Also, Smallville did very well in the technical areas. The post was top notch, especially given its budget. But what always really amazed me were the sets. And there were a lot of sets. But there was so much attention to detail, from decor choice and item placement to the colors of things. Hell, they managed to make a fucking barn feel like a real hearth.
Agreed that the sets and cinematography of the first three seasons, assuming memory serves me well, were
spectacular. Just top-notch production design, week after week. That said, I've seen bits and pieces of stuff from the later years, and they looked
dire - all shabby sets and soft focus to hide the general cheapness. I assume the difference lies in rural production dollars going much farther than city ones, where more businesses would be disrupted by film crews and thus permits more expensive, plus a gradual decrease in budget.
The Flash and
Arrow make their urban locations look pretty good. But then, neither have to pretend that their Vancouver locations are on a scale with Metropolis/NYC; they can be honest about their medium-sized city settings.
The biggest difference is the acting. All the current shows range from awful (Arrow and Gotham) to just okay (Flash and Shield), where as the Smallville cast ranged from at least serviceable to outstanding. Even the weak links (Welling/Durance/Hartley/etc.) got better over the years or were politely shown the door, whereas Amell, McKenzie, and Co. seem to have gotten worse.
I'll put Amell, Gustin, Paul Blackthorne, Susanna Thompson, Jesse Martin, and Tom Cavanagh right up there with any of
Smallville's cast. Higher, actually.
As far as the writing, it was pretty hit or miss. It could be pretty head-scratchy awful at times, but when it was good it was really good--even, dare I say, excellent.
I agree that
Smallville had much more episode-to-episode writing quality variation the the new shows -
Arrow has trended downward, but it's been gradual, with each entry pretty close to the last, whereas
Smallville S1-3 at least would have excellent eps followed by awful ones, then mediocre ones, then back again. I imagine a lot of that has to do with the newer shows' much heavier serialization, and thus less time spent on the one-off stories of the week, but whereas the new shows have far fewer garbage eps, they also have far fewer absolute stand-outs.
