Reason To Watch Smallville...Activate!

Caught this on Twitter today. Wow. Just wow. Brilliant? Insane? Both?

Zan and Jayna--the Wonder Twins from the not-at-all-canon DC Super Friends cartoons--are going to appear in the upcoming ninth season of Smallville!

Can you believe it?

I mean that Smallville has survived for nine seasons.

I hate Smallville. I watch it a lot more than someone who dislikes a show should, but that is because geeks are masochistic when it comes to their completist instincts and incessant need to be in the nerd loop. And despite hating the show overall, I've liked a few things here and there, like last season, when Geoff Johns wrote a fun episode featuring the Legion of Superheroes, and the seasons before that where Green Arrow and the Justice League added a much needed superhero element to the superhero-centric drama. But my interest never sticks and I've rarely like more than an episode or two in a row.

I never thought the Dawson's Creek-meets-comics premise would work, but approaching a decade on the air, I guess I was wrong. I've always felt the show lacked any of the quirk or style that made other teen-geared genre shows like Buffy and Angel worth watching, and was too removed from any recognizable comic continuity. When I finally started watching at all (around season 3) I figured most people were only watchingor three seasons simply in anticipation of some sign of the Superman they knew and loved.

Instead they got Lana Lang getting kidnapped, crashing her car, and narrowly escaping death week after week for years. Even after the show realized Clark was getting too old for high school and needed to shift the setting to Metropolis, Lana was still flipping her SUVs and causing headaches. Even when the producers remembered that Clark loves Lois, not Lana, and needed to bring Ms. Lane into the story, she was marginalized so Lana could play damsel in distress and convolute the overall plot.

It was interesting how they brought in Supergirl and Brainiac. Not so much, however, when they brought in Martain Manhunter, Bizarro, and Doomsday. It has always felt lazy and low budget to me. The stories are generally limp, the bloated cast steps all over each other in every episode to make sure everyone gets some screen time, and the star of the show--Tom Welling as Clark Kent--is kind of a tool. He lacks the conviction of a SuperMAN and never even captured any of the charm or enthusiasm of a solid SuperBOY. The show is superbly mediocre--a curiosity for my inner geek, at best.

I kind of love the Wonder Twins, though. I'll have to reset the DVR.

Speaking of the twins, I was really hoping someone who went to San Diego Comic Con would have picked me up the cool con exclusive toy set featuring them and their pet space monkey, Gleek. There's still time until Christmas, you know...

I was thinking of including one of the old SF episodes here, but I think the Adult Swim treatment captures the...er..wonder of the twins just as well, if not better: