Friday, September 24, 2004
Television (Mostly Smallville, Maybe Spoilers)
Wednesday night I caught the premier of Smallville. I used to be a Smallville addict, but drifted away from it last season. Not so much a reflection on the show as on my circumstances, in which I stopped watching everything in favor of the Deb seek-and-marry mission. I went back to Joan of Arcadia, the best show on TV, quickly and got Deb hooked. Smallville never got me back to speak of. Gilmore Girls and West Wing had levels of success in between. Enterprise suffered timeslot foolishness, placing itself opposite something I’d watch first were I watching anything. This season I am far more interested in Enterprise, so they put themselves opposite Joan. Duh! But I digress.
As I was saying, Smallville… woohoo! I liked it. I liked it a lot. They have come a long way from kryptonite mutant of the week episodes in the early days, and seem to be doing a nice job of transitioning from teen Clark to the eventual adult Superman. Even if they have played with the Superman canon to a breathtaking degree.
Erica Durance as Lois Lane had much to do with my enjoyment of the episode. Move over Chloe. She has the right look, the right attitude and sass. Well done.
The story was a little confusing, but I didn’t see the finale last season, but for maybe a few minutes, and not much of several of the other most recent episodes. I had enough background to be able to explain to Deb about the cave, Kryptonian symbols, Dr. Swann, the ship, his Krypton father’s role, and how the characters fit together.
I thought the Superman nods might have been a little heavy handed. “Is it a bird? A plane?” “Fortress of Solitude.” Margot Kidder’s role and some of her dialogue, and so forth. Yet cool at the same time.
The flying. I had just gotten done telling Deb that a widespread theory is that the show will end with the episode in which he flies, going off to become Superman. Then he flies! But as Kal-El, not himself.
The effect of flying was right out of Matrix Reloaded! Which I have one problem with, and it’s not the manner of takeoff or the disturbance of air around him. It’s the ground elasticity. In the Matrix, the ground sinks and rebounds because flying is a disturbance in the coding of the Matrix, an anomaly in an artificial reality. I don’t see a reason for that ground effect in Smallville. Otherwise, way cool. The special effect of flying isn’t what it once was, and it should be interesting to see the new Superman film(s).
We managed to miss the premier of Gilmore Girls, which disappoints me given the way the season ended. Deb saw all and I saw part of ER last night. Too bad about the broken neck kid; he was cool. We were cheering on the exodus of the evil whassername from Carter’s life. Yay, she’s gone! Good riddance. I think they meant the scene to be emotional for the audience, as in sad, not cause for excitement. Oops.