Ep 1.6 - Hourglass

[costas22]

I totally agree with you on both this and the Ryan episodes being the best of season 1. I love Jackie Burroughs in general ( she was on a show called Road to Avonlea), and this episode was very well thought on in terms of character development. I wasn't a huge fan of the Harry storyline, but it wasn't horrendous either.

I wish that that show would have had more good freaks of the week to even out the bad. It would have been cool to see Clark have the positive examples to encourage him on his journey, but alas, I wasn't in charge. 

Heh. I guess it was easier to have evil freaks who just happened to be infatuated with Lana. Plus, the Kents had Clark under their wing around that time, so they provided him with all his life lessons. Nevertheless, Clark meeting good natured people with powers was essential in his growth. Cassandra taught him a bit about loss, Ryan made him understand for the first time what it will be like to be a role model for others and Kyle Tippett was a realization of what might happen if Clark hides his powers.

[jon-el87]

I wish that that show would have had more good freaks of the week to even out the bad. It would have been cool to see Clark have the positive examples to encourage him on his journey, but alas, I wasn't in charge. 

It's a bit more difficult to build a plot around Clark encountering a good metahuman, than a villain. The villain comes in, commits or tries to commit a crime and Clark has to stop him/her. I'd also like to argue that the larger appearance of bad metas over good ones create a degree of bigotry (i.e. the three metahumans you've encountered were bad, thus all metahumans must be bad), which we saw in later seasons, where the belief that merely being meteor infected turned you evil or made you a ticking time bomb was expressed. Chloe even expressed it, when she ran a counseling group for meteor infected youths. Such a enviroment would create an additional need for Clark and others like him to make themselves known to the world. Thus showing that merely having super powers doesn't automatically make someone bad.

The benevolent metas create more of a story problem. As their benevolent, they'd either be regular people who just live ordinary lives or secretly using their powers to fight crime. Not only does the writer have to write a story around them, but the story has to involve them interacting with Clark. I consider "Booster" as a bad example of this. The episode comes across more like a backdoor pilot (which it kinda was), where the characters of the intended spin-off hijack the episode, than a proper episode of Smallville. I have encountered these kinds of problem, when I've written (or tried to write) fan fics. For example, this past week I've tried to write three, but I only managed to complete one (which I'm currently editing). The two that failed were ones centered around DC characters Vixen and Barry Allen. Part of the reason I failed with those two, is that I had a hard time connecting them to the mothership. As they're SV fan fics, I feel that the actual SV characters should be directly involved in the plot. Otherwise, there'd be no point in placing them in this continuity. With Vixen I had Lois do an interview with three supermodels (one being Mari), but at the same time, I had Lois express a great disinterest in the assignment, noting that this assignment would be more suitably for a DP fashion journalist (meaning I've already created a hole in the story, as the DP wouldn't send Lois Lane to interview a bunch of supermodels... Unless they were being sent into space or something). And her disinterest in the assignment would make it unlikely that she'd wanna spend more time with Mari (meaning it'd be difficult for Lois to discover that she's a superhero and them having a shared adventure). Of course, there were other problems like my inability to come up with a villain and the fact that the Barry Allen one felt like a checklist, when I thought about it, while I like to write more freely and see where the story takes me.

And the difference here, is that I'm dealing with fan fics, meaning I can have the story involve any SV character I wish. The writers of the actual show had to write about the guest metas or guest heroes in their interactions with Clark specifically. He couldn't be abscent (from the whole story), while one of the other regulars were having an adventure with someone else, in another city.

[jon-el87]

Heh. I guess it was easier to have evil freaks who just happened to be infatuated with Lana.

That's one of the things that get frequently exaggerated, when people talk about the show (like the supposed high Smallville High student body count). Certainly, it was common in the first three seasons (with it happening like 2-3 times per season), but they dropped it after that. The only real exception was "Trespass" (and that dude was just a regular stalker, not a meteor freak).