Article published in Dropline.biz on September 19, 2005

“Supernatural”—A Super Hit!

By Laurie Morton (co-authored by Dino M. Zaffina)

This WB new thriller series, Supernatural starts out in Lawrence, Kansas 22 years ago. The audience is led to a nice suburban house in a quiet and peaceful neighbor at nighttime. A beautiful blonde mother, Mary Winchester (Samatha Smith) walks into a baby’s nursery while holding a little five year-old boy in her arms. The boy jumps out of his mother’s arms and says, “Good night Sam, while kissing his infant brother on the forehead.

After the mother kisses her baby boy Sam, the father, John Winchester (Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Weeds) enters the room and calls to his older son Dean. Little Dean runs to his father and leaps into his arms. The father asks Dean jovially, “So, what do you think, is Sammy ready to toss around a football?”  Little Dean laughing, says, “No.”

During the night while the Winchester family sleeps, the audience is given an indication that something bad is about to occur. Little Sammy’s mobile is moving on its own, his clock stops running, and lights are flicking on and off, not to mention the eerie music. The mother is awakened by a fussing sound coming from the baby’s monitor. After realizing her husband is not in bed, she goes to check on little Sammy. Stopping in the doorway of the nursery, the mother sees what appears to be her husband standing in front of the crib. She asks John, if the baby is hungry, and the silhouette replies, “Shhhh.”

After departing from the nursery, the mother notices that the hall light is flickering. She moves closer to investigate, at which time she hears television noise coming from the living room. Walking downstairs, she immediately realizes that the figure in the nursery was not John, as she observes her husband sleeping in a recliner chair.

Startled and terrified, the mother runs up the stairs to Sammy’s nursery. No sooner does she enter, there is a blood curdling scream that awakens John downstairs. John runs to the nursery only to find that everything seems to be okay. He approaches little Sammy’s crib as to comfort him. While looking down on his baby boy, John sees what appears to be a blood drop land on his son’s pillow. While reaching to touch the substance, another blood drop lands on his hand. John turns to look upward to see where the blood is coming from and he is startled by a vision of his wife, what can only be described as glued to the ceiling with her eyes and mouth wide open and a blood stained nightgown in her stomach region.

John falls to the floor calling, “Mary.” At which time the ceiling bursts into flames, swallowing up Mary’s entire body. While lying on the floor helplessly watching this horrific spectacle, John does what any good father would do, he grabs his baby, and exited the fire engulfed room. He hands the baby to little Dean and tells him, “Take your brother outside as fast as you can.” Being a devoted husband, John returns to the nursery to rescue his wife. Realizing that a rescue is futile, and just narrowly dodging the flames himself, John exits the house and grabs his two sons before it explodes into flames.

We now fast forward to Stanford University, present day. The audience is introduced to adult Sam Winchester (Jared Padalecki, Gilmore Girls) who is getting ready to attend a Halloween party with his hot and sexy live-in girlfriend Jess (Adrianne Palicki). Yet, much to her dismay, Sam is not in a costume.

Sam and Jess are at the Halloween party toasting with another friend over Sam’s LSAT victory score of 174. Sam confides in them both that he has an interview at Stanford Law School on Monday.

Later that evening, while Sam and Jess are asleep in their bed, Sam is awakened by a noise. When he goes to investigate the origin of the disturbance, he attacks the intruder which turns into a hand-to-hand battle, only to discover that the intruder is none other than his older brother Dean (Jensen Ackles, Smallville).

After the two get reacquainted after four years apart, and Dean’s introduction to Jess is more of a gawking session on his part, the two brothers discuss why Dean has come for Sam. There father is missing, he has been on a hunting trip, but not a hunting trip in the traditional sense.  John hunts supernatural beings.

At first Sam refuses to go with Dean and assist him in his plight to locate their father because he has done his best to escape his family’s eerie history. Sam rejected their father’s obsessive quest to uncover the evil forces that claimed the life of the boys’ mother. Putting as much distance as possible between himself and his family, Sam left home right after high school and went away to college. Dean, however, took a very different path, following their father into the “family business.” Loyal to his brother and father, Sam has no choice but to put his personal plans on hold and join Dean on the road.

Despite the strange childhood they shared, these boys turned out to have very different views of the world. Dean still idolizes his father and, although he often appears cocky and fearless, in reality he is haunted by memories of his mother’s violent death. Sam was too young to remember the awful night that Mary died and has never fully accepted the frightening path his father and brother have followed.

A mysterious phone message from their father leads the Winchester brothers to a California town plagued by a series of unexplained deaths. They soon come face-to-face with the local legend of a Lady in White—a ghostly and beautiful hitchhiker (Sarah Shahi, Maxim Girl, 2002 and 2005), who wanders country roads by night, luring young men to their doom. Though they don’t find their father, Dean and Sam discover his journal and try to decipher his writings for clues that will help them destroy the spirit.

Once they succeed in destroying the evil spirit of Constance/Woman in White, they hit the road to the next location where they believe their father to be. Sam, however, reminds Dean that he cannot go with him because of his law school interview on Monday.

Dean agrees to drive his brother back home to Stanford. Upon entering his house, Sam discovers Jess glued to the ceiling with her eyes and mouth wide open and a blood stained nightgown in her stomach region just like his mother. Moments later, the ceiling bursts into flames and swallows up Jess’ body.  Dean breaks through the door and calls for Sam.

Now, having revenge in his heart after witnessing the death of his loving girlfriend, Sam setout to find his vanished father and destroy the evil spirit who is responsible for his mother and Jess’ violent deaths.

Both of the two stars of Supernatural have one thing in common; they are both from the Lone Star State of Texas. Jared’s hometown is San Antonio and Jensen’s is Dallas and Richardson.

Jared Padalecki is best known for his role on the small screen as Rory’s (Alexis Bledel) boyfriend Dean on Gilmore Girls. On the big screen, Padalecki was most recently seen in the Warner Bros. feature film House of Wax, opposite Chad Michael Murray and Paris Hilton. He also co-starred with Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen in New York Minute, the Olsen twins’ first studio feature film. In Flight of the Phoenix, Padalecki starred opposite Dennis Quaid and Giovanni Ribisi as a passenger on a cargo plane that goes down in a sandstorm in the Sahara with less than a dozen men on board.

Additionally, Padalecki appeared in the hit film Cheaper By The Dozen, in a role for which director Shawn Levy specifically requested him. He can also be seen starring opposite Kathy Baker and Hallie Kate Eisenberg in the independent baseball movie A Little Inside.

Up next, Jared stars in Cry Wolf, in which he will play a precocious boarding school student who is drawn into an elaborate hoax involving a serial killer. The film is due to hit theaters in September.

Jensen Ankles is familiar to the WB audience as Jason Teague, Lana Lang’s (Kristin Kreuk) love interest on Smallville. Ackles was also seen on Dawson’s Creek in a recurring role, and on Dark Angel as a series regular. His additional work in television includes co-starring in the miniseries Blonde, opposite Poppy Montgomery and Patrick Dempsey. Ackles will make his big screen debut later this year in Sony Pictures’ Devour, opposite Dominique Swain and Shannon Sossymon. The film was directed by David Winkler.

In 1997, he began his acting career with much critical acclaim when he joined the cast of Days of Our Lives. In addition to three Daytime Emmy Award nominations (1998, 1999 and 2000), he won the Soap Opera Digest Award for Best Male Newcomer in 1998.

Supernatural was created and written by Eric Kripke (Boogeyman). The show’s executive producers are McG (Charlie’s Angels, The O.C.), Robert Singer (Midnight Caller) and director David Nutter (Smallville).  It is produced by Cyrus Yavneh and the supervising producer is Peter Johnson.

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