Supernatural's Creators and Cast Preview the 200th Episode

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.”

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.”

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