P: So The Thing Is, I Think That Maybe I Might Be Having Feelings. Like Weird, Weird Feelings For…

One scene from Brother’s Keeper with captions for the Wincest-impaired.

Jurassic Park (1993)

10x21 Set Appreciation [x] [x] [x] [x] [x] [x]

=rainofhell:

1. I was under the impression that Dean was the main antagonist.

2. How is the mark of Cain not a new plot idea.

3. There probably isn’t much Dean-Castiel interaction because the destiel shippers keep shoving it on the actors and then accusing the writers of queer-baiting when they do interact, so you only have yourselves to blame.

4. I actually agree about Charlie, though apparently felicia day filmed for 10.23 so she might be coming back.

The ratings trends are interesting but reasoning that the decline is a direct result of writing choices in this case ignores the reality of how switching nights after a late-season hiatus of a month (something that has never been done before with Supernatural) killed the ratings. Since switching to Wednesdays, the ratings have actually been pretty consistent (around 1.7 mil), though about a half million less than we had on Tuesdays (around 2.2 mil).

Keep in mind also that The CW is more interested in the A18-34 demographic rather than these total viewers numbers or the A18-49 ratings which get widely distributed. One can only guess that they follow the same trends. Also, the networks get detailed breakdowns of viewers in a variety of different demographics so they know who is tuning in (or tuning out) each week.

As I understand it, Supernatural was moved to Wednesdays to give iZombie a chance at higher ratings do to a higher rated lead-in and less competition on Tuesday nights vs. Wednesday nights.

Heads up, Supernatural Showrunners: Season 10 is losing viewers faster than ever before in the show’s history

So, Dark Dynasty was the worst-rated episode ever in Supernatural’s history. I was adding that data point in to my little graph of Live+SameDay ratings that I post regularly to fandomnatural, because I am a geeky little PhD nerd like that, and I noticed a few things. First off Supernatural’s seasons always tend to lose some viewers across the season - that’s normal - but usually at a gentle rate. For example look at Gamble’s seasons in green, below. Ratings for her seasons weren’t that great but at least they were somewhat consistent. There was a nice gentle downward slope…  like a condor sailing down on a gentle breeze… 

As opposed to Carver’s three seasons, which bounce up and down like a pigeon caught in a hurricane. There’s first a huge bounce upward in week 2 of season 8. This happens to be exactly the week when the first crop of Netflix viewers would have caught up to the live show. Netflix has been feeding viewers steadily to the live show ever since, but there’s still a lot of bounces. Most of these are attributable to certain events like: Jared Padalecki’s Bieber twitter fiasco, Misha Collins’ directorial debut, Fan Fiction and the bounce it caused the following week, and of course the “Castiel and Dean actually have a conversation” lunch date promo (which resulted in the best ratings in nearly a year, and the best of all of season 10.)  The overall trend was: fans might check out for a while but they were willing to check back in when something caught their attention.

But the Carver ratings pigeon appears to have died in the middle of S10. Shortly after that Castiel/Dean lunch date promo, the ratings switch from erratic bouncing to a sudden steady downward slide that is unusually steep. This has given S10 dramatically increased variation in average ratings:

This seems to be because there was a sudden switch in ratings in the middle of the season. (the moment the Carver ratings pigeon died and began plummeting like a rock)  Check out S10′s massive drop in average # viewers per episode before vs. after the Christmas hiatus. Something changed as the show came out of that hiatus:

These numbers are still preliminary because S10 is not quite done, but this a huge drop. (note I have excluded the last two episodes from every season, so as to enable fair comparison to S10, which still hasn’t aired its last two episodes.) But it’s clear that right now, Supernatural is losing viewers more rapidly than at almost any other time in the show’s history. (exceeded, very slightly, only by season 1 when the show was still finding its legs, and finding its fandom.) 

So, what’s so different about Season 10? Several things:

- No antagonist / no greater good to fight for; “personal journey” approach; less emphasis on Sam/Dean as heroes

- Extremely slow plot progression and lack of new plot ideas: “accordioning out” of S9′s Mark of Cain plot to stretch over 1.5 years, rather than a new plot

- Extreme reduction in interactions, conversation and friendship between Dean and Castiel. (Whatever you’re trying to do here, CW, you’re doing it wrong)

- Too many “family/friends” lost w/o compelling replacements; most recently, death of the character who was supposed to represent the fandom (I know this only just happened, but there was such an instant outcry that it may have affected west coast viewership and same-day ratings). 

Message to the showrunners and to CW execs: Look at your numbers. Something is going very wrong with Supernatural and you need to fix it.

- 

From The Hillywood Show parody

THEY’RE WRITING FANFIC ON TWITTER i ca n ‘ t ev en 

guys we have to make this a reality somehow

(one) (two) (three) (four) (five) (six) (seven)

Supernatural’s beer of choice thanks to Wisconsin boy, Jerry Wanek, producer and production designer for the show. He named the beer after his mother and the Wisconsin beer Leinenkugel.  

Chris Evans on the set of ‘Captain America: Civil War’ on Wednesday (May 13) in Atlanta, Ga.

YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND THE LOVE I HAVE FOR FANFICTION WRITERS *eternally grateful for them sharing their amazing writing skills*