Smallville seems to have a couple different of audiences. Many fans who actually did like the early conception of the show probably did not like its later years. Particularly fans of characters/actors who left the show. I never really liked the early concept of the show. While I think it made improvements later it was still tied to its early history. But also like most long running show the later seasons seemed really low budget. So while the ideas became more ambitious they did not have the money to show them. It was going to the cast. Which always happens, the longer the run the higher the salaries are to keep the original actors. Looking back now, the production values seem lavish on the early seasons. Not just do to more money but they were working within their limits. The production crew did not have the experience to really pull of the demands of the later years. Watching the old Superboy show is interesting in contrast to Smallville. VERY LOW BUDGET. But at least they had more effective shot physical stunts and the flying wire rigging. Without the gloss of modern CGI which Smallville used to dress up its really dull fight choreography.
Well, part of that was the media landscape changing. When Smallville began, superheroes had less widespread acceptance, so the goal was to take the fundamentals of the Superman story and reinvent it in a form that stripped away all the comic-book elements and recast it as a WB-style (later CW-style) teen drama. (The WB tried to do the same thing with Tarzan a couple of seasons later, setting it in Manhattan and making Jane a cop. It lasted 9 episodes.) But as comic-book movies became smash hits, the show became freer to embrace those elements. Another part of it was simply that the show went on so much longer than expected. Past a certain point, they could no longer justify making a show that was about Clark before he became a hero, so they had to begin telling a different kind of story. In the final couple of seasons, they essentially were telling Superman stories, even if they avoided the name and costume. Which is why the series had so many cast changes -- new actors don't cost as much as the old ones. And why the final season of the show was down to only four regulars and had to struggle to make do with so few. Actually I felt that in season 9, at least, the visual effects were quite good compared to previous seasons. Maybe they didn't have more money, but they really improved their design and composition, and the action thus felt much more effective than it had in earlier seasons.
The first three years of Smallville had some truly awesome production values - lots and lots of great-looking location shooting, tons of extras, and big explosions. But that's not-exactly on-topic... Wait - stop right there. Robin Hood and Arthur? Teaming up? Money. Let's make it happen!
Oh yeah, the location shooting in the majestic mountains of Kansas. T.H. White already did it in The Sword in the Stone, although it was more a guest cameo by Robin than a full team-up.
When Seeking a Friend for the End of the World tries to pass SoCal off as real-world New Jersey, it bugs the hell out of me. But putting mountains and a port city in a comic-book world Kansas? Doesn't bother me at all. In such a fantastical context, it's better to be interesting than to be accurate. Great! If anyone cries foul, we'll say our concept has "roots in esteemed literature."
Sometimes you are downright scary. Throw in Sherlock Holmes, Joan of Arc and Spartacus while you're at it.
Jackie Chan's Rumble in the Bronx! All those wonderful chase scenes along the New York docks with the Cascade Mountains in the background! And check the background of this classic scene from the original Captain Scarlet, where he mans a checkpoint at "one of the entrances to New York City": http://www.inpayne.com/temp/newyork.jpg Here's an actual entrance to NYC - the tollbooths at the George Washinton Bridge: http://www.inpayne.com/temp/gwb.jpg Plenty of time for a nice isolated chat with the bad guys in their car, eh? In case y'all don't know how NOT mountainous and wild it is around New York - here's a picture I took from the window of a plane landing at Newark Airport, looking west over New Jersey: http://www.inpayne.com/temp/jersey.jpg
I always wondered if the Los Angeles-area landscapes we saw in M*A*S*H were even remotely like the area around Panmunjom, South Korea, so I did some Google searching for pictures of the latter area. And I was pleasantly surprised to find that they really did bear a moderate resemblance to one another, although some of the specific vegetation was different.
My all-time favorite is an episode of Mannix that was supposed to take place in Washington, DC. There were palm trees everywhere.
Likewise, I always wondered if exotic, mysterious worlds around the galaxy all looked like Griffith Observatory in LA, and after watching numerous episodes of Star Trek, my theories were confirmed!
That JJ Abrams show that got canceled years ago (can't remember the name) had an episode taking place in my home town (Rijeka, Croatia). I could swear some scenes were shot somewhere in the Caribbean.