l'OuvertureQuebec. This is exactly what I needed after my French exam, thanks Smallville.
This scene was just a bit too hokey for my liking. We, as a society, are well past the point where seeing a frightened priest wave a crucifix at something alien or 'supernatural' in nature is considered either original or creative. It's cliché-tastic. So, the scene failed to set a suspenseful tone and, taken as a whole, it doesn't make a great deal of sense either.
So, this possessed old guy wounds Martian Manhunter. He hightails it. Lex busts on in and the Phantom escapes. Credits.
A Wizard Did ItLuthor mansion. Creepy music. Lex is talking into a mobile that looks very much like mine; I hope it isn't symbollic of his mental state or, at least, status re: supervillainy. In any case, Lionel is there. He is omnipresent. He is also clean-shaven and has had a haircut -- this is clearly a special occasion!
The main problem I had with this scene was that apparently Lionel materialised just to tell Lex that he looked worried and then leave to deal with his "more pressing matters" (manicure). It's a pathetic excuse to organise character interaction, but I don't begrudge a little Luthor to Luthor face-off.
Luthor à Luthor, if you wanna go Quebecois.
"Ever since I put on this wedding ring," says Luthor the younger, "you seem to have an uncanny knack for being one step ahead of me." Lex, what do you mean, since you put on that wedding ring? Do you even
watch Smallville? Lionel exists as a character just to be one step ahead of you and several other characters. He is the cement with which plot-holes are filled; in other words "a wizard" never "did it" just because Lionel
did, if you catch my drift.
Lex trusts Lana. But not that she has the autonomy to make her own decisions, which is fine, because as I recall neither does Clark, Lionel, Chloe or in fact anybody on this show except for Jimmy. To recap: Lex doesn't think that Lana would spy on him without a little coaxing, and Clark doesn't think she would marry Lex without a little coercing, and in fact, according to the writers, they were both right.
A wizard Lionel did it.
"I don't think you're gonna get rid of me that easily," says Lionel. 'You', ostensibly, is Lex, but English is one of those fantastically ambiguous languages where the both the plural and singular forms of addressing the second person are exactly the same. But even if they weren't, he might as well wink at the camera. We know he's not going anywhere.
Flying the NestKent Farm. Martha is looking at a picture of Clark and some guy who died but whose death really accomplished very little in character progression for, well, anybody. Gone, but only remembered as the most wasted plot device in the history of this show; what an accolade. She always thought that Clark would fly the nest before her. We all did, Martha, we all did.
I liked this scene on the whole. My one problem was that I don't see that this year has really been all that hard for Clark. To compare: Lana has had her body and her mind violated, and been coerced into a marriage which for all intents and purposes she wanted to back out of; Chloe discovered that she was meteor infected, found her mother, and lost her mother. The rest of the cast has had assorted things happen to them, all of which have been more trying than sitting on your a** and whining about the wedding of your ex-girlfriend, who
you broke up with, to your ex-friend. It would have been different if Martha had referenced the Zoners or Jonathan's death, but she didn't.
Longitude and Latitude -- No Duh.The Talon. Lois is hard at work. Are we surprised? No, not really.
A lot of people go into journalism because they want to save the world -- uncover the truth, act as the facilitators of the people's right to know and occasionally
shout down a few scientologists. Chloe, who wanted to be a journalist apparently all her life has more than once this season expressed hesitation over publishing anything that would get her into trouble with the Luthors (well, fair enough). She is now desperate to have Lois drop the case herself. That is the antithesis of what Lois Lane is about.
It also reminds me of a couple of scenes such as in Nemisis in which Chloe reveals or at least implies that she would be willing to let somebody die if she thought it was for the common good. She then acknowledged that this utilitarian take on bettering the world was not what Clark, as Superman, is about. I feel like they are trying to differentiate Chloe from Lois. That is partly what the half-assed, poorly executed "journalistic rivalry" storyline that never went anywhere was about. It also reminds me of scenes from Combat and Noir where the differences between Lois and Chloe investigative styles were highlighted. Just a thought.
Electricity Denatures EnzymesLab. Ah, "alien peptide sequences". Almost a step up from Wither on the rung of pseudo-science spectacular. But a little Biology 101: peptides are proteins. They are molecules. They are not alive. They'd be the same whether Titan was alive or not when you extracted them. Or were they denatured by electricity?
Wait, now it's alien DNA?
Okay, moving on.
2 + 2 = 5Kent Farm. It would have been more polite for Lana to knock at the front door, but we just had to have the Clana Barn Scene of Doom. I was "moved" by this, physically -- digestively, even, but I
am allergic to Clana. Some people are allergic to peanuts, what can I say?
The Clana relationship is the one thing on the show that defies
all logic. Most things just defy a little bit of logic, but you know Clana is special. It's special. It has its own bizarro (take a shot) Clanarama-drama-llama-Lana system of logic, to which it completely and utterly does not adhere. There's no getting off this rollercoaster of craziness, you guys, so pass the sick bag because I am going to need it.
So, Smallville likes to waste screentime. It wasted a lot of screentime throughout the whole series, particularly season five and six, characterising Lana as somebody who hates anything that could be extra-terrestrial in origin and copped out on the payoff. She's okay with it, because Clark is not an alien. He is an intergalactic traveller.
The c-word: continuity.
Clark is fine with Lana going behind his back and finding all this stuff out by herself. Remember when Chloe was investigating Clark? Oh screw it. He's fine with it because it was Lana, whereas the rest of us would (and, hey, some of us
do) feel violated.
Once again, there is nothing keeping Clana apart except for the hurdles they themselves are putting there. Are they hoping to compete in the Olympics? This is so arbitrary.
Sometimes, I Don't Even Think at All!Luthorcorp. Once again, Clark thinks later. He actually would have killed Lionel without a little Martian intervention, but what's new? But check it out, you guys: he is wearing that obnoxious blue t-shirt and red jacket combo that used to symbollise
something, so basically he tried to kill somebody and Smallville implied it was the Supermanly thing to do. Nice one.
Mansion. Lana is leaving Lex. I'm surprised she didn't send him an e-mail. Lex hits Lana. He is losing it. Whatever.
Luthorcorp. Exposition. This would have been a nice place to characterise Clark as somebody for whom the ends don't justify the means. Instead, he is confused. You're always confused, Clark: it's hardly a headline. So, the only good thing I could pull out of this scene in terms of characterisation was that, in true
think first, act later style, Clark was willing to go straight after the phantom himself. To reach for the Kristin Kreuk connection, and be all
Wizard of Earthsea here: he should have considered what would happen if he lost control of his body. It's not like it's never happened before.
You know, with all the time Clark spends at the Daily Planet, he could probably get a job there.
Deathly Dam of DoomReeve's dam. Lois Thinks on her feet. Lois kicks a**. Lois beats a guy up even after being stabbed in the gut. Lois, don't pull the knife out!
Metropolis. Clearly a fakeup. Whatever. Either way, revenge is immediately more important to Clark than finding the phantom.
Reeve's dam. The Chloe/Lois scene was better executed than I thought it would be. At least the tears weren't green.
Lab. Alien peptides! Those must be some huge-a** peptides (and/or DNA) for Mad Scientist #0 to identify them under a light microscope. They could at least have had him swill around some test tubes, or denature it using electricity. I'm serious. Well, I would have been a little fairer on the pseudo-science, but the dealbreaker for my suspension of disbelief was really the idea that the phantom knew how to operate a thumb scanner. That was incongruent, not to mention cheesy. How many tacky horror clichés can they stuff into a single episode, has anybody been keeping count?
Now Clark is going to kill Lex. Whatever. He's also the kind of person who will just stand there in the event that a body-snatching Phantom Zoner turns up. But was it
pareidolia, or did I see the Superman symbol as the phantom rushed Clark? That was bizarre (take a shot). I wonder if they are purposefully getting these Superman references backwards because it is the Bizarro episode.
No, actually, I'm pretty sure they just throw them in wherever these days. Speak of the devil. Goodbye, Bizarro, goodbye.
So, to sum up: everybody is in peril except Lex, who is in custody, and characters who look like Clark. That, and everybody who looks like Clark but could be construed as Not!Clark can fly. Gotta love the loopholes.
Reply
