Ah, out with the old, in with the new. The television season is dead, long live the next television season. And to prepare for it, I’m going to review new shows as the pilots become available.

Supernatural; WB, Tuesday Nights 9:00 pm

This one gave me a nightmare. No kidding; the night we watched this pilot, I woke up in the middle of the night screaming.

The pilot opens with a happy family ripped apart by tragedy - the father sees his wife helplessly sprawled across the ceiling, erputing into flame burning the home while he barely gets out of the house alive with his two sons. We enter the present, where one of those sons, Sam Winchester (Jared Padalecki, Gilmore Girls) has done his best to escape his family’s bizarre history and is preparing for an interview which could give him a full scholarship to Stanford law school, when his older brother Dean (Jensen Ackles, Smallville, Dark Angel) arrives unexpectantly for a nocturnal visit. Dean tells Sam their father is missing after a, “hunting trip,” which means much more to Sam than it does to Sam’s unsuspecting girlfriend Jess. Ever since the tragedy, their father has “hunted” for the evil spirit who caused the death of his wife and the destruction of his happiness…the boys growing up knowing how to destroy deamons from hell while getting by with credit card scams.

The brothers discover their father had been researching a, “woman in white,” one of the “routine” manifestations of the neatherworld…over the years, men routinely die along the same strip of California highway. The boys investigate the deaths as well as the spirit, who strikes directly attempting to take Sam’s soul. But Sam isn’t some frightened mortal, and as he intuitively solves the mystery of the “woman in white,” he saves his own life while abruptly ending her earthly search.

Sam returns to Stanford in plenty of time for his interview…the ending of this pilot came as a surprise to me (although my wife was expecting it), with the one terrifying event that could drive Sam into joining his brother in the ‘67 Chevy Impala searching for their missing father and hunting for the one supernatural force clearly out to destroy the entire family and their happiness.

I have to tell you, if you’re squeemish you really want to skip this one. Although the special effects are at times jaw-dropping, they are not the primary suspense…in this show, what you don’t see is much more frightening than what you do. And remember that this pilot was enough to give me a nightmare when deciding whether or not you want to watch this episode.

But I promise you, if you do, even if you do have a nightmare, you’ll still be looking forward to the next episode…