Thursdays Rock

I love TV.
I know TV is supposed to be guilty pleasure if one admits liking it all, but guess what I do.
Especially the CW Thursday night. My friends tease me (good-naturedly I hope) about how much I love the shows Supernatural and Smallville. Well now I m going to explain why I love Supernatural, especially the current season, which started last week.

1. Jensen Ackles is really hot. See the above picture. (I don't know who took this, but I assure them I respect their copyright.You know, as if their reading this.) -Sigh.- But more than that, his character Dean Winchester is a bad boy, but he's bad because he has to be to do what's right. So he's a righteous bad boy. This is my favorite kind of boy. This is the boy who answers to a higher ideal than other people. So I am very in love with his character, as opposed to just lust, which describe my feelings for the actor. So there's my superficial, junior-high groupie reason for loving this show.
2. I, strange as this may sound, relate to various aspects of the show. Philosophically. I first watched it thinking hey, this is sort of like the priesthood. That might sound weak, but I pick up philosophical (?) patterns in the world like that guy in A Beautiful Mind picks up mathematical ones.
3. I especially love this season. I'm going to discuss in detail the first two episodes now, so cover your eyes if you don't want to know.
This season seems to be explicitly Christian. I find this cool for couple reasons, the first being that I'm Christian. If you don't know me maybe this seems kind of bigoted, or maybe it does even if you do know me. But I think it's good for me, as a Christian, to have a show like this that isn't really cheesy. And I relate far better to these guys doing the best they can and hoping they're not damning themselves along the way than someone who volunteers and then gets the warm fuzzies from it.
So this season Dean got pulled out of Hell by an angel, heretofore not realizing they existed. (But if you have demons it only makes sense that you have angels.) This angel then tells Dean that he needs to work for God to fight Lucifer. I of course imagined they were doing this all along, but that these two beings exist also blows Dean's mind. Then, if the mention of angels and Lucifer hadn't convinced you, the angel and Bobby (another demon hunter) mention specific things from Revelations. So here's another reason I think this is cool-it's bold to be so explicitly Christian, especially on a show like this, prime time, on the most coveted night of the TV week.
I mean this is not Sunday afternoon nor friendly non-denominational angels whose only real religious standpoint is God loves you (cough, Touched By An Angel, cough). While it seems weird to describe an angel in these terms, even a fictional one, Supernatural's angel kicks ass. There is just no other accurate term. When we meet him for the first time he walks right into a knife and keeps on going. It's pretty cool. I mean he's sent from God right? So a knife wouldn't freak him out. But he's also compassionate, asking Dean why he doesn't think he deserves to be saved. It's awesome. It's not dumbed down, and it's definitely not a kids show. It's not what I would immediately call uplifting, but it kind of does make me want to be a beacon of truth, fight bad guys like Satan and Oppression and Really Stupid Governments. (You think I'm kidding, but I'm not.)
My religion doesn't completely agree with every idea on the show (though it doesn't explicitly disagree with much either). But one of my humanities professors is always talking about how much the US misses out on not having many basic heroic stories anymore, which is why if we even get a scent of one we milk it for all it's worth. (I think this is probably why we make so many super hero movies.) So most of all I'm excited to have a hero I can relate to-a righteous rebel fighting the bad guys in his own special way.