You know, if the proceeding 217 episodes go down this smoothly, I’m in for a pretty good time.

Smallville opens with a strong pilot, one that does all of the necessary legwork setting up an ongoing series while also serving as an enjoyable hour of television in its own right. While a few characters and plot points get lost in the shuffle, it succeeds in setting up the central relationships that will fuel the show for the foreseeable future.

Perhaps the biggest success right up front is Tom Welling’s take on Clark Kent. Right away, he manages to capture the character’s essence as a good-natured farm boy, making him an endearing lead whose journey you want to follow. He’s maybe a bit on the angsty side – hey, this was a WB/CW show – but it’s not an overwhelming part of his personality. Really, it would be understandable if he was even more angst-ridden, given how much of himself he’s had to hide over the years, but he instead faces life with a fair bit of optimism.

Of course, a lot of that has to do with the influence of his parents, one of the defining relationships of the Superman mythos. While we don’t get much time with Martha (Annette O’Toole), the show is quick to establish the father/son bond between Jonathan (John Schneider) and Clark. Jonathan’s a decent man, one more concerned with maintaining his honor than making a profit. As the defining force of good in Clark’s life, we quickly learn a lot of what we need to know about the man, and it’ll be good to see how their relationship is explored moving forward.

Two other major relationships in Clark’s life were introduced in this pilot as well, namely his crush on Lana Lang (Kristin Kreuk) and the start of his friendship with Lex Luthor (Michael Rosenbaum). On the former, there’s not much to comment on in this episode, though I appreciate the way the show was able to quickly establish a friendship between the two through their similar status as orphaned children. Lana’s Kryptonite necklace also serves as a good reason for Clark to be such a bumbling mess around her, though I’m immediately worried about how frequently the show will use it as an excuse to weaken Clark.

Clark’s friendship with Lex, meanwhile, is instantly fascinating on several levels. For comic fans, it’s interesting to see the long-time enemies forging such a strong and immediate bond with one another. From the word go, this friendship is a ticking time bomb, one destined to end in tragedy no matter what the two may want. It’s a tension evident even if you’ve never heard of the characters, too; from the bad blood between Jonathan and Lex’s father Lionel to the fact that Lex is already suspicious of what Clark might be capable of, it’s clear that the two already have a lot set against them.

Still, while the pilot does a good job setting up all of these central relationships, it falters a bit in establishing the sort of threats Clark will face on a weekly basis. As far as exciting villains go, there’s little menace to be found in someone named The Electric Scarecrow, particularly given that his revenge scheme seems so petty and, frankly, overdue. This is really where the show most suffers from pilot syndrome, feeling the need to connect the show’s very first “freak-of-the-week” to Clark’s arrival on Earth. However, this storyline does what it needs to do, introducing the “meteor freaks” that Clark, Chloe (Allison Mack), and Pete (Sam Jones III) will regularly be dealing with.

Another pilot quibble is that, if Clark is already well aware of his own powers, would it really have taken until now for Jonathan and Martha fully clue him in on being an alien? Would he not just remember as much, given how old he was when he arrived? It’s a small thing, but one I noticed. Also, just got to love how quick the show is to hammer in the Jesus symbolism, from the shot of Clark with angelic wings in the cemetery to the iconic shot of him up on the scarecrow-cross.

That all aside, though, this was still a great pilot episode, one that has me excited to start up the next episode. I suppose we’ll see how long that feeling lasts in the notoriously episodic first season.

Random Asides

– Clark watching Lana through a telescope is a little creepy, I’ll admit.

– I got vibes of Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson from Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man off of Clark and Lana, though to be fair, Smallville did it first a full year earlier.

– Special effects aside, the most dated thing in this pilot was Lana’s gay joke in the cemetery. Not an uncommon source of humor in the early 2000s, but it smacked me in the mouth with how mean-spirited it was.

– Part of a Bigger Universe: No idea how often this’ll actually come up in the early years, but this is where I’ll make notes of references to other DC properties/characters. Surprisingly, we get a pretty big one right away, with a headline proclaiming the CEO of Queen Industries is missing and presumed dead. Somewhere, on an island…

Final Score: 9 out of 10