Smallville
 

A Smallville thread? But it's been over for years now!

Yeah, well... sometimes... I just miss this show, okay?

I love how amazingly cheese-but-good-hearted the earlier seasons were all the way up to the sudden shift of "oh crap comic books are cool again but we designed our show to be anti-comic books so... let's just try everything!" in the later seasons.

Anyone else miss this show?

(Haters, feel free to join in. All is welcome.
I know the show got hilariously bad at times.
But I just found that all part of the charm:))

I think it should have ended after season 4 or so.

After that, I watched it rather sporadically.

The finale was cool, though.

Smallville paved the way for these other DC shows on right now.

I miss this show too, but it got a generous 10 year run and escaped cancellation many times.

I think there is another main Smallville thread from years ago here somewhere.

Season 10 thread is here
Season 11 comic book thread is here

Ehh, go for 5. I love Lexmas. Don't really know why, just my favorite episode.

I love Smallville. Good all the way through the damn terrible.

I rewatch the entire series once a year. I think I hit twice one year.

And I still say Tom wasn't wearing an actual Superman shirt, but it was CGI. :lol:

Loved Smallville. It's sort of become the butt of jokes now in light of better DC shows, but I loved that it did'nt settle for being just a Superman show, and embraced all corners of the DC mythology, giving equal screen time to Green Arrow. Without Smallville going there with Oliver, I doubt we'd have gotten Arrow at all.

Also it had the Legion AND the League and Justice Society. Plus Booster freaking Gold.

And probably the best Lois and Clark chemistry I've ever seen. And my favourite kind of love story...two buddies who realize they're made for each other.:)

I watched up to season 3, I think. Kinda lost steam from there, but I did watch some episodes here and there.

The season 9(?) special with Doctor Fate and the Justice Society stuff was pretty nifty of what I remember.

Lexmas is an awesome episode. Sure, I'm a sucker for Christmas episodes, but I loved the way they shot that episode. "Lexmas" is on my Christmas playlist of 8 or 9 different X-Mas themed episodes I watch every year. Yay for traditions :)
It's hard to argue that, yeah. Even the same formula of storytelling is lifted from Smallville for the most part(which I guess was lifted from Buffy) but Smallville kept Superman conscious in the public eye for a decade. Despite the hatred the show gets, it's hard to deny its impact.
I think Erica pulls the weight but they're undeniably fun to watch. I'll always be a Dean and Terri style Lois and Clark kinda guy, myself.

Funny you mention your favourite kind of love story, since I always enjoyed the Clark/Chloe relationship dynamic. A part of me was annoyed they never pulled the trigger on their relationship, but in retrospect I really like how they never dated. It kind of comes off like a Scully and Mulder kind of bond, and there's just not enough of that on TV. Sometimes people who have the strongest of affinity for each other, even sexually, aren't destined to be together. But they can still carve out one hell of a friendship.

Yeah, Chole made a better Lana than the genuine thing.

At this point, I'm not sure if that's a good or bad thing. I kinda blame this show for setting the trend over at the CW that Green Arrow and Black Canary can't be together.

As for Smallville itself, never really had interest in watching it. From what I've read about and seen from clips, it doesn't look like something I'd enjoyed, based on how they interpret the characters (Looking at you, Doomsday).

Plus I've never been too big on the idea of superhero prequels before, and probably never will.

It is somewhat of an oddity, in that by the time it ended it was largely only really a prequel in the sense that he doesn't put the costume on, but he's dealt with everything that he would have dealt with if he had.:lol:

Rage, rage against superhero prequels. I am right there with you.

I blame Smallville for Gotham, which I had to give up after somehow making it through the first twelve episodes.

Remember "The Graysons"? :lol: That's still a running joke with my friends and I. Just imagining the kind of foreshadowing dialogue is amazing.

The parents always saying things like...

"Y'know, son, we won't be around to look after you forever."
"You have to get a job, Dick. You think a billionaire is just going to show up and take you away?"

And Dick saying things like...

"My parents are the worst! I wish you were both dead!"
"I used to birdwatch a lot as a kid. Robins are my favourite."

It actually could have been hilarious. Wish they'd at least shot the pilot. Or leaked the script.

Y'know what's REALLY sad?

The best live-action Robin we've ever seen was an empty suit after he was killed. :tgrumble:

I'm going off memory, but I'm pretty sure they changed show runners after 4.

Season 6 they changed networks, but kept the same show runners.
Season 8 was new show runners.

That's Arrow's fault and their fault alone. Smallville did it once, its an oddity. Arrow chose to follow suit. That's on them.
Trust me, I know where you're coming from, but David Bloom was one of the best unique additions to the Smallville lore. The resolution of his arc was handled awfully, but his inclusion was great. A lot of that has to be credited to Sam Witwer, though. The dude has chops.

What happened with season four is Gough and Miller stopped writing episodes, but were still in charge creatively until season seven, where they departed as showrunners

Ehh I was close.


I have to say, one thing I could not stand about the show was when they would take Clark's powers away and say something about his human side. It always seemed to me like they tried to come across as if he was a half human and that annoyed the hell out of me.

Was Smallville perfect? Absolutely not. But I've always felt like it nailed every character, especially Clark and Lex. With the new Superman movies, I just don't feel that they've quite gotten Superman right.

There's a lot to be said about this show. Overall, I enjoyed it but at the same time I kinda wish we had actually gotten to see Clark Kent don the iconic suit (at the very least in season 10). I used to have a major crush on a friend who looks a lot like Lana, though now when I go back and watch the series I can't help but chuckle at how ridiculously obsessed everybody got over her.

Yeah, but... wouldn't you be? :lol:

So I've been living in an apartment for over a year now and there's still some boxes I have in the closet I hadn't unpacked. Opened it last night and lo and behold... A small box of 9 Smallville Novels that I bought on Ebay and completely forgot about. Kind of awesome. I started reading one last night before I passed out and it was adorably show-accurate.

Taking place in Season 1, Clark offers to help Lana with a school play she's working on and gets suckered into playing the lead, Cyrano. Meanwhile, the queen-bee lead actress discovers she can turn invisible with kryptonite lipstick and begins to target her former friends. Once she takes an interest in Clark, she sets her sights on Lana to eliminate her competition.

So far it's got all the hallmarks of what made Smallville so charming(and eventually, cliche). I can't wait to read all these.

It'll be like watching a whole new season :)

An early season at that. I wouldn't mind trying to hunt one of those down myself. I tried to get into the Season 11 comic. I have the first volume, but never finished reading it.

I remember seeing the first few seasons and enjoying it quite a bit. Lost track of a lot of stuff after season 5. Braniac was neat. I really this type of Lex Luthor. Much more than Eisen-Luthor. Also think Tom Welling is a better Superman than Routh or Cavill... without actually being Superman. huh wierd

As a Superman fan I watched this show during it's entire run..ten years of my life given to the show so I have an attachment to it. I loved the earlier seasons, mainly 1-4, but there were some good parts to the later seasons. I think the "Justice" episode in season 5 was good. I must say my biggest pet peeve was the constant pining and moping around over Lana. The finale also left a lot to be desired in my opinion..seeing Rosenbaum return as Lex was the best part for me, but other than that it felt rushed, especially the end with the minute or so of him in the cgi suit.

You mean you don't find it the least bit coincidental that instead of going with the actual canon, they both do the exact opposite?

And why should Smallville get a pass on that?? It's just as guilty as Arrow.




Meh. Whether he had the chops or not, it still feels like they butchered Doomsday, as well as other characters IMO.

Smallville gets a pass because it's primarily not a Green Arrow story, its a Superman story. If anything, keeping Oliver on the main cast for as long as they did gave Green Arrow a lot more recognition to the general public than he ever had up to that point. What Arrow did is essentially the same as if Smallville had killed off Lois and Clark ended up with Chloe. One is far more guilty than the other. And honestly, I doubt the producers even looked at Smallville for guidance. They looked to Tumblr and only Tumblr :roll:

Yeah, I know what you mean. I get ya; it's a far cry from the comic. But I actually really like the story of finding out your just a walking, thinking camouflage for a monster thats beginning to wake up. Seriously, think about that. Everyone you loved, everything you've ever thought, you find out its all just a defence mechanism and you'll soon cease to exist, because you were never real in the first place. And all that will remain is a rampaging killing machine. Pretty scary sh*t if you ask me.

Whaaaaat? You mean you didn't like the 7 years "will they/won't they" even though you know they're destined not to? :D

Apparently its a very good Superman comic, but feels very light on what made Smallville, Smallville. And I get that that's kind of the point, but still... Plus it was around this time that Arrow came out and had them pull Green Arrow from the book. I'll read it eventually, but for now, these novels are wonderful. For instance, I just learned that Clark is a massive Bob Marley fan. Who knew, right?!

It got a bit aggravating, to be honest. :)

This thread got me to thinking about the cameos/guest stars that we had in Smallville. Off the top of my head I can remember:

-Christopher Reeve
-Margot Kidder
-Marc McClure
-Dean Cain
-Teri Hatcher
-Helen Slater
-Carrie Fisher
-Tori Spelling
-Tom Wopat
-Charisma Carpenter
-Jane Seymour
-Amy Adams
-Lynda Carter
-Brian Austin Green
-James Marsters
-Jensen Ackles
-Pam Grier
-Michael McKean
-Michael Ironside

Charisma Carpenter was on Smallville?

You know what, I was thinking about Supernatural. She was in an episode with James Marsters, who was on Smallville. My bad.

Haha yeah I thought thats what you might have been thinking.

Thanks for understanding. :)

I need to contribute to this thread a little better, I'll read through better later. But...


Bob Marley huh? :lol:

Yeah man! In the book, an invisible girl infatuated with Clark snoops around his room to find out what his interests are. He has a Bob Marley CD collection and in his CD Player was Bob Marley's Greatest Hits. The next day she sits near Clark at the Smallville Beanery(I guess this was pre-Talon) and sings "One Love" to catch his attention. He totally marks out over it :lol: Great stuff.

Kinda sounds like that episode from season 1 where Lex's maid's daughter had a crush on him and her brother used some invisibility cream to mess with him.

According to Smallville Issue 10, "See No Evil" (the novel I'm reading) was eventually turned into Shimmer, the episode you're referring to. Nice catch.

I don't see why they didn't shoot this one, though. Shimmer is a pretty forgettable episode while See No Evil has a bunch of nice moments like Clark performing in a stage play and Lex teaching Clark how to fence. Plus the whole book is indicative of this is where Clark learns how to put on an act. Kind of strange how it morphed into a pretty generic Lex stalker episode.

So... I wasn't sure whether to post this question in the Arrow thread or this one, but since its mostly a Smallville question, I'll ask here.

After watching Arrow dissolve into a Felicity Ass Kissing showcase, I'm hearing a lot of similar complaints that Smallville had in regards to Lana Lang.

Back in the day over at the ole Kryptonsite Forums, I remember reading post after post about how Lana has consumed the show and the show has become Lana centric, with Clark becoming an afterthought. I never really thought so, though. But here's the thing: I've always liked Lana Lang. I don't like Felicity Smoak. So, was I just blind to it the whole time? Yeah, the back and forth Clark Lana relationship went on for wayyy too long but I never felt like Lana was the main character as Felicity comes off as on Arrow.

So, I guess my question is, was Smallville just as guilty to pandering to it's shipper audience as Arrow is, or has Arrow gone beyond reason?

Damn, I miss this show. I rewatched it a little over a year ago and it actually held up a lot better than I thought it would after having seen Arrow and Flash. Welling was an amazing young Clark Kent and Erica Durance was perfect as Lois (not to mention extremely hot). Lionel was a great character and Michael Rosenbaum is by far the best live action Lex Luthor.

The show could have been a little cheesy at times and yeah, Lana was an awful and annoying character but the show actually had lots of great stories and plenty of stand out episodes like Rosetta, Memoria, Reckoning, Legion, Pandora, and Homecoming, just to name a few. As much as I enjoyed the early stuff, I never understood what was so bad about the later stuff. I actually really liked how the show started exploring more familiar Superman material. Sure, it was very unfaithful to the source material but it's a damn TV show. It's either that or more made up crap like season 4.

Welling is one of those actors that I think plays this version of the character perfectly. I'm not sure if I could see him actually pull off Superman though. Guess we'll never know :cry:

Erica was amazing. It's funny how the fanbase were so crazy against her at first since a) they didn't want Lois in Smallville at all in the first place and b) the popular fan theory was that Chloe would turn out being Lois Lane all along.

The Luthors were the best part of Smallville. (Well, maybe not Lutessa or the clone of Julian, but, y'know :P)

I already posted my defence of Lana in another thread but I also completely understand everyones annoyance with her.

Nice list of episodes! Memoria and Homecoming are tied as my favourites, though maybe Homecoming gets the win if only because since Lex's mind-wipe makes the bulk of Memoria's storytelling completely pointless.

I don't think people thought the later stuff was bad, but it was a pretty drastic change of tone for the series. They seemed to be very shy about embracing the more "out there" concepts from the comics in the earlier seasons to suddenly outright embracing them.

For example, in Season 4, Mxyzptlk went from looking like this...
http://s33.postimg.org/3toi0097z/Scr...7_47_10_AM.png to this...http://s33.postimg.org/dnx9n9jn3/Scr...7_47_22_AM.png

Whereas in the later seasons, "out there" characters like Hawkman didn't go through nearly as much of a make over: http://static.srcdn.com/slir/w450-h3...t-costumes.jpg
And that's just the visuals. Mxyzptlk went from being a 5th Dimensional Imp with seemingly limitless power to a foreign exchange student poor man's Kilgrave. And yeah, while there's a lot to celebrate and enjoy about them embracing the comic goodness, it does end up losing a bit of its identity by doing so.

Aw, poor Season 4 :lol: It's funny. I remember how much people hated on it (myself included) as it was airing but in retrospect I find it's one of the more enjoyable seasons because its so freaking strange. It's like they couldn't go more than 1 episode without some kind of possession/body swap/personality change episode. Off the top of my head, there's Lana switching with Isabella throughout the season, Lionel pretending to play a changed man, Lex/Alex in Onyx, Lois and Chloe being witches in Spell, Clark having amnesia in Blank, Lionel and Clark switching bodies in Transference, the Prom Queen possessing Lana/Chloe/Clark in Spirit, Clark being brainwashed Kal-El in Crusade, Lana/Chloe/Jason under a love potion in Devoted, Red K Clark in Unsafe... there's probably more but that's just off the top of my head. So yeah, it's a great re-watch season thats gotten better with age but when you watch it immediately following the dark drama that was Season 3 its a huge tonal whiplash.

I gotta admit I kinda liked how he looked but it really ticks me off they never bothered to reveal him as a dimension hopper or something down the road. He would've fit perfectly in season 10 with the Earth 2 storyarc.

Nice, I'm still a member over there.

Anyway, when the show aired, I never saw it either. I liked Lana too though, but after a few rewatches, I actually do see it. It was never as bad as Felicity and Friends has gotten, but there are a good bit of moments it does seem that way.

The same exact thing can be said about Chloe too, who I HATE!! Though I guess thinking about it, in a way, everyone on Smallville was a main character and they all got decent development in my opinion. That's not to say in regards to Lana and Chloe, that their stories didn't take drastic and down right ridiculous turns into left field.

Season 10 was pretty much anything goes, so, yeah that would've worked.

I actually really like Chloe. The issue was the show never gave Clark the role of being the investigative reporter; that was always relegated to Chloe. And when Chloe finally stepped away from being a journalist to become Watchtower, Lois just took over the role. That would have been a great time for Clark to learn how to track down leads, work angles, yknow... investigate.

Still, even when Lana and Chloe were getting a good amount of attention, I can't remember a single time either of them saved the day in the end. (Unless you count finding Clark KO'd and they toss away the piece of Kryptonite laying around.) Clark was always the hero who conquered the villain. On Arrow, Felicity has pretty much saved Oliver and the planet ten times over.

So, what do you have against Chloe, anyways? :lol: