One episode begins with a young woman being strangled to death in her shower. In another, three best friends on their annual camping trip are attacked by an unseen assailant. In a third, a woman calmly returns home from work and bashes her husband’s head in with a candlestick. These cold opens are tense and a little frightening, but thankfully, some of TV’s most veteran investigators are on their way, ready to solve the crime. But the show isn’t NCIS, Chicago P.D., or Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. It’s Supernatural, the CW’s long-running monster hunting romp, now nearing the end of its final season. And if you’re a TV lover who’s increasingly unnerved by the “police” part of police procedurals, it’s one of the best detective shows on the air. Crime shows have long been some of TV’s premier comfort food. Each episode inflames, then tames our most salacious viewing desires, indulging in primetime-safe depravities that are resolved by a tough-but-kindly band of righteous law enforcement officials, whether they’re police, forensic technicians, or prosecutors. Some are extremely long-running—many of the primetime scripted series with the lengthiest runs in American TV history are about law enforcement—which means that tuning in even irregularly to catch some of their many hundreds of installments can offer a comforting consistency that other areas of life lack. By January, we’ll have seen five differen… Click below to read the full story from Esquire
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Supernatural Is the Best Cop Show That’s Not About Cops
