Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		3.5
Audio		3.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		2.5

Smallville: The Complete Seventh Season Blu-ray Movie Review

A surprisingly fresh series starts to dull with age...

Ah, Smallville. More than a gimmicky superhero series that shattered everyone's expectations (including those of this jaded critic and aging fanboy), more than a show that's survived years of network turmoil to win over DC purists and skeptics alike, Smallville has proven itself to be a seemingly immortal miracle-child; a genuine surprise that continues to clip along as if its creators are prepared to churn out another eight seasons. Alas, in its seventh and most recent season, the beloved series took a sharp turn for the worst. As key players prepared to abandon ship, and rumors of impending cancellation swirled, the infamous Writer's Strike did what Lex Luthor never could: bring Superman to his knees.

While the performances are as strong as ever, this season's scripts suffer serious setbacks...

After narrowly escaping the Phantom Zone, defeating an intergalactic tyrant named Zod, and surviving the onslaught of an evil doppelganger called Bizarro, Clark (Tom Welling) is faced with a new challenge: helping a new Kryptonian arrival -- his biological cousin Kara (Laura Vandervoot) -- get acquainted with his new stomping grounds. Elsewhere, new heroes stroll into town to help out our faithful few, fan-favorite baddies like Braniac (James Marsters) take more shots at Clark, and the once-and-future Superman has to deal with the emergence of dangerous threats from Krypton. On the otherside of Metropolis, Lex (Michael Rosenbaum) begins to dissect the uber-secretive Veritas Group, a devious organization that have played dark and seedy roles in lives of the Kents and Luthors.

Like its Complete Sixth Season, Smallville's seventh outing focuses most of its efforts on downplaying the series' villain-of-the-week setup and the groan-inducing lulls of its sometimes shallow melodrama. To the show's slight credit (and despite several mind-numbing developments and twists), a few episodes sidestep the more perilous pitfalls and concentrate on the things that have proven themselves successful in previous seasons. The writers even concoct new ways to explore Clark’s late adolescence and his growth as a superhero. This, along with a batch of new characters like Kara and a handful of stunning revelations, helps the series strengthen its ongoing themes and produce solid scenes with favorites like Green Arrow (Justin Hartley), Bizarro, Black Canary (Alaina Huffman), and the budding Justice League. More importantly, Lex is finally given the opportunity to come into his villainous own and emerge as a genuine threat to the Big Boy in blue. In fact, the best season seven episodes not only revitalize the Smallville mythos, they flesh out the central heroes and transform them into more fully realized characters.

To my dismay, with every decent episode the Smallville team manages to churn out, a poorly-conceived and decidedly regressive episode is waiting patiently in the wings. At first, I thought the uneven quality (coming on the heels of a rousing and consistent sixth season) might have been the product of stricter production budgets and timetables, but as more and more questionable decisions began to dominate the series' scripts, I began to suspect the staff writers may simply be running out of steam. While many of the season's subplots are initially intriguing, they're also inexplicably cut short before they have any chance to mount suitable dramatic weight. Likewise, crucial character reactions and anxieties are suggested in early episodes, only to be abandoned before they're given the chance to deliver any psychological payoffs. To be blunt, many of the storylines devolve into such ludicrous drivel that I was left shaking my head in disbelief. It's easy to blame the dreaded Writer's Strike, but bad ideas are bad ideas... no matter what excuse a production team is able to fall back on.

By the time the credits rolled on the last episode of Smallville's seventh season, I was struck by how arbitrary it all seemed. Since the series is well into its final act, you would think its creators would be more invested in the big picture rather than introducing aimless characters, dead-end tangents, and disposable, low-level baddies. Furthermore, too many Justice League mainstays are still MIA, sideliners are often given more attention than the characters we've paid to see, and a majority of episodes are downright derivative. With key regulars stepping away from the series altogether, the Smallville creative team has their work cut out for them.

Smallville: The Complete Seventh Season Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Blu-ray edition of Smallville: The Complete Seventh Season features an above average 1080p/VC-1 transfer that improves upon the high-def release of its Sixth Season. Palette vibrancy, primary strength, and color saturation are fairly remarkable, splashing each frame with warm reds, eye-piercing blues, and ominous purples. Contrast is attractive as well, injecting the image with well-resolved blacks and at-times eerily convincing depth. Scenes in the Fortress of Solitude look crisp and surreal, Clark's nighttime heroics are rich and nicely delineated, and lush, rural exteriors look just as inviting as cozy interiors. Softness creeps in from time to time, but still allows each disc to best the standard DVD with noticeably improved clarity.

Unfortunately, all is not well when it comes to the technical integrity of the transfer. While many television releases have problems with artifacting and noise, The Complete Seventh Season is frequently disrupted by macroblocking, digital clutter, and faint banding. Nothing spoils the picture per se, but, combined, the set's shortcomings leave particular shots looking too similar to their HD broadcast counterparts. Whether these visual anomalies have anything to do with Warner's decision to cram up to seven episodes on each disc is up for debate, but I can't imagine it helped. Ultimately, Smallville: The Complete Seventh Season would probably boast a cleaner image if the entire season was given more room to breathe or if more effort had been invested in its transfer.

Smallville: The Complete Seventh Season Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

When I first watched the Blu-ray edition of Smallville: The Complete Sixth Season, I excused Warner's lack of lossless audio -- after all, season six was released in 2007 when two fledgling formats grazed these high-def pastures and lossy audio was still the norm. However, in a land flowing with DTS HD MA and TrueHD honey, it annoys me that a prominent, late-2008 Blu-ray release like Smallville: The Complete Seventh Season features little more than a standard Dolby Digital 5.1 surround track.

Thankfully, dialogue is clean and balanced, the rear soundstage is occasionally aggressive (particularly during Clark's more chaotic battles), and LFE support handles explosions and supersonic blasts quite well. The soundfield is a bit flat at times (acoustics are uninvolving and ambience is inconsistent), the center speaker dominates the mix, and channel accuracy is imprecise at the most inopportune times. If I had the ability to compare this DD track to the season's original HD broadcast, I bet I would find the two mixes to be strikingly similar and indistinguishable from one another. Still, while a barebones audio mix may not be as damning for a television show, there's little excuse for a standard track when so many other options are readily available. I'm glad Warner seems to have adjusted their approach to high-def audio in 2009, incorporating at least one lossless track into every release. So here's hoping the eventual release of Smallville: The Complete Eighth Season will have all the audible bells and whistles Blu-ray enthusiasts have come to expect.

Smallville: The Complete Seventh Season Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Smallville: The Complete Seventh Season includes all of the special features from the standard DVD, delivers more compelling content than season six, and finally gives fans some solid commentary action. Alas, without many extensive behind-the-scenes featurettes or documentaries, this release doesn't give fans a lot of material to dig through.

• Cast and Crew Commentaries: Persona and Siren earn audio commentaries with creators Miles Millar and Al Gough, producer Ken Horton and Todd Slavkin, writers Kelly Souders and Brian Petersonas, and actors John Glover and John Hartley. Sadly, each discussion is dry and somewhat lifeless, elevated only by Hartley's brief but welcome wit.
• Supergirl: The Last Daughter of Krypton (SD, 18 minutes): This overly-focused featurette digs into the creation, development, and appearances of Supergirl over the years. Renowned DC Comics creators, several actresses, and other industry heavyweights are on hand to offer their thoughts on the character.
• Jimmy on Jimmy (SD, 23 minutes): Embarassing title aside, this featurette documents the charming roundtable meeting between four actors who've portrayed Jimmy Olsen over the years -- Smallville's own Aaron Ashmore, Superman Returns' Sam Huntington, Superman: The Movie's Marc McClure, and The Adventures of Superman's Jack Larsen. Be sure to check it out.
• Deleted Scenes (SD, 34 minutes): A collection of deleted scenes from more than a dozen episodes. While most were wisely cut, the scenes include interactions and exchanges that will be of some value to fans of season seven.
• Kara and the Chronicles of Krypton Mobisodes (SD, 21 minutes): Six clumsily-animated shorts that hone in on Kara before she came to Earth.
• Smallville Visions: A nonsensical digital comic that turned out to be a waste of time.

Smallville: The Complete Seventh Season Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Smallville: The Complete Seventh Season is all-too-reminiscent of the oft-panned second season of Heroes: major characters are regularly missing, stories often fizzle or implode, and the overall episodes are all over the place. The Blu-ray edition is worth uttering a heavy "meh" as well. It features a decent but noisy video transfer, an uninvolving Dolby Digital audio track, and little more than a passable supplemental package. Smallville veterans will undoubtedly be satisfied with the results (especially if they're deciding between the BD and DVD versions of the season), but casual fans will recognize how much better it could have looked and sounded.