Superman is actually fun again!

I was very skeptical when this show first premiered on television, and I therefore did not get into it until recently around the time the first season was released on DVD. Why was I so skeptical? Well, for starters, it's a show about Superman, but Clark Kent never wears the famous red cape (which I have come to realize is one of the things that is so brilliant about the show). I also thought it ridiculous to write Lex Luthor, Superman's arch nemesis, into his childhood (and bald as a young man nonetheless). But then I saw Michael Rosenbaum's superb rendition of the character, and man can this guy act! Just as Hugh Jackman made Wolverine come alive in the X-Men movies for comic book fans, so too does Michael Rosenbaum for Lex Luthor. The character is an anti-hero, but he feel so real on the program, perhaps more so than in the comic books, as we witness his slow transition from a seemingly ordinary rich kid who has issues with his father to a force of evil.

The first season of Smallville was very different from the second and third seasons. Although I have come to prefer these latter two seasons because they are more character driven and delve more into what makes the show most fun, which is Lex Luthor constantly getting closer to finding out about Clark's powers, without ever getting there completely. In the first season, we see more of a synthesis of The X-Files and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Each week Clark has to save the high school from a different "meteor freak," or should I say a teenager given strange powers by the meteor rocks that crash-landed into Smallville on the day of the meteor shower that also brought Clark Kent to Earth. The meteor rocks are actually what is known as Kryptonite in the comics, but they are never referred to this way until well into the second season. The meteor freak enemies give Clark a motivation that he never had before (besides being raised by the goody goody Kents) for becoming a super-hero, since he feels responsible for their attacks on the town.

In the pilot episode, we are introduced to Jeremy, the first of these meteor freaks. Jeremy was a social outcast, similar to the way Clark is portrayed in this pilot (getting beaten up by the football star Whitney who happens to be wearing Lana's necklace made out of meteor rocks). Jeremy tries to seek his revenge on the jocks that tormented him in high school with his new electricity-based powers. It falls upon Clark to use his powers to save his classmates, even Whitney, from Jeremy.

The episodes are all fairly similar to the pilot with respect to the enemy until an episode called "Rogue," where a sleazy cop learns Clark's secret identity and decides to exploit him. This distinction made for a slightly more interesting episode. My personal favorite from this season was an episode entitled "Hug," in which an evil salesman has the power to persuade people to do whatever he wants. For no particular reason, this is where the show really started to come together, about midway through the season. It probably largely has to do with the fact that we get to see Lex as an actual bad guy for the first time on this episode, although it's not his fault, as the salesman used his powers on Lex. Now I'm not going to spoil anything about the ending scene between Lex and Clark, but this is one of the greatest moments in Smallville (perhaps until "Shattered" in the third season).

Another fun episode was "Leech," in which a normal boy stole Clark's powers. We get to see Clark as totally normal on this episode, suddenly unable to keep up with everyone else while playing basketball and getting winded when he tries to run to school.

Near to the end of the first season, we get a little taste of what's in store for the second season as Lex starts getting closer to figuring out Clark's secret. A reporter named Nixon who Lex previously hired to investigate Clark is the catalyst. And everything culminates in the season ending cliffhanger in which Clark's love Lana gets swept up in a tornado that comes to town. I won't spoil how that ends, although you can probably guess.

Anyway, this show is a nice diversion from the usual mopey teen and sex romp programs that run on the WB like "One Tree Hill" and the fortunately deceased "Dawson's Creek." If you liked the pop culture references on "Buffy" (which you'll get on this show through the character Chloe Sullivan) and the oddity of the week feel of "X-Files," you'll love this show, particularly this season.