The time was now to finally get around to reading this. The phenomenal powerhouse of a show called SUPERNATURAL is finally ending, after fifteen fantastic seasons. I love these McFarland editions that are dives into topics that are usually pop-culturey in nature. I've read a few of them now. Each chapter is about ten pages, tending to connect the older Gothic theme to this show. Examples of topics: the incomparable Impala as the Gothic moving castle, the also incomparable Charlie Bradbury, post-9/11 anxiety in the Gothic, the monstrousness of Sam & Dean, intertextuality within the metafictional episodes and a few more topics, covering up to the end of season ten. With most of these McFarland editions, since they focus on a specific area of pop culture that I'm interested in, I really want to dive deeper into these topics, while the ten page chapters really can only introduce an idea. For example, it's only at the end of the 'Sympathy for the Devil' essay that it casually mentions 'what if Sam & Dean are the villains of Supernatural?' with their cavalier attitude in killing every monster they see. This idea definitely deserved at least ten pages alone. If anything, this book serves as a trip down the memory "road so far". Fifteen years is a long time and I'm grateful the show lasted that long. It's been an epic ride. ( )

Supernatural is my favorite show ever. That being said I was looking forward to getting this book. I have to say that it was a bit of a let down as most of the essays in the book are pretty decent and worth a read, but some are just atricious and you wonder why they are even there. Another thing that aggravated me was the fact that only the first half of the series was covered. ( )

I won this book on the early reviewers program.
I had never seen the series but I watched the first few episodes before starting this book and enjoyed them.
This book however...
As with all McFarland books I've read was meticulously researched and you could tell these people were passionate about the subject.
But I just kept wanting to say come on it's a television show for crying out loud.
These people all have degrees and college education and they spend their time dissecting a television show that quite frankly outlived it's entertainment value about 12 years ago.
I really struggled to finish this book.
Sorry. but I have to be honest here. ( )

i unfortunately did not enjoy the book as much as i thought i would. i found it to be a bit boring and i could not get through the whole book. ( )

I want to start off by saying The Gothic Tradition in Supernatural: Essays on the Television Series does have several truly interesting essays with insightful things to say about Supernatural. It also has its problems.

In my opinion, the biggest defect of the collection is the large number of essays which ignore everything after season five of the show; this is hugely problematic because, as I write this, Supernatural is currently in its twelfth season. A look at the dates in the references show almost all of the entries had to have been written after season ten, so I cannot understand why such a large amount of space was given to essays which ignore over half of the show’s episodes.

There are also a couple of utterly atrocious essays, the worst of which is Leow Hui Min Annabeth’s “Coloniality and the Chicana Gothic: Travelling Myths in the Pilot.” Leow gives a bizarre interpretation of the story of La Llorona, a woman who drowns her children when she discovers her lover’s been unfaithful, and uses her interpretation to make the show seem like it’s about two brothers who travel the country committing hate crimes. A better interpretation of the use of La Llorona in the pilot is that she fit geographically with the California setting and, more importantly, she fits the show’s recurring theme of crappy parents.

Megan Fowler’s “”Psychotically, irrationally, erotically codependent”: Incest and the Gothic Other” is another awful essay. She argues that the basis of the Winchester brothers' bond is sexual desire for each. Apparently it never occurred to her that they both endured a traumatic and, let’s be honest here, abusive childhood and that might have something to do with their admittedly codependent relationship.

Again, there are some wonderful essays in this book--my favorites are Jamil Mustafa's “You can't spell subtext without S-E-X”: Gothic Intertexuality and the (Queer) Uncanny" and “”What’s up, bitches?” Charlie Bradbury as Gothic Heroine” by Ashley Walton--but its flaws make it not worth purchasing; however, if you are a Supernatural fan and happen to find this title at the library, I definitely recommend checking it out and skimming through to find the gems of the collection. ( )