Smallville's premiere episode on The WB — watched by 8.4 million people — made an immediate impression with its cinematic panache and inspired reformulation of Superman's small-town coming-of-age beginnings. Tom Welling was instantly winning as a humble, hunky Clark, and he had crackling chemistry with the show's key supporting players — John Schneider's Jonathan Kent; Kristen Kreuk's Lana Lang; and especially Michael Rosenbaum's Lex Luthor. The premise of a heartland town forever changed by a catastrophe from the sky (the radioactive meteor shower that attended Kal-El's arrival) had provocative resonance one month after 9/11, as did a high school hazing subplot that evoked the Matthew Shepard hate-crime tragedy. Credit series developers Al Gough and Miles Millar for delivering the geeky goods while working the Man of Steel mythos for meaningful, accessible metaphors for alienation and adolescent angst.