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A Boy Named Clark Kent
Feb. 27th, 2003 01:13 pmI've been trying to post something intelligent about this week's remarkable episode of Smallville. It's not easy. If you watched it, you already know what happened and how. If you didn't watch it, you either are waiting to run the tape or to see it Sunday, or you don't care.
So I find myself boiling this down to a simple thought: this show works best when it remembers what it's supposed to be about. Which is, the halting steps taken by a young man from Krypton by way of Kansas towards a great destiny, and the steps taken at the same time by a brilliant and cunning man whose own path is much darker. It is not about a group of teens fighting monsters, or trying to get to the truth. It is not about young love gone wrong or teen angst. Those things have been done, and Smallville cannot hope to be another Buffy or X-Files, and should certainly avoid being Dawson's Kryptonian.
This week, the story was about Clark. No Kryptonite-spawned monster. Some angst, but most of it from Clark, and for once not about Lana and Chloe. Instead, we see Clark learn something big about himself, and we see how it affects him right before and right after. The result is an episode that casts off all the imitations and gets the show to what we expect: how a boy in 2003 Smallville must struggle to become the Superman of 2015.
It didn't hurt that the acting was great. It didn't hurt that the producers got Christopher Reeve himself to play a small but pivotal part, or that this episode included a few nods to the Reeve Superman movie. But at the base was a lesson in how to make a TV show worth. Simply and Bard-ically put, to thine own self be true.
If only they had been keeping that in mind all along, I'd be making everyone watch Smallville with the same passion as I made people watch Firefly. But I can recommend that if you can catch the Sunday rerun of this episode, please do. It's that good.
So I find myself boiling this down to a simple thought: this show works best when it remembers what it's supposed to be about. Which is, the halting steps taken by a young man from Krypton by way of Kansas towards a great destiny, and the steps taken at the same time by a brilliant and cunning man whose own path is much darker. It is not about a group of teens fighting monsters, or trying to get to the truth. It is not about young love gone wrong or teen angst. Those things have been done, and Smallville cannot hope to be another Buffy or X-Files, and should certainly avoid being Dawson's Kryptonian.
This week, the story was about Clark. No Kryptonite-spawned monster. Some angst, but most of it from Clark, and for once not about Lana and Chloe. Instead, we see Clark learn something big about himself, and we see how it affects him right before and right after. The result is an episode that casts off all the imitations and gets the show to what we expect: how a boy in 2003 Smallville must struggle to become the Superman of 2015.
It didn't hurt that the acting was great. It didn't hurt that the producers got Christopher Reeve himself to play a small but pivotal part, or that this episode included a few nods to the Reeve Superman movie. But at the base was a lesson in how to make a TV show worth. Simply and Bard-ically put, to thine own self be true.
If only they had been keeping that in mind all along, I'd be making everyone watch Smallville with the same passion as I made people watch Firefly. But I can recommend that if you can catch the Sunday rerun of this episode, please do. It's that good.
