Over two decades after the show began, I finally finished watching the series. My wife summed it up best- the plot itself was not great. It seemed like it was more concerned with providing closure than it was in telling a great story. Which felt right to me.
SPOILERS (heh). I was excited to see Michael Rosenbaum back for the final episode, but since he wasn’t the main villain, it was an incredibly anti-climatic appearance. The entire first half of the show alluded to the two halves of a whole fighting against each other, but their relationship was far from the center of the final season, and thus the final episode of the show. They killed off his sister, Tess, whom I had really come to appreciate as a character. But I suspect this was to maintain continuity with the generalized Superman lore: she doesn’t exist in the old comics and movies. Chloe was the only character from the early episodes not from the comics, so I expected that she would be the one to die. And she didn’t. Instead, she became a mom, and that’s somehow the explanation about why we never heard about her again. People become moms, disappear from the work force, and are no longer socially relevant. It feels very 1990’s sexist to me. The final insult to Chloe’s character is that Clark’s relationship with her was the one constant from the beginning of the show. She’s the only other cast member, aside from Clark, who was a regular in every season. She was so important to what the show was, and yet she just disappeared from the action. They spent so long building her up to be something significant, and in the end her biggest contribution was a plot device, framing the opening and closing of the story.
My final disappointment was the only appearance of Superman. I had known for a long time that Clark wears the costume in the final episode, and it would have been a disaster if he didn’t learn to fly (I’d always suspected that it would be the final moment that helped him win/overcome the last challenge). To be honest, it would have been exceedingly disappointing if that was not how this happened. So yes, I’m very happy that his battle with Darkseid played out as it did. It just was not clear what action Clark took to win his battle. On that thought, it was not clear how Oliver so easily defeated Darkseid’s minions with a single arrow each. Or how Clark moving a planet cured everyone from their Omega curses. As an audience, I just accepted that they did, and went with it. My real problem with all of the “super” action was that we never saw Tom Welling wearing the costume. We saw a CGI double flying around, and we saw Tom’s face framed with the shirt and cape, but he never stood triumphantly dressed as Superman in a clear shot. Maybe I missed it, but I don’t think he ever called himself Superman. Sad.
I didn’t start writing with the intention of doing this much complaining. I guess I didn’t realize how disappointed I was with this episode until now. I loved this show, and it meant a lot in my personal life. I waited forever to finish watching it because I did not want it to end. And now that it is, I wonder if I’m struggling to separate the loss with the actual product.