And now for something completely different --
http://www.livingthedreamshow.com/allison-mack/
Allison Mack guested on Phil Morris' talk show (Phil played the Martian Manhunter on SMALLVILLE, among other things). It's an incredibly boring interview; Mack is, for whatever reason, extremely subdued and low-key throughout. But she said one really interesting thing. She said that she experienced a mid-life crisis during SMALLVILLE around -- judging by the numbers she was throwing out -- Season 7. She talked about how from age 4, her whole life had been acting. She was super-ambitions, grabbing every part she could. Her holy grail was to find a successful TV role that would go on indefinitely.
She got cast on SMALLVILLE. A regular role. The show kept getting renewed. Financially and professionally, Allison Mack was a success story. Internally, she felt completely blank and lost and utterly unfulfilled. Her work was hollow and meaningless and she felt detached from what she was doing and her life seemed composed of empty material achievements. She eventually found herself when she started focusing on theatre and stageplays and she realized that she wasn't happy reading other people's words; she wanted to create her own. It's a fairly dull podcast, to be blunt, but Mack drops these snippets here and there while being incredibly guarded and withdrawn -- and so now I'm going to engage in theoretical armchair psychology.
I think Mack was delighted to find success on SMALLVILLE, but as seasons passed, she realized that Chloe Sullivan was a completely irrelevant character. SMALLVILLE, for better or worse, was about Clark, Lex and Lana. Chloe was totally unnecessary as far as the show was concerned. She was a regular character who had about as much material as a guest-star; she was scripted like an extra. Because the cast and crew and creators liked her, as they did John Glover, they kept her around even though they really didn't know what to do with her.
In the clumsy teen soap of SMALLVILLE, Chloe was Clark's secondary love interest. And the creators had no intention of ever advancing that, so Chloe was trapped as Clark's secondary love interest, perpetually weepy and whiny and her character contorted into bizarre shapes like her nonsensical healing powers. When Lois Lane was introduced, Chloe's journalistic skills became even more surplus to requirements. The material for Chloe was ghastly ghastly ghastly from Seasons 2 - 7. Allison probably thought about quitting, but she didn't -- as she says in the podcast, a long-running regular role on a successful show was everything an actor could want. Financially, it would be insane to walk away from a job most people never, ever, ever get to have.
So she took the money and did her job. Allison Mack's acting was always superb no matter how bad the material. She was a professional and she did a professional's job and Allison Mack is always incandescent onscreen even when the role is beneath her. But the result was that Mack became emotionally distant from Chloe and SMALLVILLE. It became a job. A job she did for money. A job she excelled at, but just a job. A chore.
And by the time Season 8 made her the female lead of the show, it was too late. Allison Mack cared about doing a good job, she cared about the fans, but she didn't care about *Chloe.* How could she? The writers didn't. Mack was offered a truckload of money and increased screentime for a two-year extension on her contract that took her through to Season 9 and she accepted. But after Seasons 2 - 7, Mack was beginning to wear out.
The vast improvement of Seasons 8 - 9 just came too late. SMALLVILLE and its fans were, to Allison Mack, a professional commitment. But not a personal one. SMALLVILLE was simply a job now. Had been for years. By the end of Season 9, I think Allison Mack was *completely* burnt out on acting professionally without any kind of personal investment.
She quit the show. She desperately needed a break. But, again, professionalism: she signed to do a small number of episodes so as to avoid abandoning the series. And she made sure to be free for the series finale.
SMALLVILLE's tenth season floundered badly. And while Mack's absence doesn't explain all of it, the sad truth is that even a detached and emotionally distanced Allison Mack is still a brilliant actress. Without Allison Mack, SMALLVILLE lost its very best performer who endeared herself to the audience. As charming as Lois and Clark were by Season 10, it just wasn't as compelling without Chloe and Mack's screen presence. If Chloe had been written in Seasons 2 - 7 as well as she'd been written in Seasons 8 - 9, maybe Mack would have felt differently.
Make no mistake, this is total theoretical armchair psychology from a boring podcast. Don't take it seriously.