I think I’m in for crappy news regarding the only two shows I watch regularly at the moment.
First, they are announcing the Dub Cast for Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood as I type this. I’m following it on twitter, and I’m afraid the absolute wrong person is about to be cast for a character I really like in the new series, simply because he could’t reprise his role as the character he played in the first version of the series. I wont name any names just yet, but if what I think is about to happen happens, I’m going to be massively disappointed.
Second, the Smallville premier is tonight. The spoilers for the season, so far, look very good, to the point that I’m actually kinda hoping for a season 10, but . . . the show is on Friday nights now. And as everyone knows, Friday is NOT a good day for a TV show to air. It’s known as the death slot for a reason. The only show I can remember that really not only survived but flourished on Friday nights was The X-Files back in the day.
So yeah. My two top TV and fannish things, and it looks like disappointment is going to abound for both of them today. If this is Smallville’s last season I guess I can try and enjoy it even if I seem to finally be getting what I wanted from the show after all these years, but will now only get it for one year sadly.
But the dub cast for FMA:B is something else. Because I generally liked the English Dub of the first series. But miscasting is miscasting, no matter if I liked the voice actor or not.
It has been a while since I blogged, but now that the fall TV season is here, I think I will have more to write about. At least, in regards to one show in particular.
As I said before, I hated the season 8 finale of Smallville. I didn’t start watching Smallville until just before season 6 started, so the only season finales I had to deal with in real time before the season 8 finale were the season 6 and season 7 ones. And while both “Phantom” in season six and “Arctic” in season 7 didn’t rock my world, they were okay in that they didn’t insult and annoy me on a massive scale like the season 8 finale did.
So I avoided all things Smallville after that for most of the summer. I didn’t look up spoilers for the show or anything else about it. I put my Lois and Clark shipping on hold because, no matter how much I loved each character individually and together, I didn’t know if I really wanted to see what they did with the relationship anymore after the horrible way it was handled when Lana Lang came back mid-season.
So it wasn’t until around mid-August when I started checking out Smallville news and spoilers to see if anything could still interest me about the show to stick with it.
Yeah. As the title of the post says, “just when I think I’m out? They pull me back in!”
Damn you Smallville. And damn you Tom Welling and Erica Durance. Dame you for being the best Clark Kent and Lois Lane ever in my opinion. The producers are damn lucky that my favorite characters on the show are Clark and Lois (individually and together), because if they weren’t I think it would be much easier to walk away.
Before I get into the spoilers for season 9 (which I’ll shield with a cut), the news that really got me hopeful for season 9 was the news that Tom Welling would be made an Executive Producer of the show. It was a long time coming frankly, because no one knows his character like Tom does. You can see it from the episodes he directs. What I loved about the first half of season 8 was how mature and confident Clark was starting to be allowed to act and be. After the massive stalling with Clark’s growth from seasons 5-7, Clark was finally moving forward again, and it was wonderful to behold.
Pity all that growth got shattered when Lana came back. But I digress.
Tom’s Clark gets a lot of flack, mostly from shippers who don’t like how he may be treating their particular girl of choice at the moment. But I myself always try to at least see his POV of things, even if I think he’s wrong. And for all the bad handling by the writers sometimes of his character, I absolutely love, sympathize and – most of all – identify with this Clark Kent more than I have with any other. It’s because of this that I can no longer stand Silver Age stories about Superman, which is where all the Superman films (including Superman Returns) are all set in. In the Silver Age comics and Silver Age based movies, Clark Kent is nothing more than a disguise, and I totally hate the entire concept now. Kal-El was raised as Clark Kent. Until he learned he was an alien and where he was from, that is all he ever knew himself as. To just dismiss Clark as nothing more than a disguise is too simplistic for me anymore (and I think it’s dismissive of the Kents who loved and raised him too).
I’m not a fan of Vids – music videos made by fans and regular people. Usually because most vids I’ve seen are not well thought out; the songs used are not ones that fit the story the vids trying to tell most of the time, if they are trying to tell a story at all.
This vid, however, is one of the few exceptions I have. I don’t just like this vid, I love this vid. It deals directly with the character of Clark Kent and his growth as a character over the years. When I saw it, it reminded me that, with all the faults and other things I have with the show, why I still like it, and still love Clark Kent.
Warning – Spoilers for season 9 underneath the cut: