Return to Smallville: Season 9 - Where the show takes some big swings

Just re-name the show, you dopes

So, Season 9 of Smallville, which has absolutely no business being called "Smallville" anymore as it takes place 88% in Metropolis, does feel quite a bit like when the show grew up to be the show they thought or wished they were making in Season 7.

It's not the best TV you'll see, but it feels like they finally got pieces in place, logistics and characterwise, that were less awkward and like they were keeping one foot in teen-soap.  It's gone full serious super-drama, and is en route to being Superman.

Episodes We Watched

Savior - Despite clear instructions that the Legion ring was set to send Doomsday to the 31st Century, Lois returns from the future which is 1 year from when she left (but she has no memory of this for some reason?).  Clark decides he needs to give up being human at the worst possible time when his best friend is in crisis, making Clark the world's least considerate friend and reminding us he's both dumb and self-centered AF.  We also meet our Zod of the season, who is absolutely acting to the back of the theater in every scene.

Metallo - A reminder that Brian Austin Green is actually a really solid actor and should have been a main actor/ villain on this show for a season.  He's better than the guy they got for Zod, and his character's arc seemed way, way, way cut short.

Kandor - Julian Sands arrives as "Young Jor-El Clone" to basically cause a lot of trouble for everyone involved.  This whole thing makes Jor-El seem like (even more of) an inconsistent boob.  Sands is good, but the episode feels like a swing and a miss, like they forgot the impact that we may have had if he and Clark spent any time together.

Pandora - This is the episode where we find out this universe has an off-the-shelf technology that will allow you to see into someone's memories with a stick 'em pad.  It's AMAZING and never mentioned or used again.  We also see Lois in the future, and Clark shares her memories of them boning, which means Clark experienced what it's like to be fucked by himself.  Which is how we should all be feeling by this point in the series' run.

Absolute Justice Parts 1 and 2 - Geoff Johns takes on writing chores and shoves in every single JSA trope he can, plus Stargirl, and everyone new to show is acting at an 11.  Like, really, really hamming it up in a way that feels weird and incongruous to the overall tone of the show.  It also introduces Pam Grier as Amanda Waller, head of Checkmate.  It's very clear the actor playing Dr. Fate does not know what to do with his hands while in costume.  The girl playing Stargirl should have joined the overall cast, though.

Warrior - A cursed comic book (we've all got a couple in our collection.  Mine was Lady Death #1, and thereby hangs a tale) enables a street kid to become a superhero and in no way is this a riff on Shazam.  Chloe absolutely tries to rawdog a 12 year old, while Clark is faced with the challenge of throwing over Zatanna who is bodily forcing herself on him in favor of Lois in a Spirit Halloween "Amazon Warrior Princess" costume.  Shut the fuck up, Clark.

Escape - On a show that keeps ratcheting up the horniness, Clark and Lois go to an out of the way inn so they may bone for the first time, I guess?  Meanwhile, Green Arrow and Chloe also go to same inn to bone.  It desperately wants to be a sex-farce episode but is distracted by the appearance of Silver Banshee, low-key one of my favorite villain designs.  Lois also appears in negligee.  No notes.  A+.

Checkmate - All I want to know is what the meetings were like with the interior design firm asked to outfit a castle for a supposedly super-secret clandestine government organization when they were like "make this motherfucker look like a chess board, and spare no expense."  All in all, this is a competently told story, and has bearing and weight that make sense.  I was not cracking wise to Jamie throughout.

Sacrifice - Tess invades the watchtower, trapping she and Chloe inside where things get very sweaty, but not in a Cinemax latenight way.  Really my take-way is that Chloe's capture system (a) does not employ the way-overengineered HVAC system of the Watchtower, but (b) we learn that Watchtower has the world's most expensive and unnecessary HVAC system and the controls are right there, as well as the nuclear freon or whatever.

Salvation - After not watching most of the Kryptonian episodes this season and trying to remember them from my prior viewing, I think I'm pretty right in assuming this storyline was dumb as it looks, that the guy playing Zod needed to take it down about 8 notches, and Kryptonians seem dumb as hell for an advanced race.  The few good bits are undercut with stuff like the main trickster villain saying out loud "Yes, I did the one thing everyone here would find unforgivable and abhorrent."  Also, the stupid pilfering of "The Book of Rao".  But the fight choreography was pretty solid.

Where the actual @#$% is Smallville?

Superman and Lois - Season 2 Round-Up

Let me just say, sometimes you need to let a show cruise along for a season and trust in what they're doing when you think maybe it's not going great.  I never felt Superman and Lois was off the rails this season, but I just wasn't always sure why they were doing what they were doing.  And maybe they did too much of some things, not enough of others, but the show felt *intentional* in ways that were satisfying, carrying overall themes, arcs for all the characters (except for Lana's younger daughter, who is an astounding after-thought) that reflect and refract the theme, and allegory mixing with the concrete.

The show seems very aware of the faults and issues with most CW superhero shows from Smallville through to today, and works overtime not to fall into some of those traps even when it sometimes can't avoid them.  It's not perfect - there's stuff I don't love, and things I wish they'd sort out, and choices they made this season which felt poorly considered.  

But they also chose to go big and swing for the fences with big-time superheroics that somehow aren't just spectacle but contain genuine, complex emotional beats.

SPOILERS, AHOY.

Return To Smallville - Season 8

just go stand in the back, Clark

I dipped in an out of Season 8 of Smallville when it first aired.  They were hitting some key Superman business, and so I was recording episodes and would watch some, parts of some, and skip a lot.  

Season 8 was when CW realized Clark and Chloe were the only characters still around from Season 1, and they pushed Chloe a bit more center to mixed-effect.  With Lex gone, we got Tess Mercer (played by the fantastic Cassidy Freeman), and the introduction of Davis Bloom played by Sam Witwer.  

Episodes

Odyssey - Clark is in Russia for some reason?  Tess shows up and says "I'm the Captain now".  Davis appears as an EMT.  Chloe gets kidnapped and has a new power that could have been cool, but the writers will lack imagination and ditch it mid-season.  

Plastique - Clark is now at the Daily Planet, Tess is CEO of LuthorCorp but spends her time at the Planet, and a young meteor-freak kills people and Clark and Chloe just smile and pat her on the head.  

Bloodline - Clark and Lois wind up in the Phantom Zone, find Kara.  Faora shows up possessing Lois and screws up Season 9 continuity a bit, but we don't talk about that.

Legion - The Legion of Super-Heroes founders show up (Cosmic Boy, Lightning Lad and Saturn Girl) and are somewhat helpful in extracting Brainiac from Chloe.  I liked the Legion depiction.  

Hex - a cute capsule episode where Zatanna shows up and can grant wishes?  The entire exercise seems to be there so someone could put a woman in a Zatanna outfit.  Which would be ridiculous, but Lois' gig seems to be "sexy disguise" starting with this season's maid outfit in S8E1.  But I feel bad for both Durance and Mack as Durance has to play Chloe in Lois' body, and has to walk the fine line of imitation without insult.

Doomsday - Ooof.  This is wildly anti-climatic and embarrassing.  And then there's the nonsensical part where a supposedly cured Davis just straight murders Jimmy, and then they both die, clearing the decks for Season 9.  But, yeah, this was amazingly bad.  And I'm not even going into the Doomsday look, which is...  muppety.

I don't have much new to say.  With Rosenbaum, Glover, O'Toole and Schneider gone, now they need for the new cast to perform.  Witwer and Freeman add a breath of fresh air.  The show seems to recognize Season 7 was a mess, but the writers still aren't much better.

But I do have a note for WB execs.

Superman Is Not Entirely About Krypton

Return to Smallville - Seasons 6 and 7 - So, So, Soapy

MOVE, Clark!  You're clearly in the way.

Jamie is piloting this ship, and we're now well into territory when I wasn't really watching the show beyond checking in to see what they did with Cyborg, etc..   She's far more familiar with this window of Smallville, and she really didn't want to much most of these two seasons.  

Return to Smallville - Season 5 - In Which I've Just Had It

Arrival - Brainiac's ship arrives, along with a few Zod-folk.  Clark loses his powers, hooks up with Lana

Mortal - Some guys escape from Belle Reve and decide to make their name by taking out Clark Kent, who is an urban legend at Belle Reve.  

Hidden - a former classmate of Chloe and Clark takes over a nuclear missile silo? and decides to dust Smallville to get rid of meteor freaks.

Aqua - we watched the first six minutes or so of this one before I remembered this episode is very bad and everything you need to see (YMMV) is in the pre-credits sequence

Thirst - vampires at Metropolis U

Exposed - Lois is a stripper

Reckoning - I'd never seen this one.  It's where Clark tells Lana, things go well until they go very, very bad.  It was actually like an episode of grown-up TV.

Vessel - Cliffhanger Season Finale where Lex becomes Zod and Clark gets tossed into the Phantom Zone.

So I really was thinking about a few overarching things in these episodes.  

"Smallville's" Clark Kent Bares No Resemblance to Superman In Other Media

Return to Smallville - Season 4

Move, Clark.  You're in the way.

Well.  We finally got to Lois.  

We also finally got to the season where Smallville went from teen-romance to "they're 18 now, so it shall be SEXY".  

It's also the season where, back when it aired, I started giving up and didn't watch everything.  

Season 4 episodes we watched:  

• Crusade - the one where Lois arrives and Clark returns from null-space with his memories wiped clean and he flies on camera to get a plot device MacGuffin stone that will do whatever it's gonna do when he collects all three.
• Transference - the one where Lionel Luthor Freaky Fridays with Clark
• Spell - the one where 17th Century witches Freaky Friday with Chloe, Lana and Lois
• Spirit - the one where a Mean Girl ghost possesses/ Freaky Fridays the cast, Martha is hilarious, Chloe wins prom queen, and Lois looks smashing in a pink gown she has for some reason
• Blank - the one where Clark loses all his memories and Chloe has to lead him around for the day
• Commencement - the one where Clark and Chloe graduate, Jor-El is a parent who just doesn't understand, Lex is betrayed by everyone in his life, and then a meteor shower falls on Smallville.  Again.

Look, doing "they aren't themselves" is cheaper than actual make-up or special FX, and it also gives the actors something else to do, which seems fun for them.  See Annette O'Toole's version of a Mean Girl in Spirit.  Fantastic stuff.  But if what you wanted was Welling somehow more wooden, boy, have I got some episodes lined up for YOU.

But like "mind control" in prior seasons, amnesia and possession get old fast as plots when you watch them back-to-back.  It's mostly just waiting for the characters to resume their normal lives and *never mention it again*.  

By the way, I was absolutely wrong that heat vision would not come back tied to boners.  It came up twice in just the few episodes we watched.  I mean, fine.  I'm not above a good boner joke.

Mercifully, by skipping so many episodes, we missed a lot of Clark/ Lana drama.  16 years ago when these episodes aired, I was exhausted/ bored by the show leaning so hard into their drama, and stunned then and now at the writers room's utter inability to give us a reason to root for them or care while utterly centering on those characters.  

Happy Belated Birthday to Erica Durance, "Smallville"'s Lois Lane

Yesterday, June 21, marked the birthday of Erica Durance, Canadian actor, who played Lois Lane for seven seasons on TV's Smallville.  From her first appearance, she had the part down pat, and while I was an inconsistent viewer over the years, Durance remained a highlight and did a lot to elevate the show during some turbulent seasons.

She has several other TV series and a variety of movies under her belt, but has returned to the Super-media world as Alura, mother of Kara Zor-El on TV's Supergirl (yeah, I know, she's like maybe 9 years older than Melissa Benoist, but live-action depictions of Superman media often insist Kryptonian women age well).  

I am already planning an Erica Durance watch-party this Christmas, so get prepared to get merry.

Return to Smallville: Seasons 2 and 3

These people all hate each other but will only talk to each other

It's kinda kooky keeping on with our Smallville rewatch.  We're now past the few episodes we watched for Season 1, and moved from Season 2 (episodes:  Heat, Lineage, Rush, Rosetta) and all the way through Season 3 (episodes to date: Shattered, Delete, Truth, Covenant).  I'm not picking episodes, I'm just bearing witness.

It's amazing what a weird, weird show Smallville became in the course of three seasons.  

Return to "Smallville" - Season 1

It's a fascinating thing to return to a show 20 years later.  For the kids, Smallville debuted when I was about 26 and would have watched pretty much anything that was comic-book related, but was aggressively obsessed with all things Superman - an obsession which started roughly five or six years prior and continues to this day in a toned-down sort of way.  It will sound weird to new comics readers now, but arriving at Superman around the age of 20 or 21 was late for a comics nerd as I'd been reading comics for a decade with no particular interest in The Man of Steel.  But, a confluence of comics that spoke to me where I lived featuring Superman* began trickling out in the mid to late 90's, and that, paired with the WB's Superman: The Animated Series, turned the tide.

At the time of show's debut, I wasn't much of a TV watcher - as in, I didn't make time for television, but I did watch a lot of films.  That said - I'd followed X-Files til right about at this point (when I gave up on the program), but had not been a person to obsess over a particular show, otherwise.  Well, maybe Seinfeld, Simpsons and some Babylon 5.  And lest we forget, Chef!.  No Buffy, Angel or whatever else for me.

Julee Cruise Merges With The Infinite

Vocalist and musician Julee Cruise has passed.  

Cruise is well known to fans of Twin Peaks, and is one of the signature sounds of the aural landscape of the show.  She released solo work as well as standing in for Cindy with the B-52's during tours.

She was s unique and rich talent, and she'll be missed.

Too Much TV - What Shows I've Been Watching

We had just finished up a few shows, but TV now knows most of us don't actually want to go outside on Memorial Day, and so... it was decreed, a bunch of new stuff would hit around this time.

What we're watching:

"She-Hulk, Attorney-at-Law" is Coming to Disney+

It's not easy being green whilst filing writs of habeas corpus

On May 17th, the trailer hit for Marvel's She-Hulk: Attorney-at-Law multi-episode series, which is set to begin on Disney+ in the coming months.  

When talking to pal GadK about the trailer last night, I had to put aside 30-something years of personal knowledge and history and consider what the hell She-Hulk looks like to someone unversed in the character.  Which, for us old man comic nerds, is an increasingly common occurrence.

Here's that trailer.

We're just in a weird, weird part of whatever the arc will be for superheroes media in our very own reality and continuity.  We're moving rapidly away from how superheroes were understood by the broad population as costumed do-gooders who fight obvious bad-guys in melodramatic four-color battles, an impression derived from barely understood comics of a by-gone era.  

What a non-comics person should know:  At some point, the various genres of comics that appeared across a range of comics (romance, western, etc...) seeped into various genres of the booming superhero genre and sparked endless iterations and permutations - and that is what you will now get at your local comics shoppe.  And it means things in Marvel and DC comics adapted to TV and movies will get weirder than a sarcastic space raccoon post haste.  

Things I have Been Watching That Are Not Movies

Jessie Spano looks on

We don't just watch movies at Signal Watch HQ.  If I'm being candid, re-employment and other things have reduced my time for movie watching.  But I'm also watching a movie or two per week for the PodCast, plus editing and posting, all of which takes time.  And I do write up stuff when I watch a movie.

This post is not your opportunity to recommend shows to me (please don't), and I am not telling you anything is essential and must be watched.  Sometimes we just say "hey, this is what we watched" when it comes to TV.

So what have we been up to on the TV side of the spectrum?

Sports

Chicago Cubs Baseball 

This is a mistake in 2022.  Since the Ricketts got their World Series win in 2016, burning through all the Cubs karma and possibly all of that for the Planet Earth to secure a win, the team has disintegrated in spectacular fashion.  They're usually 4th in the NL Central.  Which is like not being the absolute worst team in the worst division in baseball.  

Cubs gonna cub.

Austin FC Futbol

I was a massive skeptic of Austin's foray into Major League Soccer, but we got a team that started in 2021, and I've watched about 80% of their matches on TV or online.  I have not yet been to the stadium.  I now follow the team and try to make sense of a sport that I've struggled to grok in its complexity for my entire adult life.

It's still fun!  I'm kinda into it.

80's TV Movie Watch: The Spirit (1987)

Watched:  05/02/2022

Format:  DVD from Warner Archive

Viewing:  First

Decade:  1980's

Director:  Michael Schultz

Way back in the 1980's, I ordered a Bud Plant catalog so I could get an idea of what all was out there in the world of comics.  I remember two things that really stuck out - a Mike Kaluta image of The Shadow (the first time I'd heard of the character) - and an image for a collection of The Spirit strips with P'gell prominently featured.  You know the one.

I didn't know what the hell The Spirit was, but to my 11 year old brain, this seemed very sexy indeed, and I assumed The Spirit was some sort of soft-core comic.  

Flash forward probably only a matter of months, and I read in Comics Scene that someone was making a TV movie of The Spirit, learned more about it (not a softcore book!) and back in the days when we weren't having superhero media rained down upon us, I was very interested.  

Finally the movie was slated to air, and of course there was some scheduling conflict (we just missed TV in those days), but I could probably catch the last hour or so.  I don't remember where we were or what was up, but I do remember my mom ran into a friend and started talking.  And I just had to stand there while the clock spun and my 1980's chances with no DVR faded away of seeing any of the movie.  

I walked in the door, watched the last five minutes, and then went to do homework.

Quarantine Watch Cont'd: Love Is Blind Season 2

about 3.5 of these people are sociopaths

I don't really watch "reality TV" anymore.  There's plenty wrong with it, and I don't think I need to get into the myriad reasons I think it's a large contributing factor as to why we're at this end-stage as a species.  I don't think Chrisley Knows Best or Season 52 of "Shirtless Morons Hooking-Up With The Prettiest Girls From The Slow Learners Class" has set our monoculture on the path to earning a place among the space-faring races.  Call me crazy.

I mean, I did watch some back around 2002-2006, but I don't know how to tell you people:  it's all the same.  Including home make-over shows.  Or people just off the road pretending to look for Bigfoot.  

But back when we were actually still scared of coronavirus enough to Lysol our produce, I remember laying on the couch sideways and letting hour after hour of Love Is Blind Season 1 slide by.  My memory of the show is minimal.  Someone named "Jessica"* was a real piece of work, and the very pretty girl married a guy who couldn't believe his luck**.  That's about it.  That's my memory of 11 hours of TV.  In fact, I suspect Nick and Vanessa Lachey hosted the series, but Jamie and I spent five minutes debating if they had been and couldn't remember.***

At the time, we had no idea what was happening in the world and whether or not we would be dead within weeks.  This was Weekend 1 of COVID showing up, and suddenly we were all stuck home with streaming services, and Netflix had this and Tiger King.   I couldn't deal with Tiger King, so we never finished it.  Or at least I didn't.  I don't know what Jamie did.

Season 2 has rolled out, and I declared "let's see what these horny morons are up to."  So we put it on.

Emilio Delgado Merges With the Infinite

Sesame Workshop has announced the passing of Emilio Delgado, who we all know as Luis, one of the friendly faces in the neighborhood of Sesame Street.  

Luis was there to show us adults could be kind, curious, considerate and that there were many different kinds of people who were in our communities.  My memory was that I thought Luis was "the funny one" of the human cast members.  I have read a passage or two about what it meant to have a Latino male featured on television to some of my friends.  I believe it.  Delgado had one of the few roles on TV in the 1970's for a Latino male defined as a regular, stand-up guy, and not - as was so often the case in network TV then and now - as a negative stereotype.  

I'll be honest - I think the goals of Sesame Street worked.  To this day, I think of all of the human cast members of Sesame Street as folks I want to run into at the super market.  TV is a powerful tool, and the notion of representation is important for everyone, especially for folks who don't see people who look like themselves on television, but it can also be good for other kids to see those positive  representations to combat the negative portrayals which are a sad default of mass media.

Here's to an actor who brought a welcome face to the screen for generations of kids, who did it with humor and joy.  I'm very sad to hear that Delgado has passed.

Television Watch: The Righteous Gemstones

The Righteous Gemstones takes the tried-and-true David Gordon Green/ Jody Hill/ Danny McBride formula of southern-born numbskulls with no filter (Eastbound and Down, Vice Principals) and this time focuses on the family of a highly successful televangelist, Eli Gemstone (John Goodman).  McBride plays Jesse Gemstone, the eldest child of Eli and Eli's now-deceased wife Aimee-Leigh.  Adam Devine plays the youngest child, Kelvin, a man-baby, closeted even from himself.  And Edi Patterson plays Judy Gemstone, the near feral daughter who somehow takes it up a notch even from what McBride is delivering.  Other players include Smallville's Cassidy Freeman as Amber Gemstone (if you thought she was maybe one of the more talented folks on Smallville, she's here to show that notion was correct.  She's maybe too young for the role, but she's great, so let it slide), Jesse's wife.  And, Walton Goggins as Eli's brother-in-law, Baby Billy.

I have to stop there, because one of the fascinating things about The Righteous Gemstones is the massive scale of the show, including the cast.  All those names aren't even scraping the surface of all the characters.  We see a massive sanctuary/ auditorium, each Gemstone has a separate McMansion on the family plot, there's a theme park (Heritage USA, baby!), and a story that sprawls across decades.  The ambition of the show - which is centered on an emotionally stunted, foul-mouthed clan who earnestly believe both in their righteousness and whatever is the last thing to come out of their mouths (no matter how vulgar or insane) and the very real failings of people on a pedestal.  Especially those who would claim to speak for God.  

TV Watch: Queer Eye - ATX Edition

So, back in 2019 word got out that Netflix's reboot of Queer Eye was coming to my hometown, Austin, Texas.  I've seen most of the original series from the early 00's and all of the reboot series.  Given Austin's unique physical and political location, I thought - yeah, that'll work.

Austin sits on the edge of the Texas Hill Country, and while the eastern portion of town is mostly flat to rolling fields, the further west you head through town, the higher the hills.  It's a mix of lovely green trees and white limestone, and in the more densely populated areas, people do try to make the most and beautify through art and color.  Most of the new skyline defining architecture I find intensely boring, but there are a few stand-outs (the new Google building is amazing).  All of which looks swell on camera.

Holiday Regret/ Rifftrax Watch: The Star Wars Holiday Special (1978)

I like how you can see Harrison Ford thinking about literally anything but where he is in this moment

Watched:  11/22/2021

Format:  YouTube

Viewing:  third?

Decade:  1970's

Director:  Steve Binder

Hubris, thy name is Signal Watch.  

Jamie put up three options for us to watch the other night, and I was like "ha ha!  I'm feeling daffy!  Let's watch The Star Wars Holiday Special!  It'll be great with Rifftrax!"  

Friends, it was not great.

Look, Rifftrax is/ are fun, but they can't turn a broken sewer line into the fountain in front of the Bellagio.  It's more about standing there, cracking wise at the broken sewer line.  I mean, Lucas disavowed and tried to hide the existence of the Star Wars Holiday Special (1978) for decades, but early tape decks and bootlegs at sci-fi conventions kept it alive and kicking despite best efforts to quash this thing's existence.  

Star Wars was once upon a time a thing where there wasn't that much of it - unlike today's Disney-fueled production factory, we got a movie every three years and then some occasional oddball items.  But every attempt to expand beyond the narrow confines of the feature films seemed to be met in disaster.  I was jamming to Christmas in the Stars as a kid (a record that drives Jamie into a fury when I put it on), live-action Ewok movies, an Ewok cartoon and a Droid cartoon, all of which were...  not great.  But I hadn't even heard of the Holiday Special until college.

Supergirl on the CW Ends

I started watching Supergirl from the pilot when the show had big ambitions and was going to air on CBS.  The pilot of the show is... not great.  You could feel the hands of CBS, home to a wide array of boring shows I don't watch, all over the show and kind of wringing themselves with all this superhero weirdness.  But they did bring in a decent cast, and seemed to have some ideas for modernizing the Maid of Might from her incredibly goofy origins in Action Comics 252.  

I won't get into it here, but Supergirl as a property allows for some flexibility as the character's titles never last, no one working on the latest iterations seems aware of prior incarnations, and once on the title, never seems to know what to do with the character for more than 3-6 issues.  I have probably hundreds of Supergirl comics, and there's been exactly two modern runs that I would recommend.

The show started off on CBS, which was always an awkward fit and probably one of the things that drove DC and WB to realize that working with network suits was more trouble than it's worth.  For the first half of the first season, the show felt deeply uncomfortable with itself, bucking against old network tropes and trying to make the domestic life of Kara Zor-El as basic as possible.