Feeling Hot, Hot, Hot
The fall season is approaching and we here at TVGasm are ready to take on a whole new slew of programming. We are huge fans of reality television, but we also like any sort of television worthy of snark and banter. Unfortunately for me, we started this blog several years too late for me to comment on one of the all-time greatest television shows, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I was even too late to get my licks in on Joss Whedon's not so great comeback called Firefly. Thankfully, I caught onto this blogging game in plenty of time to review the current cream of the teen-driven sci-fi melodrama crop, Smallville. I think it's consistently one of the more interesting programs on television, and the season premier did not disappoint.
I think we can all agree that the writers of Smallville decided to turn the heat up a notch this season. We've already had scenes of Clark's bare ass, Lionel Luther in a prison shower, Clark in his home shower, Lana in a Paris shower, Lana in some girl-on-girl action, a little good lovin' in the locker room, and even some bondage. Well, the bondage was actually Chloe tied up waiting for her death, but you get the idea. It turns out that there is some video footage out there containing a Smallville regular with a lotta "T" to go with some cute "A". Sorry to say, it is NOT Kristin Kreuk in a Hiltonesque romp in the sheets. What we do have is Erica Durance(credited as Erica Parker) taking it all off for a scene in 
It's been a little while since I have taken the time to comment on a Smallville episode. Yes, the Tivo missed one and I made an urgent plea to TVgasm readers for help, which they obliged. The main problem though was that the WB has waited quite a long time to air new episodes after the new year. Although some people argue that my infatuation with Kristin Kreuk has clouded my objectivity, and although I might not love Smallville as much if the mannish-chinned Jennifer Garner was in the lead, I still think the formula works quite well. And since one of the admittedly many reasons TVgasm was launched was because I wanted to write about the show, I think everybody owes that fine ass of Kristin Kreuk at least a little bit of gratitude.
So it looks like the writers of Smallville have decided to take us on a little bit of a Superman hiatus. Early on in the season, it looked as if we were doing to be deep into Krypton mythology for a long time to come. We had ancient stones, ancient maps, ancient 17th century relatives who were reincarnated, and even an ancient actress trying to make a little bit of a comeback (hello Margot Kidder). All of that has been put off a little bit and we have been recently focusing more on the lives of our Smallville characters outside of their involvement in ancient prophecies. It might not be the direction the comic book folks would have like the show to turn, but if you like your high school melodrama, you are in luck.
I think any fan of Smallville will say that they really enjoyed watching the show as all of the characters went through high school. What comes next is open for debate. The list of television shows that have been broken as their characters graduate from high school is long. I think the Smallville writers see that challenge coming and have tried to set up a post-high school lives for almost all of the characters on the show. We'll have to see whether this helps keep the quality of the episodes from eroding after graduation, but I guess I shouldn't complain too much for at least giving it a chance. Let's just hope these little diversions don't make the lives of our current characters suck at a faster rate.
I am sorry that I was so delinquent with my Smallville post from last week. Just after I had said that the episodes were off-topic, but enjoyable, we get an episode about killer dogs that had been experimented by Luthorcorp for a government weapons program. Oh, I checked out after that. Yes, I still watched the episode, but I could not stand to revisit the episode, even if it was to help out all of the loyal TVgasm readers who watch the show. And I still like the show, and hope it sticks around for a little while longer. Hey, even the New York Times thought the show was good enough to 
So, it's nearly been two months since I have had much to say about Smallville. To say the writing has been up and down this year would be an understatement. I could barely stomach the Kryptonite dog episode, and the episode about Lois' sister Lucy, was also so very unenjoyable. Then again, we have also had over a month go by without any new episodes on the Tivo. With only eight episodes left, the writers were going to have to tighten up their writing if they were going to create the same great end of the season suspense that we have enjoyed the first three seasons.
Is it bad that I admit that I always love the prom episodes of any television series that was ever created? Maybe I have some freaky fetish for girls wearing taffeta, I am pretty sure it's not a fetish for carnations. Whatever it is, I was happy to see that we have advanced to the prom episode for Smallville because it traditionally means that the rest of the season is going to have less filler and more substance. The first season ended on prom night, so for fans of the show, it represents the beginning of closure, at least for the high school years. It's a process that every teenage high school drama goes through, and if the writers can pull it off, the show has a good chance of making it after the kids graduate. Do a poor job, and the plot could be spinning it' s wheels for seasons on end until even the money from syndication does not justify the repetitive drivel that is being produced.
Ever since Chloe Sullivan learned that Clark Kent was, well, a super man, the writers of Smallville have been teasing us with the idea of how Chloe would handle that knowledge once she had to confront Clark. Clark has really only trusted one person with his secret, his best friend Pete. Pete wasn't able to handle the burden of knowing and not being able to tell anybody - he was even tortured by people looking for more information. Chloe knows that Clark has awesome strength and blinding speed, and has dropped hints to Clark that she knows, but feels it would be better for him to tell her when he is ready. Looks like we have another episode that is going to be full of who you can trust and who would keep secrets from.
I have to say, the fourth season of Smallville has really left me underwhelmed. As we push on towards the last three or four episodes of the season, I am going to admit that I am not as eagerly anticipating what will happen at the end of this season as compared with the first three. As a reader e-mailed to me, I even let the television calendar lap me by not getting this recap up before a new episode aired. So please forgive me, as I never intended to adopt a Television Without Pity update schedule, it just happened. Anyway, on to the recap.
So, it's been a couple of weeks since I have posted on Smallville, and the season finale is now over a week old as well. I was hoping to get full recaps of both episodes done, but in the interest of time and having a life during the Memorial Day weekend, I decided I am going to do a little bit of consolidation. The only really important episode was the last episode, and I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised with the outcome. For me, Smallville has had some of the best cliffhangers of any series on television, and after all the random twists this season has thrown at us, it was nice to finish off with a strong episode that left us with some anticipation for what is to come.
I should have probably done this yesterday, but last night marked the season premiere for the fifth season of Smallville. Yes, I will be recapping the episodes, but since the WB has decided that they must air this program on Thursdays at 8PM, they will usually come on the weekend. To get everybody excited about the fifth season, there is nothing better you can do than give away some DVDs from the fourth season, right? Well, that logic doesn't exactly stand up to rigorous investigation, but we can give away some DVDs anyway. That's right, on the heels of our 
Among the season premieres that have come our way over the last couple of weeks, there were few that I had anticipated more than Smallville. Sometimes I am afraid that Smallville will always be doomed by obscurity, and that mass appreciation will come too late. Then again, I really can't complain that much since Smallville has had four seasons and the network execs are committed to the fifth. Unfortunately, Smallville has moved away from its little corner of the world on Wednesdays and is now fighting with many other programs for viewers at the Thursday 8PM time slot. Since the TVgasm offices are now equipped with three Tivos, I won't have to worry about missing an episode and will continue to bring the recaps to you. But I have to admit, when I heard the master plan to move the show, I wondered if it was going to have enough eyes watching to warrant another season. Hell, I was worried the writers wouldn't come up with episodes that were worthy of another season. After the season premiere, I can say that I am not so worried about the second of my concerns, which will hopefully take care of the first.
Yes, I know. I am a jerk because I am not cranking out these Smallville posts in a timely fashion. I thank all of you for your e-mails asking me when the next one was coming out, and I appreciate that your e-mails were all polite, even when I said the recap would be up by Sunday at the latest. Although there was no new episode of The OC to contend with, the numbers for the premiere were solid. What we were left with at the end of the episode was Kal-el without his powers, and the beginning of a new life for Clark Kent, which includes a new start for him and Lana. There has really never been any question as to whom Clark's heart yearns for. Despite a brief moment in time when we thought that Chloe and Clark would be together, and the constant faux-hatred flirtation Clark and Lois enjoy, it has always been about Clark and Lana. Part of the burden of Clark's powers was that he had to be careful who knew because knowing his secret often came at a great price, and it drove Pete out of Smallville (well, that and he was a big pussy and pretty uninteresting). Without his abilities, there was nothing to hide from Lana, and he wouldn't have to hide anything from her for her safety. It's a scenario that works for everybody, don't you think?
It looks like the people of Smallville are finally beginning to settle down after their last natural disaster. Lex Luthor pulled some strings with FEMA to pump reconstruction money into the town, and things are getting back to normal. That's not to say that everything is going to be the same as before the meteor shower. Now that Clark Kent is really just mild mannered and not the man of steel, he has to get used to a lot of things. He can't run faster than a speeding bullet, can't burn things with his eyes, and no longer has super strengths. In a bit of irony, the limits that he is now experiencing with his physical prowess has really made it all that much easier for him to reach people emotionally. For starters, he can finally attempt the relationship he has always wanted with Lana, and we left the two of them as they were waiting to uh, reach each other emotionally.
This week's Smallville was very highly anticipated because it featured the appearance of Aquaman. I am not a huge fan of these cameo episodes, because the characters usually come and go in one episode, and you never see them again. Yes, that is really what a cameo is all about, but I think doing it that way really tends to break up the central story lines and leads to more confusion throughout the season. Even two or three episode arcs would make more sense. The fans love them, however, and it is kind of fun to see how often the writers try to fit in references to the comic books. And let's be honest, anything that gives us a chance to see our favorite hotties in their swimwear can't be that bad.
Last week, when I did my recap of Smallville, I mentioned that we were going to have an appearance by Buffy Summers. Well, it turns out that I was wrong, we were going to have an appearance by Buffy Saunders. The episode was still going to feature vampires, but it looks like the Buffy we were talking about was not going to be slaying any vampires. 
One of the challenges for this season of Smallville is how the writers are going to have the kids do what they did in high school now that they are not living or taking classes in the same places anymore. Logistically, the writers have decided to employ the 24 model of travel, where people can simply whisk themselves from one place to another with little worry about how much time it should actually take. The other question, which is where the conflicts are going to come, is a little tougher to solve. It would get boring if we simply said that people affected by kryptonite were wreaking havoc all over the place, although they left that possibility open. Instead it looks like we are going to see mayhem of the general variety, and now that Chloe is working at the Daily Planet, it looks like we'll have plenty of trouble for her to get in to.
It's so cliché to apologize for the tardiness of recaps that it has almost become postmodern. In fact does my referencing the postmodernity of the tardiness make this statement inherently more or less postmodern? No matter, it's all a bunch of shit that I probably wouldn't care about it even I was paying somebody to teach it to me (you know who you are). It's also not going to stop me from apologizing for the tardiness of this Smallville post. In fact, if I hadn't started a new job less than a year ago, I would call in sick just to get it to you folks sooner. Alas, I still need to accumulate some days just in case I have an acute case of hangover or a touch of the bird flu. I hope you all understand.
Quite obviously I am very far behind on my posting this year, and yes, once again Smallville gets the shaft. It's not that I want it to turn out that way, it's just that I have to watch it at the same time as everybody else, and by the time I get around to recapping, well, you know the rest. In an ideal world, networks would send us DVDs a week in advance, I'd agree not to write any reviews early, and they would get lots of free puiblicity. I am not really sure if Kristing Kreuk is filming something else at the moment, but iright now she is on the every other episode schedule. Overall, that's not a bad thing, because after Clark and Lana finally did the nasty, everybody is kind of glad that it happened, and would rather get back to the time when Lana wasn't infecting too many story lines. I would like to make an exception for when promiscious supernatural forces invade her body; those times are always fun. Anyway, after Clark went crazy and nearly killed Lana last week, it was Martha Kent's turn to take a turn for the worse. Would she be the dead loved one Jor-El warned Clark about? Something tells me we were going to find out by the end of the episode, let's see if my hunch was correct.
The buzz surrounding Smallville this year continues to be the mystery surrounding Clark's latest prophecy. Clark thought that he could be happy living as a human, but found out that doing good things while you're human means you have to take some precautions. For example, it helps not to get shot and bleed to death on the operating table. To hammer home the point that he wasn't meant to be a human and that he should keep his powers, Jor-el promised that somebody who Clark loved would die. I have to say that most of the Smallville fans on TVgasm would prefer that Chloe be saved and Lana kick the bucket, even in the face of all the evidence to the contrary. This week's episode gave us an alternate vision a lot of us could be proud of.
As campaigns go, Lex Luthor vs. Jonathan Kent is quite the spectacle. And again, maybe I am losing my flair for the dramatic, but I don't really see how Lex's election in Kansas signals the coming of the apocalypse. Yes, I know that in one of the comic books he actually becomes President, but in the world of Smallville, Lex isn't all that sinister. I mean, he is destined on accumulating as much power as possible, but is kind of lacking on the destruction of his enemies front. I mean, it's not like he isn't trying, but anytime he tries to put his enemies out of business, he gets the bad end of the deal just as often as they do. If he doesn't improve on his nemesis efficiency rating, he'll go down in history as more of a nuisance and not an evil mastermind. You are kind of just waiting for his older brother to order his death while fishing on lake Tahoe, if only to put us out of our misery. Lex does have money, and since money buys you everything in this country, he has always got a shot.
Last night was the big night on Smallville. It's the 100th episode and there was a lot of stuff going on in the Sunflower State. There was a big election for state senator, and Jonathan Kent was primed to win and make his mark by helping out the disadvantaged by driving miles away and discussing problems with a bunch of other old white guys. Hey, at least they're not wearing hoods. The big news, and cause for the most anticipation, was THE DEATH. Yes, somebody that Clark loved was going to die, and there has been a ton of speculation as to who it would be. Thanks to the comic books and some movies, we already have an idea of who is going to die, so that kind of deflated the surprise. What we do know is that whoever fails to make it to the end of the episode is going to have a huge effect on Clark's life.
By now, I have settled down about how upset I was about the 100th episode of Smallville. I guess I was just so bummed about the non-death of Lana that I didn't really appreciate the pain and loss surrounding both Lana and Jonathan's deaths. I still think it would have been great for the writers to have established their own take on the Superman universe, but I guess since the new Superman movie is coming out, they didn't want to further confuse viewers about everything. This week we get to spend some time in Metropolis with a mild-mannered reporter at the Daily Planet that fights for the underdog at night. It sounds very familiar, but the person I'm talking about might not be the one that you're expecting.
I knew that this week's episode of Smallville would be a very special one because it gave us a parental guidance warning at the beginning of the show. I know that I have mentioned how much I love the parental warnings on 24, but I don't want people to think that I am a mindless advocate of any television that is violent. Sex and violence, yes, it's all good. Just violence? A little bit harder to sell. Just sex? Well, there are plenty of boobs to see on The L Word, but if they were team of mercenaries, it would be better. Anyway, this week also let us return to a theme the writers often like to use, but not in the fashion we are accustomed to. Yes, one character's body is possessed by a spirit of some kind, but in a departure from the norm, that body isn't Lana's.
This week on Smallville, we got a little preview into the issues that are going to dominate the last part of the season, but first we had to introduce another friend of Clark Kent. With the show getting on in years, and original story lines harder to come by, the writers can always dip into the Superman comics to find characters that are eventually in Clark's life. It really started in earnest last year with some villains and of course, the flash. This year we got Milton Fine, AKA Braniac, and the Aquaman episode was so successful, it possibly spawned it's own series. It's nice to know that he has so much help saving the world, but the person that Clark Really needs to meet is Chuck Woolery, because Clark's real problem is with his Love Connection. I wonder if there is anybody out there that could help him with both?
It's been quite awhile since we have been graced with an episode of Smallville. It's kind of too bad because I thought that things had become sort of interesting. Just in case you thought things were going to be going back to normal, we were thrown another little twist. In other news, we're still trying to figure out what is happening with Clark and Lana. As repetitive romances go, theirs is among the most annoying. As much as I enjoy seeing Kristin Kreuk on screen (and I am sure the ladies can say the same for Tom Welling), the chemistry these two displayed on camera did not exactly steam up the set. Martha Kent is a Senator and Lionel Luthor finally has some evidence of Clark's extraordinary abilities. We didn't get to everything this week, but it was a start.
Last week marked the end for the great love of Smallville. Actually, they kind of told us that it was great love, but it was really sort of mediocre. I am talking about Clark and Lana. I would pretend that I cared about what happened to them, but their whole song and dance ceased being intriguing a long time ago. To tell you the truth, this was one of the worst episodes in a long time. The writers should understand that if they don't have a lot of good material, just think of an easy way to put Lois in something skimpy or for Clark to take his shirt off. If you are going to put us to sleep in the episode, us boys and girls should at least have something to give us nice dreams. But the show wasn't all that bad, and there was one very good part: Lana died!
After last week's episode of Smallville broke new ground for unoriginality and general lack of excitement, it almost seemed like the writers were just going to pack it in for the rest of the season, knowing that they are probably going to be picked up for next season since a new network is going to take the last season of a show that's getting worse rather than taking a bet on what will be the next Pepper Dennis. This week, I they advertised the episode as Tom Welling's directorial debut, and nothing says "jumping the shark" than having your actors start directing. That being said, I was really surprised at how much I enjoyed this episode. Perhaps Mr. Welling just had better material than some of the past episodes, but there was a great eery feel throughout most of the thing. I'm even looking forward to what will happen in the next episode.
A few weeks ago, Smallville featured a show that was basically a ripoff of Flatliners and I thought that perhaps the writers had given up on all originality knowing that their new network would probably want them anyway. Last week, I was surprised that the episode seemed fairly original and very creepy, despite Tom Welling having directed it. This week, I am back to thinking that the show has jumped the shark, as the episode is basically a one-hour network safe version of Saw. The episode was very painful to watch but since I want to get a few plot developments out of the way, i'll make the recap short and sweet.
So, it's that time of year again. TVgasm receives free DVDs and promptly gives them away to readers. This time, we are giving away five free copies of the Smallville Season 5 boxed set on DVD. Admittedly, I was a little disappointed at what happened last season, and my season finale recap is still kicking around in places unknown. However, the DVD is still worthwhile, if for no other reason than being able to see 
