Smallville’s cast reunion panel highlights what makes the show different from other superhero series

polygon.com:

The Smallvillecast can’t stop talking about Michael Rosenbaum. While the actor who brought Lex Luthor to the small screen was not in attendance at New York Comic-Con’s Smallville cast reunion, much of the panel’s anecdotes, jokes, and plugs were about him. Moderated by Walt Disney World entertainer Cameron Matthews, the panel welcomed John Glover (Lionel Kent), Erica Durance (Lois Lane), Kristin Kreuk (Lana Lang), as well as Clark Kent himself, Tom Welling — who hosts a Smallville rewatch podcast “Talk Ville” with Rosenbaum. “Michael’s an idiot,” he said, “so it’s a lot of fun.”

Looking back at the series, which ran for 10 seasons and over 200 episodes on The CW, it’s impressive that the show kept its character-based storytelling and stuck to its “no flights, no tights” policy for so long. Twenty years later, audiences expect superhero shows to get to the suit, the crossover event, and reveal the big bad immediately. As Welling said to the other cast members on stage with regards to the phrase “no flights, no tights” which he had written into his contract, firmly believing that “we wouldn’t have lasted 10 years if we’d put the suit on in season 1.”

It gave them the freedom to slow down, be a drama series, and not “be beholden” (Welling’s words) to any particular comic book arc. Even a character like Glover’s, who could so easily be a campy villain, was humanized in the series. (The actor said the highest compliment was when people stopped him on the street and asked if he was supposed to be a good guy or a bad guy.)

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Refusing to take that easy route “made the show focus on what it was supposed to focus on,” added Durance, who owned up to being the nerd on set and was well aware that Lois wasn’t supposed to