An Analysis on the Use of Story Telling in Supernatural

Literary Supernatural: Critical Analysis

When a television series reaches a point of longevity, there comes a time where the filler episodes can and need to push the limits of the show and explore more creative aspects of story telling. As Supernatural entered its sixth season, it had already exhausted a long list of filler ideas and effectively narrowed its scope of the world that closed other doors. When Kripke left his position as showrunner, the “Monster of the Week” episodes weren't abandoned but the writers’ method of approaching them needed to be reevaluated. This paper will focus on that experimental storytelling approach in terms of perspective and how the audience experiences the world of Supernatural.

One of the first episodes to display a different form of storytelling occurs in the sixth season where the viewer sees a “Weekend at Bobby’s.” In this storytelling approach, the main characters, Sam and Dean, are merely side plots in the episode where the focus instead is on Bobby’s perspective. The viewer only gets glimpses of the Winchesters’ hunt through their phone calls and this focus on Bobby allows a different perspective of the Hunters’ life at a home base. Through Bobby as a lens, the audience also sees the shenanigans of a flirty neighbor with a “broken woodchopper” and the stubborn nature of an old hunter who thinks Bobby just “sits on his ass all day and takes phone calls.” Furthermore, Bobby grapples with his own predicaments including getting his soul back from Crowley. After several incidents where he sits down to enjoy a drink or a treat, he gets interrupted by the door or the phone. Bobby also reaches a moment of frustration where he lets the boys’ know that they are not the “center of the universe,” giving further commentary to the fact that, to the viewers, the Winchesters are Supernatural. This episode created a means through which the world can be explored outside of Sam and Dean and a window into the universe of Supernatural.

There are several other instances where the Winchesters experience a story through someone else’s perspective. Though it appears less as a new, creative approach, in the episode, “Mother’s Little Helper,” the audience, along with Sam, listens to the story being told entirely through a woman’s recounting of an experience long ago. The episode jumps back an forth through the past and the present and in a way,  Sam becomes part of the audience, helpless to impact a story that is being told to him. In this mode of storytelling, the audience has the pieces, the narrator has the puzzle and together they complete the story, effectively engaging the viewer as part of the show.

In terms of the technical approach, “Bitten,” was an experimental venture on the role of the camera in in the process of storytelling. Though Supernatural was not the first to use this method, they created a new lens through which the audience saw the world of Sam and Dean. In this episode, the boys are unable to impact what unfolds in front of the screen though it creates an interesting paradigm where they were unaware of their part in the story. The emphasis of the camera in the storytelling also dissolves some the boundaries that lie between the audience and the characters, making them seem more human and aware of their surroundings. In a way, the fact that the characters know that the camera is there creates a sense of control on the characters part; they choose what is seen of them and how they let the story play out.  With that taken into account, the situation of becoming a werewolf, a monster of sorts, seems like that much more of a helpless situation. In the end, the girl explains to the camera, the brothers and the audience that she put this story together to show that, “Michael wasn’t always a monster, none of [them] were.” and to explain that she didn’t ask for this but she asks Sam and Dean to give her a shot at life and let her go.

The role of the storyteller is given to an inanimate object, though no less a character, in a more recent episode of Supernatural. “Baby” is one of the more experimental modes of storytelling in general. Though Sam and Dean are still the main characters in this episode, the perspective is entirely from the Impala’s point of view. This time, the audience sees what typically happens between the brothers in the parts that are usually cut out of other episodes: one night stands, late night heart-to-hearts and car washes. When the boys spend the night at the “Winchester Motel,” the viewer also gets a glimpse into how the Impala has always been their home with the boys sleeping on the two benches that that will always be their beds whenever they need them. The restricted view in the car is also effectively implemented where the unseen shows more in obscurity than if a camera caught all the action. The Impala has always been an important aspect of the show and using it as a perspective opens the audience’s eyes in yet another manner.

In stepping away from the rotating protagonists as the primary perspectives of storytelling, the audience is given new ways to view all of the episodes that still focus on the Winchester brothers. The world of Supernatural is vast and, however inconsistent, a greater scope than Sam and Dean can ever fully explore by their selves. This shift of perspective off of the boys makes the world seem less of a vehicle for the Winchesters to traverse and more of a individual entity that exists outside of their story. Though Supernatural is very much a Sam and Dean story, the writers’ and directors’ choice to step outside of that sometimes gives them a world of opportunity, even if they only explore it for filler episodes.