10 TV Episodes That Should Have Jumped the Shark (But Didn't)

Long before James Gunn's Superman, the Snyderverse, or Brian Singer's lacklustre run at the Man of Tomorrow, Smallville had cornered the Superman market. With Tom Welling as a young Clark Kent, the show ran for ten seasons and perfectly encapsulated noughties culture while giving us more reasons than usual to care about a flawed hero we thought we knew. Along the way, the show dabbled with formats and setups, drawing from the vast source of comics behind it, as well as the parts of 20th-century culture it was paying homage to while simultaneously leaving behind.

Season six’s 20th episode, “Noir”, offered just this, with a Jimmy Olsen-centric (Aaron Ashmore) adventure set in a black and white, 1940s gumshoe world. Here, Jimmy is The Daily Planet's star reporter and he goes on the case of a woman who wants him to help solve her own murder. Alternative versions of all the regular cast turn up, and Jimmy even shoots Lex Luthor (Michael Rosenbaum) dead.

Like Wizard of Oz, however, it is all a dream; a DC What If…?, if you will. Never mind the outlandish setup and story, the fact of none of it being of consequence was enough to send viewers packing - except it didn’t. And Smallville managed to quickly course correct, hesitant to take this kind of risk again but maintaining a steady quality nonetheless.