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| Even though the beefcakes don't look like they shower. |
Dear writers of Supernatural,
Let me start by saying I’m not often moved to write a letter
to a television show - except for that one time they canceled Firefly (like,
wtf); well, and then there was the incident with Veritas Quest (except now that
I saw the entire first season on YouTube, I get it); also, when I made it
through all the seasons of Kyle XY on
Netflix only to have my soul crash into
the cliffhanger of an abrupt series cancellation – there was no closure!! Who
does that?!
Okay, so maybe I’m moved a lot, but none of those letters
made it to my blog. I digress.
It all started with the preview of episode 15 of season 10 –
the Winchesters were ‘called’ to investigate a case involving a Fort Bragg
Soldier in Fayetteville, North Carolina.
HOW EXCITING I LIVE IN FAYETTEVILLE HOME OF THE AIRBORNE AND
SPECIAL
Maybe I might be slightly over-exaggerating my excitement …
a little. I definitely don't use words like 'gah.'
Seriously, how did even the local celebrities miss the news that
a television show was in town? Wouldn’t they want to broadcast it on their
Facebook, Twitter and Insta-feeds? I mean, c'mon, we’re talking about people who know
Chris Brown is in town BEFORE he knows he will be here.
And yet, Supernatural
came and went in silence.
I sat down to watch the episode with my daughter; both of us
were anxious and excited to see our town on
the small screen – appearing in our
fave show. Ok, so it’s not our favorite show, but it’s one of two we watch
together for mommy daughter time – and I remember Jensen Ackles from Days of
Our Lives and it’s slightly nostalgic.
So, there we were, at the beginning of the episode – excited
- watching the opening scenes blurrily pan through a rainy downtown “Fayetteville,
NC” to settle on the “Fayetteville Municipal Hall.”
Wait. What? We don’t have a municipal building. And that's not our downtown ...
Our (my) excitement was soon replaced with confusion. We did
not recognize a damn thing. And I soon realized
why no one blasted the news on any channels – social media or television.
SUPERNATURAL WAS NEVER HERE.
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| Accurate representation of my reaction. |
Not that I don’t realize the show is fake and only supposed
to be entertaining; however, I expect that when you pick a REAL city in the
United States, if you can’t film there - or make an alternate dimension
storyline to support a town that exists but not as we know it - you might research
to make it look either as authentic or as vague as possible. And by vague, I
don’t mean try to move quickly through an opening scene hoping the real locals
tuning in to see their town repped on a popular show with two hot guys investigating the supernatural (see what I did there?) won’t realize it’s not. actually. their. city.
Especially a MILITARY CITY THAT IS AS BIG AS OURS. For the love of all that's holy, we're in the news!!
You can’t just pick a studio set or small town in Canada
somewhere and sprinkle it with military people in uniforms and put up signs and
call it Fayetteville/Fort Bragg. You even got our law enforcement patches WRONG. Although, to be fair, I did some design work with the FPD patch in the
past, so that might make me the only person on planet Earth that would know
that – even in my city – save actual law enforcement officers and those who
have had a brush or two or few with the law. But, again, I digress.
Anyway, what you guys failed to realize is that you very
subtly if not intentionally, insulted the intelligence of every person watching
the show who lives in Fayetteville or on Fort Bragg. Like we wouldn't know or
care that our city was misrepresented. Yes, we are a city. If you’re not sure,
just ask any of the number of your Canadian ‘brothers’ that play hockey on our
local Hockey team.
Am I over-reacting? Maybe. But, I’m not really upset as much
as disappointed. Barring the fact that the location was royally and obviously
fudged, the episode storyline was also probably not as good as it could have
been. It was pretty lame. I think y’all knew that - as tight as you were with
how many players were in the episode and little detail in character or location
development.
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| Cole as a kid, just a few years ago. |
Kind of like when people like to throw in the token African
American or LGBT friend in a show/movie to appeal to a wider demographic … it
definitely felt like y’all were trying to cover the military front. Even
though you already did that with Cole Trenton, who followed the Winchesters because they killed his father who was killing people to eat their livers (ew). Never mind the fact that even though Cole was, like 10 years old only a few seasons ago when his dad died, he now looked the same age as the Winchesters; so, chronologically, that was weird unless his supernatural power is aging fast.
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| Cole as an adult, now. |
I know, I know. This is all pretend; which is why I forgave
the latter. But when you take pretend and say it’s real – like the location of
episode bull*** being in FAYETTEVILLE/FORT BRAGG, NC – that’s where I take
issue. And I’m not the only one who noticed although I’m probably the only one
who decided to care.
And yes, I am fully aware that this is a bit dramatic (note the title of my blog).
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| Dean and Sam, every season. |
If you made it this far, I’d like to close with some free
advice: if you’re not going to actually go to a real town, just make one up.
It’s not like anyone is going to look it up on the map. They might Google it.
But if you need material for your show, Fort Bragg isn’t the only way you can
go in North Carolina. There’s a s*** ton of haunted places here you can rip for
the show that have a more obscure location that’s easier to fake. Like, the
hundred of miles of countryside that hide all those wrong turns that inspire every single horror movie.
You’re welcome.
Signed,
Potential future cat lady with enough free time on her hands
to write an open letter to a television show, and who was in two movies so if
you need an actress who can’t act, but looks decent on screen, call me, thank you.
Aka: Chick Norris
PS: All photos are copyrighted by Warner Bros. I lifted these off the Internet to use in illustrating this piece.
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