J asked me a good question when I saw him last week-- namely, why do I keep watching Smallville if all I ever do is complain about it?
The truth is that while I make a lot of fun of the show, it does a lot of things right. I do actually like it, I just don't post about liking it. So, I'll correct this error now.
Things I Like About Smallville
Adaptation: I love it when I get to see a new version of something and it works, whether it's the new Doctor Who or Arthurian mythos. It's one of my buttons, and the Smallville folks have been pressing it mercilessly. I mean, for a show that tries to be relatively realistic, they somehow managed to successfully incorporate Mr. Mxyzptlk and the Legion of freaking Superheroes without breaking immersion. What they did with Braniac and Doomsday is in many ways better than what happened in the comic book. When I see Toyman show up and get played right, I bounce up and down in my chair and clap a little. The team deserves significant props for producing something that is definitely Superman, but is definitely not the Superman you already know.
Fannishness: This is a series that knows exactly where it came from. They had Christopher Reeves on the show as the person who tells Clark about his secret origin. They had Margot Kidder on as well, and at least two previous Jimmy Olsens have showed up. Dean Cain was on as a villain. When the Legion comes back from the future, they comment that they've never heard of Chloe Sullivan (who has never appeared in any Superman mythology before). The team respects what came before, and as someone who knows what came before, I love them for it.
New Characters: Lionel and Chloe make me so desperately happy. Lionel is my kind of villain; smart, ruthless, manipulative, and able to change lies at the drop of a hat. More importantly, he's not crazy. Unlike Lex, he's stable-- he just has a million secret agendas and no real moral boundaries. He is, in short, a phenomenal addition to the mythology. Ditto Chloe; she's smart without being socially inept, loyal without being narrow-minded, and beautiful without having to wear a bikini. She's the catalyst for Clark, someone who pushes him, gets him in trouble, and then protects him through it. She has a unique and complex relationship with every other character in the show, and I can't imagine the story without her.
Characterization in General: The advantage of long-running television series is that you have a LOT of time to linger on characters; in Smallville that means you actually have a few minutes every episode where things aren't blowing up and people are just interacting with each other. And I love those scenes. I got to know Clark in a way that I never did in any other format; I actually like him as a person because I've had time to get to know him. Ditto Jimmy-- even if he's still a second banana, he gets more screen time than he ever did anywhere else. They all feel more real than in the comics, and that makes me very, very happy.
Lois and Clark: Lois deserves a special mention here. When she's on form, she's my favorite character in the show. And the scenes when she's on are invariably ones where she's with Clark. The two of them together are amazing. Lana never really impressed me as a girlfriend, but then their relationship was written as only being complex on one axis. Lois has at least four different axes of complexity going for her. She brings out things in Clark that no one else does, and he does the same for her. They make fun of each other, they save each other, they say true things that no one else would say to each other. It's gorgeous. :-)
So there you go. Have some good to go with your bad. *grin*
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