Not Spaceghost
Spaceghost
Never have I seen a show struggle so hard with its identity once the setting changed. There is so much to cover in this thread and honestly I think I'm going to miss so many points.
So yeah unmarked spoilers ahead.
Having just finished all 10 seasons for the first time I was truly surprised by how messy this show gets, especially after an amazing first few seasons.
Smallville opens with a truly fun and downright enjoyable premise, Clark Kent's youthful years where he discovers the truth about himself and slowly sets down the path to become superman, all while dealing with the struggles of being a high school student. Season 1 is filled with fun little nods to his future, and it actually an all around great time, highly recommendable to anyone interested in superman stuff. Hell season 2 and season 3 all stay very true to this and are extremely enjoyable. Lex Luthor and Chloe Sullivan make these early seasons such an absolute joy.
But that joy doesn't last...if there is a lesson in watching Smaillville it's that you will hate your favorite character at some point. Maybe even forever.
Characters just get deleted, the first victim was Pete Ross, poor Pete always living in Clarks shadow. Being the first non Kent to be privy to his secret eventually spelled his demise from the show. He wasn't killed off they just said he was moving at that was it.
Jonathan Kent had a reasonably great exit, because while being one of the better characters on the show he was also the only characters whose death actually meant something.
Martha Kent was next kind of, after a while they just said "I'm going to DC!" so she went to Washington and vanished from the show, never calls, never does anything just straight up is gone, she makes like 3 more appearances later on in the show but never anything major. What made me laugh the most about her exit was that a few episodes after she leaves Clark finds himself in DC doing some snooping around the department of homeland security. I thought "oh this will be cool maybe Martha now being in the govt will be some sort of plot point!" nope, nothing she's not even mentioned the whole time they're in DC.
Kara-El is like the weirdest recurring character ever, she was a huge plot point during season 7 appearing in like every episode but from S7 to S10 they keep finding ways to make her disappear. Basically she's the personification of what's wrong with Smallville, the show loses its focus as soon as the cast graduates high school.
Lionel Luthor is a character that was deleted from the show because they couldn't decide if he was a villain or a good guy, and after flip flopping on him hard as hell they eventually had to kill him off because he was kind of story breaking. He knew everything, he had all the power and he was becoming enjoyable to watch. So they kill him off. Granted at least they used his death as a catalyst to Lex's ultimate downfall.
Jimmy Olsen, my oh my what a tragic character. He never really amounted to much, he was just a good well meaning guy who had a thing for Chloe. So what happens to him? Well first he just stops appearing in the show, then they marry him to Chloe, and what is guaranteed to happen during a TV weddings? Horrible things. Jimmy becomes this broody shit bag for the majority of his post wedding episode appearances until they redeem him and kill him within 10 minutes. The true tragedy of Jimmy Olsen was that they then revealed his first name was something else and James was his middle name I guess so that it wouldn't really ruin the mythos.
Lana Lang has the WORST character arc I have ever seen, after a certain point you begin to question whether the writers have any idea as to what they are doing with the character...they don't so she gets deleted from the show in season 8. Which is kind of what the writers do when they don't know what to do with a character.
Her character arc is such a mess she's initially the girl next door archetype but with a twist, she wants to find out more about her self and who she really is. That's nothing special, then either late into S1 or by the time S2 comes around she's kind of a tough chick who don't need no man but still kind of needs superman to bail her out of everything horrible. Still tolerable but kind of boring. Season 3 and onward is where shit starts getting weird, suddenly Lana is now a wizard and she's involved in business with kryptonian artifacts among other things. Then when she's suddenly not a wizard she's awkwardly dating Clark, then after that when Clark's family just fucking disappears into their own plot points she's basically living with Clark, and then she's dating Lex, and then she marries Lex and then she becomes a secret agent, and then she becomes a fucking power suit user and like what the FUCK IS THIS CHARACTER??? So naturally the producers run out of things to do with Lana and realize that all she does is make Clark act like a total shithead so they delete her from the show because that's just what they do.
When the show isn't deleting characters it can't deal with it's actively ruining the few good ones it has like Lex Luthor, Chloe Sullivan, Oliver Queen and Clark Ke...lol just kidding Clark is always horrible, but at least rooting for him used to be fun, it eventually stops being fun.
Lex Luthor goes from a complex and interesting villain who isn't really a villain but you can tell he isn't being straight with everyone. By the time they make him a full on villain he's just so obviously lost his marbles that he's not even very fun to watch.
Chloe Sullivan's character is the most disappointing thing ever, she consistently held the show together for me for 7 seasons, she was why I watched the show. She was so much fun, she was earnest and honestly it felt like she was really doing her own thing. But really her character was a ticking time bomb until it was assassinated by the writers, as soon as she wasn't in the daily planet anymore her character became infinitely less enjoyable. They tried to move her away from being the Lois Lane stand in to being some one else since Lois Lane was now officially in the show and her character just kind of crumbled. Also they gave her super powers and like she really didn't need super powers. In fact the show gave everyone super powers at some point hell it feels like every character in the series got Clark's powers at some point.
Speaking of which Lois Lane is actually the best character. She remains true to her values while having really solid character development which is her about confronting issues she usually runs away from. It's nice to watch. Honestly Lois is the best thing about the series once Johnathan Kent dies.
One of the worst things Smallville does is recycled episode ideas, every season has to have the red kryptonite episode, the X almost finds out about Clark's secret episode and the mandatory Clark being de-powered and some one else getting his abilities episode. Some times it really just feels like you've seen everything the show has to offer.
There are so many awkward story lines that are either dropped resolved clumsily, or evolve into something that feels out of the writers control like:
The Native American prophecy of Naman
Everything about Lana
The pseudo justice league shit that goes ultimately no where since only Green Arrow and The Martian Man hunter remain as regulars
The ISIS foundation
Zod's return
Kara's post season 7 storyline
Jor-El's training
The Kandorians
Checkmate
The time travel shit
The show just can't maintain focus after the high school stuff ends, the smart thing to do would have been to make all the major characters go to Metropolis University and basically transfer the basic premise of the show from a high school setting to a college setting, many other shows have pulled this off rather well. Instead Smallville does what it does best, over complicates a simple thing needlessly to almost pointlessness.
It's also incredible at how unwilling to learn the characters are, clearly ignoring Jor-El ruins everything, and when they listen to Jor-El it's not so bad, yet they keep ignoring Jor-El's warning and treat him like a villain.
Same with the whole secret keeping theme of the show. Like yeah okay Clark I get it, but really I think after a while you'd think the "I can't tell you because I'm trying to protect you" line is bullshit since it actively seems to cause more trouble and get more people killed than anything.
Honestly the show kind of feels like hanging out with a former friend who used to be a really amazing guy but then he did something profoundly horrible and after doing a brief stint in jail he tries to hang out with you again and act like everything is okay when it very obviously isn't okay. It irks me because the show really does have so many shining moments (none of which I mentioned here because that would effectively make this thread unreadable and I already doubt anyone will even read all of this)
So yeah unmarked spoilers ahead.
Having just finished all 10 seasons for the first time I was truly surprised by how messy this show gets, especially after an amazing first few seasons.
Smallville opens with a truly fun and downright enjoyable premise, Clark Kent's youthful years where he discovers the truth about himself and slowly sets down the path to become superman, all while dealing with the struggles of being a high school student. Season 1 is filled with fun little nods to his future, and it actually an all around great time, highly recommendable to anyone interested in superman stuff. Hell season 2 and season 3 all stay very true to this and are extremely enjoyable. Lex Luthor and Chloe Sullivan make these early seasons such an absolute joy.
But that joy doesn't last...if there is a lesson in watching Smaillville it's that you will hate your favorite character at some point. Maybe even forever.
Characters just get deleted, the first victim was Pete Ross, poor Pete always living in Clarks shadow. Being the first non Kent to be privy to his secret eventually spelled his demise from the show. He wasn't killed off they just said he was moving at that was it.
Jonathan Kent had a reasonably great exit, because while being one of the better characters on the show he was also the only characters whose death actually meant something.
Martha Kent was next kind of, after a while they just said "I'm going to DC!" so she went to Washington and vanished from the show, never calls, never does anything just straight up is gone, she makes like 3 more appearances later on in the show but never anything major. What made me laugh the most about her exit was that a few episodes after she leaves Clark finds himself in DC doing some snooping around the department of homeland security. I thought "oh this will be cool maybe Martha now being in the govt will be some sort of plot point!" nope, nothing she's not even mentioned the whole time they're in DC.
Kara-El is like the weirdest recurring character ever, she was a huge plot point during season 7 appearing in like every episode but from S7 to S10 they keep finding ways to make her disappear. Basically she's the personification of what's wrong with Smallville, the show loses its focus as soon as the cast graduates high school.
Lionel Luthor is a character that was deleted from the show because they couldn't decide if he was a villain or a good guy, and after flip flopping on him hard as hell they eventually had to kill him off because he was kind of story breaking. He knew everything, he had all the power and he was becoming enjoyable to watch. So they kill him off. Granted at least they used his death as a catalyst to Lex's ultimate downfall.
Jimmy Olsen, my oh my what a tragic character. He never really amounted to much, he was just a good well meaning guy who had a thing for Chloe. So what happens to him? Well first he just stops appearing in the show, then they marry him to Chloe, and what is guaranteed to happen during a TV weddings? Horrible things. Jimmy becomes this broody shit bag for the majority of his post wedding episode appearances until they redeem him and kill him within 10 minutes. The true tragedy of Jimmy Olsen was that they then revealed his first name was something else and James was his middle name I guess so that it wouldn't really ruin the mythos.
Lana Lang has the WORST character arc I have ever seen, after a certain point you begin to question whether the writers have any idea as to what they are doing with the character...they don't so she gets deleted from the show in season 8. Which is kind of what the writers do when they don't know what to do with a character.
Her character arc is such a mess she's initially the girl next door archetype but with a twist, she wants to find out more about her self and who she really is. That's nothing special, then either late into S1 or by the time S2 comes around she's kind of a tough chick who don't need no man but still kind of needs superman to bail her out of everything horrible. Still tolerable but kind of boring. Season 3 and onward is where shit starts getting weird, suddenly Lana is now a wizard and she's involved in business with kryptonian artifacts among other things. Then when she's suddenly not a wizard she's awkwardly dating Clark, then after that when Clark's family just fucking disappears into their own plot points she's basically living with Clark, and then she's dating Lex, and then she marries Lex and then she becomes a secret agent, and then she becomes a fucking power suit user and like what the FUCK IS THIS CHARACTER??? So naturally the producers run out of things to do with Lana and realize that all she does is make Clark act like a total shithead so they delete her from the show because that's just what they do.
When the show isn't deleting characters it can't deal with it's actively ruining the few good ones it has like Lex Luthor, Chloe Sullivan, Oliver Queen and Clark Ke...lol just kidding Clark is always horrible, but at least rooting for him used to be fun, it eventually stops being fun.
Lex Luthor goes from a complex and interesting villain who isn't really a villain but you can tell he isn't being straight with everyone. By the time they make him a full on villain he's just so obviously lost his marbles that he's not even very fun to watch.
Chloe Sullivan's character is the most disappointing thing ever, she consistently held the show together for me for 7 seasons, she was why I watched the show. She was so much fun, she was earnest and honestly it felt like she was really doing her own thing. But really her character was a ticking time bomb until it was assassinated by the writers, as soon as she wasn't in the daily planet anymore her character became infinitely less enjoyable. They tried to move her away from being the Lois Lane stand in to being some one else since Lois Lane was now officially in the show and her character just kind of crumbled. Also they gave her super powers and like she really didn't need super powers. In fact the show gave everyone super powers at some point hell it feels like every character in the series got Clark's powers at some point.
Speaking of which Lois Lane is actually the best character. She remains true to her values while having really solid character development which is her about confronting issues she usually runs away from. It's nice to watch. Honestly Lois is the best thing about the series once Johnathan Kent dies.
One of the worst things Smallville does is recycled episode ideas, every season has to have the red kryptonite episode, the X almost finds out about Clark's secret episode and the mandatory Clark being de-powered and some one else getting his abilities episode. Some times it really just feels like you've seen everything the show has to offer.
There are so many awkward story lines that are either dropped resolved clumsily, or evolve into something that feels out of the writers control like:
The Native American prophecy of Naman
Everything about Lana
The pseudo justice league shit that goes ultimately no where since only Green Arrow and The Martian Man hunter remain as regulars
The ISIS foundation
Zod's return
Kara's post season 7 storyline
Jor-El's training
The Kandorians
Checkmate
The time travel shit
The show just can't maintain focus after the high school stuff ends, the smart thing to do would have been to make all the major characters go to Metropolis University and basically transfer the basic premise of the show from a high school setting to a college setting, many other shows have pulled this off rather well. Instead Smallville does what it does best, over complicates a simple thing needlessly to almost pointlessness.
It's also incredible at how unwilling to learn the characters are, clearly ignoring Jor-El ruins everything, and when they listen to Jor-El it's not so bad, yet they keep ignoring Jor-El's warning and treat him like a villain.
Same with the whole secret keeping theme of the show. Like yeah okay Clark I get it, but really I think after a while you'd think the "I can't tell you because I'm trying to protect you" line is bullshit since it actively seems to cause more trouble and get more people killed than anything.
Honestly the show kind of feels like hanging out with a former friend who used to be a really amazing guy but then he did something profoundly horrible and after doing a brief stint in jail he tries to hang out with you again and act like everything is okay when it very obviously isn't okay. It irks me because the show really does have so many shining moments (none of which I mentioned here because that would effectively make this thread unreadable and I already doubt anyone will even read all of this)
