- Title: Smallville – Pilot
- wiki: link
This Saturday we take a look back the beginnings of The CW’s two-plus decades love affair with super-heroes with the Pilot episode of Smallville. The opening episode introduce to most of the key characters and the basic set up which will be used throughout the season and beyond. We start with a meteor shower crashing into Smallville, Kansas, and the arrival of toddler Kal-El to Earth who is found by Martha (Annette O’Toole) and Jonathan Kent (John Schneider) and adopted keeping close to the classical origin story for Clark Kent (Tom Welling). Jumping forward more than a decade, the show picks up with Clark now in high school aware of some of his base powers, such as invulnerability and speed, but others will be introduced over the show’s ten year run.
The idea of the meteor shower not only hides Clark’s spaceship, which would have looked like just another meteor to crash into the town, but it also disperses a wide variety of Kryptonite across the town which will be used in two primary ways. Classically, the stones are able to affect Clark in different ways with the most abundant Green Kryptonite variety making him weak and clumsy. Putting one of those stones around the neck of the girl Clark moons after, is another smart choice that plays directly in the plot of the Pilot multiple times including her boyfriend’s hazing of Clark when he has the necklace on him.
The other primary use of Kryptonite throughout the series is also on display in the first episode as it poisons a local giving them unusual powers. The super-powered crazy in the first episode of the series is a boy who was hazed in the same way Clark will be in the episode who returns after a coma taking revenge on those who left him tied in a field when the meteor shower causing his exposure to the Kryptonite, a decade long coma, and, upon reviving, a control over electricity (all following pretty typical comic book logic). After escaping the field, Clark is able to stop Jeremy (Adrian Glynn McMorran) from harming others at the school dance.
Other notable characters introduced in the opening episode of the series are Clark’s primary love interest for the first-half of the series in Lana Lang (Kristin Kreuk), Clark’s best friends Pete (Sam Jones III) and Chloe (Allison Mack), and Lex Luthor (Michael Rosenbaum). Both Lex and Lana’s lives are changed by the same meteor shower that brought Clark to Earth. Lex’s return to Smallville, and Clark saving his life in a way that logically makes no sense to Lex, will begin an unlikely friendship between the pair to the dismay of Jonathan Kent. Chloe’s interest in research, journalism, and odd events throughout Smallville’s history since the meteor shower, will also rub off on Clark in his own search to understand himself and his effect on the world.
The show makes a Herculean effort with the number of characters and plots it introduces here. While some get overused (such as the meteor freak of the week) others will take interesting turns over this season and beyond. Another major theme of the show’s First Season is Clark’s struggle to lead a normal life and come to terms with his abilities and his alien background. Jonathan and Martha reveal the spaceship to Clark in the Pilot. While this works as a standalone scene to add to some tension between Clark and his father about hiding his son’s powers it also makes you wonder just what kind of half-assed excuses the Kents have been using for Clark’s abilities over the years.
