Smallville: The Complete Ninth Season is a good one, but one that is unsure of its own future, just like its lead character.
The Main Story
The season starts where eight left off with our favorite general planning planet domination. Zod is putting together an army, but only thing is missing from his plan; their powers. Hidden by Jor-El, Clark’s real father, Zod has to find the powers or his efforts and plans are all lost. Of course, the Blur has something to say about it and eventually the two powers collide in a riveting ending to the season.
The main story here isn’t that bad. I think with the additional Zod backstory you get a more developed character played by Callum Blue. Unlike the second Superman film, where the trio of soldiers just show up to take over, you get reason and you get well-crafted plans with Blue’s Zod. The creators of the show did well to put that together. The build of the story to the eventual battle between Zod and Clark at the end really bring it all together and sets up season ten for one helluva finale.
While I did prefer the ending to be a little less hokey, it still served the story perfectly.
The Side Dishes
Outside of a great main story you get other stories that keep the show interesting and give it some dimension. For the most part the side stories are damn good. The story of Oliver having a terribly bad breakdown to the point where he doesn’t care if he lives or dies is enough to hold its own outside of Smallville (though, the Green Arrow isn’t that strong of a character admittedly). Other stories like Lois’ deep love for Clark really puts some perspective on their future relationship. Finally, even the stories that were made for Halloween and Valentines offered a neat perspective on how creative the writers could be with the characters (seeing a would be Wonder Woman and some zombies makes it fun).
Now with all of this said, I think that there were some real stinker episodes on this season. The first one, and the one that I will be yelled at for criticizing, is the Justice League Society introduction. While I think that all the superheroes introduced are outstanding, especially Hawkman — huge fan, it seemed a bit rushed. You’re introduced to them through a series of flashbacks and through the untimely deaths of a few members thanks to an icy villain. The entire process of introducing the would be Justice League is a bit disjointed and messy. You get some quick introductions and some heavy opposition to Clark Kent’s arrival. You also get some unnecessary humor that comes off as goofy rather than well placed. I’m not sure what happened or if the writers panicked that season ten wasn’t going to happen, but whatever the case it just didn’t work out at all.
Anyway, the season as a whole is darn good, but not great in comparison to previous seasons. The last season should be the best, if the rumors I’m hearing are correct.
So, what’s the best way to watch this season? Blu-ray is the way to go. I’m not sure what Warner Home Video did from season eight to season nine, but the visuals are certainly less grainy and not scattered with as many artifacts in the video. It’s crystal clear gorgeous, so much so that you’ll be spoiled once you move on to other Blu-ray shows. What’s even better is that the remastered audio is perfect. So every swoosh, punch, blur or whatever sounds great in a 5.1 setting.
I’m not kidding folks; the DVD set can’t touch the Blu-ray in terms of presentation.
Now, you get some good features with this set as well. Starting off with commentary on a couple of key episodes that is good. You get a bit more insight on the shows and some great background info. You also get unaired portions of several shows on the series set. I’m happy that someone has done this, as I don’t recall this done very often for the new format. Shows that have a scissor icon by the name indicate scenes added.
Finally, you get a really interesting featurette, especially for the Superman II fans out there, called Kneel Before Zod!, which goes through the evolution of what many Superman fans consider the best villain onscreen to date. Callum Blue had a large pair of shoes to fill with Zod and this gives you a bit more perspective on the character. On top of this you get another featurette called Absolute Justice: From Script to Screen. This featurette provides some good info about how the Justice Society fit in with the show.
