Jared Padalecki, Jensen Ackles and the producers on
how "Fan Fiction" looks back at the show's history.
By Eric Goldman - How
do you properly approach reaching the 200th episode of a TV show? Most
series don’t have to answer that question because most series don’t make
it that far, but Supernatural will be airing their 200th episode this Tuesday.
When I spoke to the Supernatural crew at a recent celebration honoring the 200th episode, showrunner Jeremy Carver
explained, “We knew it had to be special but feel true to the show.
There’s a certain amount of irreverence that carries through the show so
we wanted it to have that feel. We wanted it to be fun. I think some of
our most fun episodes poke fun at ourselves, poke fun at the fandom,
embrace the fandom. We wanted it to feel like… fans who have been with
us all this time, to give them something really special. There might be
little moments where they’ll get little visual Easter eggs throughout
that real, real die hard fans will pick up on and we wanted it to have
all those things.”
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| Jensen Ackles as Dean and Jared Padalecki as Sam in Supernatural's 200th episode. |
In the episode, called “Fan Fiction,” a case brings Sam and Dean to an
all-girls boarding school where they discover that the students are
performing a musical based on… Supernatural. As in, the books about Sam
& Dean written by the character Chuck that supplied plenty of very
funny in-jokes in the past. Sam & Dean are aghast to see their life
being performed onstage, in song no less, and with some of the facts not
quite lining up with what they know to be the truth.
Supernatural Crew on Reaching 200 Episodes
Said writer Adam Glass, “I think everybody knew that we wanted to turn
the camera onto ourselves. We wanted to turn around and basically take a
look at ourselves and have a little fun and poke a little fun and we
got to do that, which is sort of laugh at ourselves a little. The show
has always done that incredibly well. It’s always turned around and been
able to take a look at itself and not take ourselves too serious. It’s
what I love about the show and I think the 200th episode does it really
well.”
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| Sam and Dean get a very strange look at their past in Supernatural's 200th episode. |
As Jared Padalecki noted, “The great thing abut the 200th episode is
that there were obviously many ways for the writers to go. I’m sure they
had 15 ideas and I think they appropriately did a proper shout out to
the fans without making it a cheesy shout out to the fans. This is a way
for us to say, purely, ‘Thank you, we love you, here’s something for
you,’ without making it not make sense to Supernatural."
Padalecki added, "It’s a thin line you have to tow and we’ve done it
before in ‘Changing Channels’ or ‘The French Mistake’ where you kind of
have to make fun of yourself and you kind of have to be aware of
yourself but you can’t be
too aware of yourself. [Jensen]
Ackles and I and [Mark] Sheppard and Misha [Collins] have nothing to do
with that. That’s all the writers and the producers. They tow the line
perfectly where I think the fans will know that it’s legitimately a
salute to them and that’s it. It wasn’t like, ‘Hey, here’s us doing a
vaudeville show for you.’ It’s like, ‘Listen guys, thank you, this is
for you.’ We’re still trying to make it good and true to Sam and Dean
Winchester but really we just want to say thank you, so I think it’s a
nice thing to be able to do."
When I asked the director of the 200th episode, frequent Supernatural
director Philip Sgriccia, what they wanted to accomplish with the
milestone episode, he replied, with a laugh, “Make it good! That’s all I
was worried about was I hope I don’t make it sucky. They’re always a
challenge. This one was a bit more because there were added elements.
There was a whole new guest cast that we hadn’t seen, just a whole
passel of elements that were different for us. But I think in the end we
scored it. I think there’s some really funny, funny moments. It’s a
love letter to the audience, to our fans and we poke fun at them and we
poke fun at ourselves. It was fun to do. It was tough but it was fun.”
Jensen Ackles
said that after learning the overall concept for the 200th episode, “I
didn’t really know what to expect. I knew what the intent of the show
was about but I wasn’t really quite sure how it was going to come
together because it was a pretty… not a risky show but it was a pretty
unique show and I’m like, man, this is either going to go good or it’s
going to go bad. I think what Phil and what the guest cast did with the
show, it went great. Jared and I stood back and were like, ‘Holy s**t,
this is good!’”
Everyone involved was pretty tightlipped on the specifics of the
songs, which are sung by the guest cast, not the regulars. Said
Sgriccia, “The guest cast is crazy, crazy good.” Carver noted there are
original songs in the episode, but added, “There will be one very
specific cover song that I think is going to blow the roof off the
place. From the very tippy top of the show on down, I think everyone was
sort of blown away by the songs that are in this episode. In the way
that they’re delivered, we couldn’t be more tickled.”
When it came to the episode’s storyline, Sgriccia remarked, “Robbie
Thompson wrote the script and it’s really, really well done. We kept it
really simple in that it really was our guys. This is the 200th. It’s
going to be kind of a stand-alone episode. It doesn’t have as much of
the mythology in it. I mean, there’s actually a lot of mythology in it
but it’s not necessarily from this season. It’s mythology of the show.”
While Supernatural creator Eric Kripke
is no longer involved in the show’s day to day production, he revealed,
“I’ve seen the 200 and it's amazing. It’s bananas. It’s a musical. It’s
so strange. But not like in a way I’ve ever seen a musical done before.
It’s so bizarre and funny. I actually got a little emotional at the
end.” Said Kripke of his current status with the show, “I consider
myself the proud parent who sent their child off to college. I’m there
to root from the sidelines but I’m not there to get in the way.”
As others had mentioned, Supernatural has delivered quite a few
offbeat and unusual episodes through the years. When I asked Ackles how
much of a surprise that’s been for him, given he couldn’t have expected
it when he signed on, he told me, “I think it’s one of the reasons that
the show is what it is today. I think because we can let the air out, we
can take the piss out, we can make fun of ourselves, poke fun at
ourselves, we can break the fourth wall, we can get meta. I think it’s
one of the few shows on television that even can do that and still keep
it within the realm of the show. I think the fact that we are able to do
that and have that capability is something that makes us really
different from the rest of television.”
Source
-Jared suona il campanaccio e poi lo fa anche Jensen.
