Today marks the airing of Supernatural’s 200th episode, a high mark for any television series and one that’s nearly impossible to achieve in the days of 13-episode seasons and limited year-to-year orders. However, while the concept of a 200th episode isn’t new, it’s worth noting Supernatural’s celebratory moment is quite uncommon for high concept series of its type that never make it past the first three years of their lives. Somehow, though hell, heaven, purgatory and everything in between, the story of the Winchesters has managed to enthrall audiences for the better part of a decade – to the point where it holds the title of being the only active series that’s older than the network it airs on – and while many networks may want to point to the program’s high concept nature in explanation of its success, we all know the real reason it continues to thrive.
At its core, Supernatural’s a show about two brothers driving cross-country for work, their work just happens to be hunting creatures of the night. The show’s as much a procedural as Law & Order and CSI:, but where the CW drama diverts from those comparisons is in its method of madness. Every season, the writers make fans believe they’re progressing somewhere when in fact they’re never moving anywhere, in the end almost always ending up in the same place they started.
Every season of Supernatural begins with one of the brothers out of sorts, and the whole story of a given year progresses to a place that sees them get back together as a family before everything goes bad and they’re back to square one, except now the roles are reversed and the brother that wasn’t suffering in the previous year will be the one suffering in the next. The ways in which the show make Sam and Dean agonize may vary, but the system has remained true for the last ten seasons. This isn’t a bad thing, but it’s why the show’s continued to maintain after all this time despite holding court to a concept that most other series would lose steam with fairly quickly.
Supernatural is the “character before concept” gold standard for broadcast television. Yes, its premise is fun, outlandish and highly marketable, but the concept is not what’s keeping the audience coming back season after season. Actors Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki have created a family dynamic on their show few others can match. The bond they share as friends seeps through episode after episode and immediately grabs new fans as well as old, and it’s this continued cycle of discovery by new viewers when others may drop off that give the show an earned right to longevity.
The lesson the rest of television can learn from Supernatural is one we’ve discussed time and time again: on the small screen, the promise of a long life and profitability will only come from the work of character. No matter how great a concept may be, if the foundation that concept is built upon isn’t sound enough to support dynamic relationships between characters, audiences aren’t going to stick around. Viewers want to travel an unexplored world with people they love and love to hate, not people they can easily ignore.
