Smallville - The Complete Fifth Season

The expectation was that Smallville - the WB (now CW) hit that re-imagines Superman's youth - would last five seasons and call it quits as soon as it amassed enough episodes to satisfy the syndication machine. After a so-so fourth season, Smallville rebounded with season five, as if it were feeling the competitive heat from this past summer's big screen adventure, Superman Returns.

The show's producers set the rule that during the run of the show Clark Kent would never been seen in costume, nor would he actually fly. Smallville was set to end before Clark actually assumed the Superman identity. With Clark now in college, and with the introduction of Lois Lane, the show is racing toward its self-imposed climax, and it's moving faster than a speeding bullet. The show still suffers from occasional fatigue every now and then by succumbing to the villan-of-the-week formula that dragged down its first and second seasons, but season five effectively mines Superman's history by introducing the Fortress of Solitude and his second-greatest nemesis, Brainiac (played by Buffy alum James Marsters). He even encounters super-friend Aquaman - which was to serve as a backdoor pilot for an Aquaman show that was eventually not picked up. (Season six is set to introduce Green Arrow, played by Justin Hartley, the actor who was set to play Aquaman.)

Visually, Smallville can't compete with its big screen counterpart - which was so beautifully rendered - but it can compete on the human level by providing more details and subtext. The little touches tend to matter more than do the big reveals.