While I very much enjoyed Season One of SMALLVILLE, I felt the show suffered from two major weaknesses: 1) the insufficient focus on the characters and their interaction and 2) the over reliance on the kryptonite-freak-of-the-week plot device. The great news about Season Two is that they deemphasized the freak-of-the-week gimmick, and instead focused on a series of storylines that centered on character development. The result was a vast improvement in the quality of the series. Season One showed that SMALLVILLE had the potential to become a quality series, and Season Two fulfilled that potential.
As we see the characters develop during the course of the season, we also see their relationships become more complicated. With Lindsey gone, the seemingly inevitable relationship between Clark and Lana is free to develop. While they do manage something approaching a romance, things are complicated by a number of factors, including the Lana's certainty that Clark is hiding many important things from her. In fact, one of the themes of the entire season is the inability of the main characters to be honest with one another. Clark, Lana, Chloe, Pete, Lex (and Lex's father), and Clark's parents all hide various things from other characters at one point or another. By the end of the season, many of the relationships and friendships have been affected by an inability to be either open or honest.
We also see Clark gradually acquire additional powers during the course of the season. In addition to X-ray vision, he develops his heat vision, and we get additional hints that the ability to fly might soon develop. More crucially, Clark discovers caves upon the walls of which are inscribed symbols that look suspiciously like those contained on various parts of his spaceship. Before the season is over, these will aid in his discovery of who he truly is, and will start pointing towards his future development. The other major development in regard to his powers is his revealing to Pete the nature and extent of his secret.
One thing that I find both curious and interesting is the opposition that this show provokes on the part of Superman traditionalists, who somehow feel that the show violates the spirit of the original creation. I am mystified by this because Superman has always been prone to revision and reconceptualization. Few serious Superman fans object, for instance, to the exceedingly dark reinventions of Superman and Batman at the hands of such stellar artists/writers as Alan Moore and Frank Miller. The poet Jack Butler wrote a wonderful poem about Superman depicting him as a middle-aged has been, a poem that is praised by its readers. Yet for some reason SMALLVILLE is disapproved by "purists." But even the traditional Superman that we associate with the forties, fifties, and sixties is very different from the original character. For instance, Superman could not originally fly. Was the addition of the ability to fly improper? I personally love to see people exploring variations of the Superman legend, as long as they are respectful or serious, and no one who has actually watched SMALLVILLE could argue that they are not respectful. In fact, the show continually pays homage to entire Superman tradition. For instance, they acknowledge the Christopher Reeves movies both by having Reeves himself appear in two different episodes and by on these occasions working the John Williams's Superman theme into the score. Every episode begins by acknowledging Jerry Siegal and Joe Shuster as the creators of the show, and many episodes contain references of one sort or another to Siegal or Shuster. In other words, the show knows where it comes from, and they are generous in acknowledging that. Besides, if someone dislikes a particular variant, they can skip it. No one is forced to watch SMALLVILLE. I do think that the show is a worthy addition to the Superman saga, and is remarkable for having presented the most interesting and complex depiction of Lex Luthor, converting him from a simple arch villain to a complex, many-sided character possessing great potential for either good or evil.
This is one of a series of shows that seems to have profited from the example of BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER. During the 1990s many series were struggling with the new potential the medium was displaying in the wake of TWIN PEAKS. The first show to really begin exploiting this potential was THE X-FILES (a show that feeds into SMALLVILLE by the presence of a large number of people who either acted or were part of the production staff of both shows), but the lone mistake that that great show made (amid a vast number of marvelous achievements) was to structure the show around the mythology and the events of each week instead of the characters. We all really watched THE X-FILES for Mulder and Scully instead of the weird phenomena, but the show never structurally reflected that. BUFFY was the show that first emphasized characters and their stories over the mysteries. We have since seen a number of shows that have followed in BUFFY's tracks-DEAD LIKE ME, WONDERFALLS, VERONICA MARS, and LOST (the co-creator of the latter acknowledges this explicitly)-and SMALLVILLE is one of these. Despite the tendency of network execs to cancel shows with long story arcs and despite the unwelcome presence of so many reality shows, this truly might be the Golden Age of narrative television.
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October 5, 2010 "Please retry" | — | 6 | $13.99 | $2.49 |
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