Smallville finale shocker: no actual shots of Tom Welling as Superman!

Obvious spoiler warning: I'm not going to get into every plot detail of last night's Smallville finale.  The big climactic moments were disappointing for two reasons.  First, as usual with television superhero shows, the big action climax was painfully puny, especially for the payoff of ten years of mythology.   Basically, Clark flies through a possessed Lionel Luther (does that count as murder?) and then a CGI blue thing that is supposed to be Superman quickly flies into Apokolips and quickly moves it about three inches to the left, saving Earth.  The most emotionally potent moment of the finale was its opening and closing bookends, which had Allison Mack reading a comic book to her young child seven years into the future, a four-color tale of how Clark Kent became Superman and saved the world.  It's a weird breaking the fourth wall moment, but it served as a reminder of just how potent, primal, and powerful the Superman mythology really is.  

What they died for? Not much. How the Lost finale negates the series.

Well, that was a fantastic two-hour epic, completely redeeming the first act of weak, claustrophobic entries that started the season. It was an intelligent, soaring adventure story, rich with excitement, character-development, crowd-pleasing pay-offs, heartbreaking sacrifices, and a final twist that cast the series in a whole new wonderful light. That's what I would be saying if this were a review of "Through the Looking Glass", the season three finale which aired three years ago. Alas, this is not a review of the series-high midpoint, although after last night, I'm of the opinion that Lost only ran for three glorious seasons. Last night's finale was a tragedy, a genuinely uninvolving and downright dull botch that not only fails as a stand-alone episode and fails as a finale, but it lessens the profound dramatic impact of what came before over the last six years. It was the worst major series finale since Ally McBeal, but at least the 'Ally leaves Boston because the daughter that showed up on her doorstep just months prior is fainting' wrap-up didn't wreck the storytelling of the previous five seasons.