The first season of Smallville ended with a massive drama bomb, paving the way for a far more plot-driven second season. And that's what we got, Season 2 strikes a much stronger balance between tones, even if it still has some kinks that need to be ironed out.
While Season 1 was almost entirely episodic, Season 2 actually has a bit of a running theme across the season in that pretty much every character is discovering their heritage. Lex learns he has a half-brother, Lana learns who her father really was, and Clark learns a hell of a lot about Krypton, his father, and his true name, Kal-El. While it does veer slightly into soapy "everyone's connected" territory, I found most of these storylines to be quite touching, and the Krypton episodes were easily some of the series' best to date. Another pretty neat overarching plot involves Clark's friend Pete finally learning about his identity. Pete was kind of a nothing character in Season 1, but the fact that he's now the only one of Clark's friends to be in on his true identity makes him a lot more fun and interesting, and it strengthened his and Clark's bond a lot. However, even outside of the serialized elements, Smallville's second season is just way more consistent than its predecessor in terms of the standalone episodes. There's a strong variety of fun one-offs peppered throughout the season, ranging from the iconic debut of the red kryptonite, to an obligatory Die Hard homage, to the return of Ryan from last season. It all just flows better here.
That being said, not everything landed for me this season. The other main theme of Season 2 was "secrets", and if you've seen my review of Pushing Daisies, you should know that I tend to hate it when shows lay the secret-keeping on thick. I'm not against Clark having a secret identity, of course, I'd even say I encourage it, but Season 2 repeatedly has him get in trouble for things that aren't his fault and that he can't properly explain. By the end of the season, I was begging Clark to get some sort of alibi, but the constant fumbles he gets himself into just gets worse and worse culminating in an absolute disaster of a finale. This also really affects the Clark-Lana-Chloe love triangle, which felt a lot more insufferable. Clark spends the season repeatedly screwing up his chances with Lana, who by the way is a lot more interesting this season partially thanks to Kreuk's improved acting, and Chloe spends the season getting caught trying to dig into Clark's past. As you can tell from my usage of the word "repeatedly", I found these storylines to get pretty repetitive, it felt like Clark and Chloe were making the same mistakes episode after episode. The moment-to-moment episodes of Season 2 were strong enough that I could still mostly overlook the frustratingly repetitive character drama, but I do hope that Season 3 switches the dynamics up a bit.
Highlights
Lineage: As I mentioned, I thought the best episodes involving Clark learning about his heritage, so as such, all the highlights deal with that storyline. Lineage has a pretty fun main plotline about a woman showing up to claim Clark as her son, but the most interesting part is all the flashbacks from how the Kents found and took Clark in with the help of Lionel. Even Lana gets a solid storyline here as she tries to meet her own adopted father.
Rosetta: What can I say about Rosetta that hasn't already been said? Clark learns a lot here, between finally fitting the octogonal key in the wall in the caves, learning kryptonian, discovering that he's the last of his kind, and the craziest twist, learning that he was sent to conquer Earth. I love this last reveal, it's a very fresh and unique twist on the Superman mythos that has the potential to set-up a really gripping "defying destiny" storyline. Of course, there's also the great cameo of Christopher Reeve, and his scene is full of that classic Superman magic that I hope later seasons will be able to develop a bit.
Exodus: Once again, the season finale is completely bonkers, though I'm a bit more polarized on it than Tempest. Exodus takes larger swings, the crew has compared it to Empire Strikes Back and I can definitely see why, though I'd also say it feels like Buffy's own Season 2 finale, Beginning. It's the episode where pretty much everything falls apart for Clark and while it did end up being a bit hard to watch after everything that's happened this season, I can't say it's not exhilarating either. The main storyline of Clark deciding between staying and fulfilling his destiny is engaging and the big cliffhanger of him taking red kryptonite and running away was fun, but on the other hand, the Lex and Chloe cliffhangers fell a bit more flat for me.
Overall, Season 2 was a solid step-up over the first. The standalone episodes are more fun, and the overarching plot arcs are more plentiful and interesting, but the love triangle is at its absolute worst here and it drags down the season a considerable degree.
3/5 Stars
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