I despise TV episode reboots...

So there I was watching last night's 100th episode of Smallville. I was about halfway through the episode and I was almost on the edge of my seat (not quite literally). Things had happened that I figured I'd never see on that show. The writers were being really edgy, and doing stuff that was going to make the show go in a slightly new direction that I was looking forward too...

And then... ((Spoilers))

...Clark touches crystal and the first 30 minutes of the episode are wiped away. I hit the pause button on my DVR remote and sat there. I growled out a simple "ARGH" (very wookiee-like) and almost deleted the episode without watching the rest of it.

Why? Because the rest of the episode was ruined for me. The first half was BRILLIANT... yet it now never existed. When TV shows do this it really destroys a lot of the credibility that I have in the show and its writers. It's a cheap ploy to "pull on the heart-strings" of its viewers and I think it's overdone.

The only time I think that I've seen it work well was an episode of Star Trek: the Next Generation. Nothing like watching the Enterprise blow up in the prologue for the show only to blow up again right before the first commercial break. I really enjoyed that one. They were clever in using the commercial breaks as physical limiters in the actual story. It worked for me because the *point* of the episode was that they were stuck in that time loop. It wasn't "let's do some cool stuff that's really radical that we're too scared to do otherwise and just erase it all so it never happened!" that these reboots normally are.

One other change for me with Smallville. Lana dying would have lead to a much more poignant potential for Clark. Pa Kent dying... just makes me feel like I just saw Smallville jump the shark.

.ungawa