{"id":1552,"date":"2005-05-19T11:06:00","date_gmt":"2005-05-19T18:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/2005\/05\/19\/why-i-hate-smallville\/"},"modified":"2005-05-19T11:06:00","modified_gmt":"2005-05-19T18:06:00","slug":"why-i-hate-smallville","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/2005\/05\/19\/why-i-hate-smallville\/","title":{"rendered":"Why I hate Smallville"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Here it is, in the nutshell that is the logline for yesterday&#8217;s 90-minute season finale:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;A nightmare leads Clark to begin to understand why he was sent to Earth and he seeks counsel from Jor-El, who warns him that he must reunite the three crystals immediately or a disaster of epic proportions will befall the planet.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I haven&#8217;t even seen the episode, but I already know it&#8217;s going to suck.<\/p>\n<p>If it weren&#8217;t for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.televisionwithoutpity.com\/\">Television Without Pity<\/a>, I might despair that I&#8217;m the only Superman fan who thinks that <span style=\"font-style:italic;\">Smallville<\/span> has ripped out the heart of the DC legend, stomped on it, set it on fire, then put out the fire with hydrochloric acid.  Which is to say, it stinks.<\/p>\n<p>I hate shows that revolve around prophecy, especially when they make shit up in an attempt to give the illusion of purpose.  One of the things I loved about the original Superman&#8211; the <span style=\"font-weight:bold;\">real<\/span> Superman, dammit&#8211; was the fact that he was finding himself and deciding who he wanted to be of his own free will.  <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ISBN=1401202519\/curtiscchensfree\">Mark Waid&#8217;s <span style=\"font-style:italic;\">Birthright<\/span><\/a> dealt with that very issue, and it didn&#8217;t need to resort to lame gimmicks like prophecy or destiny.<\/p>\n<p>Maybe it&#8217;s because I&#8217;m an atheist, but I prefer my heroes to take responsibility for their actions.  Sure, you can be tortured or affected by your past, whatever, but don&#8217;t blame the invisible hand of fate when you&#8217;re the one pulling the trigger.<\/p>\n<p>And I can&#8217;t describe how much I hate the idea that Kryptonians visited Earth long before Kal-El landed.  The <span style=\"font-weight:bold;\">point<\/span>, people, is that he&#8217;s the last son of Krypton.  Say it with me, now: Last. Son. Of. Krypton.  He&#8217;s a refugee, an orphan, a lost boy who finds his way because he is rescued by chance, not because it was planned for him to rule the world.  He&#8217;s Anne Frank, and the Kents are Miep Gies and Victor Kugler and Bep Voskuijl and Johannes Kleiman and they don&#8217;t even know it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here it is, in the nutshell that is the logline for yesterday&#8217;s 90-minute season finale: &#8220;A nightmare leads Clark to begin to understand why he was sent to Earth and he seeks counsel from Jor-El, who warns him that he&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[1,133],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1552"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1552\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}