As a huge Superman fan it hurts me to say this, but after watching the entire seventh season of Smallville over a two-and-a-half-day period, the series may have officially jumped the shark. I’ve been a fan of the series from the start, even though Tom Welling and some of his co-stars will likely never be considered among America’s greatest thespians. There’s little doubt that Clark Kent is a tough character to create storylines for, with the limited budget of a television series and I give the writers and producers a lot of credit for coming up with as many interesting storylines as they have over the years. Unfortunately, they can only do so much, and not even several guest appearances from prominent DC characters could save this season.

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Tom Welling as Clark Kent, Erica Durance
as Lois Lane and Michael Rosenbaum as Lex Luthor
courtesy Michael Courtney/The CW.

At the end of the sixth season, everyone believed Lana Lang (Kristin Kreuk) was dead. As it turns out, she faked her own death to escape Lex Luthor’s (Michael Rosenbaum) clutches. This was a good move by the writers because Lana’s character had become a joke over the last couple of seasons. I was hoping she was dead, because without her to tie Clark down, the series would be free to go in another direction. Unfortunately, Lana makes a miraculous return, determined to make Lex pay for all the evil he’s brought to the world.
The seventh season also saw the introduction of Kara-El (Laura Vandervoort), Clark’s Kryptonian cousin. She was sent to Earth to find him, but was frozen beneath the dam where Lex was conducting his 33.1 experiments and building a super army. The return of Kara’s father Jor-El (Terrence Stamp) and Clark’s mother, Lara Lor-Van (Helen Slater), which had the potential to be one of the best storylines in years. Instead, the story came to an abrupt an uneven end that made little sense.
It’s incredibly frustrating to invest time in a show, only to watch the writers jump from one idea to the next without any planning as to how they are going to pace and organize their story. Some may blame the writers’ strike, but the problems were just as prevalent before the strike as they were afterward. The writers set up great potential with the Kara-El, Jor-El, Lara Lor-Van storyline and let it end very badly. One might let it pass if it were a onetime thing, but there are several instances where the writers set up storylines that could have revitalized Smallville and then strangely left them hanging.
During the sixth season, the series brought about the promise of some DC Universe action. Unfortunately, the writers and producers failed to deliver on the promise laid out in the sixth season. Green Arrow is brought back for a minimal amount of time and employs Chloe as his sidekick, Black Canary is introduced, Kara brings about the Supergirl element, Martian Manhunter drops in from time to time, and the show even explores the strange Superman angle a wee bit. So there are a few moments that will please DC Universe fans, but those moments are too few. Season Seven of Smallville deals far too much with Clark’s angst over Lana.
Season Seven of Smallville was the worst yet. Part of me is hoping that the writers’ strike had an effect on what the writers and producers could come up with for a conducive storyline. If season eight doesn’t improve, it will be time to congratulate Smallville for a good run and send it off to syndication heaven.
Smallville is presented in a 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer. The video quality is good overall. Colors are well-saturated and the contrast is very good for this release, most details are sharp, and the print is otherwise clean and crisp. There is quite a bit of grain in the image here and just about every scene is lightly peppered.
The audio for Smallville’s seventh season comes in the form of 5.1 Dolby Digital English. With a nice blend of music, dialogue, and sound effects the show finds a welcome home on the soundstage with its 384 kbps track.
Smallville – The Complete Seventh Season has a pretty solid selection of special features:
• Two Audio Commentaries – Located on two episodes, “Persona” features an audio commentary with John Glover, Ken Horton, and Todd Slavkin, while “Siren” offers a commentary with Justine Hartley, Alfred Gough, Miles Millar, Kelly Souders, and Brian Peterson.
• Deleted Scenes – Scattered throughout the discs are deleted scenes for episodes “Kara”, “Fierce”, “Cure”, “Action”, “Wrath”, “Gemini”, “Persona”, “Siren”, “Fracture”, “Hero”, “Traveler”, “Veritas”, “Descent”, “Sleeper”, and “Arctic”.
• Supergirl: The Last Daughter of Krypton (17:48) – Examines the character of Supergirl with some of the people involved in writing for the character in the comics and on the series.
• Jimmy on Jimmy (23:16) – A roundtable discussion of four actors who have all portrayed Jimmy Olsen.
• Smallville Legends: Kara and the Chronicles of Krypton (21:23) – is a rather lame flash cartoon depicting some of what happened on Krypton prior to Kara’s arrival on Earth.