HOYAY! "Supernatural": Coded gays, slashfic bait and Wincest, oh my!

With both of its lead actors (Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles) being AfterElton Hot 100 regulars, it's hard to deny that Supernatural has a gay following. Unfortunately, the series hasn't been very gay in and of itself, with the exception of one episode.

In the past few weeks, however, Supernatural has given us some entertaining eyebrow-raising moments including a homoerotic fight scene, a character that felt like a coded gay and Dean Winchester getting in the kind of trouble that leaves the imagination running.

Before we go further, however, watch out for SPOILERS for last week's episode.

Barry Bostwick and John Rubenstein from Supernatural

In "Criss Angel is a Douchebag", the Winchester Bros went to "Magic Week" to investigate Jay (Barry Bostwick), a burnt-out magician who narrowly escapes a death-defying trick, only for someone else to face the doom he escaped, Friday the 13th: The Series-style. The investigation leads Dean to question two of Jay's associates, who tip Dean to visit "The Chief" who can be found on Bleecker Street. When Dean visits the Chief, however, it turns out the magicians sent Dean to an S&M club, where the Chief ... well, let's just say he needs to know what Dean's safe word is before they can get started.

The killer turns out to be Charlie (John Rubenstein), one of Jay's friends who watched Jay's star fade to younger magicians and has turned to dark magic for the sake of his friend. Charlie reveals he has discovered the secret of immortality and wants to share it with Jay (and their third buddy).

Now, if hadn't already been wondering how Jay's friends knew about The Chief (after all, they're traveling performers and probably wouldn't know where to find a source for same-sex S&M action unless they had a bit of an interest in it) Charlie's devotion to Jay would have seemed like an intense friendship. However, the episode had me thinking of Charlie as possibly gay. His willingness to kill for Jay certainly could be motivated by love. At least, if that's the case, Charlie wasn't the "gay villain" stereotype. It added to Charlie's motivations but the hints to Charlie's sexual orientation weren't used to make him more despicable or threatening.

The Winchesters under the spell of a siren

And then there's this week's episode, "Sex and Violence," where the Winchesters are hunting a siren. In classic literature, sirens lured sailors into wrecking their ships on rocky shores but in modern times they get men to ruin their lives by compelling them to murder the person they love most. The challenge in this hunt, however, is that sirens are able to read the victim's mind and appear as his ideal lover.

At one point, it looks like the town doctor, who is beautiful, smart and witty (just the way Sam likes his women), will turn out to be the siren. Instead, the siren turns out to be the new FBI agent in town (Jim Parrack), who puts Dean under his spell. The siren puts Sam under his thrall, too, and then compels the two brothers to kill each other promising, "whoever survives can be with me forever."

I know, Sam and Dean magically falling in love with a male FBI agent is primarily supposed to demonstrate that what both Winchesters want most is a brother they can trust wholly. Still, watching a male siren taunt our heroes about how much they love him made for an incredibly homoerotic climax. Further, the homoerotic aspects didn't dip into gay panic, in the same way that Charlie didn't fall into a "gay villain" stereotype.

PE wouldn't have been as bad if the teacher looked like Jensen Ackles

Considering how a fun episode usually precedes the overall Supernatural arc turning really dark, I'm wondering what could be coming up after three fun episodes in a row (let's not forget seeing Dean dress up as a PE teacher last week). But what did you think? Did you find recent Supernatural episodes to be pretty gay? Is Supernatural trying to win the hoyay prize from shows like Heroes and Smallville?