It is no mystery that Clark Kent always gets the bad side of things when it comes to the DC television series Smallville. The most frequent period of time where things aren’t always going Clark’s way, is his high school years. No matter how many people are saved, helped, relieved of their distresses, and so on by Clark and his powers, he always seems to get blamed or turned on. Grant it, Clark does have secrets because of his powers and this results in him never being able to be straight forward, which results in him getting a bad image or people jumping to the wrong conclusions. In most of his relationships and friendships throughout high school, Clark conceals a lot because of his powers, and although he does good with it, many people still get mad at him, or make the wrong assumptions about his character/intentions.
One of the most typical relationships that we see Clark getting a bad side of things and not catching a break is his relationship with Lana Lang. Lana was Clark’s first love, and they both had mutual feelings, but it just never worked out. One of the biggest roadblocks and issues is that Lana new Clark would keep secrets and it would often eat her alive. Even though Clark remained loyal, and was only secretive because he was helping others, she never stuck around and gave him the chance to open up and share with her till a lot later in the series. Being born with such great powers put a strain on this relationship for Clark although he was using them for good and just could not share with anyone. It can even be looked into Lana and Jason’s relationship in season 4. Jason worked for the school system where Lana was a student, and when he is fired Lana is fuming with anger because she believes Clark told on them. News flash: Clark did not tell on them and she just made a quick assumption and of course Clark takes a bad wrap for it like he always does. The lack of trust in Clark’s integrity and characters in this relationship with Lana consistently caused issues, and he always gets a bad side of the situation although his intentions are good.
Clark’s friendship with Lex Luthor is definitely one to take note of. While they are known as enemies in the universe of Superman, the show actually starts with them as friends. A big part of Lex’s descent into being a villain is Clark not being straight forward about his powers. Clark saves Lex’s life and it seems impossible that Clark could have done it. Lex goes as far as having Clark investigated multiple times and trying to connect him to other supernatural sequences of events in order to figure out Clark’s mystery. This causes a lot more grief in Clark’s life than he actually needed to have. With people looking into Clark, it makes his secret a lot harder to keep, and it strained his friendship with Lex a lot more. Instead of just leaving things alone and trusting that a miracle happened, Lex was skeptical and had to go all out on finding out the mystery behind Clark Kent. Clark couldn’t live a normal life as a teen, and he had a lot of extra troubles come his way because of Lex’s questions, and regardless of his many times saving Lex’s life, it never proved to be enough to lessen the bad wrap that Clark always ends up getting.
Clark’s relationship with his parents is a lot more stable, but still had a lot of things that made Clark feel like a bad guy when he really had no ill intentions. Football was something that Clark’s father was very good at in school and enjoyed most, but he forbade Clark for the longest time from playing because of his abilities. Rather than trusting Clark and his judgment with his abilities on the football field, he never let Clark play until Clark made his own decision to his senior year. This disagreement caused a lot of frustration and Clark could not catch a break and be a high school kid because of the lack of trust that his father had for him and his abilities. Another example that I can recall is when Clark’s mother Martha loses her baby, there is a lot of anger towards Clark and they seem to put the blame on him. Obviously Clark was thrilled with the idea of having a younger sibling, and would by no means hurt the child, but his parents were angry and hurt and it made Clark feel at fault. Clark nearly felt like he didn’t belong at home and wasn’t meant to have a good family because of this conflict. Clark never held any ill intentions with his family, but their disagreements and hurt at times gave Clark the bad end of things and caused him to have a harder time.
While this is only a couple examples, there are so many more events that present Clark as a character in high school that just could not catch a break. Clark Kent always had a good heart and wanted to help others, but because of the lack of knowledge and understanding in others, he often was hurt and could not catch a break. Clark was a great hero who had some hard times in his early days.