6. Smallville
Back in 2001, The WB network launched this series, which was to focus on Clark Kents life in the Kansas town of Smallville, attending high school while dealing with his superhuman abilities and discovering the truth of his origins. Alfred Gough and Miles Millar set two basic rules for the show: Clark would not fly and he would not don the Superman costumeno flights, no tights. The series took notes from different comic book incarnations, including the Superboy comics, by showing that Clark was friends with Lex Luthor. Kryptonite, which landed in Smallville along with the ship carrying young Clark, served as a MacGuffin that granted powers to local inhabitants of the town, giving the show a freak of the week format in its early stages. At first, the show was actually pretty good. Michael Rosenbaum has provided the best live-action version of Lex Luthor to date while John Schneider and Annette OToole were perfect as the Kents and Allison Mack quickly struck a chord with viewers. Former Superman Christopher Reeve even voiced his approval for the series and appeared on the series as a scientist who helps Clark discover his Kryptonian heritage. But after the shows third season, it quickly went downhill and became obvious that the producers were running out of stories to tell about a pre-Superman Clark Kent. Rather than wrap up the series after three or four years and then segue into a series about Superman (likely due to the development of the film Superman Returns at that time), the producers tried to keep it going. Soon, elements from not only Superman comics, but the wider DC Universe kept propping up. Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen became recurring cast members in the fourth and sixth seasons, respectively, and fellow superheroes the Flash, Aquaman, the Cyborg, Green Arrow, Black Canary, the Martian Manhunter, Zatanna, Supergirl, Superboy, Booster Gold, and the Justice Society all appeared before Clark became Superman. In addition to Luthor, virtually every member of Supermans rogues gallery went up against Clark, including Doomsday, Brainiac, General Zod, and Darkseid. The show spent its last few years with Clark living in Metropolis and working at the Daily Planet, while operating as a superhero known as the Blur and wearing a Matrix-esque costume with a white S-shield on his shirt. Which begs the question, what was the point of the no flights, no tights rule when there were so many other characters on the show who were flying around in tights? The show had to continue to reach for more and more implausible situations and storylines, with a common trope being characters knocked unconscious or suffering from partial amnesia in order to show how nobody knew who Clark was. By the final seasons, the show had not only jumped the shark, but seemed to try and challenge itself to see how many times
per season it could jump the shark. Sometimes, there were multiple jumps in a single episode and by the series end, Wellings Clark had become a whiny hypocrite who appeared to be the least heroic character on the show.