Smallville

We all need our guilty pleasures don’t we. I’ve begun watching the fifth season of Smallville. Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, the producers of this series, seem to miss no opportunity to have fun with both the Superman tradition and the acting pasts of their actors. Making Annette O’Toole, of Beach Blanket Bingo fame Clark’s very straight-laced Mother, if nothing else, shows that even pinup girls grow up some day. That John Schneider, half the law-breaking good old boy team of Dukes of Hazard fame, is Clark’s rock solid, upstanding Father is just plain irony.

Last night, however in Episode 6 entitled, “Exposed” Tom Wopat, John’s partner in the Dukes, makes a guest appearance as a US Senator. Neither is the sexy hunk they were in those days of youthful delinquency, but Wopat is barely recognizable; except for the souped up hotrod in which he arrives in a four-wheel skid. Gone is the horn that played “Dixie” but in a bow to their past Tom somehow manages to maneuver his ample creaking frame into the passenger seat through the open window.

This series may be about the young man who would be Superman played by the achingly handsome former model Tom Welling and his school mates; but the adults who surround him are no mere props--their characters are fully developed. It is with some bemusement that I admit that occasionally a series I admire manages to survive and in this case is entering its sixth season.