Smallville - General Discussion

[Aethera]

This topic replaces the old Smallville forum which has been vaulted at the location below:

http://forums.previously.tv/forum/481-smallville-v/

[SueB]

Everytime I see the Dr Pepper "Fanville" commercials, I get Smallville flashbacks:

 

First there's the watertower flyby, the font, and the use of 'ville' in the title:

Now add the 'forbidden love' of "Ramone and Julia"

and take a close look at Ramone's dark hair and blue eyes....

It's a hilarious set of videos but I swear it's either a direct shout-out to "Smallville" or someone at the ad agency was a fan.

[BkWurm1]

I've never seen them before.  That's so odd.

[rogvortex58]

My DVDs are seriously outdated in picture quality. Older episodes look so much better in HD on iTunes now.

Only problem is the pilot is cut down to only 40 minutes.

[BkWurm1]

Huh.  I hadn't thought of that.  I suppose that's one reason to consider rebuying them in Blu Ray.

[GHScorpiosRule]

My dvd quality works just fine for me. The show is still very rich in its colors and the special effects still are kewl. The look just became more darker and I have the last season on Blu-ray and don’t notice any difference. Of course, I have a hi-definition teevee.

[rogvortex58]

Problem is only The CW seasons were released on blu ray. The WB ones have yet to be.

[GHScorpiosRule]

3 hours ago, rogvortex58 said:

Problem is only The CW seasons were released on blu ray. The WB ones have yet to be.

I’m pretty sure the entire series is available on Blu-ray.

[HeatLifer]

Ha, I love this.

[DigitalCount]

I don't know if anyone here is big on podcasts like me, but one to consider is Always Hold On to Smallville. This guy does a week-by-week retrospective (sometimes he jokingly calls it Always Hold On to Spoilers because he's constantly mentioning stuff that comes later for the sake of tracking continuity) and it's pretty comprehensive for the most part. Also (like me) he's a big fan of the work of people like Neal Bailey and Craig Byrne, and frequently uses both to get a read on how people viewed the episodes at the time.

Worth a look if you like that sort of thing.

[VCRTracking]

[Flyingwoman]

On 2/6/2019 at 3:13 PM, DigitalCount said:

I don't know if anyone here is big on podcasts like me, but one to consider is Always Hold On to Smallville. This guy does a week-by-week retrospective (sometimes he jokingly calls it Always Hold On to Spoilers because he's constantly mentioning stuff that comes later for the sake of tracking continuity) and it's pretty comprehensive for the most part. Also (like me) he's a big fan of the work of people like Neal Bailey and Craig Byrne, and frequently uses both to get a read on how people viewed the episodes at the time.

Worth a look if you like that sort of thing.

Thanks for the rec. Lots of good stuff there. He's got info on guest stars & characters from the Superman mythos, good critiques of the shows terrible timelines, the product placement (!!! I almost caused a car accident laughing at his admission that he used Old Spice Red Zone for years because it was featured in Jinx) and where episodes succeeded and where they failed.

[SueB]

Well, this is starting to wrap up:

As far as I know, this goes to sentencing in Sept. Although I think she could get as much as 40 years (2 counts - racketeering, conspiracy to racketeering), I suspect it'll be closer to 5-10 years and recovery of any money she made,  based on her pleading guilty and first offense. A horrible story.  I'm just glad she's not thinking she did nothing wrong anymore. What she did was horrific.  I'm not sure why they let her get away without sex offender crime (IF they did, no guarantee that the press got all the details right). 

[Chaos Theory]

Am I the only person who wants to watch this whole thing again with the new spoiler of Chloe being the true villain of the story?  

[GHScorpiosRule]

Chloe is not Allison.

[Bercilak]

On 4/9/2019 at 1:10 PM, GHScorpiosRule said:

Chloe is not Allison.

No, she isn't.  I can't imagine Chloe Sullivan ever doing anything like this. . .

[greenbean]

Heads up for UKers, they've been showing Smallville from S1 on 5Star, channel 30 on Freeview. You can also watch it on their catchup service my5.

It's been fun seeing the show again. Rosenbaum truly was so great as Lex.

[HeatLifer]

Aww!

[PepSinger]

I’m glad the actors seem to be a lot more willing to engage with fans nowadays — especially Tom and Kristin. I remember pretty much after season 4 the actors stopped doing any sort of commentary or interviews.

[MichelleNZ]

On 5/24/2019 at 1:10 PM, PepSinger said:

I’m glad the actors seem to be a lot more willing to engage with fans nowadays — especially Tom and Kristin. I remember pretty much after season 4 the actors stopped doing any sort of commentary or interviews.

It's a good way for the actors to keep some income coming in when they are between roles etc I guess. Tom was recently down here in New Zealand so they are prepared to travel a fair distance to these events which is great. I'd love to see Erica go along to some in the future maybe together with Tom they would be a huge hit but she has a young family at the moment so it's understandable that she hasn't done any for sometime.

[PepSinger]

17 hours ago, MichelleNZ said:

It's a good way for the actors to keep some income coming in when they are between roles etc I guess. Tom was recently down here in New Zealand so they are prepared to travel a fair distance to these events which is great. I'd love to see Erica go along to some in the future maybe together with Tom they would be a huge hit but she has a young family at the moment so it's understandable that she hasn't done any for sometime.

Honestly, even though I’m not crazy about Erica as an actor, she did her fair share of promotion during the show. She’s entitled to a break. 

I also find it odd how the show hasn’t really had a mainstream media surgence since Hulu started streaming it in the fall of 2016.

Edited May 30, 2019 by PepSinger

[Spartan Girl]

On 4/9/2019 at 2:10 PM, GHScorpiosRule said:

Chloe is not Allison.

No, thank God.  But it's still all very sad.  Chloe was one of the few characters that had actual development on this show.  I really came to like her once she finally stopped being a petty, nosy Nice Girl after learning The Secret.

My bitterness over the end of Game of Thrones has brought back so many memories of my Smallville bitterness and how much better this show could have been, had they spent more time actually turning Clark into Superman.  

[Spartan Girl]

Despite the fact that most of us are still bitter AF, what moments from the show brought you absolute joy? I'm surprised to admit I still have a couple:

• "Memoria" was one of the best episodes ever, period. Clark remembering Lara and the whole heartbreaking history between Lex, Lionel, and Julian.
• "Krypto" is also a favorite because I loved Shelby and dogs make everything better. It was always nice to see Clark happy for a change.
• Christopher Fucking Reeve as Virgil Swan. Enough said.
• The show's loving tribute to Reeve after his passing: "He made us believe a man could fly." 😭😭😭😭😭
• Say what you want about Clois but I was highly amused by Lois kissing Clark when he was posing as Oliver/Green Arrow if only for Clark's "omg, wtf, that was so totally hot" expression afterward.
• The season 3 finale montage of the Magnificent Bastard getting shaved in prison, Chloe supposedly getting blown up, and the symbol being burned on the Kents' lawn, and Clark getting sucked in the cave portal.
• Clark flying for the first time at the beginning of season 4. Nearly wet myself when I first saw it.
• And because I'm a sucker for John Williams, the final five minutes of the series finale.

Although it's still stupid that THEY NEVER SHOWED HIM ACTUALLY WEARING THE GODDAMN SUIT. It actually works more if you pretend almost all of the nonsense in the past ten seasons never happened.

[Lisin]

Michael Rosenbaum's podcast is having "Smallville Week" if anyone is interested! He's had Al and Miles one episode and then Kristen so far. 

[Flyingwoman]

On 6/6/2019 at 11:19 AM, Spartan Girl said:

My bitterness over the end of Game of Thrones has brought back so many memories of my Smallville bitterness and how much better this show could have been, had they spent more time actually turning Clark into Superman.  

I have an incredible urge to hug all the dazed and enraged GOT fans out there, whispering: "Oh, you sweet summer children. You never saw Superman try to persuade his pregnant ex-girlfriend to run away with him on the day of her wedding to the baby's father, did you? I'd like to tell you it gets better, that someday youll stop seeing throw-away, garbage tweets with more thoughtful S8 plot outlines than anything D&D could have constructed, and it'll all just seem like a bad, slightly paranoid dream. Really, it will. For awhile. Until the next lazy show-runner decides to half-ass their way to a series conclusion, and it'll all come roaring back."

That said, Clark taking down the missile in Hidden was Smallville at it's finest for me. Yes, there were some plotholes in the episode (because it was, after all, Smallville), but that was the closest I thought Clark came to Superman. I was kind of on a high from that all the way through Justice in S6. To crib off one of a zillion post-GOT memes: Wasn't it great that Smallville ended with the formation of the Justice League, all of them working together to defeat a Luthor scheme that stretched, in one form or another, all the way back to Season 1? Imagine all the great stuff they'll do in the future!

[Spartan Girl]

6 hours ago, Flyingwoman said:

I have an incredible urge to hug all the dazed and enraged GOT fans out there, whispering: "Oh, you sweet summer children. You never saw Superman try to persuade his pregnant ex-girlfriend to run away with him on the day of her wedding to the baby's father, did you? I'd like to tell you it gets better, that someday youll stop seeing throw-away, garbage tweets with more thoughtful S8 plot outlines than anything D&D could have constructed, and it'll all just seem like a bad, slightly paranoid dream. Really, it will. For awhile. Until the next lazy show-runner decides to half-ass their way to a series conclusion, and it'll all come roaring back."

True.  There have been many shows in my life that let me down like that.  Smallville was just one.  Only unlike GOT, it had the decency to suck for a long time before it ended.

Oh, how could I forget "Justice"?!  That really was one of the better episodes.  I would have loved more episodes like that and less of meteor freaks, Lana angst, and shoehorned-in Superman villains like Brainiac and Doomsday that were basically there for fanservice and to convolute the plot even more.

They really squandered the opportunity for Clark to grow after Jonathan's death.  I would have loved it if his guilt for inadvertently sacrificing his father to save Lana had consumed him to the point where he fell out of love for her, was able to finally see her faults, and finally get fed up with her whining about secrets and lies and the he finally and PERMANENTLY cut all emotional ties with her.  Now that would have been GOOD writing.  But I guess they couldn't have that, could they?

 

[VCRTracking]

[Flyingwoman]

Here's yet another GOT rant, some of which I agree with and some of which I don't, and some of which I thought could be equally applied to Smallville, especially this section:

Benioff and Weiss’s prescriptive approach to storytelling is exactly what transformative fandom runs counter to, and it plays into the specific problem that plagued the show throughout its final season: the conflict between natural character progressions and the bulleted checklist of plot points that Benioff and Weiss seemingly felt obligated to deliver. ... Benioff and Weiss fell back on plot and spectacle and callbacks, even when it meant characters contradicted themselves or acted in highly inconsistent ways. The effect was that they wound up regurgitating George R.R. Martin’s plot directions without any deeper thought for what it would do to the characters.

Of course, having said that, I have to wonder how much to the character-development problem was created by the "transformative" nature of the core Smallville concept, which was that Clark Kent didn't want to grow up to be Superman, trying to fill a "curatorial" role by explaining how he came to do that anyway.

[razzib16]

As @greenbean said:

Here in the UK Smallville is being shown again on channel 5*.

This is great - or rather it would be great if they were showing it all.

They showed series 1, then series 2, then ... series 1, then series 2, then ... they are now showing series one again.

That is just ridiculous!

I was so looking forward to being able to watch the entire program again, but alas it is not to be. ☹️

[blueray]

I know it's on hulu but I think that is only accessed in the US. But maybe it's on another one?

[blueray]

I don't watch the CW shows, but I guess Tom Welling is reprising his role. Maybe alternate timeline or something?

https://deadline.com/2019/09/tom-welling-reprise-smallville-clark-kent-role-arrowverse-crossover-the-cw-1202738738/

Edited September 20, 2019 by blueray

[rogvortex58]

So...that’s happening.

[DigitalCount]

Erica as well, which is funny because she also plays Allura, Supergirl's mother (and theoretically her aunt Astra, additionally). So that's going to be quite the reunion.

[GHScorpiosRule]

So, as a palate cleanser to wash away the ugh-ness of The White Princess, I decided to rewatch The Tudors. How could I forget that Callum Blue starred in it during the first season??? He didn't sound so marbly-mouthed or chew the scenery like he did as Zod on this show. And he looked yummier.

[bettername2come]

So nine years ago when I was putting up the Christmas tree, the episode where Clark proposes to Lois just happened to be airing. I now have this annual compulsion to pull out this completely un-Christmasy/Thanksgivingy episode now while decorating the tree. Which usually leads to a season ten marathon.

[Spartan Girl]

So.  Crisis on Infinite Earths.  Gonna spoiler tag this just in case:

So I guess some time after they got married, Clark gave up his powers, Lois gave up reporting, and both of them went back to the farm in Smallville and had two daughters.  While Lex Luthor is still president.  I expect nothing and I'm still disappointed.

But considering the fact that Clark never really became Superman (at least not the one we know and love) despite brief moments of growth, maybe it's for the best.  And Tom Welling still looks hot AF, and I loved how chill he was when flicking away the kryptonite and punching Jon Cryer's Lex Luthor.

[GHScorpiosRule]

1 hour ago, Spartan Girl said:

So.  Crisis on Infinite Earths.  Gonna spoiler tag this just in case:

  Reveal spoiler

So I guess some time after they got married, Clark gave up his powers, Lois gave up reporting, and both of them went back to the farm in Smallville and had two daughters.  While Lex Luthor is still president.  I expect nothing and I'm still disappointed.

But considering the fact that Clark never really became Superman (at least not the one we know and love) despite brief moments of growth, maybe it's for the best.  And Tom Welling still looks hot AF, and I loved how chill he was when flicking away the kryptonite and punching Jon Cryer's Lex Luthor.

It's BULLSHIT. Considering how this show ended. BULLSHITBULLSHITBULLSHIT. Even though I squeed at the flannel, and laughed my ass off at the eye rolling and

Clark punching fake!Lex with the "still stronger" snark.

Clark has been whining for 2/3 of this show about his powers preventing him from having a normal life, blah, blah. He was stripped of his powers as punishment by ASSHOLE AI Jor-El; then powers taken again when he didn't get to whatever place by sundown in Season Five, which again, cost him his powers; his refusal to get involved in the League Ollie created; always had to be guilted into it. Then finally, FINALLY, in the series finale, he understood and stopped whining, and proudly wore the suit, granted, horrid CGI because for some reason, even after this wasn't Teenage Years of Clark Kent any longer, the "No Tights! No Flights!" rule should have been abandoned. And he fucking FLEW. So,

telling this poseur Lex that he gave up his powers, is just a fucking cop out, or giving in to Tom, IF he said he would only appear on the show if he didn't have to wear the suit. And really, he didn't have to suit up. It just shows how selfish he is.

Yes, I said it.

That said, despite that horrid hairstyle of his, it was great to see him again and the farm.

[Spartan Girl]

3 hours ago, GHScorpiosRule said:

It's BULLSHIT. Considering how this show ended. BULLSHITBULLSHITBULLSHIT. Even though I squeed at the flannel, and laughed my ass off at the eye rolling and

  Reveal spoiler

Clark punching fake!Lex with the "still stronger" snark.

Clark has been whining for 2/3 of this show about his powers preventing him from having a normal life, blah, blah. He was stripped of his powers as punishment by ASSHOLE AI Jor-El; then powers taken again when he didn't get to whatever place by sundown in Season Five, which again, cost him his powers; his refusal to get involved in the League Ollie created; always had to be guilted into it. Then finally, FINALLY, in the series finale, he understood and stopped whining, and proudly wore the suit, granted, horrid CGI because for some reason, even after this wasn't Teenage Years of Clark Kent any longer, the "No Tights! No Flights!" rule should have been abandoned. And he fucking FLEW. So,

  Reveal spoiler

telling this poseur Lex that he gave up his powers, is just a fucking cop out, or giving in to Tom, IF he said he would only appear on the show if he didn't have to wear the suit. And really, he didn't have to suit up. It just shows how selfish he is.

Yes, I said it.

That said, despite that horrid hairstyle of his, it was great to see him again and the farm.

I hear ya. Like I said, I expected nothing and was still disappointed. Once a BDA always a BDA.

And don't even get me started on what they did with Kevin Conroy as Batman...

[GHScorpiosRule]

1 hour ago, Spartan Girl said:

I hear ya. Like I said, I expected nothing and was still disappointed. Once a BDA always a BDA.

And don't even get me started on what they did with Kevin Conroy as Batman...

I’ve said plenty about that in the episode thread in Batwoman.

[DisneyBoy]

It's already aired so I don't think it needs to be in spoiler tags so I'll just come out and offer my two cents....

By virtue of the fact that Smallville stayed on the air for 10 seasons when it probably should have only been on the air for around 5, Clark never seemed to actually want to be a superhero. He liked helping people and using his powers as needed and he wanted to make a difference, yes, but he never seemed especially excited about it. It was usually Chloe or the other heroes gathering around him to pep talk him into doing active duty. So for me, it isn't a surprise that this universe has Clark giving up his powers to lead a normal life on the farm.

Does it run counter to the status quo of the comics that the show seemed so inexplicably forced to always double back to? Yes. But that's the point of Smallville! This was a show that always had great interesting new ideas and then ruined them by trying to appease the status quo. They introduced a Jimmy who only got interesting when he became a drug addict and then killed him off and said it wasn't Jimmy because of course it couldn't be Jimmy because that's not the Jimmy from the comics. They introduced a semi-alcoholic, somewhat airheaded Lois and then overnight light-switched her into a Dalai Lama-interviewing investigative reporter because that's who she is in the comics. They had Lex spend years getting to know Clark very intimately and ultimately let him find out that Clark's an alien from another planet and then killed him off and pieced together a new Lex and robbed him of his memory so that he wouldn't know anything about Clark Kent because that's how it is in the comics.

So now, for another show and another series of writers to revisit that universe and have Clark, after the lunch bag letdown that was the series finale where he quote-unquote embraced his Superman identity, reveal that he gave the powers up so he could stay on the farm and play dad with Lois...well that just makes me smile and laugh. Because of course Clark would yo-yo back in the opposite direction. Smallville was all about yo-yoing going back and forth!

I can't take it all that seriously.

I do very much want to see Justin Hartley again in his Green Arrow outfit, possibly alongside the Smallville's Black Canary, but I guess that would open up another can of worms too, since the show stupidly decided to make Chloe Oliver's baby mama for no good reason. Smallville is a mess. Often exciting and intriguing but at the end of the day it's a mess. You can't point to character narratives as if they have any sort of cohesion because they don't. And this final epilogue only reconfirms that. It makes no sense that Superman would give up his powers while Lex Luthor is in the office of president. And the season 11 tie-in comics have no bearing here because of course they have no bearing because they're only tie-in comics and were done to make a few extra bucks off fans.

I think the only epilogue that really would have made me happy was seeing Clark on the farm with Lex and their kids because those two just needed to get a room already 🤣

Edited December 11, 2019 by DisneyBoy

[GHScorpiosRule]

2 hours ago, DisneyBoy said:

So now, for another show and another series of writers to revisit that universe and have Clark, after the lunch bag letdown that was the series finale where he quote-unquote embraced his Superman identity, reveal that he gave the powers up so he could stay on the farm and play dad with Lois...well that just makes me smile and laugh. Because of course Clark would yo-yo back in the opposite direction. Smallville was all about yo-yoing going back and forth!

Except on the Aftermath show after Flash last night, Guggenheim revealed that the person who wrote these scenes was a a writer from this show. And cackling that it was awesome because Holyrood (don't feel like checking if that's the correct spelling) "knew the history" so was the perfect person to do it. And it was only in the last two seasons that the stupid show lightswitched everything to line up with the comics. Well, except for Ollie and Chloe. THAT'S not in the comics.

So I'm going to continue to call bullshit on this. And fucking laziness.

[HeatLifer]

On 12/10/2019 at 11:11 AM, GHScorpiosRule said:

It's BULLSHIT. Considering how this show ended. BULLSHITBULLSHITBULLSHIT. Even though I squeed at the flannel, and laughed my ass off at the eye rolling and

It was nice to see Tom, but I have to agree. It was BS and basically undid his entire character arc. 

[GHScorpiosRule]

14 hours ago, HeatLifer said:

It was nice to see Tom, but I have to agree. It was BS and basically undid his entire character arc. 

Exactly. Clark had finally, FINALLY stopped feeling sorry for his Big Dumb Alien Ass, and embraced his destiny. And while there was no suit, we saw him FLY! And it was awesome. Last time we saw him fly was in Season Four, when he was Kal-El, and we saw his bum.

And yet...yet...Seven Years passed, and he was still Supes, but he and Lois weren't married yet. So these two daughters? I'm going to hand wave and assume they're twins; if not, then he and Lois had them during their seven or eight year engagement. And that Clark knew about Pod!Lex coming, and temporarily gave up his powers. And got them back after Pod!Lex was returned.

[DisneyBoy]

It's sweet how you guys are trying to tie this all together and make it work. 😉 

That it was written by a former Smallville writer makes it all the more apropos to me.

I hope I'm not coming off as condescending, but pretty much everything in the last season of the show came off as hollow. I didn't get the feeling anybody watching the show at that point actually believed in the trite monologues Clark was giving about "embracing his destiny" or whatever as much as just watching the show to see how the series would wrap up. I don't see how you could be emotionally engaged with the show by the end of season 10. I watched it from a distance,  fondly recalling the days when I actually cared.

I mean this is the show that suggests that Clark's first big official super act is flying straight through another man's body so that the evil spirit possessing him can turn back into a flock of birds 🤣

Also, the computer system called Jor-El murdered people and played God with everyone's lives to force Clark to embrace his Kryptonian Heritage, until suddenly it changed its mind out of nowhere and decided that the best thing about Clark was his Humanity. Sure! Why not!

I really have to eyeroll the last few years of Smallville. They managed to pull me back in during season 8 but then they screwed it up and I was definitely checked out after that.

I mean Clark, on his way to becoming Superman, blew up Twin Towers full of people in Metropolis. The American Way, ladies and gentlemen!

[GHScorpiosRule]

1 hour ago, DisneyBoy said:

It's sweet how you guys are trying to tie this all together and make it work. 😉 

That it was written by a former Smallville writer makes it all the more apropos to me.

I hope I'm not coming off as condescending, but pretty much everything in the last season of the show came off as hollow. I didn't get the feeling anybody watching the show at that point actually believed in the trite monologues Clark was giving about "embracing his destiny" or whatever as much as just watching the show to see how the series would wrap up. I don't see how you could be emotionally engaged with the show by the end of season 10. I watched it from a distance,  fondly recalling the days when I actually cared.

It sort of sounds condescending, but you're entitled to your opinion, just as others are theirs.

Since TWoP is gone, I'll repeat what I said---that Clark embracing his destiny and wearing that suit at the end--as awesome as it was, was also UNEARNED. John Williams' Superman Theme/Music HIT me in the feels, and I admitted I was a hypocrite. but the MUSIC! 

And I RAGED at how the EVUHL AI all of a sudden, turned into this gentle, "loving" father's ghost.

All that said, it was still canon, that Clark WAS Superman. And a good one for SEVEN YEARS after the finale. That was my point with the nonsense of Tom's Clark's appearance on Batwoman.

[DisneyBoy]

Apologies. Not trying to further annoy those annoyed. I was genuinely surprised they had him give up his powers though. I mean...they had to know that would upset people, right?

[HeatLifer]

On 12/12/2019 at 7:16 AM, GHScorpiosRule said:

So these two daughters? I'm going to hand wave

I basically hand wave this version of Lois and Clark, so I approve of your methods.

[Hiyo]

I can almost see Clark giving up his superpowers. Almost. At least still using his job as an investigative reporter to do good on a local scale.

What I can't see is both of them packing up and moving back to Smallville to live on the farm. Clark I can barely see doing that. Lois? Absolutely not.

Can I just pretend that they were visiting the farm on a long weekend vacation or something?

[blueray]

It is kind of ironic considering Lois has a line (I think in season 5) where she comments how Clark was going to marry Lana and major in agriculture and minor in law enforcement. Then move back to the family farm.  That being said, I don't really see them doing that either.

[GHScorpiosRule]

There are a multitude of reasons why I zoom through the final season of this show, but I swear that Clark took the farm off the market and decided to keep it after Martha ripped him a new one. And that he and Lois decided to keep it as someplace to go to to get away. Even though Smallville was explained being a couple hours away from Metropolis, which was ridiculous in and of itself.

And after it ended, with the EVUHL AI Jor-El being all warm and fuzzy and Clark BEING Superman for SEVEN years, no way I’m buying him giving up his powers. Maybe he did it so “Lex” couldn’t kill him and thwart that twit’s plan. 

I don’t think they said that Lois gave up being a reporter. Maybe they and the kids were there for the weekend? And I need to stop rationalizing why they were at the farm. It’s fucking BULLSHIT and LAZY, considering it was a Smallville writer who wrote it.

Edited December 30, 2019 by GHScorpiosRule