Has Smallville Jumped the Shark?

During last night's 100th episode of Smallville, fans who have followed the show since its inception in 2001 may have found themselves asking whether the show about the adolescent Superman had, as they say in the TV business, "Jumped the Shark." This episode, entitled Reckoning, had been hyped for weeks on the premise that a major character, close to Clark, would die. Over the past couple of weeks, images and video were leaked or made available by the WB (Smallville's network home) that seemed to indicate this character would be either Lana Lang (Clark's long-time love and only recently girlfriend) or Jonathan Kent (Clark's adoptive father). The truth was stranger than the fiction should have been.

You see, halfway through the episode, Lana is killed in a car accident shortly after accepting Clark's proposal of marriage and learning his secret. Clark goes to the Fortress of Solitude and asks his biological father to help him change what has happened. Jor-El goes on for a while about the problems of changing fate, etc. and tells Clark that someone will still have to die to make up for Clark's own resurrection earlier in the season. At this point, a crystal comes out of a console, Clark grabs it and is immediately transported back in time to just before he told Lana his secret. This is where things begin to go totally wrong.

In an exercise of failed logic, Clark decides that in order to save Lana's life, he can't tell her his secret. Their already strained relationship (because of his refusal to tell her the truth) finally snaps. Events then move forward, following a similar path as the first half of the show. Lana still receives a call from Lex and goes to see him, and she still ends up on the highway, and it is only Clark's appearance to stop the bus that saves her life. The first time around, Lana's accident stopped Jonathan Kent from going back to his farm for what we learn in the second go around was a meeting with Lionel. Now that there was no accident, he is unobstructed, and keeps this meeting. Sufficed to say, there is a scuffle when Lionel attempts to blackmail him with some secret photo. As Lionel sits on the ground, nursing his wounds, we begin to see signs of a heart attack in Jonathan, and soon enough, Clark and Martha arrive home to find him in the driveway and watch him collapse and die in their arms.

What makes this turn of events so unbearable, at least for me, is the fact that after all of this, Lana still doesn't know Clark's secret, and they've once again broken up because of this. Yes, all Superman fans know that he doesn't end up with Lana, instead he is married to Lois Lane, but what about in the mean time? In the comics, Lana was Clark's hometown sweetheart. I'm sorry, but a couple months of on-again-off-again relationships does not a romance make. Also of note is that, in the comic books, Lana is one of a few people who knows Clark's secret; she even finds herself at the mercies of Lex Luthor when he believes that she can tell him who Superman really is. If the writers and producers of Smallville plan to stay somewhat true to Superman canon, a fact they seem to indicate by their killing off of Jonathan kent, then the relationship between Lana and Clark needs to move past the tension of Clark lying to her about who he really is. They need to have a true romance, one that only falls apart (and even then, amicably) when Clark realizes that he has to leave Smallville to make a real difference in the world, and Lana realizes that she needs to stay. It's almost as if the writers are afraid to find a way to make this scenario work. If they don't, and the fans are forced to endure another season or two of "I love you, but I can't be with you" between the two, then perhaps Smallville really has jumped the shark.

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