Chicken Big: Or, Why S3 of Smallville Will Be the Best Yet
Written by: Hope

Contrary to weather reports, I'm fairly certain that the sky isn't falling.
Here's a riddle for you:

Q: How is Smallville different from every other show on tv?
A: We know how it ends.

Ninety nine percent of episodic drama on television is open-ended. The producers come up with a concept, and they ride it as long as they can. They use first season to introduce the characters and second season for the exposition, then it's a wide-open field from there. Third and fourth season tends to be the golden age for most television shows, and it'll be the golden age for Smallville, too - and probably far better than anyone expects it to be because Smallville knows where it's going.

Take Buffy the Vampire Slayer for example: Joss Whedon could very well have killed the title character off in the last episode if he'd wanted. There was absolutely nothing stopping him from killing every single character, and letting evil win. Mutant Enemy had far more options than Millar/Gough Ink., because we all know that one day, Clark will be Superman, Lex will be his archenemy, and Lana will be the girl who gets left behind.

Smallville had a hard start. This show had to completely reinvent characters that have been part of pop culture consciousness for seventy years. They changed so many fundamental things about them that they had to have the kryptovillain-of-the-week format in first season, just so we could get to know the new incarnations of these characters. They had seventy years of Lex Luthor, insane mad scientist-villain to counteract. They had seventy years of Superman, overconfident, nearly perfect, hero to counteract.

The show had a hard start because some of their casting choices didn't work out the way they planned - Kristin Kreuk didn't quite rise to the original incarnation of Lana, so they had to start over with her. Kelly Brook's stint as Victoria had to be cut short because again, she couldn't rise to the challenge. They had a hard start because much of the production office left after first season- leaving them in the position of starting Season 1.5 instead of Season 2 with Vortex. Lana had to be redeveloped, they had to finish developing Martha and Pete. They started Season 2 at least five episodes behind; the character development continued when the exposition should have already started.

Eight episodes into Season Two, they finally finished Season One and got down to the business of launching these characters into the arcs and patterns that will take them toward a fixed end point. That's how Smallville is different from Buffy: instead of letting the characters develop whichever way and just enjoying the ride, they had to develop toward a certain point. Clark, Lex, Lana - none of these characters can ever have a character transformation like Willow did on Buffy because their end is already set in stone. We all know where they have to be when this show ends, and each lead has to progress in that direction.

And that's why, even after a mixed season like Season Two, I'm still confident that Season Three will be the best yet. Simply put, the story of young Clark Kent and his contemporaries couldn't really *start* until they were maneuvered into place. A lot of this maneuvering was graceless. A lot of this maneuvering irritated fans. And a lot of this maneuvering was insulting: stealing from one character to fill in another, ignoring important, natural reactions and consequences in certain storylines.

Exodus is a perfect microscope through which to view this - it was a weak episode for forty five minutes, until the characters were maneuvered into their launching points - Lex gets married and gets on that plane, Clark destroys the ship trying to avoid his destiny - from those points out, Exodus was a fantastic episode. We still had to suffer through the first forty-five minutes to get there.

At this point, the production office finally has the freedom to tell their stories. They don't have to worry about whether Clark has X power yet, they don't have to worry about when Clark will find out about his heritage. All of the things we *have* to know, all of the things *Clark* has to know to become Superman are in place. (As per the producers, he won't be flying during the show, so they don't have to cover that, and there are still a few powers left besides that to play with, which are minor compared to speed, strength, invulnerability, x-ray and heat vision.) All of the things we *have* to know about Lex's family, his upbringing, his operating procedure, are in place. All of the things we *have* to know about Lana's history, her goals, and her needs, are in place.

Characters without fixed end points (like Chloe and Pete) are now in more interesting positions: Chloe can have a Willow-arc, they can do with her whatever they want - she's the most naturally developed character on this show because she's completely new. Pete technically can, too - he wasn't in Lex's vision in Hourglass, so though comics say he will be vice president, maybe he won't. Maybe he'll become a mutant. Maybe he'll wrest Plant #3 back to his family. We just don't know, but we're now finally in the season where all of these possibilities can be explored.

All that's left now is the steady rising action toward our inevitable climax, and except for key points of the mythology, they can do pretty much anything they want. They can deviate from the standard four-act episode (which they did twice in Season Two - once with Lineage, once with Suspect, but not at all in Season One), and experiment with storytelling. They can focus on minor characters, or major characters, or even the mutants. At this point, as long as they are heading toward their finale, they can do anything they want. The character development is done. The exposition is done.

None of this is to say that there is no room for improvement. They need to pay attention to continuity, they need someone who can write women (big hopes for Drew Greenberg on that front), they need someone to pay attention to the details, to the week-to-week consequences. They need to better balance their ensemble cast, and they need to maintain their forward motion through all of the episodes, and not just the "important" ones. They need to take their time and consider the implications of the stories they're telling.

But now that they don't have to worry about when Clark will get his next power, or what Lex's parameters are when dealing with an obstacle, or whether Lana may still want to leave for Metropolis, they have the freedom to explore, to create, to get creative and visionary, and they've got writers on staff now with two and three years experience with this show who are capable of doing just that. Jeph Loeb can step up to the plate with his comic book tangents, Mark Verheiden can tell the thriller-suspense stories he loves so much, Peterson & Souders can perfect their Outsider Makes Waves in Smallville genre, Slavkin & Swimmer can design their horror movie monsters, and Ken Biller, Miles Millar and Al Gough can dig deep into the body of the mythology and twist it until it hurts with a new point of view we've never seen in Superman before.

Lex said, "Life is a journey, I don't want to go through mine holding a road map." Well, the production staff of Smallville have finally thrown away the road map- all we know now is that we're heading west, and god knows what will happen before the sun sets. These are the people who came up with the Pilot, Lineage, Insurgence, Rosetta, Zero... those are the stories they've wanted to tell all along, and those are the best stories they've told so far. Based on that alone, I have faith that Season Three is going to be one hell of a ride.

Note: The views of Hope don't necessarily represent the thoughts and feelings of everyone at KryptonSite.