So picture this, it’s 2008, and we are in the
closing moments of the 7th and final season of Smallville. A beefier, recently
bespectacled Tom Welling is racing for a convenient exit in the bustling
newsroom of The Daily Planet. Clerk Kent’s first day as a journalist has been
seriously compromised by a giant asteroid on a blind date with the urban centre
of Metropolis. Outside, Lois Lane is in the shadow of a tumbling skyscraper.
This is not good. He’s only just met her, but she’s……..special. He tears
away his glasses, tears open his shirt. There’s the slyest hint of a wink in
his eye. The camera crashes in on a strange shield on his chest. A red ‘S’
on yellow. We’ve never seen this before – but we’ve always known what it
is.
It’s the strength of Smallville that you
already know how it has to end. It’s the journey to the inevitable that’s
the joy. SV is so true to the heart of the Superman myth that it can dispense
with Superman altogether. And so, when Lex Luthor turns to Clark Kent and says
"our friendship will be the stuff of legend" the series provides a
potent, delicious shiver, because we know that the future will unravel into the
bald guy threatening the world and the guy with the kiss-curl saving it,
forever.
SV could have been a calamity. Television had
tried The Teen Of Steel a decade earlier with the camp bubblegum of Superboy. We
were promised a series infused with the twisted darkness of Twin Peaks, but such
early episodes as ‘metamorphosis’ suggested a show chasing the coat tails of
Buffy, complete with wise-ass dialogue and broad, freaky metaphors for high
school life. By ‘Hourglass’ however, SV had hit its own unique groove –
the small screen has rarely delivered a scene as blinding as the apocalyptic
prophesy of Lex as President, showered by blood as flowers wilt to corpses
around him. Dawson’s Creek with Kryptonite? Think again.
Perhaps there are too many characters. Lana and
Chloe provide a decent love triangle for Clark, but Pete Ross remains a dud. The
producers seem to have twigged that dull jock Whitney Fordman is equally surplus
to requirements – but as soon as he’s written out, he becomes more
interesting.
Sometimes the show seems to be channeling the
spirit of the SV scenes in Superman: The Movie, and lead Tom Welling has much of
the integrity of a young Christopher Reeve. He’s threatened to be the Gap
Jeans Poster Boy From Space, but he rose to the role, capturing Clark’s
essential heartland decency while also showing glimmers of rage, doubt and
regret. He’ll be a brilliant Superman, if only for that final freeze-frame. It’s
to Welling’s credit that he’s only marginally outmatched by the pure
charisma of Michael Rosenbaum’s sly, complex Lex. He’ll be a brilliant
president. 4/5 stars
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