The CW Source

CW: I was wondering, especially for someone like you who is both a producer and a writer, can you get around the strike by writing as a producer, or does it not work that way? For that matter, is that something you'd even want to do?
SG: No, you can't get around it, and I can't speak for anyone but myself, but I don't necessarily want to get around it. I care about my TV show, I care about my job, I care about honoring contracts that I personally have signed with my studio and the work I have promised to do for my bosses, but now that we're in strikeland, I hope that we just strike effectively and we come to a speedy resolution. I know that from the point of view of fans who read your blog, they're thinking, "How can they do it so they can keep making the show that we love?" I hope that you tell them all that we all want to keep making the show that they love, and in order to do that, we have to get through the strike, and we hope that the studios will cooperate and everyone will come to a resolution.

CW: How many episodes do you have written?
SG: I just did a bunch of rewriting on episode 11, and I believe they are close to or at production draft for episode 12. Episode 13, I don't think it's going to be finished by the time we have to walk off the job.

CW: What can you tell me about the episodes that have been written?
SG: [Next week] will be the return of Gordon Walker, their old nemesis who's been in prison …

CW: How does he break out?
SG: That remains to be seen. (Laughs) The CW actually released a little blurb about the episode and they gave away so much more than I wanted them to…

CW: They do that all the time! It's maddening!
SG: I say this all the time in interviews – I'm a little bit anti-spoiler. I wish that we actually put out fake sides that weren't the real material. I would be happy if they people came totally clean to the episode so they could experience it the way we intended it to be experienced when we break it down. That said, it's just not possible in this day and age. There are members of the audience who don't want to experience the episode that way, they want to go in knowing what to look for. So: Gordon has busted out and his number-one priority is to get Sam. So a lot of violence ensues.

CW: What else?
SG: In December -- I'm very excited about this -- we have a Christmas episode. We have a sort of anti-Claus. There's so much lore about a bad Santa that comes down your chimney and eats all your cookies; he doesn't just leave coal, he'll kill your parents. Jeremy Carver wrote that episode, he's the newest addition to the writing staff and he 's just a fantastic writer. I just saw an early cut of it the other day and it's completely disgusting and it will ruin Christmas for anyone who watches it!

What else – we have an episode coming up where we're exploring Ruby's backstory, and we are finally doing our episode that takes place inside nightmares.

CW: This is the episode inside Bobby's head?
SG: Right. We reveal how Bobby came to be a Hunter. Bobby is in dire straits in the episode because he's being pursued by something in his nightmares. It was an opportunity to get into Bobby's head, and an opportunity to get into the boys' heads a little bit, see what's floating around in their unconscious minds. It's definitely a trippy episode. It's a little bit of a departure for us that way, but that episode was fun to work on, because when the logic that you're moving in is dream logic, you can let your imagination run wild.

The episode that I just finished writing is the return of Agent Henricksen. That storyline has been kept alive because the boys have had to lay low so the authorities don't catch up to them. We wanted to do something really, really juicy with the return of Henricksen, and we really took our time breaking the story. What we came up with is sort of our version of Assault on Precinct 13. It'll be shooting next week.

CW: Are there any myths that you're looking forward to tackling, or are you running out?
SG: We still have a long list on the board. Lately I've been thinking in terms of scenarios I would like to see the boys in, and trying to find what supernatural creature would cause this certain thing to happen to Sam or Dean.

CW: Such as…
SG: I'll give you an example of an episode that we are working on now – episode 12. It's sort of a Groundhog's Day episode, and we approached it from the point of view of how can we tell a story where one or both of the boys is stuck in the same day over and over and over again. We stared with that notion, and had conversation about which brother it should be and why and what they would learn, and then ok, how could this happen supernaturally -- what creature or what situation or what strange place in the United States could possibly make this happen? There's been a lot of talk like that in the writers room lately.

CW: Is that what happened with Bedtime Stories – you wanted to do a fairy tales episode and worked a way to do that?
SG: That's pretty much what happened. I think it was Ben [Edlund] who came into the room and said "Think about fairy tales." He has a young daughter, and I think he actually has been reading Grimm fairy tales to her.

CW: The originals?
SG: I don't know! Perhaps he's reading the sanitized version to her and then he has a book that's all "And then they cut the toes off…" When I was his daughter's age, I was reading the originals, which probably explains a lot about the writer I became.

Next time, Sera talks about writing for Sam and Dean, writing the new girls, and what she likes about Bobby, Gordon and Henricksen. Check back later for more!