The 'Dukes' of 'Smallville'
By Kate O'Hare
For going on five seasons, John Schneider has played Clark Kent's foster dad, Kansas farmer Jonathan Kent, on The WB's teen-Superman drama "Smallville."
That whole time, the question has been raised: When will Tom Wopat, Schneider's co-star on the hit 1970s-'80s series "The Dukes of Hazzard," make a guest appearance?
"Somebody finally heard you," Schneider says, calling in from the show's Vancouver set with Wopat at his side, "and here we are."
An episode called "Exposed," airing Thursday, Nov. 3, reunites Wopat and Schneider, who played cousins Luke and Bo Duke, a pair of modern Robin Hoods in rural Georgia, in the classic series.
Wopat plays Sen. Jack Jennings (a nod to the "Dukes" balladeer, Waylon Jennings), an old friend of Jonathan's who comes to Smallville to seek his help in an upcoming campaign.
"That was a great idea [to pair them up]," says Tom Welling, who plays Clark. "They were like two kids in a candy store, being together. You could tell that a lot of the old gags came up again.
"I used to watch 'Dukes' all the time growing up. John's going to hate me for saying this, but I caught it in syndication because they began that show the year I was born."
"The difficult part is," Wopat says, "they're yelling for 'Tom' on the set, and we've got two TWs here."
"I only work with TWs," quips Schneider.
For "Dukes" fans, the episode contains a few inside jokes. "The senator's taste in cars is a bit classic, shall we say," Schneider says. "He drives a '69 Dodge Charger. Imagine that."
But fans expecting to see a twin of the Dukes' orange Charger, the General Lee, will be disappointed.
"It's blue," Schneider reveals.
"It is blue?" Wopat says. "I thought it was green."
"It's bluish-green, aqua," Schneider says. "They can't be ridiculous [and make it orange]. They wanted to nudge. They didn't want to shove."
"We had a line today talking about Chickasaw County," Wopat says, "so there was another one."
"And of course," Schneider adds, "the door on the passenger side of the senator's car has been broken since he got it, so he has to climb in."
"It's not bad," Wopat says. "It's tough when they change windows, make us go out the wrong window."
Apparently, one of the hazards of being a Duke cropped up again, forcing Schneider to take action.
"I had to have them remove the door-lock mechanism," he says, "so that my buddy wouldn't get his back ripped open again like he did 27 years ago."
"The door-lock thing," Wopat says, "when you take the plastic piece off of it, it's just a little spike."
"A piece of threaded metal," Schneider says.
"You can impale yourself pretty good on it," Wopat says.
"I had them go in with a pair of bolt cutters," Schneider explains, "and get rid of it. They didn't want to. At first, they put a piece of black tape on it. I said, 'No, no, that's not good.'
"And they jumped the car the other day. It should be cute. It has the potential of bringing in the entire 27 years' worth of 'Dukes of Hazzard' audience to 'Smallville,' which is great."
Asked what he thinks of Jennings' story line -- which includes a bit of a scandal -- Wopat says, "It just kind of hits the low points."
This elicits a hoot from Schneider.
"I actually ended up paying more attention to the 'Dukes of Hazzard' stuff than to the story," Wopat continues, "because I show up, everything's so compressed. It's almost a B-story in a way."
The two also say that it wasn't hard to get the old juices flowing. "We fall into a rhythm, Tom and I," Schneider says, "and it doesn't seem like work at all. We have so much fun reminiscing and talking. It's the easiest work that I ever do, the years with Tom on 'Dukes of Hazzard' and the reunion movies we did together.
"Even when we toured with music, it was like sitting in a hotel room playing a guitar, and there just happened to be 10,000 people in the audience."
Wopat's visit did get Schneider a little special treatment on his own set.
"The first day," Schneider says, "we had lots of people taking pictures that I've known for years. I said, 'You never wanted to take my picture before. What's going on here?' It was fun."
"It was out of context," adds Wopat.
"We become special," Schneider says, "because they were watching us before they were going to school. It's a privilege on one hand and makes me feel very old on the other."
As for the "Dukes of Hazzard" feature film that came out this year, starring Seann William Scott and Johnny Knoxville, Schneider says, "I saw it. It was cute. The car stuff was great. The guys had a terrific, infectious kind of chemistry, albeit a different kind of chemistry than Tom and I had, but still it was there."
There aren't a lot of country folk like the Dukes on television right now -- except for the Kents, of course.
"'Smallville,' for all of its science fiction," Schneider says, "still has a family that walks down a dirt road to the mailbox to get the mail. People in New York, L.A. and Chicago forget that not everybody has a doorman."
Finally, to re-establish their country cred, Wopat and Schneider launch into a harmony rendition of a song from the countrified variety show "Hee Haw," ending with, "I searched the world over, and I thought I found true love. You met another, and" -- insert raspberry here -- "you were gone."
