Smallville Season 4 thread (1 Viewer)

Entitled "Crusade," Clark was last seen dissapearing into the cave wall, answering the call of his "father." Bring on season 4! Just wanted to remind anyone who might have forgot this was coming up, since I darn-near did.

Oooooh yah....

Looking forward to it!

The premieres of The Mountain and Lost are on tonight too! so many great shows, so little time. I cannot wait to see the snow boarding on Mountain.

Smallville S4 is going to be great. Big fan and promoter of the show to everyone I know.

Definitely looking forward to the premiere! All I need to do now is set the VCR to tape it, and I'm set!

About to start....Glad it's back on!

The first half has been positively awesome! Lana's new boyfriend is actually likable! Kal-El's flying! Johnathan Kent is comatose! Lois is trying to quit smoking! Martha's grim and upset! Egypt and Krypton are linked! Lex is diseased! Wow!

Total flip from the lackluster last season! I hope this is a sign of things to come. Steven S. DeKnight from the Buffy/Angel school is a producer this season it seems to help.

Yeah, I dug the season premiere as well. The hunt for Chloe will develop along the lines of Lionel second-guessing who benefits from pinning him with Chloe's murder. Lex is definitely got big life problems. Lana's tattoo is another piece of the puzzle. Nice to see Jensen Ackles (he was on Dark Angel a few years ago) get integrated into Lana's life by a chance meeting in Paris.

Lois's intro was pretty good, she definitely doesn't play by the rules, and is almost pathologically fearless in her pursuit of the whole story. Will they establish her age? She appears to be at least of college freshman/sophomore age if not older. I like Erica Durance in the role so far, and she's got a good twinkle in her eye.

Margot Kidder's part, though small, I guess it was pivotal, though what the hell IS black Kryptonite?


Also, I liked the little nod to The Matrix Reloaded when Kal-El takes flight.

In short, it's a plot device

It seems to split the differing halves of Clark's personality, much like Superman and Clark Kent in Superman III. It'll probably come back again in the future for an all out battle between Clark and Kal-El. What I like about Kidder's character so much is that we can feel the presence of Dr. Swann outside of the one episode he's able to schedule in each season. Since Kidder went insane a few years back, the "Smallville" crew are the only ones who went through the effort of making sure she wasn't STILL wacked to all Bejeezus. As such, when every they need a cryptic Dr. Swann message delivered, Kidder will be at their beck and call.

The nice thing about stunt casting on the WB is that you get people that fall outside the super pretty mold they like to cast. Margot Kidder looked the best I've seen her in a while, but the decades have clearly beaten her down in a way they haven't to Annette O'Toole. It makes the character more fascinating.

One thing that struck me: When Martha told Kidder that Clark flew, Kidder muttered something under her breath that implied flying required him to embrace his Kryptonian heritage. I'm wondering if the Superman that flies in the blue tights will have to embrace his Kryptonian side before he can do so. I'm thinking that the last season or two will be about reconciling the two very different heritages.

I was very happy to see the Kryptonian language on the back of that Egyptian artifact. When I hear spoilers that there was going to be an Egyptian mythology that involved Lana, I was afraid they were going to shelve the Kryptonian underpinings all together. And how would that have been "Smallville"?

I was surprised how frikkin' tall Durance was, she towered over Annette (Martha). She and Tom look good together in terms of height.

I actually shared a brief moment with Margot Kidder at Dragon Con earlier this month (she was headed back to her table, and I was going in that general direction, and we both stopped to gawk at something in a costume and made an observation about it, a small quick chuckle between us). Anyhow, I was surprise at how frikkin' tall Margot Kidder was as well, maybe 5'9". I guess if you're going to cast a 6'4" tall Superman (Reeve), you need a somewhat tall Lois as well.

BTW, I'll put my guess in spoiler text as to Chloe's murder mystery:

Unfortunately, the most obvious choice is for Chloe to fake her own death to keep her and her father safe, but that would let Lionel off the hook, but set him up as the most likely person to have the Sullivans bombed, so perhaps the cloud of suspicions would be enough to keep Lionel off their backs.

What a great premiere! Definitely keeps the high standards of the season finale last season.

I agree with the good stuff said about Lois/Erica. Once I saw Erica on Stargate a few weeks back, I thought she would be a good addition to the show, and it really paid off. She is able to conjure the right personality for the role.

The Lex stuff is really interesting. His search for a cure ties in with the Kryptonian mythos and the Egyptian mythos, not to mention his father and Lana. I'm really interested to see how Lana gets involved.

Glad to see Jonathan back! Glad to see the show back! Glad to see Steve DeKnight as a supervising producer!

That surprised me too. When Clark picked her up and moved her, I made a comment to my friend that I could probably do the same...because she looked small.

Boy was I wrong! When she showed up in Martha's kitchen (hehe), she looked like a damn giant.

Gotta love the various varieties of kryptonite in Superman lore. I don't remember the black from the comics, just the red, green and gold. Of course, they changed the way the red effects him for the show so liberties can obviously be taken for the sake of plot devices. Not that there's anything wrong with that...


and now for some random thoughts...

On the Chloe angle, I was expecting Clark to be a little bit more teary eyed and a long winded "I should have been there to stop it..." sequence at the grave in the end of the episode. Not doing it was a little out of character for the Smallville Clark we've come to know, but it's nice to see him step up in a calm, take care of business manner instead.

The Lionel/Lex feud is going to be one for the ages this season.

Lana may actually have something useful to offer the show this season which is great. Also, her new boyfriend does bring out some personality in her charachter which is nice also. Maybe she won't be moping around all the time now. Also will be interesting to see what comes of the tatto and light show she was hit with. Also doesn't hurt to see her naked on the bed with the strategically placed sheet.

All in all, a great season opener (not that this show has ever let me down in that respect) that I've been waiting for all summer. This show will have to carry double duty for my superhero/savior of helpless fix now that Angel is gone, but if this episode is any indication, it's up to the challenge this season.

I just hope the producers didn't blow their special effects budget on tonight's episode.

But I think it'll be a while before Clark flies again (though I could be wrong).

I agree. Clark pretty much said he wasn't able to fly in the end of the episode. It was just one of Kal-El's abilities. I'd like to see it used sparingly anyway otherwise it will be less interesting.

I'm surprised no one's mentioned that the show is now in widescreen. I love the change; it looks much more cinematic this way.

As for the black kryptonite... I think it was invented for this episode. There were a bunch of different types of kryptonite in the pre-Crisis DC Comics universe, but as far as I know, black wasn't one of them. I did love how they used it to show a fight between good and bad Clark. That was a great homage to the best sequence of Superman III.

Some may say it payed homage to the only good sequence in Superman III.

Smallville was in widescreen HDTV last season as well.

Yeah, but now those viewers stuck with standard definition (like me) can enjoy it in this format.