Airing over 300 episodes during its 15-year run, Supernatural did it all. Most of the time, Sam and Dean would just bicker their way across the mid-western states solving paranormal cases of the week in a horror-drama hybrid that followed the path laid by Buffy the Vampire Slayer. But no TV series lasts 15 seasons without some tricks up its sleeve, and Supernatural had plenty of those.
There were time loop episodes, parallel universe episodes, time travel episodes, western episodes, body-swap episodes, backdoor pilot episodes, outright comedy episodes, unique perspective episodes, found footage episodes, Oz episodes, and whatever the hell “Bugs” was supposed to be.
With such a wide selection of styles and formats to its name, it’s only natural that some of Supernatural‘s gambits paid off more handsomely than others. The likes of “Mystery Spot” (a riff on Groundhog Day) and “Baby” (from the perspective of Dean’s Impala) rank among Supernatural‘s best episodes alongside classics such as “Swan Song” and “All Hell Breaks Loose.”
On the other end of the spectrum, “Bloodlines” (a backdoor pilot for a city-based vampire spinoff) and “Bitten” (a Winchester-lite found footage effort) sit at the very bottom of Supernatural‘s bargain bin.
The conversation becomes particularly interesting when lining up the 10 highest-rated installments in Supernatural history. Because as much as Sam and Dean’s adventures were varied and unpredictable, four episodes in Supernatural‘s top 10 orbit the same broad theme. Those four episodes are “The French Mistake,” “Fan Fiction,” “Changing Channels,” and “Scoobynatural.”
Four All-Time Classic Supernatural Episodes Share The Same Basic Premise
Most of the time, Supernatural was a relatively straightforward series set in a world where monsters and gods exist in secret. Even when it expanded into a multiverse, Supernatural stuck to the familiar rules and restrictions that typically govern such stories. Occasionally, however, Supernatural would be in the mood for something meta. Something that didn’t just leap into another universe, but deliberately blurred the lines between reality and fiction, between the shows and its fans.
The first major step in this direction came with Supernatural season 5’s “Changing Channels.” Richard Speight Jr.’s archangel Gabriel warped Sam and Dean’s reality to send them into the world of network television. The Winchester brothers experienced police procedurals, medical dramas, and cringe commercials, the unspoken gag being that Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki were playing two ghost hunters suddenly thrust into the world of actors.
Supernatural season 6 continued the theme with a spiritual successor to “Changing Channels.” Regularly cited as Supernatural‘s best-ever episode, “The French Mistake” took the idea one step further by introducing a world where Sam and Dean were really two actors called “Jared” and “Jensen” playing brothers on an in-universe show called “Supernatural.”
Skip ahead to season 10, and Supernatural took the meta commentary onto Broadway. It had long been canon that Chuck Shurley turned the Winchester brothers’ lives into a series of novels, but “Fan Fiction” found Sam and Dean investigating at a high school where students were busy adapting Shurley’s books into a musical. Uplifting and hilarious, “Fan Fiction” served as a love letter to all things Supernatural.
Before ending with season 15, Supernatural found time for one more meta extravaganza. “Scoobynatural” gave fans the crossover they’d always wanted, but with an animated twist. What could have been a juvenile mess turned into a witty and innovative clash of styles, and one of Supernatural‘s last truly brilliant episodes before the end.
All four of those episodes feature regularly on lists of Supernatural‘s greatest hits, and all four are variations on the same basic theme: that the Supernatural world and the audience’s real world are interwoven. Realities can be fictions, and fictions can become realities, all depending on one’s perspective.
Clearly, Supernatural‘s meta episodes clicked with viewers. Less clear is exactly why they kept landing so well time after time, and answering that question means first identifying why the series even resonated in the first place.
It was never the monsters, or the scripts, or the horror. Plenty of shows do those elements just as well as the Winchester boys. Instead, Supernatural had two secret weapons that lifted it above the pack. The first was its characters, the magical chemistry between Sam and Dean, accentuated by an ever-growing supporting cast that quickly started to feel like family. The second was a refusal to take itself too seriously. Whether through cheeky lines of dialogue or a subtle eyebrow-raise from Dean, Supernatural always found opportunities to acknowledge the inherent silliness behind its premise.
When those two key strengths are taken to their logical conclusion, the result is an episode like “The French Mistake” or “Changing Channels.” These beloved meta episodes were built around the very things that made us love Supernatural in the first place, so it’s little wonder they’ve remained so popular. It’s a similar story for Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Also thriving on great characters and tongue-in-cheek humor, the musical episode “Once More, With Feeling” is one of the Slayer’s top three.
The real trick was avoiding the temptation to produce more episodes in that mold. A “French Mistake” every season would have quickly worn the idea out, turning something rare and exciting into something annoying and shallow. Supernatural‘s meta episodes succeeded because seeing our heroes in reality-bending, unfamiliar surroundings was a treat to be savored, and like chocolate cake for breakfast, too much of a good thing would have ruined our appetites.
Supernatural‘s record at testing the durability of its fourth wall is impressive, but not unblemished. Season 9 saw reality star Snooki cameo as a crossroads demon, implying the real-life celebrity had been possessed the whole time. The scene doesn’t quite come off as a comedic bit, and feels even more awkward now, removed from the context of its time. Supernatural season 6’s high-profile cameo fared slightly better, with Paris Hilton playing a pagan god posing as Paris Hilton, but it was a piece of stunt casting that Supernatural barely got away with.
Late in Supernatural‘s run, it was revealed that Chuck had essentially been treating the Winchesters as puppets, manipulating their adventures for his own amusement since before episode 1. The twist was intended to develop the idea of “Supernatural” being an in-universe story written by an egotistical author, and the Winchester brothers were just helpless characters rather than masters of their own fates. In truth, the revelation undervalued the entire show by suggesting that the past 300 episodes had been some elaborate in-universe performance, not a genuine battle between good and evil.
‘Going meta’ was not, then, a foolproof recipe for success, but Supernatural certainly mastered the art of writing episodes that tested and teased the audience’s suspension of disbelief. Without such episodes, Sam and Dean Winchester’s legacy wouldn’t be anywhere near as strong today.
- Release Date
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2005 – 2020-00-00
- Showrunner
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Eric Kripke
- Directors
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Philip Sgriccia, John F. Showalter, Kim Manners, Thomas J. Wright, Charles Beeson, Guy Norman Bee, Richard Speight Jr., Mike Rohl, John Badham, Steve Boyum, Amyn Kaderali, Jensen Ackles, Tim Andrew, Eduardo Sánchez, Jeannot Szwarc, P.J. Pesce, Nina Lopez-Corrado, James L. Conway, Amanda Tapping, J. Miller Tobin, Stefan Pleszczynski, John MacCarthy, Jerry Wanek, Ben Edlund
- Writers
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Meredith Glynn, Davy Perez, Raelle Tucker, Cathryn Humphris, Brett Matthews, Nancy Won, John Bring, Ben Acker, Daniel Knauf, David Ehrman, James Krieg, Trey Callaway