I caught up on Season 2 of "Superman and Lois" this past week.

There's a whole plot line where Lana Lang-Cushing -- up until this point a loan officer working for evil billionaire (is there any other kind?) Morgan Edge -- becomes a campaign manager for a guy running for Mayor of Smallville, and then when he drops out, she runs instead.

This is the same path that Arrow took when they made Oliver run for mayor of Starling City, and it's so damn stupid.

• How did Lana learn to manage a campaign?
  Don't know.

• What are the policies she plans to enact as mayor of the town?
  No idea.

• Does she have any qualifications or experience that would be relevant to being the mayor?
  No, she does not.

• Does she even know what a small town mayor does?
  Not really.|

• Why would anyone vote for her when she sold out their town to last season's villain?
  Barely addressed.

• Why does she even want to become mayor?
  Because she loves Smallville!

Okay...

I hate these plotlines for so many reasons, but the worst of it is that showrunners always put so much emphasis on how much the "hero" character in politics supposedly "cares" about the town or about people in general, and exactly ZERO emphasis on whether or not these characters actually know anything at all about the stuff that is actually important to good governance.

They don't know the first thing about public policy, economics, political theory, or even any specific issue... and yet they're supposed to be the best person for the job just because they're a main character.

In spite of all that, we're told that when Lana wins and becomes mayor, we should be very excited about this because finally, she'll be able to make the town a better place.

Note that she apparently couldn't have made Smallville better by starting a business, using her skills as a loan officer to entice wealthy people who aren't Morgan Edge to invest in existing businesses, or anything else. Nope. The only way to make Smallville better is through politics.

Most of the Berlanti shows have gone down this road in one way or another, and in every single case, it absolutely drags the show down.

I wish writers would just stop this nonsense, but sadly it's how they actually think.