As the CW’s Supernatural returns with its season six premiere tonight, we’ll see these new episodes going “back to basics”, drawing from season one, but with some notable adjustments – a softer, white-picket-fence Dean (Jensen Ackles) living a domestic life and a hardened and changed Sam (Jared Padalecki) who has inexplicably escaped the Cage in Hell.
How exactly is season six like season one? Ackles and Padalecki explain:
Ackles: I think it’s in the same vein. I don’t think it’s exactly kind of like that Monster of the Week thing. We’re starting to get a little bit of that, but there’s definitely an overpowering storyline going on. Whereas in Season One, we were kind of lighting the fire of that storyline.
Padalecki: We have vampires and jinns and skinwalkers… We’ve gone back to… Like he said, it’s not Monster of the Week. I think it would be really hard to go back to Season 1, just because our characters have been developed. Part of Season One is developing the characters, so they try a bunch of different things. But [now] we’re the characters that we’ve built and are now more developed, [while] hunting the monsters.
Speaking of developed characters, this season opens with a role reversal between Sam and Dean and not to mention that there has been significant time that had passed since Sam has been out of the Cage without telling Dean. There’s bound to be some friction between the Winchester brothers. Ackles and Padalecki talk about the change in the brotherly dynamic:
Ackles: Well, in the trailer [for Season 6], there’s a shot of me hitting him. That wasn’t edited to look as though it was [something it wasn’t]. That actually happened. So, there is physical confrontations. There are verbal confrontations between the brothers. But they do have their common denominator, and that is that they’re both hunters. So they get back on the right track, eventually, but there is still a strain in the relationship that has yet to be worked out.
Padalecki: I think there are a lot of frictions. It kind of hearkens back to Season 1, where there is Sam’s story, and Sam’s like, “Dean, with all due respect, I deserve respect as well. I have my own life. I’ve done my own things. I deserve my own credit and I’m going to do things my way, and I deserve to do things my way.” And Dean’s like, “Well, you don’t know what I’ve been through and this last year for me. My priorities have changed and shifted. I have people I love and care about and now I don’t want to be so cavalier.” And Sam’s like, “What? Why not? I just came back from Hell again!” So I think there are personal frictions with both brothers and they’re sort of amplified by the fact that we hunt.
[Above: Jared Padalecki, guest star Mitch Pileggi, Jensen Ackles]
From the images of the premiere episode, Dean has shed the leather jacket and is… get this… tucking in his shirt. What will you think of domesticated Dean? Ackles didn’t like him so much:
Ackles: Yeah, there’s a big kind of a shift in Dean’s character – actually, much to my chagrin. I was not happy with it. Dean was really kind of being written soft. We spent five years with this guy being a tough, shoot first, ask questions later kind of guy. And now all of a sudden he’s lived one year in more of a domesticated life and he’s gone soft on us. I was upset. As a fan of the show myself, that kind of made me upset. But I did my best to kind of curve that in the acting. It read pretty soft on the page, but I think I toughened it up a little bit. [Laughs] I’m like, “Look, if I’ve got anything to do with it, I’m gonna beat this guy up a little bit.”
Which was different, because after five seasons of playing this guy, now I’m actually having to think harder about how to play this guy correctly than I ever have before… I’m changing [things]. Like, “Okay. How would Dean actually react to this situation?” Because he’s never been in a domesticated situation like this, where he’s got a kid, and a girl.
Don’t pass judgment on the show yet for such a change in the characters we’ve grown to love over these last five seasons. Sam and Dean would like you to stick it through:
Ackles: So there is a little bit of change in the characters. But I think, from what I understand, once we get towards the meat of the season, everybody kind of gets back on the same track. We find out a lot more as to why their motivations has shifted a little bit.
Padalecki: I think the common denominator is also that Sam and Dean both want it to be better. In their own way, albeit, but they at least both want the same things.
And now, a special sneak peek at tonight’s premiere episode, “Exile on Main Street” and fans questions to Ackles, Padalecki, and Misha Collins.
Supernatural: Sneak Peek at “Exile on Main Street”
CW Connect with Jensen Ackles
CW Connect with Misha Collins
CW Connect with Jared Padalecki
Watch the season premiere of Supernatural on the CW tonight, Friday at 9/8C.
For more, check out SciFi Mafia’s Fall 2010 Season Digest.
[Source] IGN
