Reception
The season nine premiere, "Savior", pulled in viewership ratings that were the lowest for an original episode in the entire history of the series at the time, with only 2.58 million viewers. Low viewership aside, The CW issued a statement noting that Smallville did outperform every previous show on the network in the Friday 8:00 pm time slot in a year. On January 29, 2010, Smallville returned after a two-month hiatus.
Ken Tucker from Entertainment Weekly said the first hour of the episode contained the "stand-out visual sequence" and thought the second hour was "more lumbering", with the big fight sequence toward the end "unsatisfying". Tucker stated, "For viewers who only know the Superman/boy mythos according to Smallville, it must have seemed strange to have most of the series' ongoing subplots put in storage for this week's two-hour edition. Then again, since the villain of this piece was a faux-hawked foe called the Icicle, frozen plotlines were inevitable." When referring to "Warrior", he called Serinda Swan's portrayal of Zatanna "smart" and said her dialogue with Clark was "crisp" which made Lois’ jealousy understandable.
On March 4, 2010, after The CW announced that Smallville will be back for its tenth season, it stated that Smallville improved the network's overall Friday performance in the 8:00 pm – 9:00 pm time period by 67% among adults 18–34, 200% in men 18–34, 75% in adults 18–49, 183% in men 18–49 and 74% in total viewers. After more than a month of not airing repeats or new episodes, Smallville returned with a series low of 2.13 million viewers, with the episode "Escape" on April 2, 2010. The following two episodes dropped in overall viewership, creating series lows three weeks in a row.
Read more about this topic: Smallville (season 9)
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
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