Shortly before Supernatural took the 2011 San Diego Comic-Con’s Hall H by storm, the cast and producers took the time to meet with reporters. Jim Beaver shared his thoughts on Comic-Con and where Supernatural is going in the upcoming season.
What can you tell us about the new season?
Jim Beaver: What can I tell you about it? It’s Friday nights at 9, I think… What can I tell you about and not get fired?
Is it a darker season? Is it lighter?
Jim Beaver: I think it’s… in terms of darkness and light, it’s gonna be… My sense, having read three scripts, is that it’ll be about the same balance as usual. But I think it might be scarier. That, I mean, that’s just the sense that I have. I mean, there’s always scary stuff on this show. That’s kind of what we do. But, you know, this is all… I’m adlibbing this like crazy, but the way the first season was, there was a lot of shocks and, you know… I get the impression that we’re gonna have a lot of “Oh my God!” moments this season, so… but after three episodes, after three scripts read, that’s not necessarily true. That’s just all I know.
You know, you guys have been at it for a while, and now we come to Comic-Con and there’s so much supernatural and paranormal stuff going on. How do you feel like your show fits into that? Do you feel like you have an influence on some of the other stuff, showing that it can be a genre show and stick around?
Jim Beaver: Well, you know, I don’t worry too much about that stuff. I mainly just show up and try not to ruin the scene. But my sense is that if we’ve shown the way, in any way at all, it’s that in a genre show, the real trick is to keep focused on the humanity of the characters and their relationships, and give the audience somebody that they can identify with and really feel connected with, as opposed to just telling plot-oriented stories that… Anybody can throw special effects at an audience, but throwing really-connecting characters at the audience is the real secret, I think.
How is Bobby handling the events of last season’s finale?
Jim Beaver: Well, you know we’re all kind of… as the last season ended we were all sort of aghast at where things were, and we’re picking up, like, two seconds later. So we’re still aghast.
And it will… There’s a certain… God, I gotta be careful. Uhh, there’s a certain, almost sense of futility that’s come over us in the first episode because… You know, we keep ramping things up on this show, and then when you hit the end of the season and you say that you’ve got a malevolent god to deal with, it’s like “Oh, okay, how do you get beyond that?”
So we did a scene just on Friday, where one of the guys was saying, “Well, you know, they can’t do anything about this, so I’m just gonna do what I can do,” and work on some seemingly smaller things… I can’t even talk about that! They might as well put a zipper on my mouth.
The great thing about the show, I think, is that each season, pretty much we’ve ramped it up. And said, okay, things were bad last season, but wait till you see this! But with my background as a writer, I look at it and I think, “How would they ever…” At some point you start putting obstacles in front of the characters that you don’t know how to get them past. But they seem to.
They haven’t given me a lot of information about where the show is going, other than this kinda generic stuff. I would say that a lot of what the audience knows the characters rely on, their infrastructure, is gonna change this season. A lot of stuff that… everybody’s gonna find themselves working in a different way. And having to adapt to a major change in how they do business.
Who wrote the first three scripts?
Jim Beaver: Let me see… We’re doing them all out of order. I think Sera [Gamble] wrote the first one. I think Ben [Edlund] wrote the second one. And… who wrote the third one? It was the guys… it’s an early morning. No, the guys who did “Weekend at Bobby’s”. Umm… oh, they’re gonna kill me now. Oh, I’ll IMDB then, and… [laughter]
You get on that.
Jim Beaver: Yeah. I’ll get back to you. This is gonna come out and they’re gonna be busy writing the script where I’m killed and dismembered, so…
(In case you’re wondering, the writers are Andrew Dabb and Daniel Loflin.)
Senior Writer, BuddyTV
Laurel grew up in Mamaroneck, NY, Grosse Pointe, MI and Bellevue WA. She then went on to live in places like Boston, Tucson, Houston, Wales, Tanzania, Prince Edward Island and New York City before heading back to Seattle. Ever since early childhood, when she became addicted to The Muppet Show, Laurel has watched far too much TV. Current favorites include Chuck, Modern Family, Supernatural, Mad Men and Community. Laurel received a BA in Astrophysics (yes, that is possible) from Colgate University and a PhD in Middle Eastern Studies and History of Science from Columbia University before she realized that television is much better than studying.
