Superman's Been At The Hormone Pills (Smallville - The Complete Season 1 (DVD))

Member Name: GramiWay

Product:	Smallville - The Complete Season 1 (DVD)
Date:	30/05/09 (59 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good ideas and storylines, strong, vibrant characters

Disadvantages: A few poor episodes

I would go as far as to say that I don't mind Superman and I find the whole idea very interesting but I had never been an avid fan of any of the comic books or previous television or movie adaptations focusing on the superhero.

On the other hand Smallville was something new and exciting that took all of the drama and high school chaos of shows before it and wrapped it around the original Superman mythology making this not only a great source of entertainment for die hard fans but also appealing to a whole new generation of viewers who only needed to know the basics about 'the man of steel' before this show sucked them in.

Smallville was essentially designed to show the teenage years of Clark Kent's life before he becomes the Superman we all know and love. The show focuses on certain events and relationships in Clark's life that help to mould him into that future person and much of the first season is spent developing close ties with all those around him.

Tom Welling plays a great Clark Kent not only for the eye candy factor but he also manages to get the broodiness down to a tee. It is a bit difficult imagining him as a teenager though in comparison to some of the other characters and at times his acting skills can be somewhat flat and rather cringe worthy when he tries to express grief or some such. Smallville's first season is a spectacular ride from start to finish bursting with fresh ideas and vibrant characters as the creators leap into the mythos and grab hold of classic characters and twist them into something new and original as well as adding their own unique personalities to the show.

Clark is growing up on a farm in Smallville with his adoptive parents Martha and Jonathan Kent [played by Annette O'Toole and John Schneider respectively].

The family are united in the fact that Clark has various abilities such as super speed, super strength or X-Ray vision that comes into play in the episode of the same name. Clark's origins are revealed in the first episode of the series in a brilliant scene showing the meteore shower that brought him to Earth.

As a teenager complete with all the usual adolescent dysfunctions, Clark also struggles with keeping his powers secret from the rest of the world in particular his best friends Pete Ross and Chloe Sullivan [the latter being a new creation to the universe]. Lana Lang is also present played by the very soft but talented Kristin Kreuk and naturally Clark is head over heels in love with her though these feelings are unknown to her at this point. Lana plays the damsel in distress role so many times throughout the season that it does get very repetitive and Chloe is a much stronger female character and one which will appeal much more to female viewers in my opinion.

Michael Rosenbaum completes the main cast as the villainous Lex Luthor. I love how the show documents his descent into darkness and to the man he becomes in the comicbooks and Rosenbaum is easily the most talented of the cast bringing a rather vulnerable piece of himself to the part though this is often shadowed by the sinister nature of the character which Rosenbaum also manages to play to the extremes and you are really able to see both sides of the fence especially as the show introduces Lionel Luthor [played by John Glover] as a ruthless and cold hearted individual who pushes Lex to the limit leaving him unable to trust anybody at all.

Other than the frequent visits to the local hospital where someone ends up almost every episode and miraculousy arrives and the ongoing army of 'Meteore Freaks' [dubbed so because the meteore shower that brought Clark to Earth in the season opener gave several people super human abilities], the season is rather enjoyable if not for the science fiction side of it and the on going teen angst/romance.

There's not really a large storyline making itself known as most of the episodes revolve around a 'freak of the week' type plot with some of the most interesting being 'Metamorphisis' in which a student takes on the abilities of a bug and 'Cool' in which another classmate of the main characters falls into a meteor infected lake and needs the body heat of others in order to survive.

The show also touches on some rather personal issues with teenagers such as 'Craving' which sees a student so desperate to be thin that she creates some kind of dieting shake out of meteore infected plants and it turns her into a cannibal as she becomes so hungry!

Personal highlights for me include 'Leech' in which Clark's powers are transported into another student and the strange flowers that exhibit out of control behaviour in people in 'Nicodemus' opens up some pretty funny scenes between the characters. The season finale 'Tempest' is rather disappointing and didn't deliver in the way I'd hoped but the right blend of comedy and drama keeps most of the episodes standing on their toes pretty well.

There's not really a lot of special features except the usual deleted scenes and audio commentary with a deleted scene being highlighted on the main menu of each disc with a small pair of scissors to the side of the episode title. But all 21 episodes from the season are available across six discs and whilst the opening sequences on the menu are rather impressive there isn't really a lot to shout about past the initial episodes themselves.

In my honest opinion, this is a great start to a show that has continued to go downhill and somehow manages to keep airing despite many long term fans turning against the show. The plotlines are a lot more developed and the cast band together strongly and there's a magic here that had such potential to be something truly fantastic but I feel that is lost in later seasons of the show when the money seems to take over and the stories become recycled and pathetic.

Summary: A Big Start For Such A Small Sounding Name