Supernatural & Supertramp

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      I came really late to the "Supernatural" party. It's been on TV since 2005 and I only, recently, started watching previous seasons on Netflix. I am about two-thirds of the way through Season 8. An informal, personal goal is to be caught up on all seasons including the 1st half of the current 15th and last season when the final episodes begin to air in real-time on October 8th. In other words, I better get busy. What I love about "Supernatural" will be the subject of another blog entry entirely. But, for the purposes of today's blog entry, one of the things I absolutely love about "Supernatural" is its incredibly good, intuitive use of classic rock music. Classic Rock isn't a personal favorite of mine but don't even get me started on the use of "Beautiful Loser" by Bob Seger at the beginning of the first episode of Season 6. The song adds perfect context to Dean Winchester going through the motions of an everyday life that he thought he wanted.  Taking out the trash never looked so bleak.

     Two seasons later, Episode 17 of Season 8, metaphorically entitled "Goodbye Stranger", ends with Sam and Dean driving away together in the Impala from their most recent crusade. Sometimes, the adventures are Hunts. Sometimes, the endeavors involve furthering their mission to keep the Gates of Hell closed.  Dean is, as usual, driving and Sam, almost too big (Jared Padalecki who plays Sam is a very tall man with broad shoulders) for the car in my opinion, sits in the passenger seat as they have one of their many hunt-ending wrap-up conversations. As the conversation ends, Dean turns on the radio and Supertramp's "Good-bye Stranger"  comes over the airwaves. They drive off, probably to their newly bequeathed bunker, listening to it as the scene changes to a generic, Fall mountainside somewhere and the Angel, Castiel. He is seated by himself on a bus and he has THE Angel Tablet, in a bag on his lap.  Castiel rides off alone on the bus because, for various reasons, he has become a stranger to his previous good friends.

     Even though Season 8 aired 2012-2013, in other words awhile ago, I felt the pathos and the ethos of the scenario. Across time and space, the emotional echo inadvertently connected me to myself of many years ago.  I know this wasn't the intention of the producers of this show but it happened. A show filmed in approximately 2012 connected a 59-year-old woman to her youth in the late 1970s. Even though Classic Rock has never been a music genre about which I feel passionate, one of my favorite albums when I was a teenager was Supertramp's "Even in the Quietest Moments". "Goodbye Stranger" is not on that album but hearing such a good, classic rock song from a Classic Rock group I DID like, sent me down Memory Lane. Last night after the end of Season 8, Episode 17 of "Supernatural", I put my Bluetooth headphones on and cued up all my favorite Supertramp songs on YouTube. It was fun and sad at the same time. I can never do fun without sad. That's kind of my Modus Operandi. "Even in the Quietest Moments" was released in April, 1977. I was 15. The song, "Goodbye Stranger", from another Supertramp album was released in 1979, the year I graduated from high school. Maybe, I watch too much Supernatural or shows about paranormal activity in general but I would really like to time travel back to meet my 15 and 17 year old selves and tell her a few things. I couldn't tell her about the Life Lessons that you only learn by living them but she needed to know some other things that could have helped her on her journey. She was beautiful and intelligent and she was wise even AS a young woman. She could have used to understand that intuition is a good thing and she needed to believe in herself even against seemingly insurmountable odds.  She needed to be like Dean Winchester and, sometimes, attack situations head on and go fearlessly in the front door. She needed to look at herself in the mirror everyday and say, "Hello Friend". Maybe, it's not too late to start doing that now. It's not good to spend years being a stranger to yourself. 

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