"Smallville": A Retrospective On 15 Glorious Years

On October 16, 2001, the first episode of Smallville aired and television was changed forever.

A little over a month after the events of September 11, 2001, it was a risky move by The WB (later, The CW network) to air their homegrown American boat-rocker, and not just because nothing else on television was remotely like it. The concept of Smallville was subtly absurd: a science-fiction Superman prequel that was actually a teen melodrama in disguise. But this was a moment when Superheroes seemed farther away than Krypton.

The nation was grieving. Was this really the time or place for Superman?

Enter Smallville, The WB's most watched series pilot to the date. It was just another Tuesday night, but 8.4 million viewers turned on their actual TV sets to watch Clark Kent crash to earth (and in case you need proof that this was pre-Hulu, check out the episode in Season 1 when Chloe is waiting for her dial-up internet).

As a celebration of the 15th Anniversary of Smallville, I've put together a quick fly-through of Smallville (not that there were actually ever any real flying in the show - which, of course, made it all the more brilliant). While it wasn't sent via meteor shower all the way from Krypton (if I had planned better, I could have arranged for that very festive entrance), let's take a look back at all the wonderful absurdities, the labors of love, and the outright soap opera rollercoaster that was involved in making Superman human.

Watching Smallville as told by Clark.

Season 1

Caution: do not look directly into this image, the 2001 may blind you with its gloriousness

In an astonishingly solid pilot episode, baby Clark makes a big entrance, crashing to earth in a Kansas corn field and quickly winning over the hearts of everyone he encounters (watch out for that motif throughout the ENTIRE SHOW). He's adopted by the Kents, who just happened to be wishing for a child that very same day.

Of course, there is collateral damage. Clark's crash landing is accompanied by a meteor shower which rains down fragments of his home planet (which has, incidentally, just exploded) all over the town. Most of the people in Smallville are way traumatized by the rain of radioactive death rocks, but few more so than Lana Lang, who happens to witness both of her parents being pulverized simultaneously by a single meteor. You can see how Clark could feel bad about this.

Skip to: Clark's now a teenager just about to start his first year at Smallville High School.

lol we've all been there, Clark

He's bullied by the football jocks. He has a crush on the girl next door. Oh, and he's faster than a speeding bullet (among other things).

This was the season which started with the homecoming dance and ended with the spring formal, fitting Clark's freshman year of high school into an OCD-approved set of symmetrical parameters.

But not everything about Smallville was cut and dry. One of the most innovative aspects about the show was that Clark and his greatest nemesis, Lex Luthor, hit it off right away and become best friends.

Well, sort of. Due to a (totally avoidable) steel transportation mishap, Lex crashes his speeding Porsche into Clark (who happened to be reflecting on his teenage angst on a bridge at the time) with such force that they both go flying through the barrier and into a river. Clark, of course, saves Lex's life - but that was the easy part. The harder part would be what follows: convincing Lex that nothing out of the ordinary... nothing super happened.

And so it begins

Notable weird stuff in this show is nearly endless (as it should be), but Season One is the stuff of Classic Smallville Weirdness. A teen transforming into a murderous, malting bug-boy (a bold choice for episode 2, by the way) makes sure you know that Lana Lang, now Clark's age, will be the subject of pretty much every stalker's obsession for the rest of her time on the show (over seven seasons) (S1 Ep2 "Metamorphosis"). Amy Adams (yes, that Amy Adams!) makes an appearance as a fat-sucking monster with an unhealthy obsession with body image (S1 Ep8 "Craving"). We also get the unexpected treat of seeing Clark get x-ray vision that he totally didn't see coming (S1 Ep4 "X-Ray").

And so, the pieces are in place. Armed by his trusty journalist BFF and hopeful beau, Chloe Sullivan, Clark Kent is set loose into the world to learn what it means to be human.

Ah, the good old days.

Season 2

Caves. That is all that Season 2 is. The Kawatche Caves. And Clark's sophomore year in high school.

Who would have thought that Clark Kent would have a dirt biking mishap, fall through a hole in the ground and discover ancient caves under Smallville? The whole cavern reeks of Krypton, especially since the (literal) writings on the wall are in the language of Clark's native planet.

Clark also develops heat vision in a delightfully horrifying episode about puberty (of both the Kryptonian and human variety), meaning the number of times Clark makes things explode and/or burst into flame goes up by a margin of about 242%.

But just as Clark's getting more powers, he's also getting more weaknesses. The very words "Red Kryptonite" would make any Smallvillian blush, since Season 2 introduces this kind of meteor rock as having the power to make Clark susceptible to everything every after school special has ever told anyone not to do. Essentially, he becomes Evil Clark.

Season 2 keeps it all coming: Lex may have a brother, Clark's ship in their storm cellar is real sketch, Mrs. Kent is feeling weirdly like she's eating for two, Clark has to make his first super-leap (not to be confused with actual flying - this is just a really, really big jump), and Clark is still trying to date Lana. Of course, he's not successful.

In fact, he screws everything up so badly that he ends up dosing himself on Red Kryptonite, donning a leather jacket, and hopping a motorcycle (where did he get it?) to the big bad city of Metropolis, where he will drown his sorrows by robbing banks, going clubbing, and never not being on Red K.

Everyone's pretty upset. It's amazing.

Season 3

After persuading Clark to come back to Smallville, Clark gets his life back together (and neutralizes the threat of that mob boss he was hanging out with in Metropolis). People generously choose to ignore his habit of literally taking on a completely alternate personality and life goes back to normal.

Season 3 is a glorious melange of more psychologically-driven episodes: obsessions, the allure of undiluted truth, terrorizing nightmares, sanitariums for the criminally insane.

Also in the disturbing category: Lex accidentally allows Lana to be trampled by a horse, and she ends up meeting her new bf in physical therapy. There always seems to be something sketchhhh about Adam Knight (played by Ian Somerhalder of The Vampire Diairies fame), including, but not limited to, the fact that he regularly has violent night terrors and bleeds from his eyes. You know how it is.

Season 4

WELCOME TO SEASON 4, where you will encounter Smallville, the best Smallville, Smallville as it was always meant to be.

It's the moment we've all been waiting for: the introduction of Lois Lane, the girl Clark is destined to be with. And Season 4 wastes no time. Lois comes in strong in the first episode, after helping rescue naked and body-snatched Clark from a field after he's been struck by lightning. Best way to meet your future husband ever.

It's even better when Clark wakes up from his trance and realizes that Lois is the most annoying person he's ever met.

It's senior year of high school and Clark finally gets his wish to play on the football team (which has been his dream since day one). Lana comes back from her summer in Paris inhabited by a 17th century witch. Oh yeah, and she got a boyfriend, the ever-charming Jason Teague (played by - that's right - Jensen Ackles from Supernatural).

You got witches, small town football game bookies, taboo teacher and student liaisons, prison time for Lex's evil father, Lionel, and secret maps to stones of power that have something to do with Clark's kryptonian destiny.

We also learn that pretty much nothing can derail a graduation ceremony as thoroughly as a second deadly meteor shower in 15 years.

I guess no one can put it more succinctly than the DVD case for Season 4: "Lois Lane. Football. The Prom. Graduation. DOOMSDAY."

That's Smallville subtle for you. We wouldn't have it any other way.

Season 5

It's okay, Smallville - we all have bad days.

After four stellar seasons with hardly a hiccup, Season 5 arrives in a post-high school panic. Clark goes to farmer college in Metropolis for a while (?), but the real scandal of Season 5 is that Clark's finally with Lana. Like, they're actually dating and nothing has gone horribly wrong yet. But that doesn't mean we're not all waiting for this to fall apart at any second.

Season 5 has its moments. Admittedly, it's a long-awaited development when Clark finally gets his ice palace/Fortress of Solitude all set up. Plus, Clark and Chloe pass even further into legendary friends territory when Chloe become's Clark's confidante.

But Season 5 is definitely challenging. It's a point when the show noticeably changes directions to sustain Smallville in a post-high school environment and it doesn't really succeed - at first.

That's why we get weird episodes like the outrageous Halloween episode in which Lana joins a vampire sorority that has a history of devouring pizza delivery boys. On the other hand, people often call Reckoning, the 100th episode of Smallville, one of the show's best episodes and a major point of no return.

Most episodes of Season 5 are a little more low-key, or at least seem that way compared to the previous seasons, which all seem to have a memorable moment in every episode.

Consider Season 5 your downpayment on Season 6. And boy, will it be worth it.

Season 6

Take a moment now to prepare yourself.

Are you ready?

Smallville Season 6 IS Smallville. Drama is at an all time high and the show has come back from Season 5 with a vengeance.

Sham pregnancies. Sham marriages. Weird phantoms locked in spinning cubes and thrown into the deep recesses of space. This is good stuff.

And just when we all thought, "Hey, maybe Clark and Lana can make this dating thing work", they don't just break up. Oh, no. That would be too easy. They not only break up, but then Lana marries Lex. LANA IS MRS. LEX, and Clark and Lex are finally full-on enemies.

Oh, and you know all those episodes with other random DC superheroes that have been peppered throughout the show? Impulse, Aquaman, Cyborg? And who could forget the lovable Oliver Queen/Green Arrow (that's right, Arrow - Smallville was doing Oliver Queen way before anyone else)? Well, it's starting to seem a lot like there could be a league of justice in here or something....

Season 7

I like to think of Season 7 as the great Smallville challenge. Just like the horrifying Christopher Eccleston season of Doctor Who, Smallville Season 7 is what Smallville people use to weed out people who are really committed.

I will not say much about this difficult time in a Smallville fan's life.

But I will say these trigger words: Kara. And Lex's last season. Both horrible injustices. Just know that it will be worth it.

Season 8

Again, Smallville proving that it is a comeback kid, make no mistake. Here is your reward for enduring Season 7.

Let me introduce you to Davis Bloome (Sam Witwer), kindly ambulance tech at Metropolis General Hospital. But here's the thing - Davis is actually a tortured soul who has an unfortunate tendency to transform into a beast that prowls at night and feasts on human flesh. He's also known as Doomsday, one of Superman's greatest enemies.

That's right, people. Doomsday has come to Smallville, and it's just what we needed to salve the open wound that is the absence of the brilliant Michael Rosenbaum's Lex Luthor.

Most of the time, Smallville takes place in the city of Metropolis now. Why, you ask?

Say it with me and clap along: Because. Clark. Is. Finally. Working. At. The. Daily. Planet.

Oh, it's all coming together, all right.

Season 9 & 10

There's a reason why I'm putting the last two seasons together: because these are our ending chapters, the time of the show when we all know it really needs to end soon, but we're waiting on loose ends to be tied up and for Clark to finally be ready to fulfill his destiny. These are the two seasons when everything we know about the man that is Superman must come true.

Clark must become a full-fledged reporter at the Daily Planet, fall in love with Lois Lane, embrace his destiny, and become Superman. And flying wouldn't hurt anyone either.

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In the end, Smallville left a big, diamond-S-shaped mark on The CW's network approach. Just look at their lineup today: Arrow, The Flash, Legends of Tomorrow, and Supergirl are all superhero shows that have tried to fill Smallville's entirely-too-awesome shoes by playing according to the Smallville playbook.

It's not just The CW either; since Smallville's success, more and more superheroes have expanded their terrain to television: Fox's Gotham, several iterations of NBC's Heroes, ABC's recent Agent Carter and Agents of SHIELD, even Netflix's Jessica Jones, Luke Cage and Daredevil. However you feel about these shows, they are all Smallville's descendants.

Smallville made a way for a contemporary expansion of superheroes into TV, and it did it in a post-9/11 world. A show full of absurdities was also unapologetic and comforting. It seemed to say that even in the face of the unknown, that America - and the world - could still endure, and when has this been more important than in the world we live in today?

Smallville's first 15 years are just the beginning. Who can we depend on to remind us that no matter how small we feel, no matter what we face, that each and every one of us has his or her own great destiny? Whether you're from Smallville, Bigville, or any other part of the world, everybody matters.

When this show aired in 2001 and we didn't recognize the grieving, heart-broken America we were suddenly living in, Clark Kent arrived again just in time to bring the world a little hope. There will always be hope as long as this is a job for Superman.

Happy 15th Anniversary, Smallville.

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*Haven't seen Smallville yet? Hulu just added all ten seasons this month. Check it out!