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Smallville - The Complete First Season

Smallville - The Complete First Season

List Price: $59.98
Your Price: $44.99
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 1 stars
Summary: SUCKS
Review: I really think this show sucks cuz it has bad character development, all the characters have no personality, and its filled with cliches that never evolve into anything new. The story lines are very repetitive and never go anywhere....I really wish this series was cancelled

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: SMALLVILLE!!!!
Review: It's Great!, When does season 2 come out? They need to hurry with it.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Spectacular
Review: Smallville gives you much insight on the superman saga portraying Clark Kent as a high school teen. The series has been executed very well up to this point and is very exciting to watch, especially all the awesome special effects.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: No flights, no tights.
Review: Now, critics of this show must understand that the first six episodes, as explained by the creators themselves, must re-establish the premise of the series. Thus, the Kryptonite mutants Clark battles in every episode. So new viewers, who, somehow, living under a rock, have never heard of Superman. That being said, Tom Welling's Clark Kent is a mopey, moody teenager, and sometimes doesn't appreciate his friends as well as he should, basically, a dead-on potrayal. In-between the gloomy alt-rock, the unconvincing pining for Lana Lang (Kristen Kruek), you'll notice the very subtle romantic relationship between Clark Kent and Lex Luthor, the true love shows in their eyes in every scene they have together, especially their "meet-cute" scene where Clarkie rescues Lex from his car crash. At least a honest portrayal of repressed feelings on television, for everyone to learn and benefit from. As Jason Alexander's "George Constanza" would say:"Im not..not that there's anything wrong with it."

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: this series is kryptonite to other current tv shows
Review: great actors, interesting stories, character development. what a concept! it's amazing a show of this quality is on at all. you will really enjoy this set.

when is season 2 coming out???

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Absolutely the only redeeming TV program on ANY network:
Review: I bought this DVD set for my girlfriend as a 2-year anniversary present because if it weren't for her insisting that we watch it on Tuesday nights when we first started dating there is likely no way I ever would have chosen to do so on my own. Thanks, Tiger Blossom...you REALLY did me a favor with this one.

WOW, this is good...I probably haven't been this stoked over a TV drama series since "Miami Vice" back in the day. And "Smallville" is already proving to have superior staying power than that brief cross-section of '80's kitsch. Superior production, drop-dead casting, and a hearty respect to the original idea of Superman that you just didn't see in "Lois & Clark"...but still they find time to wedge the tongue FIRMLY in cheek with foreshadowing innuendo that never fails to bring a smile to this viewer's face. And this from a guy who leaned more toward Batman than the Big Blue Schoolboy as I was growing up (I had issues, okay?).

I won't go into the basics of the plot, chances are you already understand the adolescent Clark Kent growing into the blue suit & red cape as he grows from boy to young man being equally awkward transitions to make. The first season, being primarily an introduction not just to the characters but to the city for whom the series is named, DOES lend itself to predictability and in fact the quality of the shows has improved since then (no small feat; the first season was in itself extremely entertaining). And true, the WB could possibly have been a tad more generous with special features (at LEAST offering a 5:1 sound mix option...the special effects would seem even larger than life over a home theatre system)...but I'll happily take what they've presented here and eagerly await the following seasons to be released (note to Warner Bros: Tiger Blossom's birthday is on June 22nd...can ya help a brother out?)

Bottom line: If you enjoy good television writing (which is SO rare these days), or if you EVER enjoyed any aspect of any of the innumerable interpretations of the Superman mythos, you owe it to yourself to give the show a chance. Once you do, you'll find that owning the First Season on DVD is as natural as being able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: awesome show, one of the best
Review: this is the most badest show ever made like it's good.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Most entertaining show on the WB
Review: This is my favorite show to watch on the WB, so naturally I was elated to see the first season released on DVD. I actually became a fan midway through the second season, so I was unsure about early events in the show. These DVDs cleared everything up for me, thankfully, and while the special features left a little to be desired, all in all it's a great buy.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: A Wonderful Series
Review: This DVD is great...but if you are a fan of smallville seasons 3 + 4 be prepared- its definatley not as good! The plot of each episode is predictable and EVERYTHING relates back to kryptonite rocks! This season has alot more science fiction than the others do. However, for a true Smallville fan, I highly reccomend it!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: "Superboy" comics were never half as good as "Smallville"
Review: Maybe it is that Superman is truly indestructible or that the Man of Steel, who was picked this year as one of the Top 10 American pop culture icons, is so respected that not even Hollywood would dare tug on his cape, because "Smallville" is another successful small screen version of the strange visitor from another planet. Of course, the great irony is that this time around there is no cape to tug on because this television series is about Clark Kent, years before he put on the suit with the big red "S," when he was still in high school, his powers were just starting to kick in, and the girl in his life with the double L name was Lana Lang.

Keep in mind that when Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel created the Man of Steel in 1939 there was no Superboy until 1949, when he began part of the futuristic Legion of Super-Heroes. All we knew about the early days is that just before the doomed planet Krypton exploded to fragments, a scientist placed his infant son within an experimental rocket ship, launching it toward earth. When the vessel reached our planet, the child was found by an elderly couple, the Kents. They adopted the super tyke and with love and guidance shaped the boy's future. As he grew older Clark Kent learned to hurdle skyscrapers, leap an eighth of a mile, raise tremendous weights, run faster than a streamline train, and that nothing less than a bursting shell could penetrate his skin. When his foster parents passed away, Clark decided he must turn his titanic strength into channels that would benefit mankind.

The key part of "Smallville" is that creators Alfred Gough and Miles Millar go back to the simple beginning, with young Clark (Tom Welling) growing up on the Kent farm with Martha (Annette O'Toole) and Jonathan (John Schneider). From the "Superboy" comic books the series borrows the characters of girl next-door Lana Lang (Kristin Kreuk) and best buddy Pete Ross (Sam Jones III). But in addition to covering the basics, Gough and Millar come up with a key triad of additions to the original Smallville mythos.

First, they add young Lex Luthor (Michael Rosenbaum) to the mix, knowing that he and Superman are fated to be (im)mortal enemies, but that for the present he and Clark are friends (after Clark saves Lex's life in a car accident that should have killed them both). The key thing is that they truly are friends and that "Smallville" is as much about how Lex would become a super villain as it is about how Clark would become a super hero. Throw into the mix Daddy Dearest in the form of Lionel Luthor (John Glover), and Lex would have already pulled all of his hair out if it were not for what happened that fateful day in Smallville.

Second, is the brilliant reconceptualization of Superman's arrival on earth where the small spacecraft shows up in the middle of a shower of glowing green meteors that are all that remains of the planet Krypton. As much as the little boy in that spaceship, those meteors change Smallville forever, turning a little girl into an orphans and a young boy bald, and the small Kansas town into the self proclaimed meteor capital of the world. More importantly, those little green rocks will have continue to have an impact as they cause a series of mutations with which young Clark will have to contend. This also accounts for the great in-joke that Clark always becomes a bumbling idiot around Lana because she wears a locket made of kryptonite.

Third, there is the multi-purpose character of Chloe Sullivan (Allison Mack). The driving force of the Smallville High School student newspaper her "Wall of the Weird" documents all the strange things that have happened around Smallville since the meteor shower, making her the show's resident mistress of exposition. But she is also the tragic figure who longs for Clark the way he casts puppy dog glances at Lana, creating a nice example of teenage love triangle pathos.

Overall, Miller and Gough had created an extremely solid premise for their series, which creates multi-dynamics for all of the plotlines. The first season (2001) is book ended by some great special effects, with the devastating arrival of the meteors in the pilot and the three twisters becoming one in the thrilling cliffhanger finale. My only serious complaint is that Schneider's Jonathan Kent has too much of an angry edge, which takes away from his font of parental wisdom. Martha really needs to mellow him out so that he cuts Clark some slap. I understand that Jonathan is motivated by fears and concerns about his son, but I always liked the gentle influence personified by Glenn Ford in the first Christopher Reeve "Superman" film. Turning adolescent traumas into mutant monsters of the week is a hit and miss proposition, but that was true of the first season of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" as well, and look at how well that series turned out.

Yes, we can also throw into the mix that Clark and Lana are played by a couple of cute young actors. Welling is not too serious as the kid who is going to grow up to be the hero who stands for truth, justice, and the American way, and I was going to say Kruek was the WB's new Katie Holmes except after her soft-core Lana scene in the school swimming pool goes way beyond the world's biggest collection of midriff revealing tops. But the bottom line here is that either the Clark-Lana or the Clark-Lex would be enough to make this a good show and "Smallville" has both of them and a lot more, including the brilliant metaphor of the scarecrow immortalized in the DVD collection's cover shot.


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