Superboy Needs a Facelift? - The Aging of Smallville (Part Two)

As the first season progresses, Clark discovers for the first time that he is from another planet, but without any knowledge as to why or where he is actually from. Jonathan Kent, portrayed as an all too human but good intentioned farmer by former Dukes of Hazzard star John Schneider, raises Clark to hide his powers and to not use them for personal gain. Lex Luthor, on the other hand, has been raised to take any advantage available to him and to go to any lengths in order to obtain wealth and opportunity. A chance meeting between the two, involving a car accident that should have killed both Clark and Lex, leads to their friendship, and to Lex and Lionel’s suspicions that Clark may be something other than an ordinary farm boy.

Tom Welling is a perfect Clark Kent for a new age, tall and good-looking, and capable of the mixture of comic touch and brooding necessary in a teenager who knows he has superpowers but cannot tell a soul. Michael Rosenbaum is (and with apologies to Gene Hackman) the best Lex Luthor ever made. This Lex is actually capable, at least early on, of becoming somebody decent, and is more often than not a sympathetic character. He simply needs the right role model in his life to show him that there is a better way. That role model is Clark Kent.

While nuanced at first but later actually said out loud by some of the characters, all Clark has to do is reveal to Lex Luthor that he has superpowers and is from another planet, i.e. trust Lex, and the Lex Luthor that we know he will become might never happen. Ironically it is Clark Kent, the future bastion of Truth (along with Justice and the American Way) who chooses to lie in order to hide his secret identity, while it is Lex who early in their relationship consistently confesses his sins to his new friend Clark, someone Lex considers the brother that he never had While Lex is headed toward fate in part because of the way he was parented, and in part because his DNA may force him to become the evil force in Metropolis, the bottom line appears to be that he is doomed because he can find no one, even his best friend Clark, who will trust him.

Clark's destiny is substantially more complex but for a completely different reason. To the uninitiated, Superman is who is because of his costume and his superpowers. This is actually not true. Superman is who he is because with his powers he could become a god and rule the earth. Instead, he chooses self sacrifice, and forsaking of a normal life, to save the world. (That the Superman story is a Judaic-Christian metaphor, both Moses and Jesus, has long been understood. Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns hit us over the head with the Jesus part.)

As previously indicated, the writers and creators were probably not of the belief that Clark would make it out of high school before the show was canceled. Because of this the show began to grow long in teeth somewhere around the introduction to Smallville of Lois Lane, and the vague and extremely short pass at college by all of the teenage characters. This was followed in quick succession by the appearance of Jimmy Olsen and, profoundly, with the introduction of Supergirl in the Seventh Season.
Part Three of this post will appear tomorrow.

Superboy Needs a Facelift? - The Aging of Smallville (Part One)

Since the new TV season seems to be upon us, it is time to reflect back on seven seasons of the CW’s (and a former WB’s) Smallville, essentially the adventures of Superman when he was a teenager.
The original concept of the show was a cross between the Superboy comic books (but no costume or flying) and oldest and newest Superman mythologies: Clark and Lex were friends in Smallville long before Lex became his evil adult self and Clark Kent donned tights and a cape to save the world as Superman. The show borrows heavily from the original concept: Lana Lang, Pete Ross (a character from the Superboy comic books who knew Clark's secret identity, unbeknownst to Clark), and of course Jonathan and Martha Kent. The additions to the mythology: the close personal friendship between Lex and Clark, high school newspaper reporter Chloe Sullivan, and the participation of Lex's father, Lionel Luthor, helps keep the story going and adds to and fleshes out what otherwise could have been a rather simplistic and moralistic story.
Additionally, the show's creator made a character out of Kryptonite. Known in the comic books as pieces of the planet Krypton, the pieces at least originally landed on Earth after first passing through various colored dust clouds, creating different variants with different properties that affected only Kryptonians: Green was deadly, Red temporarily mutated Superman, etc. On Smallville, the Kryptonite arrives in a meteor shower along with the spaceship carrying baby Kal-El. In the opening episode, we learn how the meteors and spaceship arrived on Earth, how the Kents find Clark (for the first time ever portrayed as youngish parents), that a metoer killed Lana’s parents, and that the same meteor shower robs Lex Luthor of his hair as a child.
The town is also transformed from the “Cream Corn Capital of the World,” to the “Meteor Rock Capital of the World,” Unlike the Kryptonite of the comic books, the "meteor rock" (Earth is unaware of the planet Krypton, as is Clark until Season Two) under the right set of circumstances acts as a mutagen to human beings. This allows for the creation of various enemies for Clark to fight (referred to by fans as “freaks of the week”) who because of the Green K influence, are not always easy to vanquish. In later storylines, “meteor rock” becomes a source for scientific study, for better or for worse. Red Kryptonite has no effect on humans, but removes Clark’s inhibitions (turning him into “Bad Clark.”
Throughout most of the series, Clark and Lex struggled to maintain a friendship despite the core tension between them: Lex knows that Clark has a secret and Clark, who wants to tell somebody, just can’t (or won’t). Another significant tension, rising from a nature versus nurture subtext, is Lex's belief that the ends justify the means as opposed to Clark's belief that they do not. The conceit of the show are that these tensions would lead them to become enemies and to their respective destinies. We can be somewhat confident that the writers of the series did not believe that the show would last through the seventh season, let alone eight (and possibly nine?), as the series does show some wear and tear, and has lead to a point where the series may not blend too gracefully with the Superman legend.
Part Two of this post will appear tomorrow.