Al Gough and Miles Millar are best known to Superman fans as the creators of the TV series “Smallville,” but at the moment the pair are enjoying the success of their hit TV series “Wednesday”. In a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter the duo compare the two shows, while reflecting on what they’d do differently with “Smallville” if they had the chance…
Gough: The Clark-Lana thing played out way too long. Something else had to happen there. I think that was one that got a little repetitive. My younger daughter is now, finally after Wednesday, she’s going back to watch Smallville, and she’s in season two. She goes, “What’s the deal with these two?” I’m like, “It was a different time.” So, I think there are things there, if we went back, we probably would be a little more adventurous with some of those relationships and bring them to certain heads and let them play out.
Millar: We were definitely cautious and just very conscious of the fact we wanted to get to five seasons, and we ended up at 10 seasons, but we’re just like, “OK, if we split them apart, what are we gonna do?” Again, as the father of girls, I think the female characters we would do differently today. I think Lana, her agency was not there. She could have been a much stronger character, and she always felt put in positions of weakness. It’s a different era, a different time. So, that’s something I think we could have done and would definitely look at to do better.
Read the complete interview at The Hollywood Reporter.
It doesn’t take long for a “Will they, won’t they?” romance arc to sour. Unless it’s handled very well, and there is a solid plan in place for where to take them, it requires some relationship gymnastics and backsliding if the series lets it progress too far, too fast. I would argue the same problem plagued the preceding Lois & Clark, with efforts to push out the arc in the back half of the third season and not knowing what to do with it in the fourth hurting the show. That said, in my ever so humble (gasp, snort, choke)… Read more »
I would argue the same problem plagued the preceding Lois & Clark, with efforts to push out the arc in the back half of the third season and not knowing what to do with it in the fourth hurting the show. Absolutely. I was a kid, absolutely loved all things Superman, so I had a huge tolerance for poor writing. But even I was getting tired of it. When they introduced the frog-clone plot line, I was done. I never finished the show because they basically reset Lois’s memory and I didn’t want to go through all the “will they… Read more »
Lana and Clark’s romance dragged because everybody knew it wasn’t going to last. In the comics Clark’s romance with her is bittersweet because you know he’s not gonna end with her. In the show they give you false “hope.” It feels like they didn’t actually learn their lesson with dragging out relationships, they just regret not making more pairings.
Lana getting saved isn’t an issue. It’s the fact that she doesn’t feel real beyond that.
Yup. It’s the problem with prequel story telling. You know how it’s going to end so being invested in things you know isn’t going to last you know is pointless.