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[frelling_tralk]

I don't know how many Smallville fans are still on LJ, but I thought that this interview with Al and Miles was fairly interesting:

Q: Smallville stirred up a lot of controversy with hardcore comic book fans devoted to the original. How did you guys deal with that?

AG: Like all writers - we tried to avoid it as much as possible! We stopped

Comments

[cinderella81]

Q: Looking back, is there anywhere you wish you’d taken the characters of Smallville?

AG: I wish we had a better trajectory for Lana Lang. That was probably a three-season love story that lasted six seasons.

MM: It’s so torturous and slow. Ultimately, it damaged Lana in the audience’s mind. Because Clark refused to tell her the truth about his identity, he was constantly forced to lie to her. Although justified, Lana’s response to his behavior made her seem cold and unsympathetic - even though from her POV, Clark was a sneaky, bold-faced liar.

OMG This!! I grew to hate LL because they couldn't figure out how to write her! I felt like there was no solid story for her and I definitely grew to resent her ...

[frelling_tralk]

I feel like they did her character a real disservice by only caring about her character in terms of her relationship with the men in her life. She was one of the three main leads of the show originally, yet only Clark and Lex get defined characters and interesting stories on their own, it always felt like Al and Miles mostly only cared about having Lana there to be the girl next door for Clark to pine over. And then later on the girl to come between Lex and Clark in the Clexana triangle.

IMO they did do a better job of writing her from around season 5, but in the high school years it was just ridiculous how they set her up as one of the three leads, yet everytime they tried to give her a separate storyline (Henry Small being her father, suddenly going to Paris to study art) it always seemed so half-assed and badly thought-out. Even there Al is just talking about Lana in relation to the love story and how long that should have lasted, instead of what didn't work about Lana's character in her own right

[cinderella81]

They really did. I wish they'd have given her a real purpose, not just a point in a triangle ...

[frelling_tralk]

Yeah I mean, even when they did try other storylines with her, it always felt like they were just scrambling to give Lana something more to do as one of their leads, but it always came secondary to her role as the girl next door for Clark or Lex to pine over

[rogueslayer452]

I never really got into Smallville, though I did see some episodes throughout its long run (my sister was a fan, at least for the beginning half of the show) and I was always in the camp to really like Lana Lang, which is considered a highly unpopular opinion amongst the fandom. Though ITA that the show did a great disservice towards her, and I felt that Kristen Kreuk deserved better for her time on the show.

[frelling_tralk]

I really disliked Lana from the earlier seasons when I first watched Smallville, but in retrospect I actually find her character quite interesting if you read between the lines a little bit. Probably why I ended up liking her more when she became darker and more manipulative when they paired her with Lex :P

But what the writers seemed to want the audience to take on face value about her character was always so messy and badly thought out IMO, it felt like they had no discernible character there, they just had a vague idea about writing her as pretty and popular on the surface/tragic underneath

[tasabian]

Al & Miles always come across as such dicks in their interviews. I don't like AG's dismissive comments on Tom in that article- dude, the cast CARRIED you for years! People were not tuning into SV for the writing.

If they'd allowed Kristin to play a real girl and not their fantasy fap-princess, both KK and the audience would have been much happier.

[frelling_tralk]

Yeah I think that the problem was that in seasons 1-3 especially they always saw Lana as Clark's dream girl first, instead of caring about her as a character in her own right

smallville

[laceymcbain]

I find the writers always dismissive of the fans in these interviews, and they have a tendency to blame everyone but the writing/direction of show for poor ratings. I didn't care for Lana in general as a character mainly because they didn't know what to do with her, and like you, I get really tired of women's roles only being about the men they're with. I hated it when they made the rift between Lex and Clark seem to be about the relationship with Lana. Bleh. I started watching the show because of the Clark/Lex friendship, and that to me was what I wanted in the show. How do you go from best friends to bitter enemies? What does it take to make that happen? What choices?

It was a fun show, though, and it got me into fandom, and it gave me a few years with a great group of friends where we had potlucks and watched the show and laughed and wrote fic. It was awesome, and because of that, Smallville will always have a special place in my heart - even when it was stupid.

Re: smallville

[frelling_tralk]

Yeah I miss those days in fandom, I've never really found another fandom to replace it :( I've been somewhat involved in The Vampire Diaries and Supernatural fandom, but I never really felt a part of the fandoms the way that I did with SV, I've found no fandom replacement for how much fun we had together back in the day

I also started watching originally to see what would tear Clark and Lex apart, so it was a big disappointment when it came across as anti-climatic as it did in the season 3 finale when they were already fighting every week anyway, they never did become as close friends as I had been expecting

[jlvsclrk]

Thanks for posting this. It was pretty obvious towards the end how little the CW cared for Smallville - what network thinks its a good idea to move their top rated show to Friday? - and the budget cuts certainly showed for things like lighting and exterior shots. But I still loved it. In a way, I wish AlMiles had left after 3 seasons when its kind of clear they lost interest and were just looking for a way to spin off the series.

And yes, I hate what they kept doing with Lana. Its like no one on the show ever paid any attention to the cumulative effect on all the interactions between the characters. Each episode could be fine enough on its own, but made no sense in the context of the series as a whole. (I'm specifically thinking Lexana S6 here with the whole baby fiasco but it holds for just about every other pairing too).

[frelling_tralk]

I'm curious now as to why they were pushing for the Green Arrow and Supergirl spin-offs so much if they knew that the network had zero interest in another comic book show and had already turned down Aquaman? And yeah it did always come across that the CW valued Gossip Girl and shows with that demo a lot more, I guess that SV just wasn't what they were looking to brand their network with