The Big and the Smallville

Someone asked me why I didn't cover the end of Smallville at Fan To Pro.  Smallville, after all was a decade-long television show based on comic book icon Superman, and probably sounds like something worth covering.  That was a great question, and frankly, I felt it deserved it's own post.


Let me say up front that part of it probably was my mixed feelings about Smallville, which for my money alternated between brilliant and just sort of bizarre or lame.  After the first few seasons the show never seemed to have a point to me, really – Smallville episodes seemed to consist of brilliant ones that got me watching again, and lame ones that led me to stop watching.  You get the idea.

However, this is not the reason for a lack of progeek analysis on Smallville.  The real reason?

I couldn't figure what lessons to derive.

Smallville seems to be a giant Exception To The Rules.  It's sort of comic book, sort of not, sort of soap opera, sort of . . .  well all sorts of things.  It's kind of an Elseworlds, but never seemed to quite cut loose for any length of time.  Smallville in the end just is what it is.

I couldn't find anything to say about it.  It was it's own thing, and I couldn't find anything that could easily been extrapolated and applied.

Am I wrong?  Most certainly – someone else could probably impart a lot of lessons from this decade-long show.

Sadly, it's just not going to be me.

Steven Savage