Smallville ends on Friday night after 10 seasons. I’ve been watching it almost since the beginning. It’s not a very good show, but a few years ago I decided I wanted to see it through to the end. Unfortunately, it’s taken three or four years longer to get to the end than I thought it would.

It’s not that it’s a terrible show. It’s just not good. It’s gotten better; the insufferable Lana Lang (played by Kristen Kreuk) is long gone, and the acting skills of Tom Welling (Clark Kent) have improved a little. (Not that he has much to do besides act as the straight man to all the weirdness going on around him.) Erica Durance joined the cast a few seasons ago as Lois Lane, and she added a needed spark to things. The best thing about the show for a long time has been Alison Mack as Chloe Sullivan (Clark’s best friend, who doesn’t appear in the comic books), but she’s been missing for most of this season. And the death of Jonathan Kent a few years ago (Clark’s father, played by John Schneider) was sad, but at least it put an end to his interminable lectures about how the Luthors may have lots of money but we Kents are simple, good people and I don’t want you getting corrupted by them.

As far as the plot, the writers have never known how to structure a season-long story arc. Developments occur and then are forgotten. Characters talk about some incident of which you have no memory, so you wonder if it actually happened on the show and they didn’t bother to put it in the previouslies, or if they just did some telescoping. There’s no momentum over the course of the season. Events occur in fits and starts and things kind of sputter along every year until the season finale.

So what’s kept me watching all this time?

I don’t know, to be honest. I’ve always been a DC Comics loyalist and I mean, come on, it’s Superman. And the show does have moments of humor. And it’s been kind of neat to watch Clark evolve from a Smallville farmboy into a Metropolis newspaper reporter, and move from dating Lana Lang to dating Lois Lane, and slowly become Superman.

Michael Rosenbaum is returning as Lex Luthor for the end, so that will be fun to see.

But if Clark doesn’t finally fucking fly in the finale I’m going to be pissed.