Tom Welling in "Smallville."

If you didn't catch last night's 100th episode of Smallville on The WB affiliate WGN, and you're a fan, you might want to avoid the Internet, morning radio, tonight's showbiz magazine shows and, especially, the following story.

CHUM's A-Channel -- not exactly scheduling these things faster than a speeding bullet -- will air the pivotal 100th episode a week from this coming Monday at 9 p.m. ET.

When a main character on a hit series is killed off, it can be devastating for fans, not to mention the actor involved. But don't go holding any pity parties for the man who, until last night at least, played the young Clark Kent's father figure in Smallville.

"There are two things that are constant in Hollywood," John Schneider said. "Pollen and John Schneider."

The former Dukes Of Hazard good ol' boy was the star attraction last week at the TV critic's WB network press tour party in Pasadena.

The trim and tall 50-year-old, who has a couple of TV deals in development, says he got word just three episodes before he picked up the script for the 100th episode that his character Jonathan Kent's time was up.

"It was very bittersweet," Schneider said. He knew it was coming eventually (hey, he read the Superman comics as a kid, too) but didn't expect to get whacked in the middle of a season. The character will reappear in a flashback or two (including a heart-tugging scene at the end of the very next episode), but otherwise young Clark Kent is on his own.

Which is exactly the kick in the pants Kent and this series needed, Schneider said.

"It is so necessary for this to happen. In order for Clark Kent to become Superman, he needed to fill the shoes of someone."

That someone was hard-working farmer Jonathan Kent, and Schneider was proud to play him as a solid, straight-arrow role model. "Superman is the defender of all that is right," he said. "And he gets that, by God, from his father. And I like that."

Schneider says he can "still feel something in my gut" whenever he thinks about John Wayne's famous death scene from the 1972 western The Cowboys. The Duke was stuck with a crew of teenage ranch hands who had to become men in a hurry. "I can still see him laying down on the ground and saying, 'You're good boys.' That kind of a death, the empowerment of those boys ... is important," Schneider said.

His biggest regret is that he's leaving just as the series, he feels, is finally (like Kent) taking off in Series 5. "If there was a confused moment at all in Smallville, just for me, it would have been the fourth season. Personally, I think our weakest show from Season 5 is better than our strongest show from Season 4."

What Schneider won't miss, however, is the commute from Vancouver, where Smallville is shot. He missed the first 20 minutes of last summer's Dukes Of Hazard movie premiere when he tried jetting in for it from B.C.

Schneider still drives one of the souped-up1969 Dodge Chargers that doubled as the General Lee on The Dukes Of Hazard. He pronounced the summer movie makeover of his old series as "not nearly as raunchy or as inappropriate as I had expected." Now there's an endorsement.

While he won't miss the commute, he will miss Vancouver. "Will I miss the sea planes landing in front of the snow capped-mountains and the water in front of a beautiful hotel? You bet. I think some of the most beautiful places in the world are kept up in Canada."