Shows that I’ve been watching recently

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I get the impression that Dickinson is not getting as much attention as some of Apple TV’s other originals like The Morning Show and See, it doesn’t seem like many people are talking about it at all which is a shame. I found it to be such a charming and funny coming of age tale, and there were some genuinely heartbreaking moments too when it came

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I had trouble shipping Chloe with anyone tbh and I admit my view is probably tainted because I watched it now and I had to work on separating the actress from the character. But look even when she was with Oliver, I was a bit like I don't understand why? Because comic book-wise Green Arrow/Black Canary are a thing and it wasn't like Justin Hartley had much of a role apart from overcoming his manpain post-Doomday so I had really hoped to see Alaina Huffman again and they would get them together somewhere background-ish. After all, she was already on his team of heros. I'm sorry if that goes against your ship by the way.

Yeah, I get the not caring part. Jason was such a wet blanket and nobody really understood what he was doing there except for separating Lana from the rest of the group, which was annoying. I think I read somewhere that Jensen had a decision to make 'Smallville' or 'Tru Calling' and he chose the former, probably wisely thinking they'd finally give him his own show after a season. I mean the casting choices were so very weird and usually I thought 'Smallville' did so well with them but it was hard to buy Jane Seymour and Jensen Ackles as mother and son.

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I haven’t really watched SV since what came out about the actress, but yeah I think that it’s definitely going to be a little weird for me as well when I next have a rewatch, especially in seasons 7-10. And lol no worries, I did like the Oliver/Chloe ship all right, but it wasn’t my favourite or anything, it always felt really underdeveloped imo and like it was a bit of an afterthought to the writers. I think they just saw fan response to the ending of Oliver teaching Chloe to shoot with a bow and arrow, and so they ran with it. The Chloe relationships that I was more into were Clark/Chloe and Chloe/Davis, but of course everything with Davis then got a bit too sick and creepy towards the end! I thought they had great chemistry early on in season 8 though, and I was honestly rooting for them over Chimmy

And hmm yeah I know what you mean, after Jason was introduced to us as Lana’s bf and a football coach, it was hard to square that with him supposedly being Jane Seymour’s son and being from old money. I think that Jensen is better at playing more blue collar and roguish characters tbh, and Jason never really played to his strengths as an actor

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Putting my feelings towards the actress aside, I agree that in the beginning I thought Chloe and Davis were interesting. It was also that it had a journey for Chloe other than her just being Clark's sidekick that I appreciated to some degree and there was chemistry. But it definitely got way too creepy and sick towards the end. I guess yeah things with Oliver were always way underdelveoped and I only ever saw her and Clark as friends, because he never seemed to look at her with the same interest he looked at Lana, Lois or even Lucy that first episode she was in. Like I said before I wish Chimmy had not happened because I actually loved Jimmy in his scenes with Lois (and Clark). But with Chloe ... the whole thing was sucking the air out of the room.

The problem with Jason was always that we were only told things - we were told he was from old money but to explain why he lives how he lives we are told he was cut off ... however then we learn that his family is involved in this cabal with the Luthors and the Queens etc. and his mother has possibly engineered his meeting with Lana so why cut him off once he followed her to Smallville where Lex and possible things they want from their ancient cabal are anyway? It was really nonsensical. And okay then his mother shows up and that's fine we believe she is sophisticated and from old money but the way Jason speaks and dresses, we don't want to be judgmental but unless he is still in his rebel phase in his late twenties, then it's hard to reconcile? It was really messy in my opinion. I read through some posts on tumblr and maybe even ancient LJ posts and somebody said that season 4 was the best and where SV reached its peak. And I was baffled because … I thought it was mostly a slog. Every other episode somebody seemed to have been possessed or body switched or snatched and then didn't remember at all anymore after waking up. I'm exaggerating but not many of my favourite moments were in that season. I found more before or after.

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I think that season 4 was possibly the first time that the writers really tried to have an overall plot with the search for the stones leading to the Fortress, maybe that’s part of why it’s seen as a new era for the show, along with Lois’s arrival, but yeah I totally agree on how unplanned and messy it all came across. I remember actually that there was a LOT of frustration on LJ because of how much the increased high school focus meant that Lex scenes were cut back to five minutes an episode or less in a darkened mansion, someone used to record how many there were in each episode and call them the Lex minutes lol. It really wasn’t a great season for Lionel either, and that was a shame after season 3 had such great scenes for the Luthors, but all I can say about its popularity with some fans is that I think it really appealed to new viewers who came in for Lois Lane? There was also more of a comic book focus with episodes like Run introducing the Flash, there was Krypto with the dog from the comic, Clark flying in the premiere etc. Season 4 was deliberately introducing more humour to the show with Lois too, as well as cutting back on Clana pinning after one another, that was much appreciated by some viewers who saw Lois as a breath of fresh air in that respect. I think there was a tendency to see the first three seasons as being more about cheesy meteor infected one-off episodes, plus high school drama with Clana and Chloe, and so a lot of viewers were calling season 4 the time when SV really got started/got good to them. Personally I’d argue that season 5 would be the more obvious cut-off from the high school seasons in fact, but I guess that Lois’s arrival made season 4 stand out more there?

IMO also season 3 was a *far* stronger season than season 4, ironically the writers talked at the time about season 3 getting too serious and adult’ with all of the time spend in secret labs with the Luthors, that hurt them in the ratings with younger viewers, and so season 4 was a reaction to that. They specifically said at the beginning that they wanted to go back to high school and bring in more of a sense of fun in season 4, hence Clark playing football, Lois going back to high school etc, and yet for some season 4 is seen as when SV first becomes adult and worth watching 🤷‍♀️

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Oh, I definitely appreciated Lois's arrival (I mean over the seasons she evolved into my favourite character). But like you said, I found it ironic how suddenly it was a much more highschool focused show than ever before with Martha, Jonathan and Lionel next to Lex not getting much screentime or interesting things to do. I totally also appreciated the less Clana thing because before and then also later that was a relationship that was shown to not work over and over and over again which is why not only while watching but now that I can draw a bottomline under my watch I have to say I much preferred Lexana (and later Clois). The funny thing is you say people perceived seasons 1-3 as cheesy but like you said I found season 3 much darker (suddenly everyone seemed to have a secret lab... that was continued later, Oliver had a secret lab, Lana had a secret lab... I honestly felt like... should I get a secret lab?).

Personally I’d argue that season 5 would be the more obvious cut-off from the high school seasons in fact

I agree, because as much as like you said I appreciated the attempt at a storyline that was going all season long it was also called on just as many tropes as the meteor freaks... I mean let's just remember the episode where Lana, Lois and Chloe were possessed with Lana's ancestor and her friends and they were witches? I guess the production had costumes and props from the set of Charmed on loan for that but it was immensely cheesy. Whereas season 5 took on a much darker tone again getting back into the whole alien/Krypton saga.

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:nods: I’d say that my favourite seasons were 3, 5, and 8, and my least favourite seasons are probably 4 and 7. It’s been a long time since I last watched though, so who knows if my views will have changed or not since!

It definitely was a relief not to have every episode end on Clana looking at one another in the loft with sad music playing, really I don’t get why the writers didn’t just put them together in seasons 2 and 3 and let them actually date and be the high school sweethearts, it would have been far less annoying than all of the pining. I was surprised to actually find them pretty cute together when they did briefly date in season 5, because most of their scenes in seasons 1-3 had just been so repetitive and painful to sit through. Tom and Kristen were both fairly new to acting, and they tried their best, but those scenes in the loft were so clearly not playing to their strengths.

The funny thing is you say people perceived seasons 1-3 as cheesy but like you said I found season 3 much darker

I mean tbh I do recall that some of the new season 4 viewers never even watched the earlier seasons, there was talk about it only being worth getting into when Lois showed up, so that could be part of the disconnect you are coming across with season 3 being dismissed as childish? I’m not sure if that’s still the case or not, I’d like to think that most viewers would have watched from the beginning by now, but there were viewers at the time saying they didn’t see the point in catching up with seasons 1-3. Season 3 definitely wasn’t just one-off meteor infected episodes like seasons 1 and 2 were, Shattered, Asylum, and Memoria were some of the darkest episodes they ever did, and there was even a bit of a seasonal arc running through it all with Lex and Chloe trying to take down Lionel. Certainly one was better developed than the stones and the witches from season 4...

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I think for me it was 3, 5 (with the first half of 6) and 9. And yes, I get what you're saying but then you strike me as having really thought this through at the time, so maybe not too much will change. For me when re-watching things it's more that I gain a new appreciation for some details and storylines but not too many things change about my original outlook.

Yes, that was hard to stomach - I wasn't feeling it so badly in season 1 because there at least we still had Whitney (I will admit I liked 'Flash Gordon' where the actor migrated to) but yes the impossible chaste love with contemplative music in the barn attic was not happy times. I mean generally, the actors were all so young and I felt at the time they did their best but it they truly profited from being in scenes with veterans O'Toole, Redmond, Schneider and Glover.

Like I said, I love Lois to pieces and with time she evolved into my favouriet character but I found the early seasons not really childish. I mean coming from 'Roswell' fandom - not directly obviously but this what Smallville basically followed on The WB at the time and I watched back in the day and still remember well- I was a bit disappointed that we didn't get storylines that were going like a read thread through the whole season but I appreciated the morsels of character development and like you said season 3 was intense. Especially with Lex being hospitalised. That was hard for me to watch and I hardly think could be called childish.

At least the stones did come up again from time to time later but the witches were a weird one off.

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I didn’t mind the will they/won’t they Clana angst as much when Whitney was in the picture either actually, because at least Lana having a longtime boyfriend was a legitimate obstacle to keep Clark and Lana apart, but it got very frustrating watching them moon over one another so much in seasons 2 and 3 when there was no real reason that they couldn’t give it a shot. Both actors definitely benefited from being in scenes with more experienced cast members

Frankly I think that the witches storyline were just there to give Kristin something to do. I think they admitted really struggling with finding things to do with Lana outside of being the love interest, and season 4 was kind of the inbetween place when Clana were temporarily less of a focus and Lexana wasn’t happening yet, and so I guess they needed to give come up with a separate storyline for Lana as she was one of their leading characters. I remember them talking about always wanting to get to Lexana and a Clexana triangle eventually, but season 4 felt too soon when Lana was still in high school, so I guess the witches storyline was what they resorted too instead? I think they struggled with making Lana interesting in her own right because so much of the show was geared around Clark and Lex’s interest in her, and that really comes across at times when they have to resort to random storylines like her being a descendant of a witch named Isobel...

And I’d probably add season 6 to my list my favourites as well actually, although it definitely does get a bit rockier in the second half. Season 9 I didn’t really care for though because I wasn’t a big fan of the storyline with Zod quite honestly. I thought it started off interestingly when you’re wondering about the flashes to the future, but I just didn’t care for how Zod was portrayed. I found him a really one note bad guy with all of the clenched jaw shouting, and I had been so much more into the arc the previous season with Davis where he’s really struggling and fighting against his darker nature.

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I thought the whole set up of season 4 was wrong with Lana separated from the group. Like yes, it may have been to early for Lexana but her coming back to Smallville it would have been interesting to see what she made of her Paris experience - as in did that inspire her to new choices as to what career options to explore, maybe a new venture with Lex or expanding on the Talon? Something of the sort... instead we got Jason. I also deplored the fact that it started off rather well in the cemetery when Lana basically saved Lois by wacking that guy over the head with a shovel and I was like, hey - they could be friends, it would really be nice to see a female friendship on the show because in all honesty I felt Lana's and Chloe's friendship was mostly only lipservice.

I wasn't crazy about the Zod storyline either in season 9, I think what I liked about the season though were that Lois and Clark finally worked at the Planet together. I think my joy was more in these non-Zod episodes tbh. And as for the Zod episodes I guess it wasn't so much about him, more about Tess putting the pieces together etc.