Smallville: The End Is Upon Us

Smallville: The End Is Upon Us

Posted on Friday January 14, 2011, 11:55 by Stephen Carty in Small Screen

Over a decade since it debuted on the WB way back in 2001, Smallville is finally coming to an end. But after ten seasons and 211 episodes of consistent inconsistency is anyone still watching? And does anyone still care?

Well, as an ardent fan of the Man of Steel, I’m still tuning in. But only just. When the show began to wobble around the fifth year, I kept watching. When series six saw a further decline, I held fast. But sometime soon after the original showrunners Al Gough and Miles Millar left and the quality descended faster than a speeding bullet, my interest severely waned. Nowadays, I’m watching purely in an ‘I started so I’ll finish’ kind of way.

It’s a tragic shame too, as it began so well. Undoubtedly, the first season was mired by silly, Buffy-type villains of the week (a girl who can control bees; really?), but there was much to love. The character work was great, we got plenty of well-measured in-jokes (“Blue’s a good colour on you”) and the effects rocked for TV. Plus, rounding off some excellent casting, former model Tom Welling didn’t just fill an impossible-to-fill roll, he nailed it.

Then came the peak second and third seasons. True, there was still plenty of awful filler, but by reducing the meteor-powered baddies, the show soared up, up and away. With Gough and Millar bringing in comic scribe Jeph Loeb and writer Ken Biller, we got some truly brilliant episodes; Insurgence (jumping a building in a single bound), Red (Red Kryptonite), Rosetta (Christopher Reeve, that music), Memoria (catharsis for Lex) and two stonking finales. Clark developed new abilities, Rutger Hauer was a Metropolis crime boss, we had a brief intro to Perry White… all great stuff. But best of all was the expansion of Lionel Luthor’s character, who gets more nefarious by the minute and is played to show-nabbing perfection by a bearded, business-is-war John Glover. Just check out the jaw-dropping, opera-assisted series three finale…

And then, slowly but surely, we started the descent into an obviously sexed-up Smallville. As always, the opener soared and got our hopes up (Kal El taking flight? Awesome), before settling into a familiar pattern of problems that started to really grate. Credibility began being stretched like a lycra blue suit with enough inconsistencies to fill Suicide Slum and before I knew it, my previously-favourite show was awash with niggles.

One of the worst offenders was (and still is) patchy internal logic. Our Teen of Steel drank Kryptonite. Lex got shot in the forehead and survived. The Kents shared a warm Thanksgiving dinner with Lionel. Clark got a job at the world’s biggest newspaper with no experience and a crumpled application form. Though there were plenty of awful subplots that didn’t make sense if you stopped to think (Pa Kent running for office despite his main goal in life being to keep his alien son out of the public eye?), it was the mishandling of CK’s powers that ticked me off. I mean, how many times can you sneak up on someone with super-hearing?

Then we started getting stunt-casting like Lil' Bow Wow and – wait for it – Tori Spelling. The ludicrous filler continued (subterranean farmers; plant-like femme fatales; a baby that rapidly ages; a teen who freezes students to make a high school museum). And whilst it was always nice to see the likes of Margot Kidder, Marc McLure and Dean Cain pop up, the budget had declined so much that all the big scenes took place on the same set. I mean, by now everyone including Clark’s dead mother and 14 Kryptonians has been in his ‘secluded’ barn.

Now, before I descend into a red-eyed anger haze from discussing those elements that really got my goat (bodysnatching; flip-flop characterisation; the line, “I did it to protect you, Lana”) there were still plus points. Of course, this includes the constant sight of Erica Durance’s Lois Lane in something skimpy, but more the constantly shirtless Justin Hartley (seriously, every week is torso-time) whose spot on turn as Oliver Queen / The Green Arrow always elevates the show.

So why keep watching? Well partly because I'm an anal completist; partly out of a desire to see it through to the end. Whilst recent years have played like a Superman programme without Superman (Clark and Lois work at the Daily Planet, he's a secret superhero and there's a romantic triangle – but no cape or flying), at least the holding pattern was broken. As the end approaches, we’ve seen the tights and we might see the flights, but do we still care? Yeah, I have to admit, that I do. Statistically speaking of course.