The first thing you should know is that I’m not a rabid comic book geek. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever read a single superhero comic book in my life. What I did do, however, is see the original Superman movies near the end of junior high – probably the summer of 2000. Superman III and IV were crap, but the original movie was awesome (especially given its age – though admittedly the 70s corniness occasionally shines through), and Superman II became my favourite superhero movie ever (remember, this was before 9/11 and the sudden influx of superhero movies that followed). I don’t know why I ended up liking Superman in particular (especially given the existence of Tim Burton’s Batman and the illogic of Superman being able to hide his identity with ugly glasses), but for some reason, I did.
Aiding and abetting this (at the time) infatuation, was Smallville, which showed up on TV in Fall 2001. Superman in high school – and gee whiz, I’m starting high school too (I love teenage logic)! It was pretty much love at first sight, and looking back, the first season wasn’t all that bad (as first seasons go). Clark likes Lana Lang, Clark can’t have Lana Lang because Lana Lang’s with Whitney Fordman (and she wears a kryptonite necklace – you can see what that would lead to), Whitney Fordman hates Clark, Lex Luthor likes Clark a bit too much, Chloe Sullivan and Pete Ross are oblivious meteor-freak magnets that Clark constantly has to save – and round and round we go. It was shallow and repetitive fare, but it was good shallow and repetitive fare.
Season 2 was largely more of the same – but stupider. It felt like a series of ideas that couldn’t fit into Season 1 – the compost heap, to put it nicely. A few episodes held their own (“Ryan” is still one of my favourites, and seeing Christopher Reeve again in “Rosetta” was both wonderful and sad), but the rest are at best forgettable, and at worst ridiculous. Cave paintings from a lost Native American race that prophesize the life and times of Superman? C’moooonnnn. The Season 2 compost heap peaked in its final episode, which made Jor-El out to be a bad guy and effectively finished my infatuation with Smallville. From my perspective, they were betraying the movies to suit their own ends, and I wasn’t buying it. Thus, for a long time, I stopped watching the show.
And – as a Boxing Day 2008 DVD splurge later revealed – I did end up missing out. Season 3 was a rebound year of sorts – it (mostly) shrugged off the freak-of-the-week routine (i.e. someone’s been infected with kryptonite, gotten superpowers, and turned evil – and Clark has to stop him/her) in favour of deeper, more varied/interesting stories – mostly about a corrupt research facility. But alas, it couldn’t last, and the whole thing tanked again in Season 4 – mostly thanks to the silliest plotline of the series, where Lana is possessed by the spirit of her dead ancestor – a witch. I never liked Lana to begin with – her on-again/off-again relationship with Clark was wearing, and her endless doe-eyed gazes that alternated with spontaneous hissy fits over his refusal to divulge his secret just… well, I was fed up with it all. Enter Lois, brazen older sister type who can’t stand farmboy Clark. Fun, but it stayed that way too long in favour of the “Clana” monstrosity. Perhaps the best thing about Season 4 was that Chloe Sullivan (easily my favourite character – at least up to that point) finally learned Clark’s secret.
Season 5 brought about the Fortress of Solitude (yay!) and solidified Lex’s evilness. Following Bart Allen’s (aka The Flash) Season 4 lead, Arthur Curry (Aquaman) and Victor Stone (Cyborg) show up in Smallville. Yeah, it’s kind of improbable, but you know I love it when the superheroes team up. And here comes James “Spike-from-Buffy” Marsters as yet another villain – but a good and nasty one this time (“Thirst” is a stupid episode full of Buffy-references, but his straight-faced lines in light of the situation make it worth the watch). And an episode chock full of Dukes of Hazzard references! YAY! The 100th episode “Reckoning” – one I DID watch on TV, though didn’t thoroughly understand at the time – was probably the best one yet. And though Season 5 had its stupid moments (Smallville meets SAW? WTF?), it felt like show had finally found its legs.
I don’t know why I started watching Season 6 on TV, but for some reason I had nothing better to do at the time, and – let’s face it – after a 3-season boycott, you kind of get curious. I got curious at the right time, catching the first Oliver Queen/Green Arrow episode. For those who don’t know, Oliver is the sarcastic, end-justifies-the-means Han Solo to Clark’s long-suffering goody-two-shoes Luke Skywalker. And you know what I think about Han Solo. Mmm, swashbuckly – and double the eye candy. Season 6 contains my absolute favourite Smallville episode “Justice” – and the first Clark/Lois romantic vibes. It also pairs Lana with Lex – and they deserve each other (though I must emphasize that Michael Rosenbaum makes the best Lex Luthor I’ve seen in any live-action Superman incarnation). Yeah, it kind of gets silly again once Oliver departs (temporarily, thankfully) with the whole Clark/Lana/Lex triangle and the fake pregnancies/Phantom “Zoners”/super-soldiers. Alas, when it’s all over, Oliver is long gone and Lana is back with Clark. Will she ever go away?
Season 7 – Jimmy Olsen’s around for the long run, and Supergirl’s in town. And Lex is FINALLY 100% evil. De-li-cious. The problem is, though, that we’re wallowing in the Superman mythos again, and all its Krypton hoo-haa. Because I care more about Clark as a person than an alien, I really don’t enjoy hearing all this backstory blather ad nauseum. Krypton is gone, and it should stay that way. I was, however, very happy to see Oliver return (with Black Canary in “Siren”), and very excited about Lex discovering Clark’s secret – at LONG last. And icing on the cake – Lana’s outta there (at least as a regular character) by the end of the season! Clark was bawling his eyes out, but I was doing a happy dance. Bring on the Lois!
And then there was Season 8 – what I wanted to talk about to begin with. This past year, Access became CTV’s dumping ground, so by the time I found out they had started broadcasting the new episodes, they had preempted Smallville (not to mention Supernatural) for – get this – Dancing With The Stars. Insert expletive here. After a brief stint of watching episodes after my volunteer time at the school (land of fast internet), I gave up on that when I got so far behind that they were removing the posted episodes that I needed to see (no doubt due to copyright infringement – but don’t get me started on that just yet). So I waited and waited for the season to come out on DVD.
The wait was worth it. BEST SEASON EVER. Lex was gone (which I thought might suck, but ended up being a welcome change) and replaced with Tess Mercer – Miss Morally Murky. Oliver became a regular now – albeit in a moodier capacity – and Clark and Lois started working together at the Daily Planet. Not only that, but Clark began to embrace his superhero status, garnering newspaper headlines as “The Red-Blue Blur.” Over Season 8, more people learn Clark’s secret (which is always fun), and more future superheroes (and superheroes from the future) show up than ever before. Lana returns for a few episodes (bloody hell, go away already), then seemingly disappears for good – for such a gloriously tragic reason that I actually felt something for “Clana” for the first (and I guess last) time ever. And then there was Doomsday. I love my morally grey bad guys who try to avoid the dark side but fail spectacularly – and he was one of those. And the end of it all is heartbreaking.
I guess what I’m saying through all this blather is that if you have any love of superhero miscellanea at all – even if you’ve never seen the show before – you should try to see Season 8. It very nearly stands on its own, so even if you haven’t seen the rest of the series, you should be able to catch on after a few episodes. Buy them, rent them, borrow them – whatever you have to do – they’re worth it.
And that, as they say, is that.
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