I have a complicated relationship with Smallville. The show is kind of like the girl of your dreams. . .or at least so you think, until you find out she is so aimless and meandering that’s she never going to get around to doing anything actually serious with her life and probably never, ever, ever going to put out. And so here we are- season finale. . .are we going to continue to get dickteased?

Oh, yes.

The show was simple: before he was Superman, he lived in Smallville. He was friends with Lex Luthor before they became mortal enemies. Before Lois Lane, Clark Kent was in love with Lana Lang. And, as series creators Miles Millar and Alfred Gogh put it, “no flights, no tights.” So, the show was always intended to be an extended cocktease.  And somehow they managed to squeeze 10 seasons out of this premise, even after most of the show was taking place in Metropolis, even after Lana married Lex, even after Lois Lane replaced Lana, even after Lex Luthor had “died”, even after they’d crammed in almost every other DC comics character or reference possible, even after they put together a proto-Justice League, most of whom were more interesting characters than Clark Kent (ESPECIALLY Oliver Queen aka Green Arrow- who became the most interesting person on the show the past few seasons) even after Clark Kent became a superhero. . . just a crappy one called “The Blur” who couldn’t fly even though every other Kryptonian he encountered could, including the entire city of Kandor, Zod, and Supergirl.

Agh. Sometimes this show just sucked. Like an episode featuring a sorority of bisexual vampires (pander much?), and like that entire half season where I checked out and then jumped back in and realized absolutely nothing had happened.  But sometimes it was really, really good. And that’s what breaks my heart.

Truth, this show was best when it aped Superman. It gave us the stuff we liked about Supes in the first place. The relationship between Lex and Clark in the first few seasons was great. The way they brought in as Christopher Reeve as Virgil Swann. I’ll admit it- as a fan, I liked to be pandered to. And then the unconventional stuff. I had fun with an episode this season that was basically “The Hangover” with the Smallville gang. Except less male nudity.

But too much of Smallville was centered around irrelevant nonsense. And the series finale was no different: occasional moments of brilliance surrounded by a melange of mediocrity and CW/WB-tween-centrism. And from here on in, there be spoilers.  But you know what– I don’t care what I spoil about Smallville because it spoiled itself long, long ago.

The first hour seemed like it was written by a five year old. Not only did almost nothing happen, but so much of it was a “will they/won’t they” of Lois and Clark’s wedding.  Bo-ring. And in typical Smallville fashion, once cool stuff started happening, it was too late. Lex is reborn (awesome) and Lionel Luthor becomes a vessel of Darkseid (yeah, also awesome). But then, all Lex does for the rest of the episode is come to Clark and say “You have to defeat Darseid because we have to be arch-enemies and we can’t do that if the world ends.”  Lame use of the return of  Michael Rosenbaum, whose presence has been sorely missed on the show, imnsho.

And the show has been promising that in the final season, Superman will finally become Superman: he’ll get the cape and he’ll fly.  Out of a 2 hour finale, at what points does he learn to fly and get the cape, respectively?  1:40 and 1:50, meaning if you watched the whole finale, you got 10-20 minutes of Superman being Superman and about twice that of commercials.

BUT, that last 15 or so minutes is brilliant, sans the clip-show montage of the past 10 years. When Superman is Superman the show rules.

And the rest of the time it pretty much sucks. You know what else sucks? Blatant product placement for DC comics. Chloe is sitting there reading a “Smallville” comic book at the open and close of the show– you know, like this was “The Princess Bride” or something. Not only that, but it bugged me that they prominently featured the DC bug that says “Holding the line at $2.99”.  Yes, DC, I’m glad you’re not jacking up the prices of your books. But if I pick up Superman #710 for $2.99 and Marvel’s Fear Itself #1 for $3.99, I think I’m getting the exact same value of my dollar for each book, which is a nice way of saying the Marvel book is 33% better than the DC book. Mind you, I’m reading and enjoying both– but I think it’s ridiculous to feature your low-cost bug so prominently in this series finale.

Well, vaya con douchebag, Smallville. It’s good to see you go. We’ll have fond memories of the good episodes, and as soon as they all come to Netflix Instant Cue I’ll start re-watching them.

The only solace we have is that is the “Curse of Superman” remains true, something terrible will eventually befall Tom Welling. Or perhaps it won’t. Because there could be little worse happen to you than having starred in 10 seasons of Smallville. Well, ok, maybe starring in Cheaper By the Dozen.