A Week's Worth of Supernatural

Three years ago, I didn't pay any attention to what TV shows were ending and what were being renewed for another year. If a show I watched was renewed, I'd keep watching it. If it wasn't, I usually shrugged. Occasionally I got annoyed (Stark Raving Mad) or pissed (John Doe), especially if it left us hanging. But TV played a very, very small role in my life.

Since LOST, however, I have been a completely different person. Evidence: My progression of activity this week.

I think it started Tuesday, when someone posted that Kristin on E! Online said it didn't look good for renewal of Supernatural. Even though people said she was quite often wrong and gave examples, I spent the rest of the day e-mailing the media and writing letters to The CW and the people who make the show.

If it gets canceled, it's not going to be because I did nothing. Or, you know, nothing besides "guessing" each week that the next cover of Entertainment Weekly will be Supernatural in the hopes that they get sick of me making that guess and just make it happen.

So then Wednesday I got the Ask Ausiello (TV Guide columnist) newsletter. Though I had sworn off reading it because I've been getting too many spoilers, I couldn't help myself. Someone referenced "a certain someone's" warning of the show's demise, and he said he thought she jumped the gun and put its chances at 60/40.

On Thursday I stayed up late to read Plastic!Winchester Theater, gave myself a head injury laughing too hard, and dreamt about Plastic!Winchesters all night.

Friday...ah, Friday. On Friday someone linked to Keith R.A. Decandido's blog. I know his name because he did the novelization of Serenity, a previous obsession (and ongoing, though it is not currently being fed as there is not much new going on and my Firefly DVDs are in Texas).

Guess what? Keith is doing not ONE, but TWO Supernatural novels! One is Dean and Sam in NYC and will be coming out in August. The other is to be released in November.

Does that sound like a show that's going to be canceled?

Certainly not!

MaryFalso linked me to the prequel comic book. I didn't think I was interested, but then I thought about Wee!Sam and Wee!Dean and I don't think I can resist. It's not like it's expensive.

On a downer note, Jared Padalecki did an interview recently where he said he thinks Sam and Dean have to die at the end of the series. I only read a couple of the comment responses because they disgusted me.

Fiery and dramatic deaths in fiction may be all poetic and shit, but you know what they really are?

Lazy cop-outs.

Take The Horse Whisperer. I loved that book, and then I hated it. The protagonist was not the kind of person to step under a horse's hooves, under any circumstances. The writer had backed himself into a corner and couldn't figure out how to get out of it, so he solved the problem with death.

Death is easy. It takes any decision-making away. No one has to make hard choices, or try to live without something they need, or live with something they did. It's not the ultimate sacrifice. It's the ultimate escape.

Dean losing Sam and facing his worst fear would be heart-wrenching indeed, but as a series finale it would demean everything those boys fight for every week. I'm not saying having them buy side-by-side houses in Middle America is any better, but there is a much more reasonable compromise. Dean. Sam. The Impala. Taillights in the distance. A vague hope that allows every fan to create her or his own ending.

Never death.