Welcome to Tuning In, a new ongoing series that takes a critical look at the first episode of a television show, classic or new. With that said, let's take a nostalgic look at one of the longest running sci-fi shows, "Smallville."
The show is set in- where else?- Smallville, Kansas, where a teenage Clark Kent (Tom Welling) is trying to get through high school with his pals Chloe (Allison Mack) and Pete (Sam Jones III)- while also dealing with his alien superpowers and the fact that he can't get near his crush Lana Lang (Kristen Kruek) without collapsing in pain.
It's not that obvious, right?
Where "Smallville" gets most of its points is in its brilliant premise: What would Superman be like as a normal teenager? The series creators wisely play against expectations by making Clark awkward and nerdy and also introducing his arch nemesis Lex Luthor (played amazingly by Michael Rosenbaum) as a sympathetic and charismatic charmer. The pilot's ending, with Clark not getting the girl, but fantasizing that he does, is legitimately heart-breaking and well done, especially when you set it to "Everything" by Lifehouse.
Unfortunately, beyond the premise, "Smallville" is just a typical teen melodrama. There's a lot set up in the pilot, but very little of it feels natural. Lex loses control of his car and crashes into the river- where Clark just so happens to be on the same bridge??? Chloe becomes obsessed with tracking down weird events that have been happening in Smallville to the point that she constructs a "Wall of Weird" to document everything. Why? Because she writes for the school newspaper? Woodward and Bernstein weren't this committed! And the piece de resistance: Clark is stripped to his boxers by bullies who paint an "S" on his chest in red ink and hang him up in the cornfield. Apparently, obvious symbolism is a school tradition.
You know, sometimes you have to ask, "How did I get here?"
I get what the show was trying to accomplish by normalizing Superman, but Clark is simply too normal. Tom Welling's performance is clearly trying to be the opposite of the typical Superman image, but he takes it too far. Clark is boring and uninteresting and given that he's the lead of the show, that's not a good thing. Kristen Kruek is bland as well as the literal girl next door and we don't fall for her like Clark does. Chloe is the most interesting, but her character is underutilized in the pilot.
"Smallville" gets points for its ambition, but not much beyond that. It feels very stuck in the early 2000s and succumbs to too many cliches and stereotypes of the genre it's not supposed to be. In 2001, this was probably right at home, but in 2015, it doesn't hold up.
