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    Smallville will see tenth season


    2010 - 03.06

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    Posted in The CW | No Comments »

    Despite a mass exodus of regular cast members over the past couple years – including Kristen Kruek, Michael Rosenbaum, Annette O’Toole, John Glover, Aaron Ashmore, and Laura Vandervoort – Smallville on The CW has somehow managed to survive a switch from Thursdays to Fridays and remain an intriguing show on the early, pre-Superman years of Clark Kent, his friends, and his family.

    Now comes news that the CW is pleased with the show’s ratings performance enough to overlook the high production costs and renew the show for an unprecedented tenth season. While Clark is now six years past being a high school freshman and over his Lana fixation, and subplots about Clark’s public speaking anxiety are long since a thing of the past, the show remains intriguing and well scripted, even following the exit of series creators Miles Millar and Alfred Gough.

    By offering the show an early renewal, the network allows Smallville the chance to craft a season cliffhanger rather than a series-ending capstone episode.

    Reaper finale ratings surge


    2009 - 06.01

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    Posted in The CW | 1 Comment »

    The final episode of Reaper was one of the most-watched of the season; but it may not matter as the series seems headed into the abyss, unless it’s saved by syndication or whoever programs The CW Sunday Night schedule next season, which doesn’t appear likely.

    Tyler Labine won’t return either way, it appears, as he has been cast in Fox’s Sons of Tuscon. Which is too bad because Labine was a consistent high point of Reaper. Perhaps it’s better if Sam and company stay dead; otherwise Ray Wise’s Satan may need to look into some appetite suppressants that work for all the camera-gobbling he’s been doing the last two seasons. Great performance!

    Reaper return moved up!


    2009 - 02.09

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    Posted in The CW | No Comments »

    Don’t check your eyeglasses, you read that right; the CW mini-hit of the strike-shortened season last year, Reaper, has seen its season debut moved up from April to early March.

    Make that March 3, to be exact. The show will air Tuesday at 7 PM central, followed by 90210. Not exactly a thematic match, but at least the show’s back on the air.

    Notable for the casting of Twin Peaks alum Ray Wise as Satan, the show centers around the adventures of Bret Harrison, Tyler Labine and Missy Peregrym’s characters after Harrison’s parents reveal they have sold his soul to Wise’s devil, who makes Sam (Harrison) his special errand boy.

    The show debuted to some acclaim due to the involvement of indy filmmaker Kevin Smith, who continues to serve was an executive producer though he is largely uninvolved with the series on a regular basis.

    Lana, Lex to exit Smallville?


    2008 - 03.09

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    Posted in Television, The CW | 1 Comment »

    Two of the most central characters to the TV show Smallville – Kristin Kruek’s Lana Lang and Michael Rosenbaum’s Lex Luthor – won’t be returning next year, the show’s eighth season, according to TV Guide’s online edition. While they are negotiating how many episodes they will actually appear in, in season eight, neither will be weekly regulars after this strike-shortened season comes to an end.

    Since TV Guide’s Michael Ausseillo is generally more reliable than life insurance quotes, the question now remains whether the show can maintain its popularity without two of the show’s “core four” returning.

    The “core four” for Smallville have been Clark, Lana, Lex and Chloe for the past seven seasons; that list used to include a fifth, Pete Ross played by Sam Jones III, who exited after the third season. While the show can theorhetically survive without Kruek’s Lana – who, after all, is not Superman’s bride in the comics, and the show already has her replacement, Erica Durance’s Lois Lane, in place for the past several seasons – but replacing Rosenbaum’s Luthor could be the real problem.

    From the debut episode, the emotional core of the show has been the almost brother-like friendship between Clark and Lex, and the devolution of that friendship into a bitter enmity that sets them up as future rivals. There is no established replacement who can play the foil to Clark at the same level that Rosenbaum’s Luthor is able to, setting up the potential for the show to become, once more, a “villain of the week” melodrama, much as it was in the first season.

    Of course, the show has survived multiple exits; John Schneider’s Johnathon Kent was written out via a character death in season five, while Annette O’Toole’s Martha Kent has been largely absent throughout the current season, the show’s seventh. Yet with only Chloe Steel and Clark Kent surviving from the first season to next fall’s eighth season, it appear more likely than ever that next season could be the show’s final bow.