Smallville (Season 7)

Have you ever seen a season of TV that just left you scratching your head? Not bad, not great, just... weird? That was Season 7 of Smallville for me, a season that I really should have loved. It's got a lot of really interesting plotlines, premises, and developments, and as a whole I found it to be more enjoyable than Season 6, but in practice, the execution just feels consistently off.

Season 7 tries to do a lot all at the same time, maybe a bit too much. It tries to cram in the debut of Kara/Supergirl, a plotline about Bizarro, a plotline about Braniac, lots more Kryptonian lore, Lex finally becoming the supervillain we know him as, Chloe dealing with being a meteor freak, Lana entering a proper relationship with Clark and trying to get revenge on Lex, a convoluted storyline about Lex cloning his brother, Lionel's death, among many others. Some of these plotlines do genuinely work, especially in the first half. Bizarro is a great antagonist, Tom Welling really hams it up as him and all of his focal episodes rank as some of the season's best. The midseason arc where Bizarro replaces Clark is a highlight of the season and feels like a noticeable shift towards the "midseason finale" structure we'd see a lot in the 2010s. Kara is also quite likable, Laura Vandervoort plays her well, and serves as a solid foil for Clark. Chloe dealing with the casual discrimination towards meteor freaks is pretty engaging, Lex's slow turn to being a supervillain is generally well-executed here, and most surprisingly of all, Lana is actually quite fun here. Her relationship with Clark is a lot more enjoyable to watch now that she knows about his powers, and while there is still a bit of drama between them with Lana's attempts to get revenge on Lex, it's honestly pretty believable and well-written for the most part.

However, a little over the halfway point of the season, things completely fall apart. Kara gets abruptly sidelined for a few episodes, comes back with amnesia, and spends like two more episodes before getting sidelined again. I really liked Supergirl as a character but it really felt like the showrunners just don't care about her. Lana also gets sidelined as she's put into a coma for the entire final third of the season before unceremoniously leaving in the finale. The show introduces an absolutely absurd Veritas plotline where we learn there was this secret society composed of Lionel, the Teagues, the Queens, and the Swanns plotting around Clark's arrival all this time. It's the kind of stupid retcon bullshit I always despise seeing in shows. There were still some highlights like Lionel's death in Descent and the neat AU episode in Apocalypse, but so much of this final stretch of the season felt equal parts convoluted and underdeveloped thanks to just how many balls the show was struggling to juggle. And I think the biggest example of this is Lex. As I said, his descent into darkness this season was one of the highlights, but he barely had any time to actually be a supervillain since Michael Rosenbaum left the show after the finale. He learns Clark's identity like five minutes before he permanently leaves, it's underwhelming and the potential drama that could've spawned from this feels barely tapped.

Highlights:

Gemini/Persona: As I mentioned earlier, I thought the Bizarro arc in the middle of the season was really good, easily the highlight of the season for me. It was really fun to see Bizarro try to live Clark's life, and as a reverse, I liked seeing Clark return and try to convince everyone that he's the real him. Also, a lot just happened in general, even I didn't love every plot swerve. Between the initial Bizarro reveal, Lex killing off both of his clones in the span of two episodes, Brainiac coming back, Chloe coming out to Jimmy about her powers, Lana souring on her relationship with Clark, a lot happened across both of these episodes. And to top of it all off, the Pioneer To The Falls needledrop at the end of Persona might just be one of the show's best, utterly chilling.

Overall, Season 7 almost has the opposite problem of Season 6. That season clung onto and dragged out a single awful storyline that brought down the whole season in it, while Season 7 stuffed in too many storylines for it to reasonably handle without giving some of them the short end of the stick, leading to an incredibly messy final half. And yet, I would probably rather take this than Season 6, even if that season arguably hit higher high points. For all its faults, I do think Season 7 was a more thoroughly enjoyable experience throughout because at least it kept tossing new wild ideas at you. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't.

2/5 Stars