I didn't start watching this show for the first six months or so because it seemed too much like 90210 with kryptonite. Then I caught a few episodes and was hooked. Now it has come to a conclusion after ten years. How many sci-fi series would have killed for that kind of a run? Enterprise must be gnashing its teeth. But Smallville earned it. They made the stories good enough for me to forgive the playing fast and loose with the canon, they stayed true to the spirit, they innovated, and the finale was a masterpiece of giving the audience exactly what they wanted and deserved.

Someone pointed out that Tom Welling has now spent more time playing Clark Kent than anyone else in history. He's earned a special place in Superman lore. Moreover, they took a subject that has hitherto proven either uninteresting or (more likely) too difficult for previous writers to tackle and they nailed it. How does the frustrated adolescent turn into the compassionate hero? The 1978 movie had the cinematic equivalent of "here a miracle happens". 12 years flies by in a montage of recorded lessons as though all that was missing was a little education on physics, and voila - the hero appears, already flying and encaped.

Smallville shows how that journey happens, and they made it enjoyable and credible for ten years. They were even smart enough to know where they should use the John Williams music in the finale - whatever they paid for the rights was worth it, I mean, you could take someone who had been raised in a cave, play them the first four bars and ask, "What does that mean?" and they'd say, "'Superman', of course, what else could it mean?" Smallville evolved quickly from a high school romance story to assume a well-deserved place filling out the legend. Good job.

Agreed. There were a few later seasons where you can ignore 90% of the episodes, but they wrapped it up well. As a serious DC Comics fan, I think they did a good job of making the Smallville universe generally consistent with the comics.

I rewatched parts of the last episode about three times so far and still haven't deleted it from the DVR.

I just had a wow! realization. A key part of John Williams' theme: Duh-dadada-daaaa-DA DA DA and those notes are played with emphasis - is the exact reverse of the sequence at the beginning of Also Sprach Zarathustra... Nietzsche's Superman. It's just coincidental enough that it makes me think Williams may have been playing around with ASZ in his head and thought, "Hey..."

We have packed all my music references but if I can recall from the long ago days at the conservatory the practice of using a melody played backwards is quite ancient, and is referred to as retrograde motion.