User blog comment:Tommy,Klaus&Kol2012+/What I'd like for season 12/@comment-1975828-20160615023119/@comment-1975828-20160615065751

What I mean is Supernatural doesn't have a massive budget. As you've noticed, filler episodes use few CGI effects, few major characters (no Crowley or Castiel, most of the time).

I agree that for storytelling, the fillers mess it up, but otherwise, they couldn't produce non-fillers without the fillers to fill in the space, as you said, the 23 episodes.