Sorry to talk about SPN again but I was in middle school on tumblr once :T
Anyway I will always feel like anything past season 1, maybe season 2, was a tremendous waste (really I can't stand anything past season 5-6 now) because I loved the monster-of-the-week stuff way more than the religious apocalypse stuff... I think I find the earlier triangle of conflict between Sam and Dean and John much more emotionally compelling than demons or getting raptured or whatever 🙄 I just want to watch the stuff that inspired Ethel Cain to write Two Children in a Motel for a couple seasons
More thoughts
I feel like the things that made SPN good were more in the way that the bad parts were there that a lot of people don't really like to look at, like the relationship between Sam and Dean, the relationship between Dean and John, and the relationship between the camera/viewer and the characters. Obviously I'm a little biased because I was a deangirl but I feel like Dean's role as The Eldest was really horribly heightened by how John treated him and then in later seasons you got to see the full extent of that when Dean finally met up with Mary and he like, kind of ends up hating her a little bit? Dean's parentification ended up getting so deeply engrained into him, so not only did he end up being extremely obedient to John but it was also very important for him to be an effective replacement to Mary
And these things do get touched on I think a bit more in the early seasons, because Jackles plays Dean in a very specific way that, combined with the voyeuristic nature of the camera compounded with the violence that is a core part of the show and the comments other characters make about Dean (specifically in his relationship to John and Sam) the camera wants the viewer to sort of eroticize all of these horrible things about the violence that comes with this dynamic. I'm thinking largely about 1.22 and the way that AzJohn interacts with Dean and vis-versa, but also this gets carried over into season 6 with soulless Sam and his overt way of being physically affectionate and invasive with Dean and how his use of Dean as bait mirrors John's... But that all of these awful things are framed to look desirous even in their aversion
Anyway I think it's the really truly fucked up stuff in SPN that makes it enjoyable rather than the plot itself or any fanservice-type wacky hijinks, SPN is good when the writing is at its most uncomfortable and fatalistic