PASADENA, Calif. -- In all the hubbub about the 9 p.m. Thursday battle for ratings supremacy -- "CSI" vs. "Grey's Anatomy" vs. "Scrubs"/"30 Rock" vs. the now-canceled "O.C." -- it's easy to forget another show is waving knives, shotguns and ghosts to grab attention in the most competitive time slot on television.
Sergei Bachlakov/The CWTricia Helfer, center, guest stars on tonight's "Supernatural," starring Jensen Ackles, left, and Jared Padalecki.
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'Supernatural'
When: 9 tonight, The CW.Over at The CW, "Supernatural" (9 tonight, WPCW) continues to plead for viewers in its second season. Teen girls are watching (mostly to moon over stars Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles), but now the show is trying to bring more guys into its orbit by casting Tricia Helfer -- the sexy Cylon Six on "Battlestar Galactica" -- as a guest star in tonight's new episode.
For the uninitiated, and that appears to be many viewers given the low ratings, "Supernatural" is a horror show that follows brothers Sam (Padalecki, as the sensitive one) and Dean (Ackles, as the sarcastic one) as they track down murderous ghosts and the like.
Tonight, Helfer guest stars as a woman who encounters a creepy old guy with an exposed, bloody chest cavity after she wrecks her car and her husband goes missing.
Sam narrows his eyes into slits to convey concern, creating a bell curve-shaped crease in the skin of his forehead.
"Sammy's always getting a little J. Love Hewitt when it comes to stuff like this," Dean mocks.
In addition to ghoul-of-the-week stories, "Supernatural" also has mythology elements about the boys, their now-dead father and other hunters who are in the same line of work.
"We think stand-alone episodes are our bread and butter and just have enjoyable, scary stories," said series creator Eric Kripke at a January press conference here. "But every three or four episodes, we like a big mythology episode where we really move the ball forward. We'll continue with that."
That's fine by star Padalecki, who says he gets frustrated when other TV shows answer questions with more questions.
"It just feels like they're toying with you," he said.
Kripke said producers use the early (re: good) years of "The X-Files" as a template for the right balance between stand-alone and mythology episodes.
"They got too wrapped up in the mythology and people couldn't come to the party," Kripke said. "At the end of the day, the whole concept of the show is two brothers on the road with chain saws in their trunk, battling things that go bump in the night. There, that's the whole show."
Despite the simplicity of the premise, any series requires a period of adjustment. Padalecki said he's more comfortable working on "Supernatural" this season.
"In the first season, the actors are finding the characters. The writers and creator are finding out who's doing well with dialogue, who's doing well with the story, what's working, what's not working," he said. "You have to do a Wendigo [episode] and a bugs [episode] to figure out you don't want to do a Wendigo and you don't want to do a bugs." (But you might learn that a Wendigo, to certain American Indian tribes, is a malevolent supernatural creature.)
As for those facial expressions, well, they're still a work in progress.
"Jensen and myself have to, like, try out a facial expression, just to see it two months later and be like, 'Oh, God, why? Why did I do that?' " Padalecki said.
Wait until May when he watches his empathy face from tonight's episode.
First Published: March 15, 2007, 4:00 a.m.
