Reflections on Smallville Season 1

I just spent an afternoon watching 6×11 through 6×14 (my boyfriend and I are working through this season for the first time), the new Season 7 episode from this week (Apocalypse), and then the very first 2 episodes from Season 1.

I remembered the pilot being two hours and much more dramatic than it actually was. But wow, it was a nice breather from all the uber-angsty, insane-o-drama of Season 6 (which I am finding to be an absolute TRAINWRECK as far as the Lana/Lex plot goes). I actually really liked the early episodes. I hadn’t watched the first season since it first aired, and I realized something afterwards: Clark is actually *smarter* at the beginning than he is today. He gets progressively dumber as time goes on. It’s really refreshing to not see him acting so big ‘n’ dumb after the stupidity of the most recent seasons, but why the dumbing down? Maybe it’s because Chloe and Pete aren’t in on the secret yet, so he’s forced to act and making decisions on his own more. Or maybe his IQ dropped as he bulked up…

Something else my boyfriend and I both remarked on is that Lana is such a happy person when the show starts. For a girl who talks to her dead parents in the graveyard, she’s remarkably positive about life. It’s so sad to see that picture of her as a little girl crying her eyes out upon seeing her parents killed, and realizing that’s what she’ll be doing for the rest of the series >_< It’s like everybody’s lives just spun out of control in increasingly horrible ways after a very optimistic beginning.