Monday, May 16, 2011

That thing about the Smallville finale...

You have disappointed me for the last time Smallville. Never again will I have high hopes for one of your finales just to fall face first into the giant shit-ball of hype you create. You are over, and even though you've entertained me plenty of times over the years, I'm glad to see you go.

Smallville to me will always be that one show that could have been something spectacular, but it just shot itself in the foot with it's over the top melodrama and cliches.

I will always see it as a melting pot of wasted opportunities to make something truly spectacular for an audience who would have truly appreciated it; and we would have appreciated it all the way up to the end, that's why we gave it chance after chance after chance. We lived for that one comic book reference that the normal fan wouldn't get. We would browse Wikipedia just to check if we missed anything, just so we would feel like we were on the inside with those writers. But most of all, we waited for those big moments where our characters would put aside the soap opera for a minute and truly move on to something great. It usually does happen, and it lasts about thirty seconds, that's why I'm disappointed.


This season was far from the best they've done (to me, that would be season 5). Season 9 was far stronger, in every possible way, and I really do believe it should have stopped there. From the moment I heard Darkseid was coming, I already knew it was a bad idea. We are talking about the single most bad ass villain in the DC Universe. He doesn't belong on the world of the trivial, he doesn't belong on Smallville (neither did Doomsday for that matter).
Save the world? Nah, I'm good, let him have it.
There are just some places that a show about a young Superman just shouldn't go, and Darkseid should top that list. Lets put it this way... If Batman was always off limits, then the guy that killed him should be even higher on that list.


Not only does Darkseid show up, but he's defeated in the most ridiculous manner possible, totally destroying his character for millions of new fans in the process. I really hate not being able to spoil this, but we here at SiD work by a moral code, so that's as far as I'm going to go.


The finale itself showed promise (like always with SV) but failed to deliver in most. We knew a wedding would happen, we knew Lex would be returning. I was really pumped for the latter of those two, unfortunately I got stuck with around an hour and a half of reconciliation and drawn out out of nowhere daddy issues, followed by a drawn out wedding where most of the buildup from the season gets swatted in about three minutes.


The Lex scene is by far the high point of the season. It does feel gratifying to have that confrontation. But he's just there, he really doesn't do anything because, he's not the villain yet.

All in all, Smallville went out the same way it came in: flat and boring. Was it all worth it? Probably not, but we don't care. We will rewatch Justice over and over just to make ourselves feel better. And on top of that, I still probably liked it better than Superman Returns.

4/10












2 comments:

  1. Great review! I still haven't seen it but I dread the moment I do with the utmost fear. Now more than ever, I'm afraid.

    Darkseid is one of my favorite villains and from the moment he was announced as the Big Bad of season 10, I had a feeling it was going to go down a very bad path. Smallville has always been a show about incomplete ideas, never fully realizing its potential, as you very well put it, and I didn't want to see the Lord of Apokolips reduced to a fraction of his full awesomisity.

    That said, I have only one quibble with this review in which I'm in complete disagreement with: I MUCH prefer Superman Returns to this poorly-written, ill-conceived shadow of a show. Sorry, but Brandon was a more convincing Superman than Tom ever was for me. =)

    ReplyDelete
  2. I haven't watched Smallville in forever, but while I agree with Ray that Brandon seemed a more convincing Superman... they dropped the ball when they cast Kevin Spacey as Lex Luthor and gave him that ridiculous real estate plan.

    ReplyDelete