Details are sketchy

So I have just watched the season six premier of Supernatural and I have to say, although I was initially a little concerned that the show would plummet downhill after the epic season five finale (come on, epic's pretty much the only word to descrbe the apocalypse), I'm really happy with what they've done with the show. The only successful way they could have done it was to return to the shows origins; those themes of guilt, family, the real American mythology and gritty, realistic tone of it all. This is exactly what they've done. Last season left Sam dead as far as Dean knew and him carrying out Sam's final wish of getting a normal family. The show has never given any allusions to the idea of being able to have a "normal" life with the knowledge that the evil of the world is out there. Dean could not stay this way, with the wife and kid and house in the suburbs. Ignorance is truly bliss in this world and the episode begins with a comparison of clips from everyday life with clips from the past while they were fighting demons and this immediately puts that point across; you cannot separate the two. Dean's suspicions are always present and rightly so; Evil has once again tracked him down and, disrupted his life, much like Sam's in the Pilot episode.



The show's new show runner, the brilliant Sera Gamble, who has been there since the very start has taken the reins from Erik Kripke who has left the show this year and she has made clear that the boys are going back to their roots, fighting the monsters of the world they were in the beginning, but to a greater extent. She wrote this episode herself, which is probably why this point comes across so well. Instantly you see classic iconic horror imagery that was so typical of the first and second season. From the scratches on wall that have been indicators in television and cinema for years of werewolves and other creatures of the night to the more technical use of long corridors with extreme high and low camera angles, also staples of horror in cinema and games. Not to mention that classic use of limited lighting and the only lightsource a bright torch aimed at Dean's face. I was looking for these sorts of things but they're so subtlely done that they seem to quietly give the audience the feeling of the first seasons. Strange way to describe it I know but it's the technical genius of the team working on it and Sera's great writing.



It wasn't all so subtle though, and not in a bad way at all but much more blatantly bringing back the first season’s “Big Bad” Azazel, allowed for that ever-present guilt to resurface (which we all know is one key theme, the guilt of not being able to save everyone and especially trying to make up for past mistakes, often involving family). This episode's plot draws from Dean’s guilt of not being able to save his mother, then his father and now his brother. This is mirrored completely in the hallucinations he suffers from that show his new girlfriend being killed in the same way his mother was. I could talk forever about the idea of guilt but as I would never reveal a spoiler (i'm not evil) the idea of family is also reintroduced in the introduction of characters we both haven't seen for a while and some we've never seen before.

Well everything I've wrote seems a bit vague but watch this episode and you'l see exactly what I mean by it. I think the team have done a brilliant job at rebooting the series and bringing everything back down to a less apocalyptic level. Can't wait for the next episode and what ideas the writing team can dream up for one of the greatest shows currently airing.