I have a new obsession...

*sigh*

I really try not to watch all that much TV. I really do. Then Roomie goes and gets me hooked on a new TV show... luckily, it's out on DVD, so I can feed my obsession without having to set aside nights of my week for TV viewing, which I categorically refuse to do.

The new show? Smallville.

Go ahead. Laugh. I know it's cheesy and kind of Dawson's-Creek-With-Superpowers. I know the special effects are bad. I know that it's not the kind of high-minded entertainment you'd expect from... oh wait, this is exactly the crap you'd expect from me. Anyway, your insults will just roll off my back.

Allow me an explanation. Superman is an American legend. He's an icon. He's something of a god in the pantheon of our collective popular culture. To see him as he's portrayed in high school, as a conflicted, hormone-influenced, flawed, flannel-wearing, midwestern farm boy (who's got TERRIBLE swimming strokes, by the way, although he looks cute in trunks) brings him back to the realm of human. All he's missing is the acne, and come on, this is TV. No on on TV has bad skin... and besides, let's be logical: he's Superman, he doesn't bow to our earthly bacterial afflictions. But he can still have uncomfortable moments with *ahem* the birds and the bees (his laser heat vision starts going off unpredictabily... hilarious). He resents his parents' lack of money at times. His love life is a predictable teenage mess. The god of steel is very much human.

Conversely, if the good god Clark Kent is lowered to humanity from his place among the gods, the character of Lex Luthor is brought up from the underworld to be portrayed as human as well. Not the "100% Mysterious Bad Guy... Now With 15% More Evil Plotting!" Lex that he becomes as an adult, his character is, like Clark, a perpetually flawed and in many ways sympathetic. Both characters face the conflict of familial destiny vs free will. Lex is destined to be an evil asshole like his father; Clark is destined to be a "god among men, ruling them with a strong hand" as the message from his father says. Both resist.

So the hero isn't godly, confident, and self-assured Superman just yet. The villain isn't so villainous. Could there be (*gasp*) shades of gray? Could it be that black-and-white good and evil are not the only two options, or that someone can turn good or evil through circumstance despite the best of intentions? Showing good an evil as teenagers or early-20-somethings (when, let's face it, we're pretty darn vulnerable) knocks them down a little in our eyes. Social sacrilige, I love it.

And now for some less thoughtful commentary: The only thing I find disturbing about Smallville is that I find Tom Welling (the actor who plays Clark Kent) so darn attractive. Sure, he's 2 years older than me (REALLY! He was born in '77, I checked), but he's playing a freakin' HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT! Shouldn't I feel disgusted with myself or something? Wait... a 27 year-old playing a high school student? How does the entertainment business pull this stuff off? And we fall for it? Oy.