"Favorite Seasons of Smallville Ranked"

1. Season Ten

2. Season Nine

3. Season Five

2. Season Eight

5. Season Four

6. Season Seven

7. Season Six

8. Season One

9. Season Three

10. Season Two

Smallville S01E03 Hothead

FotW: Coach Walt Arnold (Dan Lauria) looking for his 200th win is infected from meteor rocks in his sweat box. He finds out that 7 of his players are ineligible for the “big game” coming up by Principal Kwon and Coach wants him to deal with it after the season.

It was funny to see Pete (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0427389/>Sam Jones) look puny against all this bigger players. Clark saves Principal Kwon from a burning car started by Coach Arnold. There a in-joke there that I won’t spoil. This episode sees Clark join the football team and end up not playing a single game. The coach kills himself in a rather cartoony way. Lana quits cheerleading to become a barista. Lex and his father guest John Glover have a duel to decide the fate of 20% of the Luthorcorp Smallville Plant workforce.

It wasn’t that dynamic of an episode even though the Freak of the Week controlled fire. This episode showcases Chloe as the intrepid reporter that will inspire Lois to her height. He’s supposed to be 14 or 15 years old interfering and taking on adults. This is one of those Smallville episodes that plot really takes the imagination to a place far, far away. It’s the character interaction outside of the football stuff that holds this episode together.

In these early episodes every time John Glover comes on the screen he steals it. It’s these scene and his presences that he brings that didn’t surprise me when he was later promoted to a series regular. Lionel Luthor is a complicated character that brought so much to the story early on in developing Lex Luthor’s character foundation.

Smallville S01E02 Metamorphosis

FotW: Greg Arkin, nerdy bug collector is being sent to military school by his mother for secretly videotaping Lana (Kristin Kreuk). While driving too fast while going to release his bugs these meteor infected bug get loose in his car when he hits a pole driving too fast turning Greg into a “bug boy” who begins to move through the bug phase with his intention of making Lana his mate.

Last episode he saved Lex from drowning this time he saves Whitney from an accident and explosion caused by Greg, played a little clichéd by Chad Donella. The episode establishes that even when he has great power to affect his world Clark would rather keep it level than use that power to his advantage. This is something that in the future makes his world and saving people way more complicated that it should have been for the future Man of Steel.

It’s technically not on par with the previous episode. Many of the special effects in this episode are showing their age. I felt Greg’s death was too convenient of an end. Once again Clark is left in the shadow after saving the heroine. *Spoiler Alert* After returning the necklace Lana smile is just because her necklace is back or because she knows Clark returned it. *Spoiler Alert* She just seems too calm for the ordeal that she just went thru.

I think the nugget of this episode is that Lex and Lana previously met before he saw her in the stable. Their first encounter was memorial or more traumatic for Lana. Realizing who she was and now is intrigues Lex, you can tell from the way he looks at her at the farmer’s market and how he talks to her in the stable.

It surprises me how passive Clark has been in these first couple of episodes. I think it’s something to pay attention too: How Clark transitions from this passive hero to the active hero persona of Superman.