It's Like Buffy and Dawson's Creek...but with Kryptonite!

First off, everyone congratulate me—I’m a new daddy again! Our second son, Carter, was born last Wednesday. Everyone’s home and doing fine, and except for a few attacks from our first son, Carter’s been welcomed home with open arms.

Just had to mention it.

In the week of time away from work and with my wife and new son, we’ve been able to do some catching up on a television show that I was sure I’d hate…but both my wife and I are hooked. It’s “Smallville,” and it’s the story of how a kid from Krypton becomes Superman. Why Clark Kent chooses to use his incredible powers for good, and not for his own profit. Why he doesn’t set himself up as a god, but as a humble young man with a humble family. Thinking back to 2001 when the show premiered, I don’t recall why I was so set against “Smallville,” but I didn’t start watching it until about five episodes into the first season. It was probably because it was airing on WB, and I hadn’t ever gotten on board with Dawson’s Creek or any of their other teeny dramas, and wasn’t going to get sucked in just because something was about Superman.

Well, I’m eating my words. “Smallville” is an excellent program, fit for families to view together. The writing’s usually solid, the acting’s usually pretty good, the leads are hotties, and it makes the Superman myth accessible to non-comic book fans (like my wife) while honoring the 67 years of tradition established in the comics. The first season DVD set is a great way to discover “Smallville” and the things that make it great…even though there are some missteps along the way.

The DVD set is six discs with all 21 episodes of the first season, with several special features that accentuate the show. Looking back, there are several things that are better watching it on DVD than the original viewing, and there are some other things that haven’t aged as well.

The episodes include:

Pilot
Metamorphosis
Hothead
X-Ray
Cool
Hourglass
Craving
Jitters
Rogue
Shimmer
Hug
Leech
Kinetic
Zero
Nicodemus
Stray
Reaper
Drone
Crush
Obscura
Tempest

Watching an entire season of episodes in a week or so, it’s interesting to see trends emerge, and we get more of a sense of Clark Kent’s emerging powers. In the first episode, his parents finally tell him that he’s from another planet. They don’t know that it’s Krypton, but they know he fell to Earth in a meteor shower that destroyed much of Smallville, Kansas. The same shower of Kryptonite does the series the service of creating freaks and monsters for Clark to fight each week, and also keeps enough of the glowing green stuff around to keep Clark in check. As the episodes progress, Clark adds to his arsenal of super-powers. He starts out with super strength and speed, but gains X-Ray vision, heat vision, and there are hints in at least two episodes of his latent ability to fly.

The main characters in “Smallville” are mostly culled from the pages of comic books: Clark Kent is played by Tom Welling, and his chief love interest is Lana Lang, played by the incredibly hot Kristin Kreuk. Add Michael Rosenbaum’s Lex Luthor to the mix, and you have three strong, likable characters who are the focus of each week’s episodes. They’re supported by a great cast, including Annette O’Toole and John Schneider as Martha and Jonathan Kent, Sam Jones III as Clark’s best friend Pete Ross, and Allison Mack plays the only non-comics rooted invention in the series, investigative journalist Chloe Sullivan. These characters keep Clark busy, since at this point only his parents know of his extra terrestrial origins. He fights for his friends, sometimes hurts his friends, and tries to live life as normally as possible.

Listening to the producer and director commentaries on the DVD for the first two episodes, they point out some things I had already noticed—like that Clark ONLY wears red, blue, and yellow—the colors in Superman’s costume. They’re also the colors for his high school (and Smallville High’s logo is an “S” in an inverted triangle…), clues at Clark’s heroic future. And although they run the series under a strict rule of “no tights, no flights” which means we won’t see Clark in the Superman costume, we’re all still fully aware of his history and his future…and even more intriguing, we all know what’s going to happen to Lex Luthor. Rosenbaum’s portrayal of Lex has been one of the most entertaining and heart-wrenching surprises with this series, and it’s most evident in this first season.

We all know Lex Luthor is the bad guy. Lex Luthor is basically a synonym for “bad guy.” He’s Superman’s arch-enemy, and has been for 60 years. So who’s this? A really nice guy. He’s had a loveless upbringing by his father Lionel (who later becomes a more central figure in the series), and is moved to Smallville to manage a Luthorcorp Fertilizer Plant. Being the son of a billionaire has its perks, of course, but Lex just wants to make friends. When he befriends Clark, and later Clark’s friends, we as audience members search for ulterior motives…after all, he’s Lex Luthor, right? Evil…bad guy…but not yet. Lex is a genuinely nice guy, and even though we know his end from his beginning, he’s a well-rounded, likable fellow who just wants to find in Smallville what he’s never known—real friends, real family. We like Lex, and I see this sort of how George Lucas should have been able to portray Anakin Skywalker’s turn to Darth Vader…but “Smallville” has the luxury of five seasons of episodes to turn Lex Luthor from Clark Kent’s best friend to Superman’s worst enemy. It’s intriguing, and handled well, and Lex is one of my favorite characters on the show.

Some of my favorite episodes from this season: the Pilot tells the story of Clark’s coming to Earth, his emerging superpowers, and a freak of the week in a neat 60-minute package. There are some uneven moments, but it has an epic feel that is rarely seen on television, even in this age of easy-as-pie special effects. “Metamorphosis” is the first regular episode, and has some great horror elements in it, and is in places startlingly violent. A good episode, that teaches Clark a thing or two about Kryptonite and Lana Lang. “Hourglass” would be a fairly tame episode if it weren’t for a fortune teller who gives us a glimpse of both Clark’s and Lex’s futures. The vision of Lex’s future in the White House is absolutely chilling…and something playing out right now in the comic books…but Clark’s vision of outliving everyone he loves is much worse. “Leech” features a high schooler who gains the ability to siphon off Clark’s powers, leaving Clark as a “normal” kid, both freeing and condemning him to a life of what Could Have Been.

The first season highlights what’s good about “Smallville” right from the start—it’s based on a solid mythology, and the casting is dead-on for all of the characters. The writing evened out pretty quickly, and the only real weak spot is that the first season depends too much on the “freak of the week” formula. There are the beginnings of story arcs, and they’re on solid footing, but we don’t see the fruition of those arcs yet. We have the simultaneous advantage and disadvantage of knowing where these characters will end up, and that can make for alternately rewarding and frustrating television. The radiation from the Kryptonite meteors gives a (sort of) plausible explanation for all of the mutants rampaging through town. But like my newly-found interest in Buffy The Vampire Slayer, if the show hadn’t grown past its first season, I would have lost interest by now. Happily “Smallville” has grown with more complicated arcs and characters, and fewer one-shot freaks.

The DVD package could use more extras than it’s got—the producer/director commentaries are entertaining, but are only included for the first two episodes. There’s a handful of deleted scenes, but nothing too revelatory…nothing to be missed. There are tours of the main locales in Smallville, and some storyboarding, but the bulk of the set is of course in the 21 episodes of the television series. If you’ve held off on getting into “Smallville,” this is definitely the way to do it…this season will give you the groundwork you need to get into the meatier episodes of future seasons.