Smallville No More

What?  Two blogs about superheroes in one night?  What has happened to the PellaPusher?!


Well, tonight was the series finale of "Smallville".  Ten seasons long, and I've watched every episode, through all of the excitement of the beginning in Smallville with Chloe and her Wall of Weird, to the friendship between Clark and Lex, to the romance between Lana and Clark, to the different cameos by future superheroes like The Flash, and onward to the introduction of Lois and their lives in Metropolis.


I've seen Clark and his friends grow from their high school days of tracking down Meteor Freaks to their work as adults at the Daily Planet and its environs.  I've been saddened by characters leaving either by death or by growing up and moving away.  But what has touched me the most was watching this kid grow up into the Superman we all know and love.  The at-first reluctant hero who grew into the one that gives us hope and faith in those with the power not only to lead us, but also to protect us from the evil around us.


The series has had its share of awesome cameos, like Teri Hatcher (a former Lois) as Lois' mom, Christopher Reeve (do I really have to tell you who he played?) as a scientist that informed Clark about Krypton, and Terrence Stamp (a former Zod) as none other than Daddy Jor-El himself.  I've been in awe of the "gets" that the series producers have been able to furnish (although I would have loved to see Dean Cain somewhere in there).  Of course, I shouldn't forget between old and new versions was Annette O'Toole, playing Martha Kent, herself a former Lana Lang.  


But those cameos were not anything to me in comparison with the way that the main actors in the show have grown.  All of them have grown in the past 10 years in their roles, and in the early years, I was most impressed with Michael Rosenbaum and his portrayal of Lex Luthor.  He was AWE.  SOME.  No other Lex has been portrayed as well as by MR, and when he left the show, it made the quality decrease for me, and that's probably because the show's creators left, too.  But then Tom Welling really grew from just the hunky model guy to quite the actor, and has directed many episodes as well, and if I recall correctly, they've been my favorite episodes in the last few years.  


So imagine my happiness when it was announced that Mr. Rosenbaum had finally agreed to appear in the final episode of the series.  There he was, my favorite Lex, telling Clark how much the world needed the two of them, because a villain is only as strong as the hero.  Both Clark and Lex had moments in the show where they flashed back to how their lives had been on the show, and I just kind of lost it at that point.  And wow, the prophecy actually came true: Lex was elected President of the US in 2018, with Perry White as the editor of the Planet, and Jimmy Olson as the eager photographer, and of course, with Clark and Lois as the reporters on the beat.  How cute was it that Chloe was reading a "Smallville" comic to her son, whom was wearing pajamas with a drawing of Superman on it?  I loved the touch about the arrows being in his room, since his dad is the Green Arrow.


Oh, the dads.  I've always loved the underlying story of Clark trying to make his fathers proud.  I'm really glad that John Schneider returned in spirit for Clark to know that he had grown into a man that made him proud, and Jor-El was finally ready to tell Clark that he had passed all of his trials as the Chosen One.  The parallel of Lex and Lionel's relationship has been interesting, too, and  here we saw just how much a father would give for the love of his son, twisted as it was.


We also got what all of the Smallville fans had been eagerly awaiting:  Clark, as Clark (and not Bizarro) actually FLYING, cape, tights, and all.  YAY!  That, coupled with the John Williams music, made me smile.  That score is my favorite of all of the John Williams scores, so the little snippet of it playing as my favorite superhero became Superman was icing on a very big cake.  Cool touch at the end to add to that:  the closing credits were current style, mixed with the style from the Christopher Reeve-era Superman movies.  Awww, sweet.


Thank you, Smallville, for allowing us to watch the evolution of Superman in such a great way, and thank you to the CW for allowing the series to tie everything up so that we could actually see it happen.


It's a bird, it's a plane...it's my hero, Superman.