Season 7 has been mostly story-driven, probably due to the writers strike. The problem is, they get a good idea - Zod, Bizarro, Zor-El - but never follow through with it, they prefer to have the episodes end at 30 mins so they can have another 10 of Clana splitting up/getting back together/splitting up/getting back together etc...

What you say has a lot of truth in it ninjy,what disturbs me is it seems gough and millars outline for season eight has been rejected rightly or wrongly in favour of as brian peterson put's it 'a season of lois and clark',either way the viewer seems to be getting short changed.

True, a season of lois and clark,humm that sounds awfuly simular to another superman based show. Can any one guess what I am talking about?

oh oh oh oh!!!! i know i know!
is it The New Adventures of superman?!
thats been shown on itv2 since god knows how long.

Correct kid, you win... bugger all, but I am right and if it did turn out that way it would just become tedious.

so is there gonna be a season 8 - it is getting rather drawn out at this point. it would be nice if they could give it a proper ending that they could build up to. not something thats just rushed

Personally I think that they should make season 7 the last and give smallville the send off it deserves.

Season eight starts in sept in america with a reduced budget and no doubt a reduced cast.Only clark , jimmy and lois will appear in the complete season , lana will appear in seven episodes only,lex and chloe maybe some, maybe none at all.Lets hope the latest season of lois and clark is the last for smallville,the programme makers are falling into the classic trap ,they are making more episodes which harm the ethos rather than enhance it ,sad.

Very sad indeed, they seem to be sacrificing what made the show great in order to squeeze as much money out of it as possible.

well it just seems that smallville is slowly dying off

Sadly you are right kid.