Blog From The Bench

(At the risk of sounding like a teenager) Supernatural rules! It's my new favorite show and I'm "bow down and pay homage" devoted to the two young stars Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki. So, as I am apt to do – I video stalk. Not familiar with the term? It's when you get it so bad for an actor you search, find and watch everything he's been in no matter how bad. And to that end, I give you:

Before They Were Winchester Boys

First up, big brother Dean Winchester, aka Jensen Ackles. He started out in soaps a few years ago and has had a pretty consistent presence on the TV screen ever since.

From Days of Our Lives he went to the mini-series Blonde which I haven't seen yet but next month on Lifetime TV my wish will be granted! From there we go to:

Dark Angel

Jensen joined the show in the second season as the transgenic, smart alec sociopath Alec. Alec starts out as a "which ever side is winning is my side" kind of guy who's not above butchering a friend if it means saving his own neck. He's a genetically enhanced wunderkind and man is he cute (sorry, but he's adorable and charming and I can't help it). Alec's original function was as comedy relief and he fills this function quite well. He's sassy and snarky but never so much that you don't like him. And just when you think you've got him pegged he gets all serious and broody and oh I like that so much.

Unfortunately, I find Dark Angel slow and difficult to plod through in spots. It was a potentially brilliant show with some really great themes about government censorship and genetic tinkering and religion vs. government vs. science – but James Cameron who helmed the show was a bit too artsy at times and that left the audience confused. And also, well, yes, Jessica Alba is a lovely girl but she's not much of an actress (send your complaints and letters to. . . .). The show can be very Johnny One Note and I often found myself hitting the fast forward button to by pass her scenes and get to the others. Yeah, I was primarily watching for Jensen, but I found the rest of the supporting extras to be much more interesting than the two leads.

Bottom line: one of Ackles best roles but keep the remote control handy.

From here, Ackles made a stop at Dawson's Creek but I've yet to see those so. . .

We move on to the town of Smallville

Jensen Ackles was second runner up to play Clark Kent in this WB series but lost out to Tom Welling. He joins the show in it's fourth season as a regular (in the credits an everything) playing a rather erratic character called Jason Teague. Jason starts out as a love interest for Lana Lang (interesting, sexy, works), follows her to Smallville where he becomes a high school football coach (even though he's younger than the people he's coaching. . . okay. . ), reveals his scary side and his creepy (and clearly wrong) relationship with his mother (the lovely Jane Seymour) – digging that and in the end goes quite mad. Okay, that was cool. . . I guess.

I like Smallville as a series so I had less trouble keeping my finger off the fast forward button. There are some truly neat episodes in his season that deals with the quest for ancient puzzle pieces. And as much as I enjoyed seeing Jensen in the role, it clearly wasn't much of a stretch for him, acting wise. Mostly he plays love sick and broody with no real depth (not his fault cause he does that so well in other shows) but his switch from lover to bad boy to psycho just doesn't flow. I suspect much of his characters transformation came from the fact that he was being groomed for his own show and thus needed to be written out of Smallville

Bottom line: It's a great show but if you've never watched it, you'll be lost coming in at the fourth season. Still, Jensen fans have no choice but to buy it and watch it!

Jensen makes it off the small screen and into the movies – oops, okay, not really because the flick went straight to DVD in Devour. This strange movie is part of the same WB teen horror angst as his current show with a lot less depth. It's a convoluted tale of a college boy with a dark past and mostly he looks confused. And you'll be confused too when you get to the end of the movie.

Bottom line: if you're a fan, another must have because he's on screen 85% of the movie and he has a couple of sexy and sweet scenes (that's us fan girls, we like sexy and sweet). But if you're looking for a good teen horror flick – keep looking.

And so that brings us to Supernatural which is currently on The WB (soon to be the CW Network) Tuesdays at 9:00 (soon to be Thursday at 9:00) and you gotta check it out. It's scary, it's funny, it's sexy and it's a rising star. Critics love it, fans love it and The WB hasn't had a hit like this since Buffy took hold.

Give it a shot and I'll be back with my video stalking of co-star Jared Padalecki in a bit. I know, you can't wait! LOL.