I recently acquired Supernatural based on a few positive mentions here on KIA2. I quite like it, but it's a bit... off. These sorts of shows are really about the banter and camaraderie, with the monster stuff being almost incidental. Somehow the chemistry/banter is not quite working for me.
Should I persevere?
I partly disagree. It did end up wandering aimlessly for a few seasons after season 5, but it does pick itself back up with some pretty good plotlines.
Just did some research, and I think the improvement coincides with when Jeremy Carver was given the reins over the show's direction.
I do agree with your general thought though. Whenever I've recommended the show, I usually have include a caveat that they could always drop out after five seasons (especially if the person found the total season count an intimidating factor)
Like I said, there are decent plotlines afterwards, but I still don't necessarily think it's worth it. Metatron was probably the most interesting post S5 content, and I don't think it's worth wading through 6 and 7 all for Metatron. Then you have the Amara plotline, the British Men of Letters and then the (in my opinion) lazy Alternate Worlds crap. Jack is decent and interesting, but again, it's not worth it.
I can't recommend wading through 10 more seasons of mediocrity just so that a person can watch the 3 of those seasons that are decent. Not great seasons, but decent. I don't see the cost:reward ratio being worth it.
Yup, I agree with you about 99% there.
Like for you and I (I'm at least assuming this applies to you in the same way), we'd already invested a fair bit of time into the series and even tried to ride through the crap-tier seasons. So coming out into some decent later seasons, was... more of a (slight) net reward, maybe.
It was also a little different I think because it took a while to get used to being jaded about it, since we were riding out after 5 glorious seasons and didn't know how the quality was going to play out until we'd been mired in it for a year or two.
But for someone new to the show, they have both fair warning after the fact AND... they haven't even started investing anything into watching it at all, so there's "generally" not a lot of good reason for them to go past season 5 unless they just really want to anyway.
Each of the later plotlines you brought up were pretty interesting imo. Save for the British Men of Letters. The Steins were short but interesting, and some of Lucifer's antics were pretty hilarious. Didn't like the alternate world stuff but I did like Jack as a character. Amara was interesting, but also sort of fell a little short in some ways.
I did like the whole thing with the Mark of Cain though. I know in a lot of ways, it's a little bit of a rehash of Dean's experiences in previous seasons, but I liked the internal conflict element that it played up. Especially since Dean's character tends to shy away from self reflection. And that situation sort of forced him to try and confront himself in a way he couldn't ignore or dodge away from.
That's fair. I think their biggest problem was a lack of really utilising the villains they made. The Styne's were an amazingly interesting idea, and for them to have lasted a grand total of 3 episodes (over a grand total of a 5 episode span) did them dirty as a concept. It had potential, and then it was gone before it could be used.
That's probably the biggest issue with later Supernatural, a weird choice of which villains they chose to focus on. They had the Styne's and chose to focus on Rowena. They had Dagon, and chose to focus on the British Men of Letters. They had Asmodeus, and chose to focus on the Alternate World. It just felt like weird priorities.
I know it sounds like I'm downplaying a lot of it, because I liked Jack and there was a lot of potential with so many other characters or concepts, but then it's no explored and it's more annoying because now it feels wasted. Everyone who I know liked Supernatural and kept watching loved the idea of the Styne's, but they only last 3 episodes. It was beyond wasted, and it's not the only concept that was wasted. And I think that's what annoys me most, was just how much was wasted in favour of lesser ideas.