Smallville is lame

You know, Smallville has never really been a good show. Since the day it premiered, it's been poorly written and poorly acted.

But at one time, there was something about Smallville that made it seem better than it was. There was this sense of destiny, that it was building towards something..what it was building towards we all knew, but it was still interesting to see how it got there.

But right now, I'm sitting here, waiting for Lost, and in the meantime watching a newer episode of Smallville (Blue, if anyone was interested), and I...I just can't even enjoy it anymore. It's not even that interesting.

The show seems, to me, to be a shadow of its former self. Each episode is still chock-full of talk about destiny and whatnot, but it all seems like lip-service. It doesn't feel as if the show is moving towards anything, stagnating. And this shines a spotlight on the poor quality of the show, making it more obvious than it was in previous years. What's worse is the increasingly prevalent reliance on gimmick episodes since Season 4's uber-popular Run - primarily using other DC heroes as guest stars (most of whom, by the way, have it a lot more together than Clark, which makes the future-Superman look a hell of a lot less super).

So when did this happen? If you ask me, it was Season 5. Season 5 seemed to be moving strongly toward a resolution, toward Clark achieving his ultimate destiny. Clark discovers the Fortress of Solitude; he experiences the loss of his father and the degradation of his friendship with Lex; the writers took great pains to put the (then) final nails in the coffin of the Clark/Lana pairing.

My understanding is that this was originally intended to be the final season - but a surge in ratings encouraged the show to overstay it's welcome. And it has - dreadfully so, and it becomes more apparent with each passing episode, each passing season.

Smallville used to be a show that I couldn't miss. Now, I can't help but go out of my way to miss it. There's nothing in it that interests me anymore, and it has tainted my enjoyment of older episodes to the point that I don't even like those anymore, either.

And that's a damned shame.

-M

Thought/Question of the day - 2/20/08

Is it strange that I am intensely annoyed whenever a citizen of the Marvel universe refers to the events of a specific "big event" mini-series as the title of said mini-series?

For example, whenever someone refers to the events of House of M as "House of M," the events of Civil War as "the Civil War," or the events of World War Hulk as "World War Hulk," it bugs the hell out of me.

And I know it's just going to happen again a year from now, when every Marvel hero is talking about how devestating the "secret invasion" was.

-M

I'm not reading it, but I can't stop writing about it

I haven't been reading Amazing Spider-Man since the end of "One More Day," but I've been sort of keeping tabs on it since the reboot.

I read Dan Slott's opening arc (which was pretty good, but nothing that couldn't have been done with Mary Jane) in which Dexter Bennet purchases the Daily Bugle and later renames it "The DB."

As an aspiring newspaper man, this kind of interests me. I think it would be kind of cool to see the Daily Bugle staff (particularly Jonah) dealing with the fact that newspapers have had to become sleeker and more design-dependent since the dawn of the internet in order to keep people buying, often using the printed edition and the website as compliments to each other. Maybe it's just my inner-nerdiness, but I think it would be interesting to see Robbie Robertson and J. Jonah Jameson - surely two old-school journalists - dealing with growing pains, having to watch as a couple of hotshots right out of college come in and completely redesign their template because the one they're using is outdated. Naturally this isn't something I wouldn't want to see an entire major plot devoted to, but I think I would probably get a kick out of a recurring subplot of some kind.

This is something that's always been a nitpick with me, at least in recent years. As I've become more involved and knowledgeable about the design of a newspaper and the amount of effort and thought that goes into creating an eye-catching page one, I often find myself critiquing such pages within my fiction of choice, whether that be television, comics, or movies. Oftentimes I will vocalize this if someone I know is with me, usually causing them to either roll their eyes and ignore me or remind me that it is, in fact, fictional and used merely to forward the plot in some way. I know this, but I can't help it.

...

Why yes, I am working on the college newspaper this weekend. Why do you ask?

-M

Get thee behind me, Mephisto

Marvel keeps trying to lure me back to Amazing Spider-Man. Dan Slott, John Romita, Jr....and now, Barry Kitson.

If I weren't so opposed to "Brand New Day" on principle, this...



...is almost enough to keep me from sticking to my guns. You ask me, that Spider-Man is fantastic.

Hm...nice move, Marvel. You may have convinced me to give in enough to pick up his one-off issue, but I haven't caved yet.

-M