Structuring the Pilot: Smallville
A pilot being made doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s perfect. The best thing about this is that you can sometimes learn more about how to do something by looking critically at examples that don’t work as well, than the ones that appear flawless.
As a side note: this is also the reasoning behind why aspiring screenwriters should read some unproduced scripts (many of which can often be found online).
Smallville was a show that I absolutely loved when it was originally airing, but not one I had really gone back to since. Rewatching the pilot to write this, I quickly realized the angle from which I would need to approach this.
This pilot has problems. Some of them are signs of when it was made (back is 2001), but there are also some fundamental structural issues. Priorities and moments could have been shifted to make the whole thing much stronger.
There is one more thing worth mentioning. I am going to be very critical of this episode, but that isn’t to say that my subjective viewpoint is perfect, or that anyone else shouldn’t like it. In fact, this is a series I hold a lot of nostalgia for. But pilot episodes are hard, which is a big point I have made in all these posts. This one may not land for me, but it was still good enough to launch a series that lasts for ten years.
Smallville – “Pilot”
Written by Alfred Gough & Miles Millar
Directed by David Nutter
Teaser - Prologue
(A) Spaceship and meteors are headed to Earth.
(C) Lex is berated by Lionel while flying to Smallville
(A) The Kents buy flowers; Martha makes a wish.
(A) Martha admits her wish was for a baby.
(A) Spaceship is getting close.
(C) Lex wanders away from Lionel.
(B + C) Lex is terrified as he finds Jeremy; runs away as meteor drops.
(A) Lana sees her parents killed by meteor.
(A) The Kents crash into a meteor.
(C) Lex is found, now bald.
(A) The Kents wake up, a small boy is there.
(A) The Kents find the spaceship.
The pilot opens on a prologue, which is primarily about how Clark joined the Kent family, but it also manages to fit in the episode’s villain, and key moments for both Lex and Lana.
The very first shot showing a group of meteors and a spaceship headed toward the Earth. It’s a single shot that sets up both that there is an impending threat, and that aliens exist in this series. This kind of moment is great, revealing a lot in very little time.
An interesting choice is that we actually see the Luthors before we see the Kents. They are used as a transition, a reason to fly over the Smallville sign.
The most important thing about these scenes of Lex as a child is that they are the only time in the episode we see Lionel at all, and specifically get insight into how Lex was raised. Lex is a frightened child, and Lionel just berates him for showing any fear. Luthors are meant to be leaders, Lex has a destiny.
This comment about destiny seems all the more impactful because this series acts as a sort of prequel (although of a reimagined future), meaning we know what Lex’s destiny is.
We move on to Jonathan and Martha Kent, who are buying up flowers. And here is where we begin to get moments that make this prologue feel too long. Things in the flower shop begin very awkwardly as Nell hits on Jonathan in front of his wife, with no attempt to hide it. With no relevance to the rest of the episode, it feels like it could have been handled more subtly or taken out completely.
The main reason the Kents are here are to have them run into Lana, who is dressed as a fairy princess. Martha is told by Lana to make a wish, and in the next scene we hear she wished for a child.
We’re also learning that it is the day of the big homecoming game, which becomes especially important to what will become the episodic portion of this story.
Lex wanders into a cornfield where he hears a voice begging for help. We’re seeing how scared he is once again as the voice makes his try to run away. Lex winds up in front of Jeremy, the villain of the episode. But Lex sees a meteor heading toward them and turns to run again. This is all set up for Jeremy’s motivation as well as reinforcing what we’ve already seen of Lex.
As the people of the town look toward where the meteor fell, we get the only scene in the episode that is from Lana’s POV, where this little girl sees her parents crushed by a meteor. The situation with her lack of POV for the rest of the episode will come into play a bit later.
For a quick explanation of what I mean by POV, it stands for Point of View, and is in this case referring to the character we follow in a scene. Most scenes in the episode follow Clark’s POV, but there are scenes where he isn’t there, so it becomes a question of who we are following. POV can also refer to a type of shot where it appears as though we are seeing through a character’s eyes. But, for the purposes of story structure, the latter definition won’t come into play.
Skipping ahead to after the action ends, Lex is found by Lionel. Lionel appears completely taken aback and horrified by the state he finds his son, who is now bald.
And then there is the Kents. Jonathan tries to avoid driving into a meteor, but it is too late. When they wake up from the accident, there is small boy outside the truck, smiling at them. They get out and look around for where he could have come from, only to find their answer: a spaceship. Jonathan doesn’t think they can keep a boy they just found in a cornfield, but Martha argues “we didn’t find him, he found us.” She sees this child as the answer to her wish.
Act One – A “Normal” High School Clark
(A) Clark’s a teen; researches feats of strength/speed.
(A) Clark wants to play football; told it’s too risky.
(A) Clark uses super speed when he misses the bus.
(A + B) Clark and Pete explain the Scarecrow to Chloe.
(A) Clark feels sick around Lana; she has a boyfriend.
(B) Jeremy steals a picture.
(C) Lex has returned to Smallville.
(A) Clark fantasizes about football and Lana.
(A + C) Lex swerves into Clark; they go over a bridge.
(A + C) Clark saves Lex.
(A + C) Clark pulls Lex onto land; wonders how he lived.
This first act is about introducing us to a teenage Clark and the main characters of the series, as well as showing us the moment when Clark realizes just how different he is from other people.
The first time that we see Clark as a teen he’s looking up incredible feats of speed and strength, presumably looking to prove that he isn’t alone in having these abilities. He needs his parents to sign a permission slip to try out for football, but he’s told it is too risky, that there could be an accident. It all seems to be setting up Clark’s desire to feel normal.
At this point, we haven’t seen him use any powers, but that changes very quickly. When he misses the bus, he uses super speed to get to school instead. This is used as a reason to introduce his friends Chloe and Pete with some dramatic irony where Pete wins a bet that Clark would miss the bus, commenting on how slow Clark is.
When they arrive at the school we learn that Chloe has thing for Clark, but denies it, and Pete has a thing for Chloe. It all comes off as fairly forced dialogue just to catch us up on all the high school emotions running through these friends, but more so is just not important for anything that happens in the episode.
In this scene we also get the info that Chloe is a reporter and believes there are a bunch of weird things happening around the town that no one takes seriously. Plus, we get Pete and Clark explaining the scarecrow situation from earlier in the episode. Every year the football team picks a freshman to string up like a scarecrow for the night of homecoming.
Continuing to build out all the love triangles, Clark is distracted by the sight of Lana and goes to talk to her. Chloe wins a bet on how soon he’ll fall down, because, as she says, he can’t get within five feet of Lana. Just getting close to Lana makes Clark sick to the point he looks like he is going to puke and is in serious pain. Her green necklace is highlighted to give us a clue as to why he is feeling this way.
Lana is kind and helps Clark pick up his books, specifically commenting on a book of Nietzsche translations. She asks if he is “man or superman”. Clark says he hasn’t figured that out yet, and with this we have what is essentially the theme of the series: Clark learning who he is, leading to his becoming Superman. Lana’s boyfriend comes over, kisses Lana to make it extra clear they are together.
Next there is what feels like the most unimportant scene in the episode. Jeremy, the scarecrow Lex saw twelve years ago, is in the high school, looking the same age as he was before. He punches through a glass display case and pulls out a picture of three jocks, saying “it’s payback time”.
What this scene accomplishes is that it shows us something is weird with this guy, and he wants revenge. These are important facts, but it is revealed to us in the most on-the-nose way possible. I’ll get into more of the reasons why I say this a little later, but this scene seems to exist only to keep us from forgetting who Jeremy is, and I’m not sure it is necessary.
Following this is an incredible short scene where Lex arrives at the Smallville Luthor Corp building, and says “thanks, Dad”. Out of this, we learn he’s been sent here by his father, presumably against his will. It is an incredibly short moment used to re-introduce the character now that he is older and set up his situation.
So, Clark watches some football tryouts from the stands, and we see Whitney playing on the team and Lana as a cheerleader. Quickly this shifts into a fantasy sequence in which Clark sees himself as a player using his powers to win a game in the final seconds, only to end with Lana coming over to kiss him and all the crowd chanting his name. This starts a trend in the episode that where Clark’s treatment and perception of Lana isn’t great. A key point to this fantasy seems to be that if he wins a football game, he also wins her affection. Not ideal.
After Pete snaps him out from his fantasy, he walks off to brood, his place of choice being a bridge that he can stare off from. A truck drops some kind of barbed fencing near Clark. Lex is coming from the other direction going too fast and getting distracted by his phone. When he sees the fencing, he slams on the breaks and tries to swerve out of the way, leading to him smashing into Clark and sending them both down into the water below.
From here, Clark rips the roof off from Lex’s car in order to pull him out from the river. When he gets Lex safely to the shore, Lex claims he could have sworn he hit Clark. Clark says that he that were true, he’d be dead, and in this moment seems to be realizing for the first time that there is more going on with him than being fast and strong. He seems to be invincible.
Act Two – Clark Learns
(A + C) Clark is picked up by Jonathan, who doesn’t like Luthors.
(A) Clark spies on Lana; she lends Whitney her necklace.
(B) Jeremy attacks one of the jocks who made him a scarecrow.
(A) Clark has been given a truck by Lex.
(A) Clark is told he can’t keep truck; reveals his invincibility to Jonathan.
(A) Clark is told about where he came from.
(A) Clark is shown his spaceship; runs off.
Act two is primarily about truths coming out, specifically ones about the Luthors’ prior actions as well as where Clark comes from.
Jonathan comes to the river to pick up Clark, where he demands to know who was responsible for the accident and only becomes angrier when he learns it was Lex Luthor.
As the scene comes to an end, Lex sees his car being pulled up from the river, noticing the way his roof has been peeled back. It’s a small moment that starts him wondering what really happened.
When we get back to the Kent Farm, Clark is in the barn looking up at the sky through a telescope, but he soon looks lower. And, here is the next instance of Clark being creepy when it comes to Lana.
We get a whole scene of Lana sitting on her porch, talking to her boyfriend. There are a couple things going on here, but the main point is that Lana is giving Whitney her necklace for good luck at the homecoming game. This necklace is explained to be part of the meteor that killed her parents (making it kryptonite, to the Superman fans). She believed it has done so much bad that only good luck can remain.
On its own, this scene is fine. A problem comes with the fact that it is bookended in a way to show the whole scene is being watched by Clark through a telescope. The reasoning for this appears to be a way to keep it within Clark’s POV, rather than Lana be able to have the power of POV on her own.
There are at least two key problems with this decision. The first is the fact that Lana has already been given a scene in her POV in the earlier in the episode, making this choice to refuse her that ability later seem unimportant. Secondly, using this framing mechanism makes Clark come off incredibly creepy, and well, mildly stalkerish. The fact that this ends with Clark turning away, visibly upset, when he sees Lana kiss her boyfriend, really doesn’t help.
After this, we return to Jeremy. In this scene he finds one of the former jocks who strung him up as the scarecrow and electrocutes him (later we find out this goes as far as putting him in a coma, not killing him). And here is why I say his prior scene is so unimportant. What that scene told us was the Jeremy hasn’t aged and he wants revenge. In this scene we have a character comment on how he hasn’t aged, as well as remind us that he was the kid who was the scarecrow in the beginning. It also has Jeremy getting his revenge instead of just talking about it. And, just to make sure we understand, we see the same picture of three jocks that Jeremy stole from the school. Here, it is hung up in the garage.
Basically, we’re getting everything we were already told and shown in the prior scene, but this one contains the actual actions, rather than having Jeremy just talk to himself while performing a small act of vandalism. We could drop the prior scene from the episode entirely and all we lose is that Jeremy has no presence in the first act. But we would still have Pete and Clark explaining the scarecrow tradition, so it does still have a connection to this plot thread in that sense.
Anyway, Clark discovers Lex bought him a truck as a thank you gift, but Jonathan tells him they can’t keep it. This has Jonathan revealing that in the past Lionel Luthor has come to town to make deals with families, only to screw them over. So, because of this, he doesn’t trust any Luthor. It’s a vague bit of backstory to explain why Luthors are bad.
Clark starts to stomp off, but Jonathan tells him it is normal to feel upset. The word “normal” hits Clark and makes him turn around. He shoves his arm into a woodchipper to prove how he’s not normal at all, and then explains to his dad that Lex’s car really did hit him.
Jonathan decides it is time to tell Clark the truth, revealing how Clark came into their lives and eventually showing him the spaceship.
So, the act ends on Clark running off, upset that he didn’t know any of this before. One problem here is that the primary source of drama for this act out comes from Clark learning information that we already have. For the audience, the only thing new here is possibly wondering what Clark will do now that he has this information. The effect could be so much more if it was news to us as well. If either the prologue didn’t exist, or it ended with a smiling boy looking at Jonathan and Martha, still inside their truck, this whole scene would be so much more impactful.
Act Three – Consequences of Meteors
(A) Clark and Lana open up to each other.
(A) Clark walks Lana home; Whitney spies on them.
(A + C) Clark gives Lex the truck back; Lex wants to be friends.
(B) Chloe and Pete see Jeremy where another Jock has been assaulted.
(A + B) Clark is told all about Jeremy.
(A) Clark is shown the “wall of weird”, blames himself for it.
(A + B) Clark is attacked by Whitney; told he’s going to be the scarecrow.
Now that Clark realizes he came from space, act three becomes about him learning about what the meteors caused all those years ago.
The act open with the reveal of where Clark ran off too at the end of the prior act. And, it’s a graveyard. This becomes incredibly important in that it is where Lana’s parents are buried, and she comes here to feel closer to them at times.
The episode never addressed why Clark chose to come here at all. Lana has an incredibly valid reason, but Clark isn’t shown to have any connection to this place. The most he offers as an explanation is that because he is here in the middle of the night must mean something is wrong with him, which, well, is a matter of avoiding the question rather than answering it.
Most of this scene comes down to us, and Clark, learning a lot of exposition about Lana, such as how she feels her real life is in metropolis, not in Smallville.
Well, Clark walks Lana home, and we hear that this is the most they’ve ever spoken. This adds to the creepiness of Clark’s obsession with her, and it only gets worse. Because they have spoken this one time, Clark tries asking Lana to the homecoming dance. Of course, she says no, she is going with her boyfriend. This shouldn’t even need to have been said.
Confusing the matter, Lana promising to save Clark a dance and even kisses him on the cheek. It is these moments, coupled with how Lana talks about Clark in her previous scene with Whitney, that seem to be saying the feelings are reciprocated to some degree. It’s incredibly awkward and seems to be trying to paint Clark’s actions and thoughts as romantic rather than creepy.
Whitney watches this whole interaction outside of Lana’s home and becomes incredibly jealous. Given everything he would have just seen and heard, there could maybe be a mild argument for this reaction. That being said, he was hanging out on Lana’s porch in the middle of the night with no explanation, which is again a guy being pretty creepy toward Lana.
The next day Clark visits Lex’s mansion to return the truck. When asked how he got in, Clark seems to imply he used his powers to basically break in (jump a fence and just come inside, but it is the same idea). Clark is incredibly impressed by the size of the mansion, but Lex doesn’t care about it at all. He mentions how his father brought it over brick by brick as a way to move their ancestral home to Smallville, but more as a display of power than out of interest in living in it. We’re having more of Lionel’s character revealed even without his presence in most of the episode.
When Clark reveals he is returning the truck because of how his father feels about Lex’s father. Lex hopes it doesn’t mean they can’t be friends.
Elsewhere, Chloe and Pete watch as another former jock is loaded into an ambulance. We’re told he is the third victim, meaning that Jeremy has completed his entire revenge scheme before our hero even knows it is happening. Pete points out Jeremy, who is still in the area, and not recognizing him Chloe decides to snap a picture.
Between scenes Chloe and Pete fully investigate the entire Jeremy situation and decide to tell Clark all about it. They know exactly why Jeremy is attacking former jocks, how he hasn’t aged, and even an explanation for how he might have electrical powers. Chloe hinges it all on the fact that Jeremy became comatose because of the meteor shower.
This leads Chloe to showing Clark the “wall of weird”, her own collection of everything weird in Smallville that was caused by the meteors. Given the fact the Clark just found out that he came to Earth during that meteor shower, he feels he is totally to blame for everything on the wall.
These two scenes paired together act to fully explain the Jeremy plot to Clark, as well as set up how future people may have powers in this series.
It is a little surprising that we’re about 3/4 through the episode and these two scenes are the first time that Clark has had any connection to Jeremy at all. Clark learning more about his origins is a completely separate plot from everything Jeremy is getting up to. Pete and Chloe are here to bridge the two plots, but it isn’t even that learning about Jeremy has Clark going after him. There is nothing in this wall of weird scene to indicate that Clark is leaving to do anything other than find a new place to brood.
The act ends on Clark being jumped by Whitney and told he’s going to be this year’s scarecrow. Whitney is wearing Lana’s necklace, allowing him to get the better of Clark. When he sees the way Clark looks at the necklace, Whitney puts it on him, saying it is the closest he will ever get to Lana.
Now, this situation is making Whitney be set up as a terrible boyfriend. Not only because he is attacking Clark like this, but because he has just taken what must be one of his girlfriend’s more important possessions and given it to someone else. Given the fact that this necklace is the only thing that makes it possible for Clark to lose his strength enough for any of this to happen, it comes off necessary for the plot, but the leap Whitney’s had to make to do this… again, terrible boyfriend.
Act Four – First Super Fight
(A + B) Clark is the scarecrow; Jeremy is going to attack the dance.
(B + C) Lex sees Jeremy and hears a call for help.
(A + C) Clark is saved by Lex, runs to the dance.
(B) Jeremy arrives at the dance.
(B) Everyone is happily dancing.
(A + B) Clark stops Jeremy.
(A) Clark watches Lana from afar.
(A) Clark leaves, sees the jocks’ trucks.
(A) Clark sees Whitney react to his truck being in a pile.
(A) Clark is happy to have his parents. Clark fantasizes about, then watches, Lana.
The final act of the episode is primarily about Clark’s first fight with someone who has superpowers.
Clark is strung up as the scarecrow. Jeremy finds Clark like this, and it leads him to believe that nothing he did mattered, he didn’t change anything by punishing the jocks that did this to him. So, he’s going to the high school to electrocute absolutely everyone at the homecoming dance.
From here we get pay off for Lex’s portion of the prologue. He is leaving Luthor Corp, and sees Jeremy crawling out from the corn field. Lex remembers seeing him as a kid, and then hears a voice saying “help me” just like the last time. But, unlike the last time, Lex is no longer afraid. He runs into the field and finds Clark strung up.
The moment Clark is helped down, the necklace falls off him, giving him his powers back. So, he runs off to stop Jeremy. Lex is left alone, finding the necklace on the ground. He has a similar look to when he saw the roof pulled back from his car. It is another piece to the mystery forming in his head, not that he has any idea what it means at this point, but it is set up for what his character will be up to in the series.
Jeremy arrives at the high school, and we’re shown Lana, Whitney, Chloe, and Pete, just to be sure we know the stakes. Jeremy’s plan is to set off the sprinklers, so that when he sends his electricity through the water it will get them all. This is when Clark shows up.
This confrontation ends up being more about the conversation before it happens than the fight itself. Jeremy claims he isn’t doing this for himself, but for everyone like himself and Clark who have ever been strung up as a scarecrow. Clark is continuing to take the blame, feeling like the fact that Jeremy’s coma, and presumably his powers, originated from the meteors means they must be his fault.
The big moment here, is Jeremy claiming that he has a gift, a purpose, a destiny. Clark says he does too. It’s this idea of destiny brought up back in the prologue when Lionel scolded his son Lex with not living up to his.
Well, the fight happens. Jeremy electrocutes Clark, which doesn’t have any effect on him. Eventually, Clark tosses him to the side. And then Clark doesn’t actually do anything else. Jeremy gets in a vehicle then drives it into Clark and through a wall. The wall happened to contain water pipes that burst and fill the vehicle, causing him to electrocute himself so terribly that it seems to wipe away both his powers and his memory.
The fact that Clark does almost nothing in this fight and has barely anything to do with Jeremy losing it, is a bit of a problem. This could have come off much more interesting if it ended in a way where Clark purposely sprayed him with water. If he used his super strength to grab a pipe and bend it to be aimed at Jeremy, or another action with that gives him similar agency in this ordeal.
The way this all plays out means the protagonist’s plot is separate from the antagonists for the vast majority of the episode, and even after the two dovetail together, the antagonist is defeated not by the protagonists actions but by his own.
After the fight, Clark enters the dance for a moment, but then leaves when he sees Lana and Whitney kiss again. Outside, he finds trucks that presumably belong to the jocks, and gets his own kind of revenge by piling them on top of each other.
The episode ends with a final scene in Clark’s barn. Clark and Jonathan have a little father-son bonding time, leading to Clark saying he is glad his parents found him. Jonathan echoes Martha’s words, telling Clark that they didn’t find him, he found them. It is a bit of a sweet moment, but then the scene goes on.
Clark turns on some music and finds that Lana is there for the dance she didn’t get to have with him at homecoming. They get all close, seemingly very romantic, but then it all comes to an end as a honking horn snaps Clark out of it. Lana is being dropped off back at her place, Clark was just fantasizing about her again.
A problem with this fantasy sequence is that it is so hidden until the end that it calls into question what is real with Clark’s POV. The fact that it is so focused on Lana and ends with him once again watching her at a distance, doesn’t help either. Much of the Clark and Lana relationship in this episode is about blurring the line between obsession and romance, and this ends the episode on the same sentiment, while also leaving us to wonder about Clark’s connection to reality.
Restructuring the Pilot
While I have brought up issues throughout this post, the largest structural issue for this pilot is the fact that Clark has no connection to the Jeremy plotline for most of the episode.
So, accompanying much of what I have brought up during the breakdown itself, here is my proposal to try to fix this problem:
Have Jeremy somehow be responsible for Lex’s car driving into Clark.
This could already have an explanation in the episode, as Lex ran away instead of saving Jeremy in the beginning, so Jeremy’s plan for revenge could be pushed so far as to include Lex.
The most important thing this small change could do, is that is allows Clark to see something in this moment that could cause him to investigate Jeremy himself. Now Clark is connected to Jeremy right from the end of act one, and it would be his investigation being brought to Chloe that would lead her to showing off her Wall of Weird, rather than her randomly deciding to let him in on it.
Clark is also a trying to find answers about how he fits in. It’s already demonstrated in his first scene after the prologue where he is searching the internet to find people who can do the things he can. Having him find out about the Wall of Weird and all the incidents with the meteors before he finds out his own origin could have him presenting the theory of him gaining abilities this way to his father. This could have Clark learning about the spaceship stem from his own search for answers, rather than being brought on only from Jonathan feeling bad for his son.
The whole woodchipper freak out still works, but it has the weight of him thinking he knows the answers to why he can’t be normal, only to find they are something much bigger. And of course, if we condensed the prologue the whole spaceship reveal could mean so much more to the audience when we hit this point. We could be along for the ride of believing he just got special abilities from the meteors like other people did, only to discover he doesn’t fit in them either
This change would also give Chloe more of a role in the episode because Clark would turn to her sooner with his investigation. Similarly, it opens more possibilities for Lex if Jeremy is after him to some extent.
And of course, I would also think that having Clark working more on the investigation could lead to him having less time to spy on Lana, which would be nice. Her scenes can all still exist but give her the ability to have POV herself.
Conclusions
In the other serial-episodic dramas I have spoken of in past Structuring the Pilot posts, I have brought up how the episodic plot of a pilot tends to be something much simpler than it would be in subsequent episodes. This is a side effect of needing to spend more time setting up the world and characters of the series, while still managing to demonstrate what will be its usually format. It is this balance where Smallville’s pilot most falls short.
This is a pilot that takes the idea of a simpler episodic story to the degree that it feels almost entirely disconnected from the rest of the episode, and that is what my proposed restructuring is about trying to fix. It isn’t enough to have the hero able to solve the problem with relative ease, they also must have a more active role from early on in the episode.
That all being said, this is a pilot that started a series that lasted a decade. While it isn’t perfect, it did succeed in what it was there for: to have people continue to watch the series.
