Daniel's TV Blog

For a few seasons I wondered why I watched Smallville. This season wasn't one of those. This season rocked. Clark began his destiny with a cool black suit with a long coat reminiscent of a cape. This season the mythology they took on was the city in a bottle, Kandor. In the comic books, Kandor was an actual city that wad shrunk and exists in the fortress of solitude. The Smallville Kandor is a metaphoric city in a bottle. A group of Kandorians were digitally stored and cloned on Earth long after their death on Krypton. They were lead by Zod and the writers took every opportunity to say "Kneel before Zod" they could. The show is now as much about Green Arrow and Watchtower as it is about Superman, and that is what makes the show good. This season also was the introduction of Checkmate. A super great twist was the identity of The Red Queen, a mysterious powerful person referred to by Checkmate. It turned out to be Clark's mom, junior senator from Kansas Martha Kent. It turns out she's ben pulling strings in the government to keep Clark's identity safe. In the end she gave his iconic blue and red costume. Next season will be the last so we should see him in it by the end of show. That's if survives his Kryptonite infected fall from a very high building.

Labels: Smallville

There is a common new device used this year on two shows, it's the I-saw-something-important-at-season-ending-cliffhanger-but-now-I-forgot-it thing. It happened with Olivia on Fringe and also with Lois Lane on Smallville. Yes I still watch Smallville, deal with it. Olivia went to Spock's universe and didn't remember her conversation until the fourth episode. Lois went into the future and saw some shocking important but she is only now starting to remember flashes of it. Whatever she saw the future seems to be bright yellow like it is on fire or something.

I've been trying to think of other cliffhanger amnesia. With two this season there have to be other instances. In the first season of Babylon 5, the security guy figured out the plot to kill the president but was shot and in a coma for the first few episodes of the next season. It's not quite the same but it did take a few episodes for the information to disseminate. Daniel Jackson died and ascended at the end of Season 5 of Stargate: SG1. He returned in Season 7 with no memory or the place he had gone in the intervening season or the advanced information he learned while there. It's sort of the same thing but not really since we weren't given the expectation of new information at the end of the previous season.

But this is such an easy device for drawing out a cliffhanger over several episodes I'm sure it has been used before.

Labels: Fringe, Smallville

Stunt Casting is when shows pick high profile actors for roles which generate media buzz and thus some free publicity. The Simpsons and Will & Grace are/were great at this. But the life-time achievement award in stunt casting has to go to Smallville which continually picks actors from past Superman movies and shows. This started from the beginning with Mrs. Kent played by Annette O'Toole who played Lana Lang in Superman III. They continued with Terrance Stamp (Superman II's Zod) as the voice of Jor-El, Christopher Reeve as Dr. Swan, and Margot Kidder (Lois Lane in the movies) as Dr. Swan successor. Although after a couple episodes she was found murdered because the actress is koo-koo-bananas. Recently they had Dean Cain (from Lois and Clark) as the Immortal. He was captured at the end but since he is immortal he can easily return. Tonight Clark meets his Krptonian mother (or some sort of Fortress of Solitude clone of her) played by the actress who played Supergirl in the 1984 movie I didn't see.

Here's who I'd still like to see: Ned Betty, Gene Hackman, Susana York (Kryptonian mom from the movies), John Shea (Lex from L&C), Traci Scoggins (Kat from season 1 of L&C), and of course Teri Hatcher.

Labels: Smallville