Branch Rickey, longtime owner of the Dodgers, operated on the principle that it was better to trade an aging player a year too soon than a year too late. Athletic skills can deteriorate quickly, and most athletes refuse to acknowledge the warning signs of diminishing performance; fans and front office personnel also overlook warning signs and willingly cheer on players even after it is clear the players should have retired a year earlier. The sight of a feeble Willie Mays patrolling center field for the Mets, or an aging Hank Aaron getting a few more taters as a DH with the Brewers (they were in the American League then; trust me) was depressing. And the less said about Brett Farve, the better. 

It's the same with television shows. Fans want their favorite shows to go on forever, even after the creative fires have waned and the show is a fading shadow of its former self. Joss Whedon turned over Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Marti Noxon when the show switched to UPN in season six, and the result was two decidedly sub-par seasons. The X-Files started as a cultural phenomenon, but even after David Duchovney left they soldiered on for another two seasons, to no good effect (this is not to blame Duchovney’s replacement, Robert Patrick, who was wonderful; the writers were simply out of ideas). 

So it was with a sense of dread and regret that I read the news the CW network - I can’t stop thinking of them as the Country and Western Channel - renewed Smallville for a ninth season. The show was supposed to end after a seven-year run, but the writers' strike threw off the timing and an additional season was deemed necessary. With Tom Welling on board (doesn’t he have anything else to do? I guess not) the network has now signed on for season nine. 

Let’s not even start with the fact Smallville is supposed to be about the development of the young Clark Kent, who will be 25 by the show’s reckoning next season. Let’s also ignore the fact that very little takes place in Smallville any more, as nearly everyone has moved to Metropolis...which is supposed to be two thousand miles away from Kansas, but I suppose if Kansas can have mountains, dams and pine forests, it can be near Metropolis. 

Season eight has been an unmitigated disaster. The show’s creators, Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, left the show and were replaced by a four-headed hybrid of executive producers. The leaving of a show’s creator as show runner is NEVER a good sign (see Buffy, above). If nothing else, this makes sticking with the show’s original mythology difficult, which is tricky anyway after eight years of contortion and ret-conning. 

The show also lost the person who was arguably its strongest actor when Michael Rosenbaum decided to bow out as Lex Luthor. Surprisingly, this turned out to be less cataclysmic than anticipated, thanks to some other casting developments. The loss of Rosenbaum has been somewhat compensated for by having a) less Lois, although the “Lois + Clark” anvils are still annoying, b) more Chloe (well, more than if Alison Mack had been axed for budget reasons), c) more Justin Hartley as Oliver Queen, d) less Jimmy Olsen, e) less Lana (more on that below) and f) some fine work by newcomers Cassidy Freeman and Sam Witwer. Witwer, who was clearly cast for his six-pack abs and not his acting chops, has effectively brought a very human dimension to the character of Doomsday. 

If Alison Mack had been given the sack (sorry), I would have stopped watching the show right then. Chloe Sullivan has been the moral core of the show, especially with the disappearance of Clark’s parents. It was always a mystery to me why young Clark wasn’t in love with her instead of Lana, aside from the canonical associations, of course; they had more in common, she was clearly nuts about him, and speaking as a former teenaged boy, her breasts were bigger. The show couldn’t have survived her loss. The writers now seem to have painted themselves into a corner with the episode "Legion," which appears to have left them no way out but the fan-fic theory of Chloe somehow taking over Lois Lane’s persona. 

The writer’s efforts to make sense of the increasingly convoluted show mythology, especially working in the absence of Lex, have reached preposterous proportions. Any moral ambiguity in the characters has been abandoned, to the point where young Clark Kent has to convince the leaders of the future Legion of Superheroes that killing is bad (ya think they forgot that in the future?). Characters sanctimoniously lecture other characters about the importance of doing what’s right, and then try to kill someone in the next episode. 

The series reached its lowest point with the return of Lana Lang. The evolution of Lana’s character has been absurd, to put it mildly. This Kansas farm girl somehow retained her purity despite being married to the evil Lex Luthor, developed darn near super-human fighting and spying skills, and then . . . wait for it . . . became an honest to gosh superhero! As fast and as strong as Clark!  And then they had super sex! And then Lex played a cruel trick by making her absorb kryptonite so she and Clark could never touch again (except for one last, incredibly icky kiss that has to rate as the most unromantic smooch in TV history). Kristen Kreuk has always been the show’s weak link in the acting department, and her leaving could have signaled the development of the adult Clark Kent. Instead, she became deified into an equal of his (is this in any way canonical? That's a rhetorical question), although now she apparently has to live in another hemisphere because she can’t bear to be near Clark and not make the beast with two backs...although she still loves him for his mind - right?

Smallville should have ended after seven years as planned. When the writers' strike screwed that up, it should have been renewed for no more than 13 episodes, although maybe this was economically unfeasible. The show has lost most of its best actors - Rosenbaum, Annette O’Toole, John Schneider, John Glover - and has chosen to focus on less interesting replacements (what on earth does Chloe see in Aaron Ashmore’s Jimmy Olsen?). It has become nearly completely detached from canon, and the frantic ret-conning is giving me a headache - and I’m not even that familiar with the canon! The show, which began with a remarkable pilot episode and was consistently excellent for 6, maybe 7 years, now sucks.   

I stuck out the final two years of Buffy, but as good as Smallville is, it ain’t no Buffy the Vampire Slayer. A hole just opened up on my calendar for Thursdays at 8:00 (9:00 Central) in the 2009-10 TV season.