10 TV Shows That Should Have Quit While They Were Ahead
3. Smallville
It's difficult to determine exactly when Smallville became utterly irrelevant. I've argued in the past that it was flawed from inception: the high concept was broken, and the show never had the narrative legs to sustain itself past the pilot, let alone the first season.
Beginning with Clark Kents life as a teenager in high school in Smallville, Kansas, the idea was that the show would move gradually on to climax with Clark becoming Superman, living in Metropolis and working for the Daily Planet. Well, that all happened, and Clark still couldn't fly and still wasn't Superman.
Hed continue to meet - and often befriend - early versions of major allies and enemies from Supermans rogues gallery, long past the point where it made sense for a pre-Superman Clark Kent to know all these people, because the show ran out of any other reasons to exist except to tell comics-based storylines, something it wasn't supposed to be doing at all.
Smallville's original showrunners departed after seven seasons, cryptically remarking that theyd struggled to stick with their initial vision for the show. It would limp on a further three years before a mercy killing finally arrived in the tenth season. Some (like me) reckon the show should have died a death long before the seventh year, while still more point to the protagonists graduation from high school as the point at which the show should have hung it up.
Almost no one really believes that Smallville had the narrative legs to go as far as it did. By the end, it had been a ridiculous, no-budget, poorly executed Superman TV show in all but name.