The Superman mythos got the teen drama remix with Smallville. Perfectly cast and solidly scripted, the series ran for ten seasons, and while I did enjoy it, I never got past season five originally. We’re going to fix that this time out.

The show launched with its Pilot on 16 October, 2001. Written by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, who developed it for television and served as showrunners untli the close of season seven.

We are introduced to Smallville, Kansas where a meteor shower changes a number of lives forever. The Kents, Jonathan (John Schneider) and Martha (Annette O’Toole) get their fondest wish with the arrival of baby Kal-El. Some people lose their hair, some people lose their families.

We flash forward to join Clark Kent (Tom Welling) in high school. His powers are beginning to blossom, but this series will tell the story of how it becomes the Man of Steel. Lex Luthor (Michael Rosenbaum) arrives back in Smallville (he’s the one who lost his hair) to run a division of LexCorp. Lana Lang (Kristin Kreuk) lost her family and lives with her aunt, and is the subject of Clark’s high school crush. But she’s got a boyfriend in football superstar, Whitney (Eric Johnson).

The series doesn’t waste time, revealing the truth of Clark’s birth to him early on in the episode. It also gives Clark a supportive group of friends, Chloe (Allison Mack – before the troubles) who works the school newspaper and documents the strangeness of the town and his best friend, Pete (Sam Jones III).

But Clark isn’t the only one with powers in town. It seems the meteorites and the kryptonite embedded in some of them, have created what will be called Freak-of-the-weeks. Oh, and why can’t Clark get near Lana, she has a charm made out of kryptonite (which ends up in Lex’s possession before the end of the ep).

But he’ll keep trying.

There’s some fun imagery, world building, and character development as we know who some of the characters will grow into.

Clark saves Lex’s life, and they form an unlikely (and we know doomed) friendship. Clark’s parents try to instill good values in him, and Lex’s father, Lionel (John Glover), well, he’s someone to look out for.

Clark has to take care of the freak of the week, and has run-ins with Whitney becoming this year’s Scarecrow (a high school tradition, and also highlights the Christ/Superman connection), which also leads to the imagery used to promote the first season.

As a Pilot episode, it works really well. It introduces us to the characters, the world, and has some nice moments. It’s going to be a fun ride.

Metamorphosis was also written by Gough and Millar and it was first broadcast on 23 October, 2001.

Greg (Chad Donella) loves his insects. But when an accident causes some combination of bugs and kryptonite to affect him. Greg finds he has some insect-like abilities. And now, he has his eyes set on his perfect mate. Lana.

Lex gives Clark Lana’s locket, and he leaves it out for Lana. But will she figure out who returned it, or will she think it was Whitney who did right by her?

It’s a fairly basic episode, and things are a little too on the nose – all the bands Greg likes are named after insects. It just plays like a cross between The X-Files and Buffy. It’s not bad, but it just doesn’t work as well as the Pilot. It was enough to convince the studio to go for a full season order instead of just thirteen episodes, though.

Anything after the first episode is going to feel a little less than, especially when it starts establishing the tropes that will be the trademark of the first season – the freak-of-the-week. And the other trope is the Clark’s slowly developing powers and the way they reveal themselves.

One thing to take into account, is that the series is twenty-five years old at this point, and not all of their effects stand up as well as they could have. But it’s not enough to eject you from the story. And you may not be tuning in for the story. Let’s be honest, we’re here for the characters, and where they’re going and growing.

So let’s see where the series takes me, and I can’t wait to see how it finishes up, seeing as I didn’t get that far last time.