Should have been cancelled: Smallville

I don't remember exactly where I was when Smallville began. I remember reading about the pilot in a magazine, and discussing the prospect of a new Superman TV program with some friends. We had grown up with Lois and Clark playing in the background, though had never made a serious effort to understand that show's undoubtedly intricate plot threads. This new show, I heard, would be more geared towards a younger market, focussing as it would on Clark Kent's schooldays. I remember thinking this sounded nice, but not really mind-blowing. In the end, I didn't see the pilot when it aired (I was probably too busy playing Perfect Dark) but I caught up with the series later. And my God, what a disappointment.

Which is saying something, considering my expectations weren't exactly huge to begin with. What could, in hindsight, have been an innovative and challenging series was nothing but a serially repetitive paint-by-numbers outing, which more resembled a parody of an Enid Blyton book than the glory days of Richard Donner and Christopher Reeve. As a friend commented years later, it was the same episode every week, just with a different name. The not-so-winning formula went something like: mutant (sometimes ghost) created by Kryptonian space debris gets up to no good, affable farm boy Clark Kent (Tom Welling, who must be exhausted after a decade of this tedium) must put a stop to this getting up of no good whilst keeping his superpowers a secret from the world at large, particularly his burgeoning love interest Lana Lang (Kristin Kreuk), under the loving eye of his remarkably boring, dirt farming adopted parents. Unsurprisingly, this wearisome format bred much apathy - after all, if you had seen one episode you'd basically seen them all - and combined with two-dimensional characters and dialogue which would make the writer of a cheap soap opera cringe, amounted to distinctly average show.

This isn't to say there weren't the odd bright sparks. Michael Rosenbaum's portrayal of the young Lex Luthor, Clark's gothic mansion-dwelling best friend who liked to help out but obviously enjoyed flirting with the dark side, was usually very watchable and initially presented the show's only interesting character - someone who saw the world as more a more morally complicated place than Clark's boy scout ethics allowed for. Likewise, Clark's other friend Chloe Sullivan (played by Alison Mack) quickly became a fan favourite, and once her character was allowed to evolve beyond just being Clark's dependable and geeky sidekick she also became one of the series' few watchable characters, often displaying a maverick streak and ruthlessness which was enjoyable in a world of flat characters. And in fairness, the series also progressively improved over time. Once Clark left High School and the action moved to the contrastingly grungy urban (but clearly studio set) locales of Metropolis to pursue a career at the Daily Planet, the formulaic ‘bad guy of the week’ approach was dropped and greater room was given to episode storylines and character development, such as it was. (The turning point was probably the death of Clark’s adopted father in season five, which marked an end to the existing episode format and also happily expunged one of the show’s stiffest characters.)

The good times didn’t last long, however – as the show leapt from one extreme of unreal predictability to being increasingly weighted down by its own labyrinth of story-arcs, plot points and in-universe jargon. Even bringing in old time Superman characters – such as Lois Lane, Super Girl, General Zod, Green Arrow, and possibly the most annoying character ever brought to life on television, Jimmy Olsen – didn’t help, and in fact helped to overload the show with its own silliness. And so, after a decade, the series has finally been cancelled. Which begs the question: just who exactly has been so devoted to this quagmire of tedious characters, flat dialogue and stories swinging between mind-numbingly boring and inaccessibly convoluted that it was kept alive for so long?

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