Smallville Season 8

Looking over what I've written about this series over the past year and a half, I was ready to send this longtime fave upstate to the farm – like straight up into Smallville, nowhere. I stopped watching this show weekly at some point in the season when DVR conflicts and the GSW hoops games forced me to make some decisions. This one was going to be a late summer catch-up on NetFlix (maybe the one time of year that I make back my wasted dues from other parts of the year). I can't say that the decision signaled my personal preferences though since Supernatural was another member of the cut-midseason list for me, but that show was easily one of my top-3 favorite shows last season. Well, that decision was made slightly easier, as well, for the fact that I didn't have CW in HD, so I figured if I was going to DVR a show I might as well keep tabs on the visually prettier ones and I'd catch Supernatural and Smallville on standard DVD about this time of the year. Instead, I'm catching up to both through Blu-Ray. I'm anxious to watch Supernatural on time. Smallville on the other hand looks pretty much like the Supernatural hand except with less expectations. I think Smallville redeemed itself for the most part by the end of Season 8. Was it as compelling, personally, as it had been in the past? No. There are still fatal flaws inherent to the new Smallville that I've come to terms with, but there are fun parts to latch onto as well.

First, the MEH.

The set: Maybe the worst part of the Season 8 was the Birds of Preyification of the Smallville set. It was always nice to see real skies, real roads, real places in Smallville: the farm, the main street, the school, the vast areas of “Smallville, KS”, and Vancouver aka Metropolis. Now, the sets are small, clausterphobic, completely phony, and defined by fog machines. It's all indoors and it is conspicuosly distracting to the overall flow of watching the show. We all need some time to settle into our episodes and it is basically difficult to do when the sets are just so “cheap”. Metropolis, by the way, feels like Gotham City. It's dark, ominous, jagged. I'll get to this later.

The music: Mark Snow, the same composer that scored the X-Files, used to score Smallville. Not anymore. He had some distinct sounds that I miss. Aside from his style, the grand narrative and the aforementioned dankness of Metropolis is painted with different music. It is very “superhero-ish” with grand brasses. And basically, it's annoying. The stories before were more about relationships and the music had a nice balance of delicate and stark, but I rarely remember them overpowering any scenes. Now, like most movies, Smallville is overscored.

The kryptonification: I'll preface these comments with the recognition that shows have to evolve – especially one-hour dramas that go one for more than five seasons. With that said, Smallville started to lose its soul – the focus on a town that happened to have the kid that would eventually become Superman – when it began to rely heavily on the kryptonian mythology and bigger picture. If that's the course needed, so be it. They shouldn't sacrifice human connections. I feel like the characters are pawns in the creators' desire to serialize the show.

With all that said, I kinda don't remember the good stuff. But there was some progress by the end of Season 8.

Primarily, once the show was mostly purged of the strings from Lana and Lex backstories the rest of the story began to mature. Yes, we know that Clark is a man of Metropolis, now. He is now dealing with grown man shit and at some point he is going to become Superman. I assume that is the endgame of this show come the end of Season 9 or 10 (if it gets there). As much as I love Kristin Kreuk, Lana was a one-dimensional character that really didn't offer much else outside of being Clark's “soulmate”. She was also the high school sweetheart and first love. We all knew from the beginning that they wouldn't last. And, like any person, the first love lost can be the spark to letting go of the past and moving on towards the future. Season 8 freed Clark from this major anchor to the past. Lex, like Lana, was pivotal to the essence of this show. The friendship that turned into the legendary rivalry was a major piece of this show, but even though Lex still stirs up trouble to this day in the comics, there wasn't much more that they could do no matter how talented Michael Rosenbaum is. Similarly, Clark is freed completely from his man vs man conflict against Lex and is forced to deal with himself and his “destiny”.

While the disposal of Doomsday seemed anticlimactic, the digression of the Davis Bloome character was gut wrenching to his final decision to cement his legacy in Smallville lore. That decision created a surprise that was tragic and extremely sad both to us viewers and the characters themselves. That pivotal scene laid wonderful groundwork for Season 9 and Clark's continued journey.

And that is where I am today. It took a while, but Smallville has seemed to finally move out of its parents house, spent sometime listless on friends' couches, and has landed on its feet in a modest apartment. Hopefully, if done properly, Season 9 will continue a solid adventure and development of characters to tie up nicely in Season 10 – ugly, styrofoamed sets aside.

posted by breakfast boy@ 12:47 AM