The email from the WB publicist said simply that Executive Producers Al Gough and Miles Millar were going to be doing a phone teleconference to talk about the upcoming 100th episode of
Smallville, where it's expected a major character will snuff it. And if the coffin in the previews is to believed, it won't be one of those vague, off-screen, "They might be back season" kind of deaths.
The teleconference morphed into a one-on-one phone interview with Al Gough (who was in Los Angeles), whom I interviewed way back in Season 1. That's a lot of time and a lot of gay under the bridge. The interview was limited to ten minutes. Al, just like last time, was a good sport about dumb questions, and did let slip that Chloe fans shouldn't get their hopes up about her transformation into Lois Lane, and that
Aquaman is going to be a family affair in terms of staffing.
Omar G: How are you doing? It's been a while.
Al Gough: Good. It's been a little busy.
OG: It's well-known that you're killing off a character in the hundredth episode. Wouldn't the obvious solution be to kill off Clark Kent, bring back Aquaman, and transition straight into that show?
AG: [
Laughs] You figured it out. I knew somebody would.
OG: It would save a lot of money, I think. How's
Aquaman coming? How will you balance the two shows? Will you and Miles both be doing show-running on the new show?
AG: We're going to be doing both shows. The nice thing about
Smallville is it'll be in Season 6, so definitely it's a well-oiled machine. We have a terrific writing staff and great production staff in Vancouver. I don't think it'll require as much of our time.
Aquaman, being a new show, will. I think we can balance both given we have a lot of good people on
Smallville and some of them we'll move over to
Aquaman.
OG: Is the plan for
Aquaman to start fall?
AG: The plan would be that if we don't violently fuck it up in the pilot by fall.
OG: Lex Luthor has been making more evil decisions lately than we've seen in the past. At what point in the character's evolution would it be safe to call him "A Bad Mutha"?
AG: This season he's definitely accelerated. When you get into Season 6, he's definitely gonna be in the black hat category. That's been accelerated because of the fallout with Clark and [Lex's] attraction to Lana.
OG: He's got the Anakin thing going.
AG: Kinda. I think there's more to it than that. A lot of it is his father. After a while, how much hounding can he take from that guy?
OG: A recent episode had Clark worried about how his powers might hurt Lana when they have sex. Shouldn't that issue have come up earlier in the show when he was having sex with Lex Luthor?
AG: [
Long laugh.] Yeah, you know, perhaps.
OG: That's more than I thought I'd get out of you.
AG: [
Laughs.] ...with the gay subtext.
OG: There's been lots of speculation about who will evolve into the Lois Lane that Superman fans are familiar with -- the Lois Lane currently the show, or Chloe Sullivan.
AG: No, it's funny, I've been hearing the rumors that Chloe is really Lois Lane. Then we put in that Lois was her cousin. When you actually put Lois on the show, you'd think that would quell that. I don't think Chloe goes into witness protection and comes out as Lois Lane.
OG: So, people aren't responding to these big hints you're dropping.
AG: When you actually introduce the character on the show, that to me would be the big hint. But people can dare to dream.
OG: When Sam Jones III left the show, fans expected he'd drop back by for a guest appearance. Is that still a possibility in the future?
AG: We tried to do it twice last year. And he couldn't do it for scheduling purposes. We tried with "Jinx," the football episode. We wanted Clark's team to be playing Pete's team in that championship game. Then, he was going to come back and be Chloe's prom date. We went on the road with Sam on these both times and there were scheduling problems with shooting commitments. At this point I don't think we would bring him back. I don't see it -- certainly not this season and I can't imagine season there's a reason to bring Pete back. Gosh, he was so well serviced when he was a regular character.
OG: I wrote that again and again.
AG: [
Laughs.]
OG: What about Bruce Wayne? Is that still being worked on or have you given up on having him as a guest character?
AG: We can't do it now with the movie [
Batman Begins]. Dammit, it was really good. Now they're making another one. That dream unfortunately has died.
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OG: Aw.
AG: Yeah.
OG: Will the show tie in at all to
the Superman movie summer, or is it completely off-limits?
AG: We're friends with [director] Bryan [Singer] and [screenwriters] Mike [Dougherty] and Dan [Harris] and we certainly talked and let them know what we're doing this season. We don't want any egregious mythology conflicts. There's no storyline that's going to play into the movie or anything like that.
OG: I was one of the viewers excited when Tom Wopat guest-starred on the show. Are there any plans to bring
Cooter on?
AG: [
Laughs.] You never know. Now that he stopped protesting the
Dukes Of Hazzard movie, he might have a hole in his schedule. Wopat was something we always wanted to do. We found the right way to do it with John. And then with the damn car.
OG:The show has done very well ratings-wise this season after some worry about it moving to Thursdays. What do you think has been the key to its resurgence?
AG: I think it's a couple of things. Not being against Lost and Top Model has been a help. We've let the character grow up this year. We can play some of the key triangles we haven't played before -- Clark, Lana, Lex, Lex is getting more evil. The things we've been building up for four years, we've been able to play with within the mythology. For us it could have gone horribly right and still been the death of the show. But it was the perfect storm of events with the move. People who watched
Lost and
Top Model can finally watch the show. Some of it is just dumb luck, quite frankly. Thank God it happened to us and none of our stars got pregnant.
OG: Tom or Michael?
AG: Exactly.
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