I enjoyed the show for what it was, but - especially as the premise dragged on beyond reason - it would almost have to be...
The problem I had with Smallville at the time was basically the pace. You wait a week for an episode, then a couple of weeks because of Superbowl or whatever, then even longer over Xmas and New Years, and don't talk to me about summer reruns.
The show was always one step forward, two steps back. Other than that, there were a lot of great episodes, and I gave a shit about the characters.
When I did a binge re-watch last year, most of the issues disappeared. I could watch each episode one after the other, usually in bunches, and it became a coherent narrative. I could see what they were doing, where they were going, and enjoy the great bits along the way. That's not even mentioning The Magnificent Bastard. John Glover played one of the best characters ever.
This was a show that existed years before Arrowverse. It gave me the superhero team-ups I always dreamed of and never thought I would see on screen.
Too bad that a show I liked couldn't be a show I adored, just because they were dragging out certain storylines for as long as possible. But watching it all as basically a single story over the course of just a few weeks of COVID lockdown here, it was really, really damned good.
And I still got chills down my spine when I heard the announcer say, "And now, the series finale of Smallville."
I wasn't disappointed.
The duplicate/missing disc thing is apparently a common problem, and is presumably at least part of the reason it's out of stock everywhere.
