Smallville Rant (Part 1)

Smallville started out with a very interesting premise. It was to be the story of Clark Kent before he became Superman; it was to be the story of the friendship between Clark Kent and Lex Luthor; and it was to be the story of Lex Luthor's descent to evil.

The show was sometimes serious, sometimes light-hearted, sometimes sentimental, and of course sometimes angsty. But it was always first and foremost about Clark Kent’s journey to becoming Superman; Lex Luthor’s journey to becoming Superman’s arch nemesis; and the friendship of legend.

Along that journey Clark found out about his alien origins, the necessity of keeping his abilities a secret and became friends with Lex Luthor. The Kents’ upbringing taught Clark responsibility, heroism, morality, love, friendship, forgiveness. Of course it can be argued (successfully) that the Kents also taught Clark to be paranoid, judgmental, quick to jump to conclusions, quick to anger, and ready to tell boldface lies. Okay so some things weren't great, but I digress.

Lex Luthor taught Clark about history, Greek mythology, going for what you want and that the ends justify the means. Of course, Clark being Clark never agreed with the last point – whether it was with regards to stealing Lana away from Whitney in S1 or experimenting on people for the greater good of humanity in s6.

But somewhere, somehow, I don’t know why the original premise of the show was lost. Suddenly it wasn’t about the friendship of legend or Lex Luthor or even Clark Kent but more about who the loves of Lana Lang, the Green Arrow, special guest stars and stunt casting. Coincidentally (or not), Smallville moved to the CW in 2006.

In S6 the big news was that Green Arrow was coming to Smallville! He was going to be used as a catalyst to push Clark towards his destiny. At the time I thought why does Clark need to be pushed towards something he would choose willingly? Anyway, with Green Arrow we were going to get a nascent Justice League, more Level 33.1, more badass Lex, and especially a more Supes-like Clark. Yay, I thought.

None of that came to pass. As long as GA remained in SV, the epic journeys of Clark Kent and Lex Luthor were all but forgotten to GreenArrowVille. Oliver Queen and Lex had animosity brewing from their time together at boarding school and GA was inexplicably Lex’s enemy. More baffling, GA singlehandedly put together the nascent JL although Clark had already met and positively influenced all its members.

In retrospect I should have seen this coming. Before the season started there were quite a few interviews with Justin Hartley (Green Arrow) and the producers about Green Arrow and plenty of promotional pictures of GA. That was the tip-off that SV would become GreenArrowVille.

I started wondering why/when did the writers/producers/network lose interest in the protagonist of the story?