Stealing Borrowing Posting Ideas

Mrs. G on Derfwad Manor posts a recipe from a guest blogger on Thursdays.  She asks a few questions of the guest blogger, one of which always is, "Who is your secret boyfriend?"  The answers are always entertaining.  Y'all know about secret boyfriends, yes?  Also known as TV boyfriends.  So I suppose that if I'm going to be more honest, this is actually just an excuse to write about fandom, Supernatural, and Jensen Ackles.  Again.  You have been warned, and you may stop reading now if you had enough of this from me last year.

Once upon a time.......

On a struggling TV network mostly dedicated to teen soap operas, there is a little television show called Supernatural.  The network, as Rodney Dangerfield used to say, "don't give no respect" to the show, sticking it in a terrible time slot, on Thursdays at 9 PM, where it is up against Grey's Anatomy (bleh) and the original CSI (I'll give that one a meh).  The cast and crew do far more to support the show than the network does; I see commercials for the appalling One Tree Hill, Gossip Girl, and the new 90210 at the rate of about 4 to one with Supernatural commercials.  Don't get me started on CEO Dawn Ostroff.  Creator Eric Kripke at the two leads, Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki, along with writers, producers, and directors, attend fan conventions at what must be an exhausting rate, pushing the show every chance they get.

So for four seasons, the show has chugged along, pulling an average of 4 million viewers each week.  The writer's strike last year nearly killed the show.  Four million, in TV numbers, in case you're unaware of these things as I was in the days before SN, is paltry at best, and cancellation-worthy at worst.  The fan base, those 4 million (mostly women) people, have a fandom all unto themselves that encompasses a stunning array of in-jokes, turns of phrase, fiction, forum boards, and even art.  It is easy, perhaps frighteningly so, to lose yourself in that world, where a network of fans feel just as strongly as you do about the show, the characters, the mytharc.  Easy to become connected to a world-wide group, exchange IMs with fans around the globe, sometimes to the exclusion of reality.

I spent a lot of time in fandom when I was unemployed last year.  I miss it, often, now that I'm too busy to be as involved as I was.  I made some wonderful connections, new friends from all over the place, cool and interesting people that I would have never met were it not for a television show.  That fact still boggles my mind.  Without a TV show ffs, re-read that sentence.  Especially since as a kid, I wasn't really allowed to watch TV, I could have never imagined that I'd be this into a television show.  TV was for the hoi-polloi.  TV was for people who couldn't read.  TV was dumb.

Mostly, I still think that.  Whenever I go to work somewhere new, I have to explain to people, yet again, that I don't watch TV, no, I didn't see Greys or Scrubs last night, don't care what's happening on any given sitcom.  Those canned laugh tracks, ugh, how can anyone watch that?  It really annoys me.

Escapism, still, when you get down to the nitty-gritty, that's the appeal in the end.  When I became a big fan of the show, my life wasn't so fantastic.  I could pretend that wasn't happening while playing in fandom.  Now that things are better, I feel less of a need to escape, but wish I had the time to.

Oh, yes, I did say that this was an excuse to talk about Jensen, didn't I?  Instead, I'll just post a pic, and you can make that determination for yourself.

Ah yes.  So very, very pretty.  But aside from that, his work is amazing.  His portrayal of the badly damaged Dean is something I think needs to be seen to be appreciated.  Thursdays, 9PM, on (I cringe to admit I watch this channel) The CW.