Jeremy Carver To Step In As Co-Showrunner At ‘Supernatural

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Thanks to daisychain1957for the news.

Jeremy Carver To Step In As Co-Showrunner At ‘Supernatural’
Posted about 6 hours ago by Jason Bowles0

Sera Gamble, one of the showrunners on the program ‘Supernatural‘ has opted not to renew her contract and has instead chosen to focus her energy on development. Gamble has been with the CW show since its beginning, running the show for the last two seasons along with fellow showrunner Robert Singer, who will remain with the program.

Stepping into her role will be Jeremy Carver (right), of Syfy’s ‘Being Human,’ which he co-executive produced and developed along with his wife Anna Fricke. Fricke will remain at ‘Being Human’ and will run the show solo.

Carver does have a history with ‘Supernatural’ having served as a co-producer, writer and story editor during the 2009-10 season, before departing for ‘Being Human,’ which he developed along with Fricke, based on the British original series. He will maintain his “Executive Producer” credit on that show.

Previously, ‘Supernatural’ was run by its creator, Eric Kripke, who stepped down from the position in 2010, which was when Gamble and Singer took over day-to-day duties. He remains an “Executive Consultant.”

For those unsure of what all this means, a showrunner generally outranks a director. While a director crafts individual episodes of a television program, the show runner is tasked with running the overall, day-to-day aspects of a series. The showrunner is in charge of managing and guiding the entire series.

‘Being Human’ has been growing in its popularity and Carver already has a history with ‘Supernatural’, so by all accounts this should be a smooth transition. What do you all think of this staffing change?

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I have to say, I am happy. I like Gamble as a writer, but as a showrunner she has completely failed imo. She had two seasons and most likely even a third one and instead of planning a storyline which could have been well developed in three years, she just got by.

Comments

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This is a very convincing argument, and it certainly paints a picture that would sell season 6 to any Dean fan, except when watching it's very difficult not to have a different take on it. Not because we ignored Dean's actions, but because despite Dean acting as a proactive hero..and succeeding in many mini battles..pretty much everything he did was All About Sam. He discovered that Sam was Souless, he didn't trust Sam, he retrieved Sam's soul, he worried about Sam with the Wall up then when the Wall broke he worried that Sam might die. This was a running theme throughout the season. Nothing was All About Dean except Lisa and Ben, which got very little screen time. Both Dean killing Eve and becoming the centre of Castiel's betrayal came right at the end of the season...when I think TPTB had to make some changes, and the latter was only because of Ben Edlund writing TMWWBK.

I notice a lot of arguments about who gets the storylines v who gets the POV or characterisation v passive plot bunny..but thinking about it, sometimes I wonder if that really matters. What seems to matter is what gets the most emphasis from the writers..what do THEY value the most. You mention how Dean was the hero and has done a lot of heroic stuff in season 6 and 7, well in any other show I would agree that makes Dean the central character..because on another show that kind of character would be valued most by the writers, and all the emphasis would be on him. However, on SPN the writers seem to value the Woobie character more..they would rather put more emphasis on the VictimSam than the HeroDean. So, instead of third parties waxing lyrical about Dean and his heroic acts..they're discussing Sam and his problems. You would get episode after episode of every character - Dean, Cas, Bobby etc all talking about what is up with Sam and how to save him. (In fact I actually think that 90% of the conversations Dean had with Bobby and Cas in the first ten episodes were related to Sam at some point). Then there are the baddies..Dean may vanquish them heroically..but in a showdown between Dean and Grampa Shady, or Dean versus Crowley the conversation was rarely about Dean, instead it would again be about Sam..whether it was Grampa working with him, or Crowley supposedly holding his soul hostage. Basically Sam was always present..even if he wasn't in the room he was still present because the topic of conversation would be about him. That's why it was absolutely clear that despite Sam never really doing anything other than have things happen to him..the fact that everyone and everything revolved around him, that made him the central character.

Just to add...the problem with the writers operating under this rule, is that the only way Dean could become the central character is if HE becomes the WoobieVictim and Sam becomes the proactive Hero..which wouldn't be true to Dean's character, and would annoy a lot of fans too. I would go so far as to say they have experimented with this this season, with Sam and Bobby having conversations about Dean..with things happening to Dean, and Sam getting a lot more kills.

Ideally what I would like is for Dean to be a proactive Hero in his own story, and Sam to be a proactive Hero in his own story and occasionally the two meet and link. It works on Fringe and other shows..but for some reason this isn't a method the SPN writers like to follow.

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Ideally what I would like is for Dean to be a proactive Hero in his own story, and Sam to be a proactive Hero in his own story and occasionally the two meet and link. It works on Fringe and other shows..but for some reason this isn't a method the SPN writers like to follow.
I do very much agree with this. I don't like Fringe, but you are right, there it works and it works on The Vampire Diaries too (even in an ensemble show works quite differentely). I do think they have sticked with the pattern that Sam was the hero and Dean the sidekick since the very beginning, then they realized how strong Dean character was and have never been able to actually balance their personal storylines and theirs in the mytarch.

Btw I think that SPN can be read and seen in two different ways. If you look at the character growth, Dean wins. No context.
If you look at the storylines, yes the ones which have more emphasis are about Sam, but this is way far from making Sam the most interesting character.