people anxious. A big criticism of The Boys season 3 is that it ended just like it started and nothing really changed, just a lot of build up for nothing. To me that's exactly what happened in season 3 of SPN with Dean actually dying and going to hell. He seems to still write like he would for a network TV show instead of a streaming service, and he's said that he's planning to go to season 5 with the Boys. I think he's got good ideas and knows how to string stories along to keep them interesting until they can reach a final episode and come to a conclusion. I'd bet he'd be able to develop a well rounded epilogue to season 5 SPN if he got the chance.

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Abba_Fiskbullar t1_jad5u9j wrote

Wasn't Ben Edlund responsible for the show's uptick (ha!) In quality on seasons 2-5?

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forman98 OP t1_jad6ib5 wrote

Yea, and he stayed until season 8 but I think he worked better with Kripke there than when he wasn't.

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Galileo__Humpkins t1_jadweo0 wrote

Money is a helluva drug.

I pretty much tell anyone interested in the show “watch seasons 1 through 5, pause the last episode of season 5 at the end right when the camera is outside of the house, and pretend that’s where the series ended and 6-15 aren’t real.”

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Juraviel23 t1_jadxf3f wrote

While I agree that 1-5 amazing, there were a few standalone seasons that were also very good. I think it's season 11 where they are trying to stop Gods sister, and that was a banger. A redeemed Metatron trying to convince Chuck not to give up on humanity is peak Supernatural.

Of course, then they completely ruin that excellence with the plot twist involving God in the last season.

I think the show had two perfect series finales, S5 and S11. The actual finale got ruined by COVID, so I'd cut them some slack if the rest of the season wasn't terrible.

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hannahbaba t1_jaef7pb wrote

For me the only stand-out late season was 12, when the villains went from being angels and demons to just… the English. Such a weird choice but I enjoyed the change.

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james_carr9876 t1_jae095b wrote

Is it just me who feels supernatural and Smallville are bizarrely similar in later seasons??

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hannahbaba t1_jaegi2o wrote

There are a lot of good episodes in seasons 1-2, but I’ve always felt like the writers strike forcing a shorter season 3 was hugely beneficial. Made them cut out any filler and focus more on the larger plot.

Season 3 also gave us Ghostfacers, so on that alone it’s my favorite.

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Xralius t1_jado4v0 wrote

Extremely good? I mean come on. They are OK. Its a good thing to have on in the background while you're doing something else. Its B level quantity over quality television, which is fine. There's nothing really outstanding about it. Its entertaining enough, but the writing, acting, cinematography, are all pretty meh.

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exaslave t1_jaec97z wrote

It's difficult to recommend people to just watch 5 seasons out of a 15 season show on good faith. Yet new people will get a bit afraid seeing a 15 season show to pick up, specially one with so many episodes.

Loved those first 5 seasons and the whole 15 were good overall but gee, makes it difficult to recommend the show.

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DoAsIDontSay t1_jacvnid wrote

Agreed. The story was told by the end of Season 5. Personally I hated the angels and especially Castiel who was played by an extremely bad actor. He was okay in 4 and 5 but anything after that involving him or the angels was tedious to get through. It was so clearly not working anymore that they wrote him out at one point but ended up bringing him back because of the backlash from (I presume) viewers who thought he was hot. Sam was a bad actor too but the chemistry with Dean helped offset his bad acting even though I think he actually got worse as the show went on. Supernatural was a great show for the first 5 seasons but the other seasons and focus on Castiel tarnished it.

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ArchDucky t1_jad09f7 wrote

It's actually 2 - 5. Originally, the brothers weren't meant to continue. It was going to be a anthology series at first. Their chemistry on screen is what made them stop telling a story about the world with these characters in it, and more about these characters interacting with the world. Also the budget significantly increases in the second season. If you watch the end of Season 1, it ends with a car crash with generic ass music playing on the radio. Season 2 starts and its playing a licensed Ted Nugent song.

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forman98 OP t1_jad52s1 wrote

I think the anthology series was an idea that got dropped before the pilot even shot. Kripke wanted the scary stories to be front and center with a couple of reporters going around capturing them, but when the studio disliked that he pitched the idea of them being brothers. I think he fleshed out a couple seasons at a time, waiting to see if they would be able to continue before writing any cliffhangers.

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saul2015 t1_jae6k98 wrote

I would hardly call "extremely good", it was alright

the show was always B tier/CW silliness, especially after season 1

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