Smallville Season Finale - Preparing to be a Man

I got onto the Smallville bandwagon just recently, in the last couple years, but I've talked about that already.

Every sporadic Thursday, it almost quenches the thirst for all things comic book, and this season, it's been hitting closer to the mark. Over the past few weeks, as the CW seasons end, I have read a lot about Smallville. I hear Lex Luthor is leaving, I hear that next season they are bringing in some different villains, including Doomsday, the only one to kill Superman. As I don't read the ccomic anymore, I am not sure how DC danced around that particular comic stunt, but of course it is nothing new.

Wait, I was writing about Smallville, which is a television show which for many years kept a distance from the comic book Superman, building it's own mythology and it's own Clark Kent, not doing too terrible of a job either. Thing is, this season, they aren't really staying away from the comic book anymore. In fact, they keep bringing in more of the mythology only previously referred to in the comics. For one, in the episode two weeks ago, "Apocalypse," where Clark did his own version of "It's A Wonderful Life," time-traveling and jumping into a world in which he did not arrive from Krypton, he for the first time sported the classic reporter look, broad-rimmed glasses and all.

This last week, in the finale, more walls came down, and all signs were go that Clark Kent was going to quit being a watered down version of SuperBOY, and become a TV-version of Superman. It's risky, but I'll be tuning in.

Smallville has some Power Ranger Moments

When Smallville first came out, I didn't look into it enough to even know it was about Superman, truly, they didn't promote it like that in the beginning, but in handling it that way the show has been able to evolve, along with it's cast, into a mythology of it's own. As a teen soap opera it has succeeded, and as a TV show trying to capitalize on the success of comic-based movies, it has had moments. In the last couple of years, I know it has ascended from free-time fodder to schedule making viewing.

The last few years, they have slowly introduced other superheroes, the Flash, Cyborg, Green Arrow, Aquaman, and Black Canary, for starters. This last season they even had references to the Justice League, with the posed shot of them walking into the camera right from the cartoon's opening theme.

This last week was the return of Green Arrow and appearance of Black Canary. Maybe they were trying to geet out the big guns for the new show push, but it was reaching a little bit. The opening sequence, where Black Canary appears and faces off with Green Arrow, with some very hacked up CGI flying/cable descension, had some Power Ranger moments. It made my girlfriend laugh when she happened to walk into the room.

Suspension of disbelief and ridiculous aside, the slip seemed to be out of laziness, a little more care to take the special effects to the current level would have fixed most of it, but Black Canaries powers never translated to paper very well either.

I can respect that this show relies on straddling a few demographics, teenagers, comic book fans, and cartoon watching kids, and still enjoy it. In fact, I think the plot string it is following might be a lot more interesting than any the original Superman comic came up with. The handling of Bizarro Superman was very vanilla, but watchable, and if they are careful, the Justice League and DC comic character universe could be a well for the writers to continue to taste from, I'll keep watching.