Dreamscape and Cash Money - The Winchesters...
How do full-time monster-hunters afford the life?
In Supernatural, credit card fraud, pool hustling and (hinted) turning tricks were Dean’s way of keeping his underclass hunter’s life on the road.
(Bar hustling - Dean in 1x08 Bugs)
In the two previous mooted SPN spin-offs, which didn’t make it:
Bloodlines - looked like a Vampire Diaries style show, but Chicago-based, where monsters were just, ineffably, rich. One of the many reasons SPN fans were bound to hate it.
(Upscale bar scene from SPN 9x20 Bloodlines)
Wayward Sisters - Jodie and Donna had blue-collar law enforcement jobs, as rural sheriffs - which would have worked just fine, in terms of being in keeping with the cultural universe of SPN:
(Work clothes - Donna and Jodie in SPN 10x08 Hibbing 911)
The WInchesters - One of the elements that feels “wrong” for an SPN spin-off, is that Lata, Losy, John and Mary seem like kids who don’t have to worry about money, even though (apparently) none of them are working, not even part-time. Ada is the only one with an obvious source of income, as a bookstore owner.
Millie Winchester’s garage looks pretty dilapidated, and a single Mom mechanic raising her son, John, in the 1950s/ 60s, that would have been hard. She’s a tough and gravelly woman, and the “realest” most blue-collar character thus far in The Winchesters.
But is John just… living off his Mom?
Vietnam vets faced a tough home-coming, both politically, due to strong anti-war sentiment, and financially, receiving little assistance:
https://www.history.com/news/vietnam-war-veterans-treatment
Mary and her friends all have absent parents and yet, apparently, no need to work?
Even middle-class Buffy the Vampire Slayer (25 years ago) as the kid of a single Mom, had some money worries once Joyce died, and struggled working in a burger joint for a while.
If it turns out that The Winchesters is indeed a dream-scape, in which Holy Ghost narrator Dean is (as the God-author of this story) writing his parents a happier beginning, then the relative lack of financial anxiety/ realness can be made to make sense. Of course Dean would want to protect his young parents from money troubles.
But, I suspect the vibe advertisers on the CW want is “product friendly” and the CW top brass think narrative money-worries are not “product friendly” enough.
A tragedy for story-telling, and in fact, I suspect, also wrong in terms of audience atttraction (who doesn’t have money worries these days)?
So yeah, I’d like to see Carlos selling weed, Lata reading tarot for cash, Mary waiting tables in a diner, John actually working on cars with his Mom - all of them trying to fit monster hunting into the everyday scrabble for living..
