I'm a pretty new fan who tends to watch TV shows really slowly, so I haven't watched the entire series yet, so I won't have the most informed opinions. However, I do want to say:
Never on a Sunday portrays Clark as a bad reporter who (accidentally) framed an innocent man. Ugh. Are they trying to make us dislike our hero? Not being a big fan of anything mystic or voodoo-ish, I usually skip over this one too.
Yeah, I just watched this episode recently and while I thought it was decent overall, I REALLY hate all the black magic stuff. It's creepy and disturbing to me, and while I know that magic exists in the DC Universe, this type of intense "hard fantasy"* still feels pretty unfitting for Superman IMO.
I also wasn't really cool with the idea of Clark ruining someone's life so bad through his journalism and not expressing THAT much regret. I mean, he was regretful, of course, but they didn't focus on it that much. I actually think a story of Clark making a mistake in his journalism that causes some harm could be an extremely interesting, but not the way it was handled here. I think it would be a lot better if Clark's mistake wasn't as major or devastating, if he did more soul-searching as a result, and he atoned for it in a meaningful way. Hmmm...a fanfic idea?
It's been a long time since I've watched Smart Kids, but I recall it being pretty uninteresting to me due to the excessive focus on the kids and not on the main characters, too.
While I thought Vatman was mostly a really good episode, I HATED the ending so much that it made up for how much I liked everything else. It's very disturbing to me that Clark would just take the clone's word for it that there was no way he could be saved and perform the mercy killing without even TRYING to help, especially since this is a superhero who usually doesn't kill at all.
*Hard fantasy is a term I invented that's supposed to be equivalent to "hard sci-fi". Hard sci-fi has more to do with actual science, hard fantasy has more to do with real-life magical practices. When magic appears in stories, I much prefer it to resemble soft science fiction.
