Smallville season 1
by William the Bloody
A brief summary for the unfamiliar: The town of Smallville, Kansas in 1989 was besieged by a meteor shower. Martha and Jonathan Kent were driving home to their farm when the shower hit and their truck overturned amidst the chaotic downpour. However, the thing that flipped their vehicle wasn't exactly a meteor. It was a ship. A small craft with one passenger, a young boy. The Kents, unable to have their own children, raise this child from another world as their own, the townspeople and the boy himself, completely unaware of his spectacular origins. Jump now to the new millennium. The boy, Clark, is all grown up and starting high school. He has abilities far greater than any other man, but he has learned to cope and keep them a secret from everyone besides his parents. It seems that this little town of Smallville has gotten mighty weird since the meteors hit more than a decade ago. The meteor fragments while deemed officially "harmless" by the government, actually emit an odd radiation, which can have an even more odd effect on soil, plants, and, yes, people. Most high schoolers would find it hard enough just trying to get the prettiest girl in school (Lana Lang) to notice them, never mind having super powers and the bizarre mutated threats that keep popping up!
The Good: I was very glad to know that the Superman mythos would be introduced to the younger generation. The pilot episode with its depiction of the meteor shower was superb. Lex Luthor's characterization and acting are pretty darn good. Sure he's Clark's friend, but every so often you get this "what is he really up to?" feeling, which suits him. The Kents are decent parents, doing their best with the odd situation that they have. You never get the feeling that they're sorry for adopting Clark, rather you can see their strong love for him. Clark's friend Chloe is wonderful. The actress is quite cute in that perky girl next door sort of way and she really gives the character personality. Five words: John Glover as Lionel Luthor. WOOT! By the end of the season, the show found its direction and got really good. The finale was excellent.
The Bad: Nearly everything else. Lana Lang, Clark's heart-throb, is a terrible actress, and unfortunately, they give her loads of screen time. Every time I see her I want to slap her across the face. She is wooden and unpleasant. The actor who plays her boyfriend, Whitney, looks waaaay too old for the part of a high school kid. His and Lana's characters seem to be in emotional suspended animation. At the start of the season, we are supposed to hate Whitney. I mean really, really hate him, but then they try to make him sympathetic out of no where, and I'm sorry, but I just don't care that his father got sick because, well, we never even MET his father and we are supposed to hate Whitney so I don't care, okay? Also, that odd radiation emitted by the meteor rocks isn't radiation so much as a bizarre sense of irony. Example: a girl longing to be thin (re: thin actress in a bad fat suit) makes herself veggie shakes using irradiated greens. The shakes make her thin, but she finds that she has to suck the fat out of other living beings to survive now. Boy, is that ever good irony. I imagine these writers were locked in a basement and forced to read old Tales From the Crypt comics or something. The episodes got so formula it was ridiculous. Person gets into weird accident, person gets somehow infected by meteor radiation, person goes on ironic killing/maiming spree, Clark uses super speed to race to the rescue, usually ending with the death of the radiated person. After Clark develops x-ray vision mid-season, just about every episode has a scene where he runs at super speed, stops, camera closes in on his intense glare, and then we see a bit of x-ray vision action. There are also many, many plot holes and continuity issues, never mind all the stuff that seems to happen off-camera!! Hello!
Overall, this season has 21 episodes and only 5 of them were good. The pilot looked promising, but slipped really fast. When the series managed to shake off the limitations it had set upon itself, you got a quality show, indeed, but it was too little too late. If the tail end of season 1 is a good indication, season 2 is looking promising. But,
C+