Smallville really just took its formula from Buffy the Vampire Slayer (as did the revival of Doctor Who, same as Angel: the Series doing the same for Torchwood by Russell T Davies’ own admission), which also has a superhero in high school origin story and a strange town overrun with freaky things happening. Smallville’s meteor freaks were exactly like the Hellmouth and the high death rates of their respective student bodies.
Roswell is another show that had a similar setup and was actually the first WB show about aliens with magic powers in high school. Max Evans is not too subtly Clark Kent-like, right down to the famous moment of transforming a lump of coal into a diamond. The alien/human hybrid quartet of Max Evans, Michael Guerin, Isabel Evans and the infamous Tess Harding are reincarnations of alien royalty/elite from a destroyed planet, so the connection is obvious.
Except that show went far further with what would happen if the government found out than Smallville dared beyond a few episodes here and there. Max certainly had more done to him (the White Room and going on the run in the finale) than Clark ever did in that regard. Humans who get a little too close to the inhuman with plans for science or personal gain certainly is a trope that pops up in other genre shows (often humans desiring eternal life at a cost or captive experimentation/torture).
Sheriff Jim Valenti (who was the villain of the Roswell High books the shows were based on!) turned out to be the kids’ fiercest protector, not unlike Lionel Luthor, despite being initial antagonists. Lionel being the king of horrific fathers contrasted hugely with Jonathan Kent. Jor-El’s A.I. practically martyred Jonathan in a trade for Lana Lang, so this version is absolutely not comparable to the Christopher Reeve version’s relationship with Marlon Brando’s! Smallville’s Clark is nearly a reversal of the old films in regards to farm boy Clark being the real deal, not the mere disguises of Superman and the hapless reporter (this is also true of Dean Cain’s iteration), as well as the nurture over nature message of the Kents being his true parents in all but blood, whereas the focus is strictly on Jor-El over Jonathan as the father figure in the 1978 and DCEU versions.
Closest to danger Clark ever got outside of Lex Luthor’s experimentation (only with the anonymous blood vial that eventually led to hybrid Lex/Clark clone test tube baby Conner Kent) was from General Sam Lane and the anti-vigilantism plot, but Clark never got nearly so exposed. Max also told his secret in the first episode, so it’s a stark contrast to how long it took for Clark to tell his love interests and friends. Clark and Lucifer Morningstar are the kings of the long-delayed reveal! By contrast, Angel waited seven whole episodes and most of the rest of the characters mentioned here did so in their first episode, if not their first scene.
The WB was already a home to many shows like Smallville, though it certainly started DC adopting the channel as their home to drop their properties into that already-established format.
Angel: the Series, Smallville and Supernatural were the more masculine side (Angel: the Series and Supernatural are definitely the most mature, horror-based shows, as well) on a channel that also had Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the original genre show on a channel that was heavily just sitcoms and 7th Heaven prior to 1997 and quickly transformed the whole channel), Charmed and Roswell (not to mention Dawson’s Creek and other more soapy, non-genre offerings).
Shows like The X-Files and Buffy the Vampire Slayer were the ones that pretty much formed everything we expect from a modern fantasy/sci-fi/supernatural/horror series now, including the mix of overarching long-form story arcs and soap opera/relationship dramas mixed with the Monster of the Week and seasonal Big Bad formats. Monster of the Week (Smallville used Freak of the Week) and ‘shipping were terms coined by The X-Files’ fandom (yep, the biggest controversy of that show was whether Fox Mulder and Dana Scully should remain platonic colleagues as intended by the creator or become a romantic relationship, which took an interminable slow burn of seven seasons), while Big Bad (and thus arcs surrounding that Big Bad seeded throughout the season) was coined on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. All these terms are used for discussing nearly every subsequent genre show today. Television prior to these shows did not have these formats, minus the old-as-dirt episodic Monsters of the Week, but not using that terminology yet.
Smallville was a marriage of comic book superheroes into the genre show format that was already going strong on the old WB. Some of these other non-comic-origin characters wouldn’t be out of place in the comic world either. Definitely true for Buffy Summers and Angel, as they basically are superheroes. Buffy has the more straight-forward Peter Parker-esque origin story, while Angel’s is told completely non-linear (often through a slow drip of flashbacks–his soul was returned a century prior, not during the course of the show, yet he most certainly didn’t become a hero then).
It’s surprising that Supernatural never quite went all-out with a real comic tie-in presence beyond some short runs early on. Neither the comics or the novels use Castiel much at all, who is the most super-powered main on the roster (so much so that the show writers were terrified to put him in Monster of the Week episodes and even tried to kill him off in seasons 6/7 due to him making the Winchesters irrelevant). Castiel is the Eldritch being-level angelic equivalent of The Little Mermaid trying to understand humanity, but with the tragic ending of the novel.
Clark himself has a mix of Dorothy Gale (check out that Over the Rainbow shot on the bridge in Smallville’s pilot, which is an image also echoed in Luke Skywalker’s binary sunset, followed by him doing an Ariel pulling Lex Luthor from the water) and Peter Pan (more than just the flying boy–he also has an immortality problem) in his DNA.
It’s that little piece of inconvenient canon (alluded to numerous times through Smallville) that is at the heart of the adverse reactions of many Superman purists who were horrified by Smallville’s Clark choosing to live a human life and have a family with Lois in the CW’s Crisis on Infinite Earths. It wasn’t just because Tom Welling still refuses to wear tights, but because it was the real unsolved existential crisis facing the character. Conversations with the Kents, Dax-Ur and General Lane all exposed this issue as an insecurity he had quite early on in the series. It’s hardly teen angst, nor was it with Angel and the Doctor saying it repeatedly to Buffy and Rose; it doesn’t make it teen angst just because they were teenagers. Clark likewise shares the tragedy of many other inhuman immortals (and yet, they keep doing it!) in that he can’t father children naturally with humans without some kind of sci-fi workaround (like Blue or Gold Kryptonite).
We might like to see these characters be Peter Pan forever, but sometimes even Peter needs to grow up (as in Hook), lest he forever remain a tragedy. Make no mistake, the immortality trope is always a tragedy, which is why so many of these characters either run away from seeing it played out or they most desire to live human lives. Having duties greater than themselves and a need to save lives they’d never be able to as mortals are often the reasons for these sacrifices, but it still remains a sacrifice and ultimately a damnation, not a gift. These characters are either doomed to lose everyone they’ve ever loved or go out in a blaze of glory, which is what television shows using the trope are actually daring to show more recently.
Not being a tragic horror story, Superman tends to avoid it, but it’s the same problem. That brief scene in Crisis on Infinite Earths was more in line with Smallville than Superman purists wished.
The Doctor is Peter Pan. It’s most obvious with the imagery of little and big Amelia Pond in her nightgown, but the story with Rose Tyler juxtaposed beside Sarah Jane Smith also shows his Peter Pan-esque tendencies. He’s the immortal who keeps picking up new companions to take on far-off adventures, only to leave them behind over and over again before he has to face their human mortality. Although the Doctor is older than Spock, he has picked up many Spockisms over the years like touch telepathy (yup, the Vulcan mind-meld), the half-human aspect of the 1996 TV movie that fans and the show do their best to ignore and the 10th Doctor’s sacrifice via a glass case of radiation (see The Wrath of Khan).
Angel, of course, is Pinocchio (with a big dollop of Highlander’s Prize), the Beast, the immortality of Peter Pan, Louis de Pointe du Lac and pre-retcon evil!Lestat de Lioncourt (the retconned one is, of course, Spike) morphed into Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and a touch of Steve Rogers meets Clark Kent, but with the aesthetic (not character) of Bruce Wayne (that mix is all there). Like Pinocchio and the Beast, there are those major elements of temptation, redemption and atonement.
The Buffyverse definitely borrowed heavily from the sympathetic vampire begun by Varney the Vampire, Nosferatu’s plagiarization of Dracula that gave birth to death by sunlight (see the whole aesthetic of the Buffyverse’s Master), the antiheroization (quite evil initially) in Dark Shadows, the archetypes of Anne Rice (the entire Master + Fanged Four are her lineup–Akasha, Gabrielle, IwtV!Lestat/Louis, Claudia and retcon!Lestat vs. the Master, Darla, Angel(us), Drusilla and Spike), the prosthetics of The Lost Boys and the vampire detective setup of Forever Knight (which copied Barnabas Collins’ cure for vampirism arc, while Angel’s Shanshu borrows more from Highlander’s Prize). Blade and Angel added apocalypse-fighting/comic superheroes to that mix.
Ironically, the more recent examples of the good vampire have gutted their mythologies of evil-default vampires entirely (making the exceptions to the rule far less alienated and unique amongst their own kinds) and certainly kicked out the apocalyptic superheroing for soap opera. The Buffyverse is ironically closer to Anne Rice’s full-blooded, evil, murderous inhuman creatures (no matter the guilt and eating rats in alleys) than it is Twilight and The Vampire Diaries in spite of the human/inhuman romance plots, marking a strong separation between the WB’s era and the CW’s.
That’s a strong example of how the genre show environment has changed in the last two decades, so it’s not just the differences between the eras of Smallville and the Arrowverse/DCEU.
Supernatural is a particularly weird example in that it ran for so long with the same cast (unlike Doctor Who, which is fast approaching its 60th anniversary and has gone through many changes, not just its format) that it was still following the same show format and catering to a generation who grew up along with it (not to mention the actors going from young to middle-aged) from 2005 through 2020. The format all the way to the end (though never again as desaturated, jump-scare horrific as that first season was–its inspirations from The X-Files showed) is most certainly pre-streaming and owes much to its old WB origins using a formula born in the 1990s, despite the CW’s rebranding in 2006. Castiel’s ushering in of the whole angel mythology was the most seismic change in Supernatural’s history, though even he was like a horror creature early on. The show certainly had early comedy episodes, but they definitely got more frequent later. One only has to look at the season 15 premiere’s handling of the Woman in White and Bloody Mary’s returns to see how alien the season 1 atmosphere was to the show by then.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer likewise shed its gothic horror atmosphere and went into the sunlight (not for the better) around the time Angel took his gothic fairy tale-turned-noir with him to L.A. See Lucifer aiming for the same aesthetic in its first season. Smallville was likewise a show that spanned the WB and CW, but before the television landscape completely left that late-'90s/'00s aesthetic. You can definitely start to feel similar differences in the change from Smallville High to Metropolis and Lana to Lois. There’s a pretty stark generational shift in the shows aimed at late Gen-X/older Gen-Y (Millennials) and now Gen-Z (Zoomers). That’s the biggest shift between the WB and the Arrowverse-era CW.
Castiel, despite him learning how to love, is the ultimate example of free will in a mythology that has none by design (he truly did have a “crack in his chassis”) and even adopts a son whom he can finally relate to, ends with him tired, very sad and unloved in return. Not a single character in the history of Supernatural ever tells Castiel that they love him. Frankly, Meg and Crowley, who kept saving his life, showed more care about and affection for him than the Winchesters, particularly Dean (who belittled, refused to help and abandoned Castiel for years before the Jack and Mary drama shattered the relationship irrevocably). Sam, who used to feel the same othering from John and Dean as the Boy with the Demon Blood that got heaped on Castiel if he dared remind Dean he wasn’t “human, or at least like one”, had a bad habit of following his brother in questionable acts like putting Jack in the box. Castiel says he loves others several times, but he never once hears it back. As in The Little Mermaid, Castiel sacrifices himself for someone who will never love him back, except in place of sea form is the black goo of the Empty. At least Jack cared, but you’ll notice Castiel is nowhere to be seen when the Winchesters reunite in Heaven. Not even Sam (who was equally sad and tired at the end, while Dean was just angrily lashing out at everyone while blaming everyone but himself) bothered to place a single photo of Castiel amongst his shrine to John, Mary and Dean. Sam literally knew Castiel longer than he ever knew Mary and his relationship with John was so bad that he left his father and brother to go to Stanford. Boy, did that final episode say it all about Castiel loving, but never being loved in return. Bobby Singer was wrong; it turns out that, for the Winchesters, family did end in blood.
The alienated outsider archetype who doesn’t quite fit in amongst human society (often with an immortality/lifespan problem on top of other interspecies differences), but often desperately wants to find human belonging, love and family, is true of characters like Clark, the Doctor, Spock, Connor/Duncan MacLeod, Angel, Castiel, Lucifer, etc… These are subsequently the shows and storylines that borrow most from the Superman mythos.
See the many takes on Superman II’s Pinocchio plot, except having to give it all up for a higher purpose (not to mention many other Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid, Pinocchio and Peter Pan parallels), such as Angel’s I Will Remember You, Smallville!Clark’s Arrival/Mortal/Hidden, the Doctor’s Human Nature/The Family of Blood and Castiel’s season 9 arc.
That’s Superman and Clark’s real impact on the television landscape.
As I re-watched this scene…this is exactly what I saw. Thank you for expressing it so well. The scene also fits with some of my personal experiences, and it just made so sense in light of what they all had just gone through and the need for safety and connection they must have been feeling.
My take on the threesome and Alex’s uncomfortableness and sadness at the end of 206 is this:
He seems to have resigned himself to Michael and Maria as a couple, even to the point that he’s encouraging Maria to understand Michael’s reasons for lying and telling her not to give up on Michael. He feels that he’s lost his chance and perhaps feels that he has deserved to lose his chance (based on their conversation by the fire in 204.) He thinks his moment/time with Michael is over. (NOT that is is, of course!! Hopefully…)
So–in the moment in the trailer he’s uncomfortable. Not because he doesn’t want to be there, but because he feels like he can’t have this love or doesn’t deserve this love. He doesn’t want to leave. When he and Maria kiss, he moves into it. Actively. It’s not just her, even though she initiated it.* The trauma they have all just experienced makes the need for physical connection pretty believable.
After he and Maria kiss, they both look at Michael, who seems like he doesn’t quite believe this is happening. This is not the bisexual person in a stereotypical threesome. It’s a man who doesn’t believe he’s worthy of love being invited into a physical act of love by the two people he’s torn between. The care they are all taking for each other is beautiful. But, back to Alex, he “knows” he can’t actually have this. That Michael and Maria are together and Michael isn’t his. And he follows through on that in the morning. Of course Michael’s comment about feeling loved is hard for Alex. Did he feel loved in the moment? Probably, given the short montage we saw. But I can’t imagine the pain of having those moments and all the while knowing you will have to leave and can’t have them again. The look on his face as he walked away read to me as him longing for Michael to call him back, but knowing that he won’t.
So…just my take. Nobody has to agree!
*Just a note from personal experience. This is not actually that weird, nor is it out of character for a gay man. I have a couple of close gay friends (who are definitely not bi or pan) who kiss me like that on occasion. When we are sad or in an intense situation or even just at a crazy party and having fun. We will never have penetrative sex (nor do we want to!) but kissing like that can be an affirmation, a connection. It can be a “we are alive, we made it” act of love, not sex. Which is what I saw in this scene between Alex and Maria.
**Also – I’m completely ignoring the interview that Heather did. I respect her as an actress a ton, but I’m basing my feelings on this scene and this episode on what I saw on screen.
Okay so here’s my two cents on episode 6 of Roswell, New Mexico as a real and honest to goodness homosexual gay man. The threesome didn’t bother me nearly as much as it’s bothering everyone else. I’m going to start from the beginning of the episode and work my way through to tell you why.
Question from moderator at Cast for Good panel, April 21,2020:
If you were in the writer’s room, what’s the one thing you would want to happen on Roswell?
Tyler Blackburn’s answer:
“…I do want Alex and Michael to be together. Like I feel like that would be…that would be ideal. To have them actually work it out and have a really nice gay relationship on TV. For it to be not so complicated…that they could actually express their love for each after working through their issues… It would be a good way to bring things full circle.”
Sothis really great post came across my dash recently and it gave me something of an “aha” moment. I wanted to share it with all of you, because that’s what I do here.
A couple things before I start: - This is about Noah and his overall arc, especially re the twist in season 1 and Isobel in relation to him. So CW for spousal abuse, mention of non-consensual possession, and violation of consent. - While this post is talking about something I think is really cool that was done with this character, it is not meant in any way to support his actions, nor is it meant to be a sympathy post. - I know people have some issues with certain aspects of Noah being revealed as a villain; one in particular being that he is the only main alien character to be a POC. I will not be addressing that angle of the arc for many different reasons, but mostly because I feel unqualified to do so. Feel free to make your own post discussing that issue, it’s an important one. - This post is going to involve me talking about my personal reactions and feelings to story elements in a way that I don’t normally do to this extent; this is the point where I acknowledge my innate biases as a person and ask you all to please remember that this is my opinion and nothing more.
Anyway. The post in question was lamenting the audience’s loss of “Nobel”, or Isobel and Noah, when Noah was revealed to be the fourth alien in 1x11. More specifically, the loss of Noah as he was when he was pretending to be human: a gentle, kind, loving husband who was supportive and an excellent male character type that we don’t get the chance to see on TV all that often.
Reading it, I found myself agreeing. Before 1x11, I had at least one post I was planning to write about Noah in his position as Isobel’s husband and how wonderful and refreshing it was to see someone like him that wasn’t played for laughs. I remember being surprised and disappointed when he was revealed as a villain, but most of all saddened at the loss of the character he had been which was now tainted by the knowledge it had all been a lie. I caught some small foreshadowing moments in my rewatch, subtle but there, that I had missed entirely my first time through, and I remember feeling that there should have been more obvious signs that he was going to end up as an antagonist. (Mostly because typically there are.)
I couldn’t tell you exactly when the penny dropped, but I was thinking somewhere along the lines of it being so atypical that this show in particular would “betray” the narrative like that. To pull the rug out from under the audience so aggressively is an unusual and daring move, and unfortunately it’s very often a symptom of rushed or just plain bad writing. Now though, I have a different theory.
Because this isn’t about Noah, it was never about Noah. This is about Isobel.
And contrary to appearances, it’s about the audience first and foremost. What does doing something like this accomplish? A complete about-face for a main reoccurring character most of the way through the season with little to no foreshadowing is not a kind trick to pull on your audience for no good reason. So what is the reason? I remember the fandom reaction (among those who did not predict the twist) being shock, anger, disgust, dismay, and sadness. I’ve already said I had those feelings at the time, and my skin still crawls now when I watch the scenes of him with Isobel in “domestic bliss” in the early episodes. What possible logic could there be behind deliberately creating that reaction in the show’s audience?
Again, the answer is simple. Isobel.
What Isobel went through in season 1 is not necessarily an easy thing to really, truly sympathize with. Not if you haven’t experienced it. It goes beyond a betrayal; it’s a violation. In every sense of the word.
As the audience, there’s always some layer of “the signs were all there”. (Again, mostly because typically there are in fact signs for the audience.) We’re removed by one degree from the character’s surprise, shock, horror, and what ever else because usually we’ve seen both sides. We know the upset is coming.
Framing it this way, hiding the foreshadowing in clever camera work and editing as well as limiting scenes with only Noah to ones that could easily have two meanings, means that the audience experiences the betrayal as the character does.We feel the gut-punch just as much as Isobeldoes.
That sudden 180, the unexpectedness of it that leaves us reeling, is crucial for us understanding and sympathizing with Isobel going into season 2. Because we saw the Noah that she loved, and we loved him too. We fell for him as easily she did, and we can hate the truth he was underneath the lie while mourning the loss of the lie itself just as Isobel does. The anger, disgust, and sadness we feel is Isobel’s as well. We didn’t get obvious foreshadowing because Isobel didn’t; the abruptness of the reveal for us mirrors her experience at the gala.
And that thought..I guess just clicked into place for me. Even if it wasn’t the intention, the effect that that move achieved was staggering and notable. And honestly? I give major props for such an inventive way to get the audience on board. Because speaking for myself, it worked.
This is key.
From a personal perspective, one of my younger sisters has been climbing out of the wreckage of her marriage for the past two years. She had fallen in love and dated a charming, kind, and sensitive man. He cared about her needs and did all he could to make sure that he was supporting her in all she needed. Before the wedding.
We found out later that he is a clinical narcissist who manipulated everyone, but most especially my sister. We didn’t see the signs because there were no signs. It’s so easy to think that we would never fall for an abuser because we would know better. But the odds are…we wouldn’t. Sometimes there are no signs.
The audience was betrayed because Isobel was betrayed. And in retrospect, it worked.
For anyone who was rightfully like ‘Uh where’s Maria???’ after seeing the season 2 trailer.
Glad to see this. I knew that the trailer was put together by the PR people and that Carina and the writers have no control over it…but glad to see her clarify that there will be Maria!
sometimes i think about all the reasons i love this show and yes malex, yes aliens, yes gorgeous women, but honestly what i love the most is that it’s also a story about people in their early 30s living far from big cities and sparkling careers. i love that the settings are diners, bars, junkyards, that their clothes and houses and cars are ordinary. i know it’s a really small part of the story and sometimes it’s imperfect but it’s so important and good to me. like, OG roswell was about teens in high school and there’s so much stuff about teens in small town high schools but 30somethings still in their small home town is really something else and i love that they explored it.
