As always, top of the "guilty pleasures" heap is Smallville. This season's been pret-ty lame, all things considered, though probably still better than the first couple. And at least the "freak of the week" meme's finally pretty much out the window at this point. (I started watching around season 4, which may be the best of the lot. 5 had its moments too.)
Of course the most interesting thing about the show, since day one, has been Lex's fall, which finally reaches its conclusion in the subtly-titled episode "Descent". Too bad it has to happen in such a dumb ep.
Yes, we've known for at least three years that [spoiler]Lionel would eventually die protecting Clark's secret from Lex[/spoiler] (spoiler-tagged to protect WHICH major plot point that's been coming for three years happened this week), but the whole episode was pure idiot-plot. Lex is entirely too dumb here, not bothering to [spoiler]check the locket before he kills Lionel[/spoiler], and Chloe in turn is dumb enough to hide the key in the same place where she found it. In the most head-slapping contradiction of the episode, Clark can hear Jimmy muttering in the basement freezer (and why does a newspaper company have one of those, anyway?) yet completely fails to notice there is a third person in the room with him and Chloe approximately thirty seconds prior. (Which brings me to another thing: [spoiler]the "No one will even remember your name" line was a very nice nod to the fact that you don't hear a hell of a lot about Lionel in the other versions of the Superman story, but it sort of serves as a reminder that[/spoiler] Chloe's most likely going to take a permanent dirt nap using her powers to heal Clark before the series is through. Sigh.)
On the plus side, the Veritas arc has done a pretty good job of tying together plot threads that have been dangling since literally the first scene of the show, with Lionel reading about the Queens' death in a newspaper on his way to Smallville. And the closing scene between Lex and Clark is what the show's all about.
On the Kara/Brainiac side of the plot, we've got some kind of incoming cosmic threat. Now, the DCU's got plenty of cosmic threats that are bigger than Brainiac or Zod, but it'd be just swell to see Darkseid.
Next season's almost certainly going to be the last, with creators Gough and Millar hoofing it and Kreuk and Rosenbaum scaling back their roles. So really, this season should wrap up the Lex/Veritas/cosmic threat stuff and leave next to ease everything into the status quo.