The Show:

It has been a couple of years since I reviewed the first season of Supernatural on DVD.  The show originally impressed me with some great characters and an overall story that was both interesting and a bit spooky.  Mixing just the right amounts of TV horror, hip humor and sibling rivalry the program became a favorite at my house with each new season being eagerly anticipated.  Have had the chance to revisit the first season once again I discovered that the program help up very well, and it's still just as clever and entrancing as it was when it was first released.  On top of that this new Blu-ray version is a solid improvement over the SD DVDs that originally came out, boasting a nice image and a 5.1 sound audio track that are both sure to please fans of the show.

Note:  Much of this review comes from my original write-up of the show.

In the middle of a calm quiet night, a young mother of two wakes up and checks on her baby Sam and sees a dark foreboding figure crouching over his crib.  Screaming, she wakes up her husband who rushes into the nursery to find the baby sleeping quietly, and his wife stuck to the ceiling her stomach horribly cut open.  Giving the baby to his four-year old son and telling him to run out of the house, the husband tries to save his wife only to see her burst into flames that engulf the whole house burning it to the ground.

Fast forward 22 years.  Sam Winchester (Jared Padalecki) is now attending Stanford and has plans to attend law school.  He has a beautiful girlfriend and a close circle of friends.  That all changes when his older, estranged, brother Dean shows up one night.  Dean informs Sam that their father, who Sam hasn't talked to in over two years, has gone on a hunting trip and is a few days late checking in.

This is bad news because their father hunts supernatural creatures.  Ever since the death of his wife, John Winchester has scoured the country killing every evil demon, ghost and ghoul that he can find.  He's been looking for the demon that killed his wife, and though he hasn't found the creature yet, he's not about to give up.

Dean and Sam have been trained for the past two decades to fight evil too, and were very good at it until Sam gave up two years ago to attend college.  He wanted a normal life, and grew tired of the constant violence and danger.  He agrees to help his brother track down the one lead they have to their father's whereabouts as long as he's back at school by Monday.

Though they don't find their father, they do rid the world of a ghost, and Dean is good on to his word and returns Sam to his apartment late Sunday night.  Flopping down on his bed, Sam opens his eyes to see his girlfriend attached to the ceiling with her stomach sliced, just as his mother was years before.  As she bursts into flames, Sam decides that he no longer wants to be a lawyer.  He and his brother are going to find their father, and kill the demon who has been tormenting them.  The slightly mismatched brothers start their journey, driving around the country in a beautiful black 1967 Chevrolet Impala, searching for their father and killing as many creatures of the night as they can along the way.

This show is a mix of The Fugitive and X-Files with just a dollop of Hardy Boys thrown in for good measure, and it works very well.  There's a fair amount of continuity, mainly searching for the father and learning more about the brother's past and that keeps the show from being repetitive.  It never feels like a 'monster of the week' type program.  They aren't just using the same script every week and just changing the supernatural threat.  This is a pitfall that a lot of horror television shows fall into, and I'm glad Supernatural has been able to avoid it.  The overriding plot also advances as the series goes on, significant events take place in this season, and it's not like a series from the 50's where the heroes never get any closer to the answer that they are searching for.

The show is very creepy too.  It has a dark feel, and there are moments of gore in most episodes, though this is never overboard and relatively minor.  It does keep you on the edge of your seat however.  Battling a mixture of urban legends and more standard horror monsters, the episodes mostly all involve a murderous creature, and while most of the vivisection and such occur off screen, they effectively imply what's going on.

There are also some nice moments of humor that are adding into the show to relieve the tension.  In once scene the brothers refer to themselves as Agent Scully and Agent Mulder, and though the show is never gets silly or totally breaks the mood, the light elements are a nice touch.

Stars Jansen Eckles (Days of Our Lives) and Jared Padalecki (Gilmore Girls) work well together and have a nice on-screen chemistry.  They fight and bicker quiet realistically and in general behave like real brothers.  They do a good job in the show, and the only real complaint that I have it that they are a bit too attractive (and all the women they meet are bombshells.)  It would be nice to see someone who looks like a real person every once in a while, but that's a minor complaint.

The DVD:

The 22 episodes that comprise the first season are presented on four Blu-ray discs.  Eschewing fold out case that the DVD version arrived in, WB has thankfully put these in a four-disc Blu-ray case with each disc on its own page.  This case is housed in a nice slipcase.

Video:

The 1.78:1 1080p VC-1 encoded image looked very good.  The show was originally shot and mastered in HD so the picture boasts a good amount of detail with nice sharp lines.  A lot of the show takes place in dark caverns, graveyards, and abandoned warehouses, and these low light level scenes are the biggest improvement from the SD DVD release.  There are more details in the shadowy scenes and the blacks are deep and inky, which is important for a show like this.  In the scenes that are brightly lit, the show is equally impressive.  The colors look natural and aren't oversaturated or blown out, as is the style for some shows nowadays.  The skin tones are accurate too.  On the digital side of things, the discs look great with nothing really to complain about.  This is a very nice looking series on Blu-ray.

Audio:

While the original release only had a stereo mix, these Blu-rays have a DD 5.1 English audio tracks (along with stereo tracks in French and Spanish and optional subtitles in English, French, and Spanish.)  While the 5.1  track is a huge improvement over the stereo that I was used to, I'm a bit disappointed that there wasn't a lossless track too, and purist will be disappointed that the 2.0 channel mix, which is how the show was originally broadcast, is missing.  Those defects aside, the program sounds pretty good.  The classic hard rock songs that fill the show (by groups such as AC/DC, Lynyrd Skynyrd and Iron Butterfly, among others) come through loud and clear and the rears were used effectively to fill the room with sound.  During action scenes the soundtrack really comes alive too, with the full soundstage being utilized to good effect.  There are a lot of directional effects mixed in with the general mayhem of these scenes which give the program a realistic feeling, if you can call two guys hunting demons realistic.  The dialog was never overpowered by the music or sound effects, and distortion, hiss, dropouts, and other audio defects were absent.

Extras:

This set ports over all of the bonus features from the DVD set, and includes a couple of new items too.  The new featurette is a light hearted panel that the two stars took part in at the Paley Television Fest in 2006.  It runs an hour and 12 minutes and is pretty entertaining.  There's also a new Devil's Road Map interactive feature that presents texted-based facts about the various episodes and the placed the Winchester brothers visited.

The other bonus material is pretty nice too.  There are two commentaries, one for the pilot with creator Eric Kripke, director David Nutter and producer Peter Johnson, and the other for the episode Phantom Traveler with stars Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles.  There are deleted scenes for seven episodes, a 21-minute featurette on the creation of the series Supernatural: Tales From The Edge Of Darkness.  One rather fluffy bonis item was Day In The Life Of Jared And Jensen that followed the two stars over the course of a shooting day.  The bonus material is rounded out with a gag reel and a stills gallery.

Final Thoughts:

I enjoyed watching this season again just as much as the first time, nearly 4 years ago.  Revisiting this original set of shows was a lot of fun and the improved audio and video quality is well worth the upgrade in my opinion.  If yo've never seen the show, this is a great place to start.  Highly Recommended.