Smallville (Season 5)

Hey, it's the "Good sex, bad Lex" season!

Okay, in all seriousness, Season 5 kickstarted a new era for Smallville. Where Seasons 1-4 are a supernatural teen drama set in high school, and Seasons 8-10 apparently blossom into a full-on superhero show, Seasons 5-7 seem to straddle the line between the two which leads to it being the most divisive stretch of the show. And just from Season 5, yeah, I can see why. This season is kind of a lot, but I'll be damned if it wasn't super entertaining.

The first twelve episodes of Season 5 are generally pretty great, aside from the unfortunate double whammy of Thirst and Exposed, two of the show's worst one-offs to date. It feels like the writers really wanted to push the show forward, so we ended up getting a lot of payoffs to stuff that the whole show was building up to. Clark actually tries to have a stable relationship with Lana for a bit, and it almost manages to work. Lex and Clark have a really massive blowout and finally end their friendship pretty much permanently. Braniac shows up as played by Spike from Buffy and has a surprisingly engaging arc where he coerces Clark to free Zod. Multiple other superheroes like Aquaman, Cyborg, and a weird Batman proxy start showing up. And of course, there's the incredibly engaging plot where Clark loses his powers and gains them back at the cost of someone else dying, revealing in the 100th episode to be Jonathan. Season 5 moves through these plot points at a fast pace, making for a really unpredictable and thrilling experience for most of its first half.

If the season kept up this momentum throughout, I'd easily be willing to call it my favorite season so far, but sadly, the second half of Season 5 does lose a bit of steam. We do get some good episodes after Reckoning, but nothing really tops the Milton Fine or election arcs in terms of pure excitement, at least not until the finale. It also doesn't help that Season 5's worst episodes tend to be some of the worst episodes of the show so far. I already mentioned Thirst, the almost comically cheesy Buffy parody, and Exposed, the one where Lois does a pole dance, but there's also episodes like Tomb and Fragile that really don't stack up to the rest of the season. Even the finale felt a bit weaker and messier than previous seasons, with the neat premise of Zod's arrival mixed in with a chaotic apocalypse plot that gave way too many Angel Season 4 vibes than I would've wanted (I'm still traumatized by that season, huh?).

Highlights:

Arrival: Kicking off the incredible three-episode arc that starts off Season 5, Arrival stands out as one of the more focused season premieres alongside Exile, mostly based around Clark running around Smallville trying to help everyone recover from the second meteor shower, only to lose his powers for not returning to train at the Fortress Of Solitude. I especially liked seeing Chloe reveal she knows about Clark's abilities, their friendship this season was really great and wholesome.

Hidden: Meanwhile, Hidden ends off the arc with a bang. Clark gets shot, pretty much dies, gets resurrected and regains his abilities at the cost of someone close to him dying soon. As usual, I like the storylines of crazed meteor freak haters, and the threat of a missile launch destroying Smallville elevated the stakes to quite high levels.

Solitude: I really liked the Milton Fine plot and wish he was around more this season, the morally grey mentor role he took with Clark was quite cool. Solitude was a strong ending to his storyline, at least until his reappearance by the end of the season. You got a cool fight between him and Clark, the reveal that the Kryptonians are trying to resurrect Zod, and a close scare where Martha almost ends up being the one who dies.

Reckoning: Reckoning is arguably the most iconic episode of Smallville, and it's not hard to see why. This is an absolutely crushing 100th episode that gives you everything you thought you wanted before ripping it all away. Clark tells Lana about his powers and they get engaged in a genuinely sweet sequence, Season 5 really did sell me more on their relationship than the last few seasons combined, but of course, it couldn't last. Clark telling Lana about his abilities led to her death, so instead, Clark and Lana break up, and Jonathan ends up being the one who dies, and just after winning the election too.

Overall, Season 5 was probably my favorite season so far in terms of my viewing experience. Its fast pace, constant massive shifts to the status quo, and several standout arcs made for a really fun time. However, it just couldn't keep up that momentum to beat out Season 3 overall. Its low points were low, and its second half was a noticeable dip in quality, but as a whole, I still found this to be quite the enjoyable season of Smallville.

4/5 Stars