Most people who like Smallville complain that the first four seasons were the “good” ones, and the rest were the “bad” ones.

Respectfully, I disagree. Everything that I don’t like about Smallville is strongest in the first four seasons.

First of which is the soap opera drama shit. When the show-runners conceived the show, they wanted to appeal to the teenage audience: to that end, they turned Superman’s formative years into a soap opera. This was maintained throughout the show’s run, but it was at its most nauseating levels in the first four seasons.

Second was the over-attachment to a certain unimportant side-character who got top billing, despite being a less important part of his life. The show-runners made the mistake that everyone else makes when it comes to Superman: that is that his story is “boring”, and so the focus should be on everyone else BUT the main character. Because of this, half of the first four seasons are focused around Lana-fricking-Lang: to the point where EVERYONE is up her ass with how much they idolize her and worship her and act like she’s the focus of the show instead of Superman. I mean, people say Superman is a boy-scout, but Smallville Lana might as well be a mary sue for all the attention that’s given her!

Third, and this is the part that I don’t understand, is the focusing on “meteor-freaks”. Logically, kryptonite should not be as plentiful as it is in the show, even with the meteor showers. But instead, it’s become the crutch for story-writing foes that can be stronger than Superman. What’s worse is that the fans also don’t like the “meteor-freaks”, but they hate the “super-heroes” of the later seasons. That was a big failing of the show, which we can probably blame on Joel Schumacher: the show-runners were ashamed of Superman’s origins, so they went out of their way to distance themselves from his comic book origins (ie. “no tights, no flights”). This was a low-point of Arrow until, in season 4, he accepted his position as the Green Arrow. The existence of super-powered beings instead of “meteor-freaks” made the show feel more like a prequel to Superman than a soap opera.