Television Series

Smallville

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Smallville

Last updated 28 May, 2006

Banner of Smallville cast

Premise: Follows the adventures of Clark Kent as a teenager, when he's still learning about his powers. Notable differences from the DC Comics version of this story are that Lex Luthor is a friend, and not yet a bad guy; Martha and Jonathan Kent are relatively young; and the Lois Lane-like Cloe has been added to the mix. Object of desire Lana Lang and best friend Pete round out the cast.

Current status: Heading into Season 3 this fall.

Commentary

Season 1 (mid-point) (2001–02)
Season 1 (end) (2001–02)
Season 2 (mid-point) (2002–03)
(After this point, I kind of gave up on it...)

Season 1 (mid-point)

8th favourite show: C+

Strengths

The best basic premise since putting Sunnydale on the Hellmouth: The horrible meteor shower that brings Superman to this planet also explains the “super-villains” (mutated by the alien rock lying around) and the prevalence of kryptonite.

Lex Luther: Very interesting to see a villain when he's young and still trying to do the right thing.

Cloe: This actress has great screen presence, and she gets some great lines.

John Schneider: Who knew he'd turned out so well?

Weaknesses

The star: Tom Welling is not a strong actor, in my humble opinion.

The kryptonite: Yes, it's Superman's only weakness [hmm. Is that ironic?], and yes, they have explained the easy access to it, but the device quickly grows old anyway.

Lana's whispery voice: The girl needs to try some deep diaphragmatic breathing.

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Season 1 (end)

8th favourite show: B

The strengths of this show remain the strong group of central characters and their interactions. Lex Luthor is by far the most compelling of these. The “villain of the week” is, unfortunately, generally of much less interest. They come in, they do something wrong, Clark stops them, we never see them again. Yawn.

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Season 2 (mid-point)

“Most Unrealized Potential”

This season seemed to start off very strongly, then somehow just... peeter out. Clark is with neither Lana nor Cleo, and I'm not really sure why in either case. The girls are friends, which is nice, but not all that interesting. Pete has learned Clark's secret, which made for both a good episode and good character development. And there thankfully haven't been quite as many Kryptonite-driven plots.

But we haven't really seen enough of the show's strongest asset, Lex Luthor, and too much of its weakest, Clark. Admittedly, as the star, that's hard to avoid. But maybe, just maybe, they should have looked for a little more acting talent, even if that meant slightly less beauty. (Tom Welling is just so stunningly beautiful, it's hard to imagine that he doesn't constantly, always, have women throwing themselves at him — not quite right for the character.)

Still and all, there is great stuff to work with here. Most of the actors are quite good, and they really have come up with an interesting twist on the old Superman story. Now if only it could all come together more regularly...

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Cast

Stars Tom Welling as Clark Kent

Co-stars Kristin Kruek as Lana Lang, Michael Rosenbaum as Lex Luthor, Eric Johnson as Whitney Fordman (S1), Sam Jones III as Pete Ross, Allison Mack as Chloe Sullivan, John Glover as Lionel Luther, Annette O'Toole as Martha Kent, and John Schneider as Jonathan Kent.

Links

Smallville official Web site

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