Smallville (Oh how I love you again)
I stopped watching Smallville around season 4, I blame this completely on the whole Lana/Clark story line they'd been working at for the first four seasons of the series.
Don't get me wrong the actors were fine, but the whole Lana Lang obsession that Clark had going on was not only creepy (looking at her through a telescope psycho stalker much?) but it was also unforgivably whiny. Love shouldn't cause frown lines or premature wrinkles, laugh lines maybe but not mopey face wrinkles. (Which I feared Welling would get if Clark didn't find a better girlfriend) I was a die hard Chloe/Clark shipper but again the whole Lana thing was too prevalent to ignore. Lois Lane was introduced and I was extremely happy, Lois Lane canon surely they would loose focus on the whole *epic love* that was supposed to be Clark/Lana.
Unfortunately not so much, while Lois was a wonderful vivacious character with a sharp wit they over looked her for doe eyed boring as toast Lana. (I'm sorry for all you Lana fans out there but she really was dull, she made Clark dull and then she turned Lex evil I will get to that in a second.)
It wasn't just the ridiculous plots that the writers invented to keep them apart, faked deaths, becoming infected with Kryptonite and lets not forget the clones, being possessed by an evil spirit of a witch who was linked to Zod... I'm confused... it was also her constant harping on all of her men to make them tell her everything about themselves and 'trust' her. Not to mention that every boyfriend that wasn't Clark either wound up dead, psychotic, a psycho meteor freak or evil, her relationships always ended badly not to mention that every meteor infected was out to boink or just kill her talk about high maintenance.
I mean really how much trouble can one girl have? I am assuming that Lana was either cursed or meteor infected with some power that made people (primarily men and Tina Grear) lose all sensabilities when she was in their immediate vicinity.
Any way I stopped watching.
Then I caught some episodes of Season 10 which were GOOD to my surprise which started me watching older seasons on Amazon.com. (Shameless plug for Amazon becaus it rocks)
I've pretty much avoided all of the 5-7 seasons, by avoided I mean cherry picked episodes that sounded interesting and Lana free. Season 8 was wonderful and tragic, Clark realizing that he has feelings for Lois is slow and sweet along with the fact that Lois is crushing on his alter ego the RBB which would be a major mind frack. And then the whole Doomsday storyline was just tragic Sam Witwer did a wonderful job portraying Davis Bloom aka Doomsday. I really felt for the guy, he becomes a horrible monster with little to no control over who he kills and he is unable to die so where does that leave him? His romance with Chloe was equally tragic, which left me really disliking Chloe for a while. She 'thought' she loved him but really she wanted to 'save' him, talk about missionary dating.
Season 9 was kick butt, I loved the romance between Clark, Lois, Blur triangle which was funny and sad and just wonderful, the whole plot line with Tess Mercer finally made sense, along with her almost religious worship of Kryptonians as saviors made her actions understandable. She believed that these were almost god like beings all of them like the Traveler, they were going to save the world from the wickedness of human kind. Eco terrorism at it's best.
The writing for the season was solid. Clark had finally become a man as well as a leader, his character no longer running from his destiny but embracing it along with the balance of needing something for himself as a man not just a hero. It's an effort for Clark to find that balance, at first you see the struggle of becoming everything he thinks he should be but struggling to be that person he knows he should be. All the characters were finally maturing into wonderful confident individuals who are able to balance out their alter egos and their own personal lives. Oliver Queen finally comes back to himself with the help and unconditional love of Chloe.
Tess was wonderful in the end and I was so glad to see she didn't die, the actress does such a phenomenal job depicting such a complex and misguided character.
Season 10 is absolutely wonderful.
Most shows fizzle out by the time they are ending Smallville seems to be aiming for a bang in their last season and so far they are delivering.