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2006 TV News Archives

January 23, 2006: Al Gough Talks Death in “Smallville” Episode 100

TV Guide Online has posted an interview with Al Gough where he discusses the up-coming 100th episode of "Smallville". Here's part of that interview...

Q: Regarding the "100th-episode death," how beholden do you and Miles Millar keep yourselves to the Superman movies' mythology when determining characters' fates? Do you feel like you can't kill someone we've already seen alive in the films? Is that a hard-and-fast rule?

Gough: No, not necessarily, to be perfectly honest. We feel like in our show,�as in�the various Superman comics, [the characters] can each sort of exist in their own reality. It's not something that is necessarily synched up to the movie franchise, past or present.

Q: So with all due respect to Annette O'Toole, who played Lana in Superman III, you conceivably could kill off Lana.

Gough: Exactly. We kept ourselves open to that. It could be any of the characters�- but not Clark. [Laughs]

Q: How will this death affect Clark's direction for the remainder of the season?

Gough: Not just for the remainder of the season, but for the remainder of the series. It really makes him take a look at his life up to this point: the decisions he's made and the decisions going forward. It's definitely a step away from Superboy towards Superman, which is what this whole season has been about. That's one of the reasons the fans have been responding to [Season 5], because we're allowing the characters to grow up. They're out of high school and facing bigger, more complex decisions. Certainly Clark is, in his relationship with Lana and about having sex; there are now bigger costs and bigger consequences for everything he does. Things don't neatly wrap themselves up at the end of every episode.

Q: What were the driving forces in deciding to kill off this character? Was it purely for story-line impact, did budget play into it at all, was it just a desire to shake things up...?

Gough: Again, what we have found doing this show each season is that you need to do something to kind of shake things up. Last year we brought in Lois. This year we knew we had some big pieces to play with�- the Fortress of Solitude, Brainiac, Clark and Lana having sex�- but then we said, "It's the fifth year of the show and there needs to be a seismic shift in the series." Something happens that really is absolute, and this person won't magically come back to life.

Read the complete interview at TV Guide Online.