Around a hundred pix of some cute mugs.

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The first of today’s mascots is Jensen Ackles as Dean Winchester, the co-star of my newest American-television obsession, Supernatural. If you haven’t seen it, the show is a clever, affectionate amalgam of every paranormal series that’s made it big, from The Night Stalker through The X-Files (Still, on at least two occasions, Dean goes so far as to say, “This ain’t the X-Files.”) but a little Moonlighting and Starsky & Hutch, as well.  Supernatural reminds me most of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, however, because there’s as much comedy as drama as well as the requisite self-awareness and self-reflexivity of modern television. Like Buffy, Supernatural takes its characters and their relationships very seriously but irreverently plays around with the genre and its expectations. And like Buffy, there are gay cultural references. Plenty of ‘em.

The show goes so far as to acknowledge the “homoerotic subtext” by having the two brothers, Sam & Dean, in one episode attend a Supernatural-fan convention where there’s a special panel on, yup, The Homosexual Subtext of Supernatural. Slash fans and authors, take it away. Also, don’t miss the funny and sweet Ghostfacers episode in which “big gay love pierces the veil of death and saves the day.” If there aren’t any queers working on this show, there sure are some cool straight boys.

Anyway, Ackles is handsome, and a great comic actor, but it’s Dean the character I’d really like to take down, if you know what I mean.