'Smallville' Series Review

Spoiler Alert: This review provides details about the series and the finale in particular.

Full disclosure: I am a big Superman fan. Not living in my mom’s basement with a can of Superman Crazy Foam and hundreds of other “collectibles” big, but a fan nonetheless.

After a surprising 10-season run, Smallville is complete. I say surprising because had I told you in 2001 that a show debuting on the WB detailing the life of Clark Kent before he became Superman would last 10 years on network television, you’d have laughed. Out loud. In my face.

Overall, Smallville was an entertaining series, particularly if you were a Superman fan who was willing to accept and/or overlook the way the mythology was bent, spindled, and mutilated for the sake of creating 10 years’ worth of episodes. In addition to the suspension of disbelief required by most fiction, Smallville often required you to overlook gaping plot holes and serious medical misfortunes. Seriously, if some of characters on the show were professional football players, they would have been forced to retire because of the number of concussions they sustained – to say nothing of the very regular visits to the hospitals in Smallville and Metropolis for a variety of other injuries.

Still, the story of how a young man grows up to become the world’s greatest superhero kept me coming back season after season. Despite limited budgets (compared to feature films), it had a polished look and solid special effects, which are vital for most science fiction programming. Most importantly, it was usually entertaining and often very entertaining. It was fun to watch Clark learn about his super powers and discover his destiny. It was even more fun to watch his best friend, Lex Luthor, slowly descend into evil.

A series like Smallville takes on a mythology of its own, separate from the Superman comic books and even the Christopher Reeve feature films from which it took much of its inspiration. I can’t say I liked every creative choice on the show, but overall it provided a winning formula for a series (and had plenty of “in” references for fans of the comics and the DC Universe in general). Here are a few personal observations.

What worked:

Michael Rosenbaum. I defy you to find a better Lex Luthor. He is officially the gold standard by which all other performances are judged. Period. His brief appearance in the finale reminded everyone how much he was missed over the last three seasons of the show.

Casting. Beyond Rosenbaum, most casting was spot-on during the show’s run. Tom Welling? Great choice as Clark. Allison Mack as Chloe Sullivan? Delightful. John Glover as Lionel Luthor? Fantastic. John Schneider as Jonathan Kent? Perfect. Heroes, villains, new characters, established characters from the DC Universe – more times than not, the casting director found actors that really fit the roles on the show, even when those roles were written very differently from how the characters were usually portrayed in the comics.

Lois Lane. When I heard Lois was joining the cast in Season 4, I was skeptical. How nice to know I was wrong. The Lois character brought in new energy and helped make the transition to more Metropolis-based storylines smoother. Erica Durance is now the gold standard for Lois Lane, and was particularly strong in the final season. She won’t get an Emmy nomination, but she should.

The finale. The return of Lex Luthor, check. Wrap-up of major plotlines and supporting characters, check. Flight power, check. Guest appearances by several familiar faces (including a Jimmy Olsen cameo), check. Montage of heroic moments from the series, check. Iconic John Williams music, check. Open shirt to reveal Superman logo, check. Superman in full costume (albeit from a distance), check.

What didn’t work:

No flights, no tights. The unofficial rule of Smallville was that Clark was not permitted to fly or wear the official red and blue Superman costume. This turned out to be a rather silly rule that the producers seemed to bend with regularity, starting in the second episode when Clark was literally floating above his bed while sleeping. Not to split hairs, but floating is flying.

From that point on, series producers found a number of ways to have Clark fly or float without actually flying – his Kryptonian heritage possession (Season 3), flying with Lois in an Matrix-like imaginary world (Season 10), etc. Every other Kryptonian that Clark met seemed to have no problem with the whole up, up, and away business, and Clark learned he could leap tall buildings in a single bound pretty early on, so the whole no flying mental block (I think that was the excuse) was pretty weak.

It’s important to note that “no tights” didn’t mean “no costume,” because Clark began wearing costumes during his time in Metropolis. He started in a black trenchcoat, then progressed to a custom leather jacket emblazoned with his “S” logo. You can make the argument that he was trying to find his identity as a hero, but it always seemed a bit disingenuous to me.

Lana Lang. With respect to Kristin Kreuk, who did some fine work in the series, this character was a mess. She started out fine as a cheerleader and Clark’s high school crush. Then came the subplots, with possessions, the Isis Foundation, and her marriage to Lex Luthor (OK, I kind of thought that was a good twist if you had to keep Kreuk on the payroll), and fake pregnancy (not such a good twist). Her eventual kryptonite infection, which forced her to keep her distance from Clark, was a pretty silly plot point, but I celebrated it because it meant the character would never return.

Jimmy Olsen. The whole “killed by Doomsday but that’s OK because he’s actually the real Jimmy Olsen’s older brother” thing was cheap. Clever, but cheap.

Kryptonite freak of the week. Early on, the basic premise of Smallville was that most of the “criminals” that Clark faced were actually byproducts of the meteor shower that brought him to Earth. If used sparingly, perhaps four or five times a season, this could have been a reasonable plot device. But especially in the early seasons, it seemed that almost everyone in Smallville was infected in some way. Kryptonite never seemed to be in short supply, either. I understand the need for kryptonite to continue to produce bad guys and keep Clark at bay, but sometimes it seemed that enough chunks of the green stuff landed to fill Rhode Island. It was an important plot device, to be sure, but it became overkill.

Ten seasons. In my mind, Smallville was a five-season show at most. Produce at least 100 episodes (so you’re good with syndication), graduate from high school, make the move to Metropolis, end the relationship with Lana (“I love you, but my destiny is bigger than Smallville” or some similar line), reveal the costume, cue the iconic John Williams march, fly off into the sunset. While I applaud the show’s ability to stretch out Clark’s story for more than 200 episodes, I would argue the overall quality of the series suffered. The focus on more superhero-esque plotlines were the highlights of the later seasons, but the loss of the Lex Luthor adversarial relationship was never adequately replaced.

Senator Kent. If you are trying to keep a low profile to protect your alien son, you do not seek public office, even if a fellow Duke of Hazzard (guest star Tom Wopat) says you should. Plus, a senator’s son would more than likely get serious attention in the local press, at least if he were friends with high-profile people like Lex Luthor and/or Oliver Queen. And, knowing all this, you certainly don’t take your dead husband’s senate seat. All Season 10 Red Queen subplots aside, there wasn’t a better way to get rid of Clark’s mom on the show?

The finale. For those of you unfamiliar with the comic mythology, Darkseid is a New God and Apokolips is his domain. He is one of the nastiest villains out there. Rest assured, you mess with him, you have an epic battle on your hands. But because of time and budget restrictions associated with the series, Superman dispatches an entire season’s worth of subplots in mere seconds (and Green Arrow dispatches Darkseid’s evil minions with three arrows). It was very similar to the anti-climactic end of the Doomsday storyline.

The ghost of Jonathan Kent was quite the restless spirit in the finale. As much as I loved the character, he didn’t need to keep showing up throughout the episode. He didn’t need to show up at all, really, but a short cameo at the Fortress of Solitude would have been sufficient.

Finally, the Lex Luthor mind wipe. No. Just no.

No finale would have satisfied everyone – just ask the folks who ended LOST and Seinfeld. However, the Smallville finale served the characters and brought closure to the series. As a fan, my thanks go out to the creative team at Smallville, who delivered 10 years of compelling television about a strange visitor from another planet with teenage angst, girl troubles, daddy issues, a lousy best friend, and, of course, powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men. The Superman story is organic, changing and growing with each new set of creative individuals who serve as his caretakers for a time. Smallville is now a piece of the history of the character, and I think it’s influence will continue to be seen in the character for years to come.