2. Smallville
Another in a long line of Superman related shows, Smallville was to follow the journey of Clark Kent as he went from being a high school student to the worlds greatest superhero. The shows creators enforced a strict No tights, no flights rule that meant Clark would not put on the suit or fly in the run of the show, this was about his youth and his journey to become the man he was destined to be. The rule worked; whether you were a fan of the show or not most would agree that the writers did a good job of portraying the experiences of Clarks youth and how he learns to control his powers but then the years began to go by. It took far too long for Clark to become Superman, about five years too long. It is bad enough that becoming the man of steel was so drawn out but the wait for him to fly was ridiculous we all wanted to see it happen and by the time it finally did most of us didn't even care anymore. Even if like me you stuck with show despite the fact that a fully grown Clark Kent was protecting Metropolis, working at the Daily Planet and teaming up with the Justice League and yet still wasn't Superman, it is hard to deny the writers had no idea what direction to take once Clark had graduated. In fairness the last two seasons of the show which integrated more comic book influenced storylines and characters, were a vast improvement on seasons 6 through 8 and ironically the departure of one the most popular characters in Lex Luthor seemed to remove an albatross from around the shows neck.
This improvement in quality also highlighted the overall problem of the later seasons; it was defying the premise of the series. This was meant to be a story about Supermans early years but by this point he was Superman in everything but name. He had the girl, the job, the rogues gallery and despite that he still could not fly or wear the costume. This was stupid; the show never should have gone past high school, if they really wanted to continue it then it should have been spun-off into a series called Metropolis and followed Clarks early days as Superman.