CW, enough Smallville already, give us more JSA!

By Ian Cullen May 14, 2010, 4:16 GMT

Smallville, courtesy of CW

It’s common knowledge that Smallville has been renewed for a 10th season.

I mean enough already.  This show was getting old at season eight, and has been on life support ever since!

Perhaps The CW see the show as a favourite old car that they just don’t want to get rid of, or a favourite pet that they don’t want to put to sleep.

However, as a fan of genre television I can’t really agree with them and feel that they should end the show before it becomes more of a joke in genre circles than it already is. To put it bluntly.

For a show which is supposed to be about a teenaged Clark Kent and his friends, and has re -written most of the Superboy origin story in order to do it; things are looking bad when your star Tom Welling is almost looking as old as his father Jonathan Kent (John Schneider) did when the show first started.

What was that now? Ten years ago.

As stated above, the producers have had to re-write the comic book origins quite a bit to both justify this series and to keep it going for as long as they have. Some of the things they have done have worked, but for most part they’ve fallen flat on their arse with hardcore comic book fans.

Especially those who are fans of the coveted silver age of comics.

So you think Clark Kent not being able to fly yet, and having a black emo-like costume is bad? Well compare that to what they did to Lois Lane and you’ll then begin to realise how dramatic of a television adaptation Smallville is.

Lois Lane never really figured in the Adventures of Superboy for a start. In fact Clark Kent didn’t come into contact with Lois until he became a journalist, but that’s just a small issue when you look at how they have adapted Lois for Smallville.

In the comic's Lois was written as a cross between Patricia Swan (classy and intelligent) and Sarah from the NBC series Chuck (no nonsense, tough and worthy of respect).

The Lois we see in Smallville needs a restraining order and is more like a cross between Miss Piggy, Daffy Duck and Conan The Barbarian and comes off like a third rate Las Vegas Lounge act. 

This series is getting old and I can’t buy the idea of Clark Kent as superboy, when the lead actor is pushing 35 and starting to look his age.

Added to which, I’ve seen more charisma in tree bark, and my cat can fly a lot further than him. Especially when the next door neighbors dog is giving chase.

Smallville, when it first started, was fairly good. Not the best, but for a teen based show trying to bridge the gap between teen viewers, comic book readers and SciFi and Fantasy viewers. It wasn’t a bad show. 

Tom Welling, despite his limited acting ability, looked like one would imagine a younger Superman to be.

Admittedly the show has had some interesting storylines over the years, but it has also brought us some really mediocre stories to the fore as well.

For example, Lana Lang being the descendant of a witch in season six or was that seven...I mean come on give us a break!  Didn’t they do that on countless other shows such as Charmed already?  And probably much better!

The season arcs have become more and more extreme, but in a bad way. Added to which, the typical Smallville filler episode has become a yawnfest, and a tad to much like the average episode of 90210 with the freak of the week or the latest teen love dilemma. 

My major bugbear with Smallville is simple: Make Clark fly, damn it.

He’s meant to be superman by now. I don’t care that he is from another planet. Ten years of being a teenager and dealing with teen problems and getting the sulks every other episode is more than enough for anybody. Give him a cape and some spandex and say 'Fly Clark.'

End this series, and do so on a high. 

This season saw an excellent two hour event, which saw the JSA introduced into the show for a guest appearance. This guest appearance from the iconic Justice Society Of America though really good didn’t do Smallville's regular cast any favours.

It only highlighted how boring and uninteresting the core characters have become. In fact the only character that really shined was Justin Hartley’s Green Arrow.

The CW have missed a trick here.

I mean why not cancel Smallville, and launch a series about the JSA?  I for one would love to see more of Michael Shanks as Hawkman, as a viewer and casual comics reader. I found The CW’s interpretation of the JSA characters to be far more engaging and fun to watch than the regular Smallville cast.

So please, for the love of God and all that is holy, including my 1980’s Levis, push the cancellation button on Smallville next year, and give us a new series like JSA that we can all get behind.

Monsters and Critics' contributing writer Ian Cullen is a former actor, community artist and singer, and a lifetime fan of Science Fiction and television. He runs www.scifipulse.net - a site, which follows the trends of science fiction television and movies.  He lives in Manchester, England.