Supernatural

Supernatural is my new favorite show. I know, I’m late to the party. It’s been the favorite show of lots of people for over a decade. But better late than never, right? 

This all started a few months ago when we finally got the miracle of Netflix (imagine a choir of angels singing when I say “Netflix”). Again, late to the party, but life’s a journey, not just a destination, and my journey goes at a slow, meandering pace that often deviates from the marked trails. Anyway, we got Netflix (angels singing) and I was able to catch up on a few seasons of Shameless and Orange is the New Black that I had missed back in the dark ages when all I had was cable and no commercial-free Netflix (wake up those angels again). I watched a couple episodes of that show where the girl gets turned into a zombie, but she continues to work. It was good, and I plan to go back to it, but it bothered me that even after a person is dead, she still has to have a job. Then I got diverted when a friend recommended all 153(ish) seasons of Supernatural.

Episode #1 hooked me. Some woman was pinned to the ceiling and caught fire! That was quite an image. I’m now in Season 10. Thank goodness there are so many seasons—and all available commercial-free through the miracle of Netflix (somebody nudge those angels and get them harmonizing).

Supernatural has it all: demons, vampires, angels (not the nice choir variety that sing when I say "Netflix"; most of these angels are total jerks), ghosts, werewolves, and a couple of funny, handsome Winchester brothers at the heart of it all. It’s especially fun how they switch back and forth between more serious episodes that move forward an overarching plot, and one-off episodes that focus on a “small” monster that the guys have to deal with. For instance, there was a season where the guys were fighting back against the leviathan that were trying to take over the earth and harvest people for dinner, but then sometimes they’d get diverted with a comparatively mundane problem like a ghost or something. It’s a blast.

In addition to being entertaining, Supernatural is educational. It offers ideas for using excess table salt to ward off ghosts and how to attract crossroads demons that can grant your fondest wish—for 10 years until the agreement expires and your soul is cast into the pits of hell. The Big Bang Theory doesn’t do that. Although Big Bang Theory is pretty funny, too.

So everyday I watch one or two episodes of my new favorite show and am gradually working my way through the seasons through the miracle of Netflix (angels: you know what to do). The only downside is that I’m not spending enough time working on the sequel to my novel Bigfoot CSI. What would really help is an entire Bigfoot season on Supernatural. Talk about the perfect crossover! Can somebody please talk to the Winchesters about making that happen?

Government Work

The TV show Ghosted is fantastic! Every time I watch it, I can count on at least one good laugh. It’s not just about ghosts, either. It’s kind of a Men in Black or Agents of SHIELD or X-Files kind of situation where there are lots strange creatures that the guys in a secret supernatural government office have to hunt down and keep under control. 

While the show itself is a blast, the show’s premise is worrisome. In another life, I worked in a little-known and exceedingly dull corner of the federal government. As a former employee of the massive, lumbering bureaucratic labyrinth that is the U.S. government, I know we shouldn’t put something important like managing ghosts, demons, and other assorted unexplained phenomena in the shaky hands of public servants. What if they mess it up? What if they trap ghosts, then accidentally release them, like that dope in the first Ghostbusters movie? What if they put aside their important work so they can take extra long lunches on Fridays (or Mondays of Thursdays)? What if their training is less than outstanding, as it was in my case?

When I was first hired to shuffle papers in a gray-walled pile of bricks on Chicago’s near north side, we had to go through an unnecessarily long training process. As if that would somehow help make us efficient at our jobs or something. There was one particular woman who was responsible for training a large class of new hires over the course of three months. Much of what she did was spend an inordinate amount of time explaining how to route pieces of paper from one corner of our organization to another. The only thing more painfully boring than teaching it was listening to her teach it.

The boredom was only broken up by occasional moments of fingernails-on-the-blackboard irritation because this trainer always said the word “viva” when she meant “via.” Always. And she insisted on using “viva” in every third sentence that came out of her mouth. She’d say something like, “This sheet of white paper is supposed to go to the Accounting Department, but it has to get there viva the supervisor’s office.” She meant via, of course, because she was saying the boring white paper gets to accounting by way of the supervisor.

Every single time she said it, the guy sitting next to me would start singing Elvis’s classic hit Viva Las Vegas under his breath. Every. Single. Time. In retrospect, I don’t know which was more annoying: The trainer who didn’t understand that different words had different meanings or the guy next to me with his Elvis impression. Oh, wait, yes I do know. It was definitely the trainer because a) she was getting paid more to be a cretin without language skills and b) if she knew the proper word, the guy next to me wouldn’t have had any excuse to sing.

Anyway, the point is these are the kinds of people who work for the federal government. Do you want them in charge of keeping you safe from things that go bump in the night? Can they be trusted to run Area 51? Would they even know how to find Area 51 without going viva the accounting manager’s desk? In other words, if the idea behind shows like Ghosted is to be believed, you’d better make friends with the creatures under your bed, because the government might not be able to protect you.