Customer Reviews

Supernatural: The Complete Second Season

5 star:		(242)
4 star:		(30)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

In the midst of this television season's coverage of "Lost"'s fall from grace and eventual comeback and the big waves made by "Heroes", not to mention the slew of increasingly brazen reality TV saturating the market this gem of a show got lost in the shuffle. Season one was a solid start for the show, full of monster-and-hottie-of-the-week stories that stood alone while very slowly giving us an inkling of a larger plot at work before ending with a glorious cliffhanger. The music was wonderful, the guest stars brilliant, and the homages to classic and modern horror were thick. If you missed it, now's the time to catch up because season two is a winner in every possible way. The first episode is among the greatest season openers I've ever had the pleasure of viewing and it shakes this show to it's very core and sets the tone for the entire year's events. From there, Sam and Dean set out to get revenge for their deceased family members and save as many people as they can along the way. Second verse, same as the first, right? Well, no, not quite. We still get our monsters-of-the-week and our cute guest stars and our classic rock soundtrack, but the tone of this season is so much darker and the events so traumatic that the stakes just seem to be on a whole other level. Friendships are made and broken, loyalties are tested, long-standing beliefs are challenged, all three Winchesters fight for their very souls, and almost nobody's getting out whole. This season is a tooth-and-nail battle for survival and while it still has a hefty dose of the humor that made the first season so much fun, it's obvious that this show is no longer just playing around at having a larger plot. This is the real deal. Among the baddies met along the way are more vampires (one played by an almost unrecongnizable Amber Benson of "Buffy" fame), a rogue hunter, a living dead girl, a female werewolf (in the most heart-wrenching episode of any show I've seen this season), a deal-making demon for those who remember the legend of Robert Johnson, some of Sam's fellow "gifted" children (we do learn their secret), and a Norse trickster god to name a few. The music, if anything, has gotten better this season and so have the guest stars. My favorite guest performance has got to be the loveable Katherine Isabel from cult-classic werewolf flick "Ginger Snaps" who shows up twice and inspires adoration in every frame she's in. If you missed this show on the CW, shame on you; now buy this set. If you missed the first season buy that set too. This show is so good I'd hate to see it die because nobody bothered to watch it for themselves. These kinds of shows are notoriously short-lived and the television big-wigs have little patience for them so when one of this caliber gets on the air and stays on the air, we need to keep it that way in every way we can. Support horror, sci-fi, and fantasy television now, and we'll be rewarded with more later. I hope.

Supernatural stormed onto the WB last season and was a rip roarin' thrill ride with amazing writing, mythology, and acting. With this second season, the series moved to it's new home on the CW, and the series continued to evolve and become even better and deeper. Season 2 of the series finds the Winchester Brothers continue to drive into a horrific tale every week, as well as trying to work out their own story arc, and to find that blasted yellow eyed demon. This year, we delve deeper into the characters of Sam and Dean, wonderfully played Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki. There are deeper layers to both, and the series' work on character development this year is phenomenal. Both brothers go thru the ringer emotionally, mentally, and physically this year, and the show doesn't cheat or let them or anyone else off the hook. The year starts off with "In My Time Of Dying", a pick up where we left off with last season's cliffhanger. Are the boys okay?. The car?. Dad?. A more subtle, less showy premiere. "Everybody Loves A Clown" gets back into season 1 territory with a creepy clown going after parents. Real creepy stuff. Some of the best episodes have to do with the show's mythology. "Hunted" is one of the strongest eps of the show ever. "Born Under A Bad Sign" antes up the pot dealing with Sam and what the yellow eyes demon has in store for him. "What Is And What Should Never Be" is one of the most emotional shows with Dean getting a look at what life would be like if they weren't hunters. The two part finale, "All Hell Breaks Loose", is rightfully titled. Amazing stuff. SN delivers two hysterical comedic episodes with "Tall Tales" and "Hollywood Babylon", the latter being stuffed with jokes, in-jokes, and Dean's nasty food habit. Other notable eps include "Croatoan", "Heart", and the great "Folsom Prison Blues". Linda Blair guest stars in "The Usual Suspects", a strong episode that brings to light what we've all probably wondered. How can they get away with these things and not get caught?. Creator/Producer Eric Kripke knows how to work the audience and to keep things real in an unrealistic word the Winchesters live in. Dean and Sam are who they are and their continuing development in this wonderful season progress naturaly. Both actors do some incredible work here, putting most other CW casts to shame. Any duds?. "Road Kill" was pretty standard, and I didn't care much for "Simon Said". Extras include JP's screen test, deleted scenes, gag reel, a featurette on the myths they use and a featurette on bringing an episode to life. With it's classic rock soundtrack, the impossible to ignore Dean Winchester, top notch horror writing and mythology, Supernatural continues to be the new supernatural/horror show to beat.

Supernatural is a show about family, loyalty, faith and doubt, and commitment to a cause and to one another, all wrapped in a terrifically acted, beautifully filmed, and gorgeously color-graded monster-of-the-week show. It's the best thing on television since Buffy or Firefly or X-Files, and as much as I adore and respect those shows (I own them all and am glad of it), in my opinion Supernatural is better than any of them. The entire cast does a flawless job, the relationships are both achingly complicated and refreshingly simple, and the writers don't shy away from hard questions or harder answers. Loyalty to your family trumps everything, and you don't have to save the world every week, just the people you can.

I can't recommend it highly enough.

Special Features: "The Devil's Roadmap", "Webisodes", three commentary tracks, gag reel, deleted/unaired scenes

There was no witchcraft involved in the success of "Supernatural". The show benefited from top notch writing, direction and performances with just the right dash of quirky humor to offset the horror elements of the show. The second season of the show picks up right where the first ended. Dean (Jensen Ackles) and Sam (Jared Padalecki) have located their dad (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) and have the fabled gun fashioned to kill demons in their possession. The trio confront the Demon that killed Dean and Sam's mom only to find it leaping from person to person finally possessing their father almost forcing the boys to kill him. Driving the Demon out of their father the trio escape with the gun believing that they can still track down the creature, find out why it has harvested children with special psychic abilities and how it plans on using them in its "war" against humanity. Then a truck hits Dean's 1967 Impala. Sam is injured but alive and Dean is on the cusp of death with internal injuries. John makes a deal with the Devil or, in this case, the Demon they were pursuing--take his life for Dean's. Before he dies John whispers something to Dean which will resonate throughout the rest of the second season.

We get three commentary tracks on "In My Time of Dying" (director Kim Manners and actors Ackles & Padalecki), "What Is And Should Never Be" (writer Eric Kripe) and the first part of the season two finale "All Hell Breaks Loose" (Kripke, Manners and writer Sera Gamble) along with deleted/unaired scenes on three episodes.


"The Devil's Road Map" is exactly that; a map of the United States showing where each episode takes place in the country You can click on each spot and see material from John's book with writers like Whitley Striber discussing the various monsters. We also see behind-the-scenes footage of the writers/producers discussing the creation of various episodes such as "All Hell Breaks Loose". These are essentially featurettes on each episode and they are kind of cool. We also get Jared Padalecki's original screen test on videotape. The quality of the screen test is typical for home video cameras as it was really never intended to be shown. It's kind of cool to be able to contrast his first take on the character vs. the final performance from the pilot episode and subsequent character development over the course of two seasons.


We also get three "webisode" featurettes including "The Inside Scoop with Ivan Hayden/VFX Supervisor" discussing the visual effects of the show, the overall look of these effects and how he approaches integrating the visuals into the show. "Inside the Writer's Room" which also aired on the "Supernatural" website during season two features writer/creator/producer Kripke, writer/producer John Shiban and producer/writer/director Robert Singer where the trio point out that the show uses Urban folklore as the basis for most of their episodes. Sadly we can't see the board with story ideas behind them. We also get glimpses of some of the storyboards including plenty of clips from the second season. "The Inside Scoop with Chris Cooper" is the final webisode included and features the prop master for "Supernatural" who discusses "all the toys" that the cast use on the show. Cooper discusses some of the fun stuff he gets to create including the guns and devices that Dean & Sam use. The amusing gag reel rounds things out including a very funny scene where Padalecki has a practical joke played on him during shooting.

"Supernatural" looks extremely good overall with nice color reproduction and detail. There are some digital artifacts and the images do blur a bit when there is rapid action on screen (which could be due to the fact that the show is shot and mastered in HD although it largely captures the "look" of film) but on the whole the show looks quite good.

An exceptional second season with only a few dud episodes, I'd highly recommend the "Supernatural". The show has hip humor that manages to capture much of the fun elements that made "The X-Files" so memorable (and hard to reproduce as the failed but interesting "Kolchak: The Night Stalker" from 2005 demonstrated). As with the previous the discs are housed in a fold out case with a brief synopsis and credits for each episode.

In fall of 2005 when the new television line-up was paraded out for all to see an overlying theme was prevalent in several new shows: horror. Surprisingly, the new genre has produced some of the most entertaining television in years. The WB, a fledgling network in comparison to its older siblings, has launched a television show that not only embodies the spirit of this new horror fascination, its very title defines the current obsession dominating the entertainment industry: Supernatural.
America's newest preoccupation with death, life after death, and in general all things spooky have produced some pretty interesting television shows these past few seasons. After all, art imitates life, and on the television show Supernatural even art can be both haunted and dangerous. The WB's newest journey into the unexplained is a fiction drama called Supernatural that follows the journey of two brothers who travel the highways of the United States searching for the origins of unexplained tragedy. Every week Dean and Sam Winchester scour the Internet and various newspapers looking for mysterious crimes, bizarre accidents, and unsolved murders. The brothers travel every episode to a new location on an endless road trip with the purpose of silencing the evil that few only know about. Most of the time the brothers find themselves facing off against the inspiration of a well-known ghost or horror story. It's when they find these urban legends or at least the ideas that inspire them that the plot line takes on a whole new level of interest. The fact that a show like Supernatural has a plot at all is amazing. The horror genre is not known for riveting story lines. In Supernatural the plot is detailed and focused and most often is the driving force behind any of the action. Sometimes the plot line can be so involving it becomes a character of its own, just as important, if not more than the show's two male leads.
Women, with few exceptions, are usually damsels in distress for the boys to rescue. Every week either Dean or Sam falls in love with the female the Winchester boys happen to be helping. The only strong female roles seem to belong to women who are supernatural by nature, whether they are ghosts, psychics, or demons. Just recently, there was an episode involving a young woman who was a love interest for Sam and fought along side him. It was an interesting episode, the young woman brought up the issue that women were not just creatures to protect or fear and Sam's obvious conflict with the idea as he claims that every woman around him gets hurt or killed. On a side note, the killer of the week in this same episode was the ghost of a small female child. This was a nice commentary on the internal debate going on between the main characters. This seemingly harmless little girl who appears to be the victim ends up being a formidable villain. Nothing is what it seems. Driven by two strong female characters, the episode is resolved when Sam accepts the idea of getting involved with his most recent love opportunity. This was quite the huge score for the ladies in that episode.
A theme addressed in almost every episode is family. Dean and Sam are brothers and when one is in trouble the other will stop at nothing to come to any rescue. John Winchester, the patriarch of this crusading clan isn't around much. In fact, an on-going sub-plot of the first season was the brothers' mission to find their father as he had gone missing on a demon hunt. As unusual as the Winchester family appears, when together, they are a strong force to be reckoned with.
Father/son issues, brother issues, lost love issues; general angst rules the relationships that dominate the main characters of this show. These men are human; they have very human problems even if what they do for a living is very inhuman. These problems, heightened by unusual circumstances, relate the characters to the show's audience. It's refreshing to see two brothers who care about each other, who miss each other and connect by way of a relationship not overcast by testosterone on television. The humanity of the show is just as important as the fantasy. It keeps the viewers involved.
Analyzing aside, this is one of the best shows that TV has offered the horror/ sci-fi/ fantasy community in a hell of a long time. After being frustrated by horribly written clunkers like LOST that just keep viewers positively "lost" in an ever changing plotline, Supernatural actually delivers on the mysteries it presents each week. Sure there are questions about the bigger plot, but secrets are like promises, and when TV shows don't keep their word viewers get frustrated. Supernatural is a fun, fulfilling TV show worthy of praise! I hope that the viewers keep watching and show the big bag networks who's really in charge, (US!) and what we really want!

After witnessing the death of their mother by paranormal means, (she was sucked up into the ceiling and then burst into flames) two brothers, Sam and Dean, travel all over America to avenge her death. They hunt demons, ghosts and whatever else they can find in the hope that they will eventually capture and kill the demon responsible for their mother's demise.

Supernatural is one of the shows that is destined to follow in the footsteps of Buffy and X files, becoming a truly great dark fiction series. Season Two opens following the explosive Season One Finale. The Winchesters (Sam, Dean and their father John) are all in hospital recovering from a violent car crash. Sam and John are recovering well; however, Dean awakens only to find that he is having an out of body experience and is likely to die. Never fear, Dad comes to the rescue and makes a deal with someone that you should never make deals with (did the story of Faust teach us nothing).

John Winchester exchanges his life for Dean's and with his last breath whispers into Dean's ear that someday he may have to kill his brother because Sam has a destiny that definitely will be tainted with darkness. As the two brothers try to figure out what will happen to Sam and if they can stop it, they embark on a series of scary, humorous and entertaining adventures. Armed with shotguns filled with rock salt they encounter everything from Psycho Carnies in Clown Suits to Dead chicks that can run.

In Season Two we meet a few new characters, the best of which is Ash, a redneck MIT dropout who is all business up front and a party in the back. I hope that he will become a series regular, as he is a witty and welcome addition to the cast. We also learn a bit more about Sam's destiny as the first part of Season Two is full of intriguing hints about revelations to come.

The first Season of Supernatural was a great watch and Season Two does not disappoint. Therefore, if you love programmes that are filled with movie references and storylines that are steeped in myth and legend, you will love Supernatural.

This is a show that just keeps getting better and better with each passing season. And this is only their 2nd season!! If this show was put in a race between "Buffy" and "Charmed" (2 shows I liked), "Supernatural" would win by a mile! The chemistry between Jensen and Jared is probably the best I have ever seen since "Angel" was on tv. I mean for this show to essentially have a 2 person cast, it actually works and works very well. Next to Bones and Booth on the Fox show "Bones", Sam and Dean have a fantastic 2-person combination that works very well. They both have a great on screen presence together and actually act like brothers, and not some forced upon relatonship that most tv shows are doing nowadays. I have to admit, before seeing season 1 I was a huge doubter of the show, because I just thought that it was about 2 pretty boys hunting in a Buffy rip off. But after I saw the first few episodes and then the whole season, I became a quick fan of the show. Why this show was on the bubble, I have no idea. I mean this show is sooo much better than that "Top Model" crap! That's the show that should have been on the bubble, not "Supernatural". And if The CW gave this show the axe, I seriously would have written to the Sci-Fi channel to consider picking this show up, since "Battlestar Galactica" is coming to an end, which is strange considering that show's huge fanbase. But that's another story. To sum up, "Supernatural" is a great show and I would highly reccommend any sci-fi fan or even "Buffy", "Angel", and "Charmed" fans to pick this box set up and add it to their collection.

Supernatural Season 2 did what most shows fail to do in their sophmore year and that's deliver. The first season was amazing and when shows are amazing the second season is put under a lot of pressure. The show surpassed the first season with such ease. Eric Kripke and company filled the season with funny episodes, scary episodes and heart wrenching episodes. This season was also filled with outstanding guest actors. And the lead actors showed just why they got the job. Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki's acting was darn near perfect. They each had their episodes where they shined but the season belonged to Ackles. He showed why he's a former 3 time Emmy nominee especially in the gut-gripping, edge of your seat 2 part season finale. In "All Hell Breaks Loose Part 2" the season ended with so much promise for season 3. No one is left disappointed just itching for more.

I started watching Supernatural when it first began in 2005, and Season 2 has by far exceeded my expectations...It has the wonderful ability to have you on the edge of your seat from start to finish; this is my favorite show EVER!!! I will buy the Season 2 box set the day it comes out....and if you are thinking about purchasing this, I promise this is well worth it, you won't be disappointed!

Scary, spooky, edge-of-your-seat, eerie, suspenseful show. Supernatural takes on subjects of urban legends, lore- anything that goes bump in the night and uses those nightmares to create "real-life" battles of good versus evil (creatures of darkness-demons/ghosts/zombies etc).

It's riveting to watch; most times you can't imagine just what exactly is coming. Season 2 is just as good as the first season- though I do miss Jeffrey Dean Morgan... The chemistry between the brothers is amazing- the comedic timing and overall combative relationship often results in hilarious laugh-out-loud moments. You can't help but chuckle over their antics. The show creators chose well with Jared Padelecki and Jensen Ackles- they play off each other really well. Jensen has amazing delivery- the lines he is able to say with a straight face... WOW!

A couple of my favorite episodes are Folsom Prison Blues, Playthings, and Hollywood Babylon. I was looking forward to Season 2's release especially for the extras. The deleted scenes and gag reel were the best part of 1st season DVD and they're just as good here. Jared's screen test is also there which is longer than I thought, but still interesting to 'witness'. Though, the gag reel is the BEST. As soon as I got the set, that was the first thing I watched. Just as good as the first season's, maybe better. Fun and hilarious!! I wish my job was that much fun...

The second season ends with a big bang and lots of lingering questions are left to be resolved for season 3 and (hopefully) future seasons. I can't wait to see what is coming next! This is one show that I LOVE to watch!!! The stars are lovely eye candy, if nothing else... ;-)

The show makes a welcome distraction for drudging away on the treadmill. Anything that makes the minutes fly by is welcome to me...