9 Most Fan-Pleasing Moments In Television

Television has always had a fanbase peculiar to it. While cinema has an air of exoticism to it and the theatre has that aura of respectable aloofness, the television squats in the corner of our living rooms, watching us go about our lives, its programming a constant presence, the men and women appearing in it almost a part of the family. Their theme tunes become the hummed soundtracks of our lives.

For decades the home audience has had a close, personal relationship to the television shows it takes to its heart… almost too close. We campaigned for the reinstatement of cancelled shows like Star Trek, Community and Firefly. We fell in love with weird, awkward hybrid creations like reality television and professional wrestling and turned these peculiar niche products into mainstream sensations.

Fans became fandom, oddly obsessive over the minutiae of specific television shows… and our fandom began to attempt to influence the way those shows were put together, to steer the narrative and the characters in the direction that we wanted them to go. These days, a call to arms can go viral, a petition reach thousands in a matter of hours, a Twitter campaign trend worldwide.

The age of the Internet makes all of us backseat drivers, but at least we’re going where we want to go. These are the moments when being a fan paid off: when we got just what we wanted, for better or worse.

OBVIOUSLY there are spoilers within. Wouldn't be much use without them...

Two hundred episodes is a monumental achievement, especially for a genre show about bickering brothers fighting and skewering paranormal and mystical nasties: Buffy The Vampire Slayer with a bro code. How did the producers of The CW’s veteran genre action/horror show elect to celebrate such a significant milestone?

With an episode titled ‘Fan Fiction’ that celebrated the (mostly female) fanbase of the show, that’s how. Heroes Sam and Dean Winchester arrive at a high school to find that they’re staging a musical version of the Winchesters’ lives… based on the prophetic books of Carver Edlund, aka Chuck Shurley, a man they’ve previously encountered who may (or may not) be God, messing with them.

The all female cast of the musical are essentially stand-ins for the Supernatural fandom, with references to slash pairings – including one for Dean and Sam, prompting Dean to insist that the main characters stand further apart onstage (“You do know they’re brothers?”). There are also a fair few nods to the people with problems with the show: basically, the writers have made notes on the fandom, and have incorporated them into the text of the show, good or bad.

Unlike previous metatextual attempts to make fun of the fandom within the course of Supernatural storylines, this love letter to the fandom is sweet and perfectly constructed – a lovely idea, brilliantly executed. Oh, let’s not forget that Chuck turns up at the end to give the production a ringing endorsement… which pretty much means that the fandom-inspired show just got the thumbs up from God.