[Filling the Space is a flexible column where our writers could vent, deconstruct, and work their way around the emotions brought on by TV, films, books, music, and key moments in pop culture. This isn’t meant to be analytical, but instead, a way for us to explore our feelings.]
As the headline says, I heard the Smallville theme song playing and started watching the show again. I used to watch the series live when it was airing, but stopped somewhere during Season 3 because it got a bit too creepy for my scaredy cat taste. But now? I’m willing to go back again. It’s no secret that I adored the new Superman and David Corenswet’s depiction of Clark Kent, but I wasn’t planning on fully entering my Superman era. But that’s kind of the amazing thing about music and its means to take us back through time.
Lady Geeks Media writer Jenna and I were on Marco Polo when I heard the show’s theme song, Remy Zero’s “Save Me,” through a video she sent me, and I literally leaped off the couch and started screaming. I haven’t had a visceral reaction to music like that in such a long time that it completely threw me off. But I could almost see it all clear as day. Teenage me, sitting on the couch after school, watching Smallville and obsessing over Tom Welling’s Clark Kent.
Ten seasons is too long to catch up on a show when time is almost nonexistent, and I have an entire list of things that I need to do daily. But here we are, I’m now watching an episode of Smallville a day because nostalgia got me so hard, I couldn’t refuse it.
So much of my musical taste is directly influenced by the shows I watched as a kid growing up. One Tree Hill had the quintessential angsty teenage soundtrack, and now, rewatching Smallville, I’m reminded that so does this. The needle drop of Green Day’s “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” straight up made me cry in Season 4, and I can’t wait to see what else is in store for the show.
I don’t know if it’s the actual needle drops corresponding with the scene, or our own angsty teenage nostalgia awakening with all the punk rock, pop emo songs we’d listen to, but no genre of music takes me back the way these songs do. Green Day, Blink 182, Lifehouse, Weezer, Fall Out Boy, you name it. I forgot what I ate yesterday, but I still remember the lyrics to all these songs and every emotion they evoked when I was a teenager. Turns out, present me agrees.
Anyway, who else is currently rewatching Smallville? Show of hands in the comments below.
First Featured Image Credit: ©Warner Bros.
I was so obsessed with Smallville that I own every season on DVD and have it digitally! It feels like the perfect time to start a rewatch.