Smallville

[watervole]

 I'm currently rewatching the first season of Smallville.

One of the reasons I like Smallville, is the characters of Jonathan and Martha Kent.

 

It's extremely rare on TV to see a happily married middle-aged couple. Not only are they happily married, they're not just wallpaper, there are important characters. We see their marriage portrayed as strong, caring, loving, and that relationship being part of the bedrock that makes Clark what he is.

 

The writers never make the mistake (or at least not in any episode I've seen) of trying to make drama by weakening that relationship. The Kents don't have affairs, they don't have big blowup arguments, they don't do any of the things that married couples in TV dramas so frequently suffer from.

 

They don't even have the film star good looks of most of the cast. They are normal people, and normality in Smallville is a quality greatly to be desired, when half the population appear to have powers derived from kryptonite.

 

It's that very normality, the happy stable relationship between two ordinary people that allows Clark to grow up with the morals and sense of public duty that will eventually characterise Superman.

Comments

[lil_shepherd]

The characters of Jonathan and Martha Kent in Smallville like those in Lois and Clark: the New Adventures of Superman (which I actually prefer, at least for those two characters, because of their wonderful sense of humour) are based on the comic revamp of the characters by John Byrne. Before then, Jonathan and Martha were only seen in Superboy as they had died by the time Clark took up the cape - a convention dating back to the invention of the character. DC had already wiped out the (mainly 50s and 60s) Superboy's existence - with Clark only coming into his powers in his late teens, but the Kents were still very dead until Byrne brought them back and resolved the romance between Lois and Clark by having them marry. (Though DC has now reversed this by comic book logic.)

[watervole]

I like Jonathan and Martha in 'Lois and Clark' as well.

I want to rewatch that too.

I hadn't known they were dead in the comics, but it doesn't surprise me.

[lil_shepherd]

The very very first Superman strip had this line "The passing of his foster parents greatly grieved Clark Kent" of a picture of gravestones.