Smallville is a show about growing up. Girls are becoming women, boys are becoming men, and parents are trying to pass on their wisdom to them. The kids are in full teenage swing, thinking a high school romance is the most intense relationship they will ever be in, pining from afar, learning the adults in their lives are fallible, issues like that. The twist is, of course, that the lead is a young Clark Kent, and his superpowers are kicking in full swing. He's already indestructible, super strong, super fast, and his X-ray vision kicked in about halfway through the season.

Incredibly, though, Clark seems more cursed by his powers then blessed. He can't play high school football, for example, because he and his parents are worried he might hurt someone accidentally, or reveal his unique nature to the world and get taken away by scientists. He's being presented, in a way, as a special needs child, with an intense desire to be just like everyone else.

Luckily for Smallville and the world, Jon and Martha Kent are raising him in the best possible manner. While the other super-powered teens of Smallville (more on this later) are almost manifestations of the id, using their powers to get what they want, Clark is bent on avoiding discovery while helping his friends as best he can. (For the most part, there is an awkward moment where he uses his X-ray vision to watch the girls locker room, but that is presented as "involuntary") Most of this inherent goodness seems to be passed down from his parents, who dispense very good advice without sounding preachy or trite.

The show is strong in many ways; most notably in the acting. Assembling any teenage cast and you face a number of challenges... that the actors won't be able to bring sufficient ability to the roles, that any grownups on the show will be cardboard cutouts, things like that. While everyone brings something to their role, and there aren't any true stinkers, the standouts of the cast have to be Tom Welling and Michael Rosenbaum (Clark Kent and Lex Luthor, respectively). The danger of playing this kind of Superboy is that he will become too whiny, and Tom is doing a good job at avoiding that. He has a true desire to do good, and a real desire to be normal and have normal relationships, but he doesn't succumb to an eternal morose nature- even though he has guilt that it was his spaceship crashing that brought the meteors that are causing so much misery and killed Lana's parents. He is, in general, affable, shy, and charming, and the character development is truly showing us how this young man could become Superman.

The cast's standout, however, is Rosenbaum. It would be unfair to the generally talented cast to say that his character, Luthor, consistently steals the show, but it may be accurate. And he doesn't do it in any obvious scene chewing or slapstick way; he just does it by being Luthor, and making Luthor both the kind of guy you want to befriend and the kind of guy you fear just a little. The Luthor of Smallville is not someone who will inevitably grow into the Luthor of Metropolis, but is likely to. He has an instinct to protect those he cares for but also to be in control of every situation. He isn't a spoiled rich kid, although his money has certainly helped shape him, and he has a core of goodness that will eventually be extinguished by his need for power. When Luthor says, as he does, that he would do anything to protect his friends, you not only believe him, you get a chill down your spine.

Additionally, some of the creative choices for the show work very well. The most famous of these being the "No tights, no flights" rule- Clark Kent will not appear in the Superboy outfit and will not be flying around Smallville. The tights rule just makes sense- quite frankly, comics have always been a little silly in this regard; most of us, should we discover we have super powers, would not don a uniform and go to fight crime. The no flights rule was a bit more dangerous, creatively, but has worked out. Those who wondered how he would get from place to place have realized that his super-speed has kicked in, so movement isn't a problem. My issue was that Superman has always show pure joy in his ability to fly, but A: that doesn't fit in with the "worried about his own powers" Superboy we are presented with, and B: it gives us something to look forward to in the finale, as Clark Kent accepts what he is.

On the other hand, other creative decisions have been problematic. Smallville is dotted with Kryptonite fragments, brought down in a meteor shower that accompanied Clark's landing in his spacecraft. The Kryptonite leads to much of the strangeness in this small town, and leads to Clark not handling things quite as easily as he should. But its also a chain... every weird occurrence has to do with Kryptonite, which is getting old. The guys who walk through walls, the bug boy, and the salesman... all their powers come from Kryptonite? Sure, it plays up Clark's guilt but it also get boring and even, in some ways, alleviates the guilt of those doing wrong; how long before we see the Kryptonite defense?

And Clark could easily dispatch almost all of these threats without a problem... except that Smallville is dotted with Kryptonite. So of course, to make these final fight scenes dramatic, they take place in some location where the Kryptonite is weakening Clark. If everyone has it, to the point where even Whitney (Lana Lang's boyfriend and therefore a rival of Clark's) can smack down the man-who-will-be-Superman, then its not a dramatic tool, its an escape mechanism. "We don't have to think about how this will be difficult for Clark cause hey, there will be Kryptonite." Loopholes like this will make for lazy writers. I'm surprised this occurred because the comic books figured this out way back in the 80's and therefore got rid of most of the Kryptonite on Earth.

Sometimes, however, they even use these weaknesses in clever ways. In an episode where Luthor becomes convinced that Clark has super-strength, a Kryptonite effect temporarily robs Clark of his powers, and throws Luthor off the scent. There were worries that Luthor was getting to close to Clark's secret, but now he's just more confused then anything else in regards to that.

Most of the other changes from the comics are rather plot neutral. Metropolis is, for some reason, now a midwestern town instead of a coastal town. This does no harm but unnecessarily aggravates comic purists, since they could have used established DC midwest cities like Keystone City of Gateway City. Pete Ross being black makes absolutely no difference- the show does an excellent job of being colorblind without being preachy. The addition of Chloe Sullivan works out very well, and her desire to be a journalist- even a tabloid one- may help the show eventually turn Clark to journalism (although I have a nasty fear that this will be through Chloe's death). In many ways, Smallville harkens back to Golden Age Superboy but set in the 90s... lots of Kryptonite, Clark and Luthor's friendship in Smallville... and although that back-story no longer matches the comic book continuity, it is still a lot of fun.

All in all, the show has lots of potential, but is only living up to part of it. I enjoy it and watch it weekly, but it needs to move away from its tabloid and rather monolithic plot points and start taking more advantage of the terrific actors, excellent back story, and quality writers it obviously has. The first season almost over and the show already renewed, it needs to really break out its second season- which it is entirely capably and worthy of doing- or it may not have a third.