Smallville

I can't believe there isn't a thread about this. Well, I can I guess, maybe Smallville overstayed its welcome a little bit. 10 years is a heckuva run for any show, especially for one that's based on a superhero.

Let me just say that I'm a gigantic Superman fan. I know, I know, you look at the avatar and would think I'm a Thor fan. And while that's true (Thor for me falls somewhere after Superman, Wolverine and Green Lantern - probably in that order), I'll always be a Superman fan at heart. I was the kid who tied the sheet around his neck and jumped off of furniture. The kid who dyed his hair black with shoe polish (wait ... you mean no one else did that)?

I can remember when the show came on the air, how excited I was. It had been just a few years since the disastrous end to Lois and Clark, and I was excited to see a fresh new take on the Man of Steel in his early years.

Sadly I will probably look back at Smallville as more of a missed opportunity than anything else. While there were clear high points (the bookend episodes of this season, Absolute Justice last season, heck even the Zod storyline altogether), Smallville will most likely be remembered, at least for me, as a show that deteriorated over the years.

It's a show that really went on too long. Considering the name, it's funny to think that the show really spent 6 seasons outside of the fictional town that it was named for. I personally would have liked to see 4 seasons of Clark in High School (Frosh, Soph, Junior, and Senior), maybe a year or two at college, and then maybe a year or two in Metropolis. Lana really should have been transitioned off the show in Season 5, but for some reason she stuck around until Season 8. Lana, incidentally, encompasses all that I felt was wrong with the show over the years, as the writers gave her progressively more powers and more abilities until she was eventually Clark's equal. Honestly at times I felt like it should have been called "Smallville - the Lana Lang show." It's too bad, too, as I like Kristen Kruek. She just can't act her way out of a paper bag.

Still, despite its flaws, Smallville has been the longest running interpretation of Superman on Television, and with DC properties crashing and burning (see David E. Kelly's Wonder Woman saga), there's no telling just how long we'll have to wait to see Superman on the small screen again. It was with those conflicts that I sat down and watched the series finale last night. Spoilers abound, so I'm just going to hide everything from here on out.

Spoiler

What I like about the season finale of Smallville is that it's basically the entire premise of the show, good and bad, compressed into a two hour finale. What I mean by that is that there are excellent scenes that remind me of how great the show used to be (the early scenes with Martha and Jonathan Kent, in particular the graveyard scene between Jonathan and Clark), as they are poignant but far too short. Instead, in classic Smallville action the first half of the episode focuses far too long on the impending nuptials of Lois and Clark. In fact, we get to hear their vows - twice! The pacing is all wrong. There's the classically bad Smallville acting, such as the disappointing Tess / Lionel Frankenstein scene, which is so horribly over the top with poor dialogue it's was almost enough to make me turn off the show right then and there. Still, it was absolutely delicious to have Michael Rosenbaum back as Lex Luthor, despite the Frankenstein's monster leaps in logic required to accept him as back and walking the earth.

They had a perfect opportunity to start over with Lex, but instead we get the death of Tess Mercer (which I was fine with - someone needed to die in this episode) followed by an implausible neurotoxin poisoning. On some level, it works, as it gives them an excuse to show the descent of Lex into madness (as opposed to the ascent of Clark to heroism a few minutes before). At the end of the day it becomes a convoluted excuse to show Lex and I think it could have been handled better. Rosenbaum deserves better, even if you can tell he's wearing a bald cap this time out.

It's the last 15 minutes of the show that close out the series in classic Smallville fashion. We finally get to see Superman, which is something that probably could have been done a heckuva lot sooner. The "no flights no tights" rule really went out the window once the Green Arrow started showing up regularly. Still, Clark finally dons the tights and flies. Finally. And while the moment comes across as simply awesome, it's almost too little too late. Then there's the highly unusual choice of steadfastly refusing to show Welling in the suit. Instead we get distant shots of a tiny (even on my big screen TV) CGI Superman followed by way-too-tight shots of Welling from the neck up. I can only assume that this was because Welling simply couldn't fill out the suit properly, which is odd because he looks more than capable in the barn scene earlier with Darkseid. This is really where the episode fails for me, as they had a chance to make long suffering fans like myself truly happy. Instead, it stands out as one last "screw you" in a long line of Smallville mistakes.

Then the John Williams music kicks in, and almost all is forgiven. We see the Daily Planet seven years later, Lois and Jimmy together, and hear Perry uttering "Great Caesar’s Ghost." It's perfect, almost too perfect. But it's not Smallville. Even the ending, the rooftop scene with that familiar music kicking in, is borrowed from a movie that came out before I was born. And while it's a beautiful coda to the series, you can't help but feel that it's a bit of a missed opportunity.

At some point I'll probably sit down and rewatch the series from beginning to end, at least the key episodes (the FOTW Episodes, etc.). I'm also certain I'll be rewatching the Superman movies very soon (the Superman Blu-Ray set comes out June 7th). For me I'll enjoy my time with Smallville, even if it wasn't always perfect.