I came late to the television show Smallville. I didn’t watch the show regularly when it first started because I thought it was rather pointless to. Smallville being a prequel to the Superman story, I knew how it all ended: I knew that Clark didn’t end up with Lana and he and Lex became bitter enemies, not friends as they start out.
However, before season six first started, I discovered that Lois Lane has been added to the cast. Now, I have always been a fan of the Lois & Clark relationship. In high school I used to watched the tv show Lois & Clark all the time.
So, before season six started I went back and watched all the episodes and seasons I missed. And, for the most part, the show was very good – especially seasons two and three IMO. The season Lois came on had it’s highs and lows, and season five seemed to spin it’s wheels a lot, but still had some very good, quality episodes.
Season six of the show started, and I tuned in to the show every week, until about mid season. The first half of season six was very strong, but the second half seemed to slump until the final two episode. Season seven seemed to follow the same pattern, but there were some great mythology episode during that point in the seventh season – plus the writer’s strike at the time stalled some things, so I could forgive it. The three characters I mainly liked, Lois, Clark and Lex, all were still interesting to me. I wasn’t a rabid fan of the show, but it entertained me more than not; even if their were things or story aspects I didn’t like no and then, it never offended me or felt like it was insulting my intelligence.
Until last week’s season eight finale that is.
First let me say this in all fairness: season eight of the show started out with fantastic promise. Lana Lang who, quite frankly, had no place on the show after season four, was gone for good, only scheduled to come for a five episode stint to finally close out her character. Lex was gone, and that worried me, but the plan they seemed to be setting up for the season – dealing with the monster Doomsday, who was the only villain ever to kill Superman — seemed quite inspired. I didn’t like the character of Chloe Sullivan much, but that mostly had to do with her crazy, rabid fanbase than the character most of the time. She was getting her own creepy story dealing with Doomsday’s alter ego Davis Bloom, so I was at least more interested in her story arc for the year than I had ever been before.
And, most of all, the story of Lois and Clark was finally starting to move forward into true Lois & Clark territory.
There were misteps that happened, a huge one in fact during the mid season arc when Lana came back, but for the most part, I thought the show had been better than it had been, especially in the past two years.
So it’s truly sad that the final episode of the season pissed me off so much in the way it insulted my intelligence as a viewer, that I have been seriously contemplating giving up the series as it goes into it’s ninth season.