| Smallville's Big Finish | ||||||||||
After 10 years on the air and 217 episodes, Smallville is no more. Clark Kent has put on his
tights and taken flight, finally donning the mantle of the Man of Steel and bringing the longest-running
American Science Fiction series to a close, in a two-hour finale that can only be described as a glorious mess.
Smallville's swan song had story issues and plot holes huge enough to match its earnestness
and heart, and I absolutely loved it because it epitomized everything Smallville has ever
been, both great and terrible, over the course of its decade-long run.
Smallville is hands down one of the most poorly written travesties ever to hit the air. The dialogue
often veered from bad to annoying to borderline incomprehensible; over the course of its final five years, the
storylines were jumbled and contradictory, putting even the most melodramatic soap operas to shame; and many
episodes had such gaping structural flaws -- not to mention character and plot inconsistencies -- that
were it any other series, I would have gleefully chucked in on the ash heap of bad TV.
But it wasn't any other series, because we always knew how it would end. We all knew that buddies Clark and
Lex would wind up bitter enemies; that lovebirds Clark and Lana weren't to be and that Lois was waiting in
the wings; we knew that any enemy, from the lowliest freak of the week all the way up to General Zod, was
doomed to fail because Clark still had to become Superman. And knowing that Clark would meet his iconic
destiny no matter what, storylines became superfluous. It gave Smallville the freedom to be
kinda dumb, so long as it paid off in other ways.
And it did, in spades. Like Superman himself, the series endured because it had tremendous heart. No matter
how dopey things got, Smallville maintained an emotional resonance that kept fans coming
back. You always cared about Clark and wanted to see where he would wind up next. I used to attribute this
to my pre-existing fandom, but as the awful Superman Returns illustrated, love for a character doesn't
mean you'll like or forgive bad properties that feature that character. All the credit for my enduring
enjoyment of Smallville has to go to Tom Welling, who was consistently able to take
whatever mess the Smallville writers threw at him and make it work. No matter how silly or
confusing things got, you always rooted for his Clark Kent.
And that's why the series finale was less about Clark finally becoming Superman, and more about stressing
that the costumed hero is just window dressing on the solid, upright man who lies at that hero's core -- a
man shaped by his experiences and the relationships he forged while in Smallville.
No relationship was more intrinsic to the show's success than the one between Clark and his adoptive parents,
the Kents, particularly between Clark and his earthly father Jonathan. The finale capitalized on this
superbly, bringing Pa Kent back from the dead -- both as the voice of Clark's conscience early on and in a
more substantial spectral form at the end -- for some very touching and pivotal scenes. Take this
one at the Fortress of Solitude, where Jor-El says this upon presenting the Superman suit to Clark:
And that advice applies to Clark's failures as well as his triumphs -- a point the finale hammered
home with yet another resurrection from the dead, bringing Michael Rosenbaum back to reprise his
role as Lex. Clark and Lex shared only one scene, but it illustrated that Lex's influence on Clark's
growth was equally as strong as Jonathan's, just in a different way:
Lex See what I was saying about plot holes and lousy story structure? It's just another day in Smallville, folks, and I could go on and on, but let's get to the biggest problem I think most fans had with the series finale: we never got a good look at Clark in the Superman suit, and he was never directly referred to as Superman. All we got was Clark's head with a flutter of cape behind it; a glimpse of his blue-clad shoulders outside of a plane window as he rescues Lois, and a couple of teeny, tiny, full body CGI shots. And just after he saves the world, and the camera pushes in to give us the first dramatic close up of Clark as Superman, the shot dissolves to a splash panel of Supes in a comic book that Chloe is reading to her son, seven years later. So why bring fans to the brink of the series' most iconic moment, only to give us the ultimate fuck you? Well, it could be as simple as Tom Welling just not fitting the suit, but I think it goes deeper. The writers are clearly saying look, our story ends here. You know the rest from this point on, and there's nothing new for us to show you. Is it a dramatic let down? Of course, especially after waiting ten years for the Big Blue money shot. But no matter how much the fanboy inside me shakes his fists at the merciless heavens, it's also an artistic choice that I respect. Because Smallville was never really about Superman. It was about Clark Kent, a Kansas farm boy trying to make good. And the Smallville finale showed us a wonderful and satisfying culmination of Clark's journey, without obscuring it in the shadow of the super man he was destined to become.
Christopher DeFilippis is a serial book buyer, journalist and author. He published the novel Foreknowledge 100 years ago in Berkley's Quantum Leap series. He has high hopes for the next hundred years. In the meantime, his "DeFlip Side" radio segments are featured monthly on "Destinies: The Voice of Science Fiction." Listen up at DeFlipSide.com. |
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