Smallville Gets New Showrunners

There is a story on SuperHeroHype.com today that says the creators of Smallville, Alfred Gough and Miles Miller, are leaving the show after this season.

Good news, friends.  They had some good stories over the years, but for the most part Smallville never really lived up to it’s potential.  It’s been a show I watch out of habit, and recently even that’s been a struggle.  The entire series feels so stretched out, and things that are happening this season should have happened years ago.  For example, Clark & Lana are finally together, 3 years after they graduated high school.  Mmmyea, Lana is Clark’s high school sweetheart.

Then, of course, they introduced the Green Arrow and the Justice League as guest stars.  This is fine with me, because the episodes where they show up are some of the best, but I can’t help but feel the reason they are there is because the writers just have no new material thanks to the mandate that Alfred Gough and Miles Miller set from the beginning:  “no tights, no flights.”

Essentially, the show they pitched to the WB was a Superman-in-his-teens story, and therefore he wouldn’t be flying or wearing the costume.  Ever.  For some reason they’ve stuck to that promise no matter what, and the show has suffered from it.  They didn’t realize they told all the stories they could tell without any flights or tights.  Clark’s natural progression is to turn into Superman.  He discovered all of his other powers pretty quick in the early years with only one left… flying.  But they couldn’t do it, because “no flights” was no doubt hung in the writers room.

Well, that idea may have worked for the first few seasons, but it’s been more than seven years.  In three years, it will be a decade.  Teenagers are only teenagers for seven years, so the original pitch should be changed a little.  No doubt the WB (sorry, the CW) realized that and kicked them out to hire people who would be willing to grow with the story.

Season 8, to premiere in the fall, will apprently have new executives and presumably those new executives will bring new writing talent and new ideas.

Long story short:  I was going to give up on Smallville, but maybe I’ll stick around.  Word on the street is that Lex Luthor and Lana Lang won’t be around next year because they chose not to renew their contracts.  That means the writers will have to introduce some other villians and maybe even take Clark out of Smallville.

If it were up to me, I’d propose ending the show after this year, having a one or two year hiatus, and then relaunching the whole thing with a new name, “Metropolis,” which would be a weekly live action Superman show.  And the Justice League would be invited, too, but, y’know, with Clark actually participating.

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For the past couple weeks this show has felt a lot like Smallville to me, in that it’s just mediocre enough to be enjoyable. That’s not necessarily a good thing, but then again it’s not really bad, either, because I’ve made a point to see every Smallville episode since day one. But while Smallville lasted this long because it’s on the CW, Fox has a much worse history of keeping weak shows around. They usually get canceled within weeks of the premiere, which is why I’m still saying there won’t be any more episodes after number 8.

It’s just that they don’t take any risks. Two of my favorite shows, Lost and Battlestar Galactica, take risks every week with their storytelling. You can tell when a show does this because when someone asks you “what is it about?” the answer is so easy, but so complicated. For example, what’s your initial reaction when someone asks you: “What is Lost about?”

Well, it’s about a group of plane crash survivors. But is that it? No, not at all. You can go on for hours with that answer. Same with Battlestar Galactica, and I’m sure a lot of other shows that I don’t know about.

Smallville and The Sarah Connor Chronicles, however, suffer from that answer being a bit too easy. “What is Smallville about?” Superman before he was Superman. But is that it? Well, uhm, for the most part… yes.

What is the Sarah Connor Chronicles about? A robot from the future sent back in time to protect John and Sarah Connor so they can stop the robots from taking over in the first place. But is that it? Well, uhm…. yes.

So far, at least. I’m aware that it might take an episode or two, or three or six, to really develop the overall mythology of the show. Lost had it from the start, with the roars, the pilot, and the polar bear. BSG had a bit of it in the beginning because we knew Sharon was a Cylon, and it really picked up later when Baltar realized he has no idea how he knew where a Cylon installation was and accepts the fact that he may be getting played by the hand of God.

The good news is that the Sarah Connor Chronicles might have shown a bit of it in last night’s episode, specifically during the last fifteen minutes, when the mysterious girl at school gets in a car with an unknown person (she’s hiding something), John shows up with Sarah’s ex (just what did he say to him?), and Cameron collecting the Terminator chip then writing a grief note at the end (who was she writing to? suicide girl? and what did she say?)

It’s also interesting that we still don’t know why the girl jumped from the school’s roof and killed herself a few episodes back. Originally I just thought it was lazy writing but I’m smacking myself in the forehead now because it obviously is connected to something. It was both creepy and cool when Cameron replayed the event for the school’s grief counselor. I’m still frustrated, though, that she’s so different from episode 1 to episode 2.

So, what do I hope the Sarah Connor Chronicles is about? A robot from the future who is sent back in time to protect John and Sarah so they can stop the robots from taking over in the first place? Sure. But maybe it will also be about Skynet’s realization that they need John and Sarah, because without John and Sarah, the first Terminator (Arnold) has no reason to go back in time and therefore serve as the inspiration for Skynet itself. Therefore, Skynet should be sending Terminators back to protect John and Sarah, and the twist should be that future John is sending back agents to kill himself so the resistance that sparks this whole mess in the first place never happens… thereby ensuring Skynet never exists.

One of those “ultimate sacrifice” stories. If that really is what this show is about, I hope Fox keeps it around after week 8.

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After the sixth season of Smallville ended last May, I heard rumors that the producers were looking to bring Supergirl into the show for the it’s seventh (and probably final) season. I was excited, because I am a big Supergirl fan. I’ll be honest as to why: because it’s a hot female superhero. But, luckily, at around the time I started to actually pick up and read comics, Peter David was writing for Supergirl and honestly she wasn’t all that hot in that series but it was good enough for me to have just recently spent almost $150 on the complete collection because it was so well written. I could into more detail about this but I won’t.

Anyway, here is Supergirl on Smallville:

Not sure if that’s an official promo shot or what, but I like how Smallville, in it’s final years, is fleshing out more of the DC universe’s cast of characters. For example, last season the Green Arrow played a pretty prominant role and we saw the beginning’s of the Justice League. Michael Rosenbaum (Lex Luthor) has said that no matter what, season 7 will be his last, and I can’t really imagine Smallville without his Lex Luthor, so I hope that if Smallville really does end this year they’ll have a number of spin-off options. They could do a Green Arrow series, and I’d watch not because of the Green Arrow storyline but because the guy they had playing him was just so damn cool. Better yet, they could do a Justice League series–even if Tom Welling (Clark/Superman) didn’t want to keep playing Clark Kent/Superman, he could be a guest star and run things “offscreen.” If done right, it could be a better version of Heroes.Had Veronica Mars not came (and went), I’d even think Chloe might be pretty good with her own detective/drama type show. But since that’s no longer an option maybe she could continue to be “The Watchtower” for the Justice Leage or Green Arrow.

They could even do a Supergirl spinoff. What teenage boy (or twentysomething perv like myself) wouldn’t watch that? Get Peter David as head writer and you’ve got yourself what the insiders like to call “a pretty good show.”

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