Fischer: Not-So-Smallville

By Travis Fischer, tkfischer@charlescitypress.com

If I have one pet peeve about television, it’s the prevalence of the idea that small towns have a “City Sheriff.”

As we all know, hopefully, there’s no such thing. Counties have sheriffs, cities have police departments, and contrary to what countless television programs would have you believe, they are not interchangeable.

Lately I’ve been catching up on “Superman & Lois,” the latest live-action Superman show that sees the Kent family leave Metropolis to raise their kids in Superman’s rural hometown of Smallville.

The very setting of Smallville on television is problematic for me.

It can be difficult for people in a specialized profession to watch a television drama about that profession. A lawyer friend of mine will watch a legal drama and count the ways that the protagonist does something to save the day that would absolutely get them disbarred.

I believe doctors struggle to watch medical dramas for the same reason.

So a show about life in a rural town, particularly one where both main characters are also newspaper reporters, that’s my kryptonite.

Thankfully, there’s no “city sheriff” to be found in “Superman & Lois.”

Still, there plenty of other nits to pick that make me wonder if the writers themselves don’t come from another planet.

Such as in season one, where Superman’s son, a high school freshmen, endlessly wines about not being a starter on the high school football team.

Or when Superman himself cheerfully does a fly-by harvesting of a row of corn so his family can donate it to charity. Keep in mind, the show begins with the Kents deciding to “start up the farm again” at about the same time school starts. So, whose cornfield did Superman steal a row of corn out of?

Then there is the side plot about Lana Lang campaigning for, and eventually being elected, mayor of Smallville.

After securing her victory by winning over the farmer vote, because farmers are a demographic well known for being eligible to vote in mayoral elections, she faces her first major issue as mayor in Season Three. Well, I mean after the impending incursion of a Bizzaro-World, of course. The season opener begins with a frantic aide informing her about black mold … in the school building.

Yep. Instead of conflating the sheriff with the police, “Superman & Lois” found a novel new way to get it wrong by conflating the mayor with a district superintendent. I’m not sure where the city council or school board is supposed to be when all this is happening either.

One of the issues on the table in the current writer’s strike involves maintaining a certain number of people in the writer’s room. While they’re hammering out their next round of negotiations, can somebody maybe throw in a provision about at least one person needing a basic functional knowledge of civics?

This all, of course, gets underscored by the fact that the so-called Smallville is actually anything but. In fact, judging from its scope of businesses and city services, I’d peg Smallville to be about the same size as Charles City, if not a touch bigger.

I honestly don’t think the people writing these shows can actually comprehend what a small town really is.

Charles City is a county seat. It has a population of more than 7,000 people and is just about in the top 5% of most populated cities in Iowa. That may not seem like anything to a room full of writers who’ve never lived in a city under a half-million people, but you can get so much smaller.

I know, I grew up in towns a fraction of this size.

Just once I’d like to see a TV show portray Smallville the way a real small town is like.

But I’d settle for it knowing how local government works.

— Travis Fischer is a news writer for the Charles City Press and will happily consult for any TV show on how small towns work for whatever they consider a “small” fee.