A Whole Lotta Nothing Goin' On

Wow, I have left posting this a long time, haven't I? Apologies all, I'll try and get another post out this week to make up for it.


 

And we march on with Smallville, jumping into the third season (and yep, spoilers if you haven't seen this farm into the show).

The events of the second season finale have left Martha and Jonathan worried sick about Clark, since he slipped on a red Kryptonite ring and fled for Metropolis. Three months after his departure, Jonathan is granted temporary superpowers by Jor-El, in exchange for something that's not revealed until the end of the season, to bring Clark back to Smallville. After a great battle (that isn't long enough), Jonathan succeeds and Clark returns to Smallville, trying to pick up where he left off.

And... pick up he does. Seriously. One episode later and it's almost all forgotten about. More on this later.

So, how do our characters progress this season?

• Clark starts off the season feeling guilty of the transgressions he caused at the end of Season 2, not the least of which was hurting his mother and causing her to miscarry (oh yeah, Martha was pregnant towards the end of Season 2, despite being told she would never have children. I didn't bring it up last time because it went nowhere) but things quickly go back to normal.
• And yet again, I find a Buffy parallel. In the episode Becoming, Part 2, the second season finale of Buffy, the titular character leaves Sunnydale after a traumatic event, heading towards L.A, where she used to live. While there, she briefly holds down a waitress job and her friends and family worry about her back home.
  Clark too heads off to a big city (Metropolis, natch), leaving worried friends and family behind, and spending the entire summer there, much like Buffy in L.A, coming back just before school starts.
  Power-wise, he gains super-hearing. Yeah, doesn't sound all that impressive but the episode it happens in, Whisper, is a good one and they managed to work it in convincingly.
  Clark's relationship with Lana... yeah, it's pretty much back to square one. Or, default as I call it, since they very briefly dated (if you can call that brief). Not that it matters, because he gets a love interest in the form of Alicia Baker, in the episode Obsession. Turns out she has the power to teleport and Clark divulges to her that he has powers. However, she turns out to be just a wee bit clingy and borderline insane, as she tries to Lana so that she'll have Clark to herself. Whether or not you're disappointed she didn't succeed I'll leave up to you.
• Pete, despite learning Clark's secret last season, doesn't receive much in the way of character development. In fact, one episode, Velocity, nearly derails the character instead. In that episode, Pete reveals to Clark he's been street racing for a couple of months at that point. And later on, he refuses to take a dive and owes some thug $20,000. And Clark helps him out in very unscrupulous ways and makes Pete aware he's uncomfortable with the deeds he's undertaking.
  Pete... what the Hell do you think you're doing? Do you have meteor rocks in your head or something? Dangerous behaviour, getting Clark to bail you out, what kind of friend are you? I have a feeling the writers knew his character held little to no use anymore and just wanted to do SOMETHING with him. Well, sometimes it's better for a character to do nothing.
  And he leaves at the end of the season as well, so...
• Chloe's inquisitive nature shines through in this season, probably because the writers still wanted to push Lana and Clark together. Chloe ends up doing all sorts of investigations, with conflicting interests due to the fact that some relate to Clark and while she obviously doesn't want to lose his trust, something else important to her is usually in jeopardy if she refuses to play by the rules set out by someone higher-up.
  Like any good snoop, her investigations often bring her into the line of fire. In the episode Delete, an attempt is made on her life and Clark naturally steps in to save her. It is this episode that sees the two reconcile and it's all the better for it.
  She's still my fave character at this point, too.
• And let's see how my least favourite character, Lana, is doing this season.
  Yep, still not improving. The love interest she has this season doesn't help much. His name is Adam Knight, which some took to mean he was actually Bruce Wayne under an assumed name. I'm glad that turned out to be false, I hate the character. Maybe being in a relationship with Lana Lang turns you into this big hole of suck as a person, but I found the character to be arrogant and of little to no use to the main plot. And I found it hard to care when it was revealed he was spying on Clark and Lana for Lionel. Good riddance to bad rubbish.
  So yeah, no development for Lana. That's a big shock for you.
• Speaking of development, let's go to Lex. Who gets treated rather badly this season. The dude gets shoved in an asylum and receives shock therapy just because his father doesn't want him to remember that Lionel himself murdered his own parents. Granted, the events of the episode Asylum are great, but that's because three guys Clark faced off against banded together, almost like a supervillain team-up.
  It's not until near the end of the season that Lex regains some of his coolness and escapes the emotional wringer brought about by his father. Still, I like this interpretation of Lex and I feel things may soon get worse before they get better for the lad.
• The Kents face their own crisis early on, with Clark gallivanting in Metropolis and Jonathan going on his own to bring him back. Jor-El's granting him the powers takes a toll on his health, which reoccurs throughout the season and the debt still lingers. The season finale wraps up the debt subplot, but until then, it's hard not to sympathize with Jonathan, knowing what he does. Not that he wasn't sympathetic before, but this isn't easy for him.
  Or Martha either, caught in the middle between a husband who's keeping secrets and a son... also keeping secrets. But the Kents are strong and that's why they work well as a family unit: they have faith in each other.
• Lionel continues down the path of being a magnificent bastard, what with committing his son to the aforementioned asylum, pinning murders he actually had nothing do to with on his son, demanded information about Clark from Chloe while threatening to ruin her life and tortured Pete. Oh, and he gets liver cancer. Yeah. So, expect that to be a big factor in the next season.

The season ends with the episode Covenant, in which a girl claiming to be Kara from Krypton comes for Kal-El. It is at this point that the deal between Jor-El and Jonathan is revealed: in exchange for the power Jonathan temporarily received, Jonathan was to return Clark to Jor-El, something that angers Martha to no end.

In the subplot, Clark finds out that Lex has been investigating him, even though Lex tries to defend himself by saying he's still thinking about his near-death experience, and Clark reacts badly, telling Lex after his father's trial (Lionel's mistakes finally caught up with him, it seems) that they are no longer friends.

Oh and in the midst of all this, Lana leaves for France. This WOULD be cause for celebration, if it weren't for the fact that she'll be back next season. So, sorry to ruin your mood.

The main plot ends with the revelation that “Kara” is a tool of Jor-El's, a girl who died on the day of the meteor shower who Jor-El remoulded into an instrument to get Clark. Jor-El chokes Jonathan with an energy rope, and tells Clark that if he does not begin his training, he will kill Jonathan. Despite his pleas, Jonathan is unsuccessful in convincing Clark not to go with Jor-El, and Clark disappears in a bright light.

This is so far the weakest season, in my opinion. The biggest problem is the lack of focus on the main story, the one about Jor-El. It's almost like as soon as Clark gets back to Smallville, it goes back to business as usual. Back to “freaks of the week”. And the story doesn't even really pick up again until the final episode of the season! Come on, that's about 20 episodes difference! You taunt us and tease us with actual build-up, only to return to status quo and almost forget you HAVE a story!

Also, as mentioned above, the way Lex is treated this season, the poor guy just goes through so much and some of it just seems ill-fitting to a great character. I mean, making him think he was crazy using the flimsiest of schemes? I would have believed Kryptonite-induced insanity! OK, it would have been stupid, but far less so!

Anyway, that being said, it's still a good season, even with my complaints and all the other out of character moments mentioned (like the stuff with Pete. Ugh).

Next blog post... may actually not be about Season 4, as I have another movie to review. So it could be the movie or the next season. Either way, Season 4's not too far away.

My top episodes: Obsession, Asylum, Perry (oh yeah, Perry White was in an episode this season, played by Michael McKean. Promise me he'll be back, please?), Truth, Covenant.

Least favourite: Velocity, Talisman, Relic, Shattered, Slumber.

You Will Bow Before Me, Son Of... Well, Me

Alright, let's get Smallville Season 2 out of the way before I have a huge backlog of Smallville to write about.

Before we go any further, I do want to apologize for lack of updates lately. Usually, I like to do at least three posts a week, but due to work and becoming co-host for a TGWTG fan/geek talk stream, I haven't been writing as much as I used to. As such, from now on, I will be dropping my output to at least one post per week. That doesn't mean I won't do more than one per week, just that one will be the new bare minimum. Doing the stream leaves me with two less days of writing, since I'm often doing research the day before the stream. 

If anyone wishes to join in, here's the site: http://www.livestream.com/anettohasawebshow 

We go live every Friday at 8 PM EST (or if you're Australian like me, 10 AM Saturday).

So, where did the show leave off? Well... OK, at this point, if you're a new viewer like I am, things might get a little spoilery. I mean, there isn't much to spoil in the first season, due to a lack of arcs and season-long subplots. Season 2, however, things pick up a little. So, consider this a spoiler warning, since I will be bringing up events from the Season 1 finale, which might be the only episode that has anything close to being spoiled.

So, after Season 1 ends with tornadoes tearing up the town of Smallville, Clark rescues Lana, Lex rescues his father (more on him later) and Clark's secret identity is still safe (maybe I should have done a brief overview of the last episode of Season 1, too). This season, the focus is on Clark finding out where exactly he comes from, why he's on Earth and what secrets the spaceship holds.

Let's check in with our characters, see how they've developed (I'll forego adding the names of the actors since they're the same throughout the show's run thus far. However, any new characters I will mention their actor):

• Clark goes through... well, I wouldn't call it an identity crisis, since he knows who he is, to a point. However, with the revelations made this season, Clark shows a larger desire to find out why he was sent to Earth above every other planet.
  This season, the superpower he develops is one of his most well known: heat vision (in the episode named... Heat. Well, it delivers what it promises. And at least it'd be easy to find when you want to watch that particular episode again). The funny thing about the episode, the Buffy-vibes I mentioned in my last post kicked in again. Class about mating rituals of animals, attractive young teacher takes over from older teacher, said young teacher turns out to be a villain... really, I actually felt like skipping ahead to find out if she was a bug lady (spoiler alert: she's not). The effect itself isn't that crash hot (no pun intended) but it's neat that he has one of his best powers (and my personal fave of his abilities) this early, which will make for some interesting combat situations in the future.
  Also introduced this season: red Kryptonite (though it doesn't go by that name at first). Whereas green weakens to the point that it could concievably kill him, red is a personality changer. In its debut episode, Red (again with the on-the-nose episode titles), Clark buys a class ring that has a red rock, said to be a meteor fragment, just with a red rock instead of green, and becomes a lot less inhibitive. He basically becomes the bad boy of school, acting like a rock star and scoring dates with multiple women (Lana included). He talks back to his parents, and acts like he's being held back from using his gifts.
  Not entirely unlike the comics (it's more of a physical transformation, from what I know. It was a pre-Crisis thing anyway, not sure if the effects carried over post-Crisis), this was an interesting element to lift, and works on some level as a drug metaphor, too. Whereas Red covers the whole “good guy does pulls a 180 personality-wise” angle, Rush goes with the idea of people on drugs being thrillseekers who have little to no regards for the consequences. Only in Rush, it's not just Clark, but Pete and Chloe too. While it wasn't utilized all that much, the potential for good stories is there, provided they don't abuse it (no pun intended again)
• Pete actually gets to find out that Clark has superpowers early on (third episode, Duplicity) and this gives him a little more to do, being a confidante to Clark about these powers. Otherwise, no real change in his character. He is a good character, he just doesn't have much to do besides support Clark.
• Chloe, however, not only still has a role to play, but gets more character development and remains being awesome. The development comes in the form of wanting to be more open with Clark about how she feels, something she gets to achieve- in a way- with the aforementioned episode Rush, in which she and Clark are constantly making out, though they don't address these events once the episode concludes.
  Chloe takes the initiative in the episode Fever, telling Clark how she feels while he's sleeping, and she is just so heartfelt that you feel like slapping Clark and saying “Forget Lana, date her!”
• Speaking of Lana, would you expect a little positive character development? I know I did. And you know what? Nothing. She remains pretty much a living prop for people to fawn over (small spoiler alert), before finally deciding to be with Clark. For about two episodes, if that.
  Also, she was given this stupid subplot about a man who might be her real father, that doesn't really amount to anything, so it was just a waste of time. Jury's still out on whether or not she's even truly needed in this show.
• Lex maintains being cool and witty. Nothing much else to say here, except he gets a love interest late in the season. Who he marries. So, no prizes to guessing what happens to that.
• The Kents... again, nothing changes much for them. Well, besides Martha working for Lex's father and Jonathan becoming stricter.
• Now for a new player: Lionel Luthor, played by John Glover. He appeared a fair bit in Season 1, but becomes a bigger player starting this season. The relationship between Lionel and Lex is akin to that of Norman and Harry Osborn, the biggest difference being a lack of a Peter Parker-esque character for Lionel to hold in higher regard. Even when Lex manages to show up his father, Lionel is never easily impressed.
  For the first half of the season, Lionel is blinded, though this does not make the character undergo an epiphany on past misdeeds. And even though he soon recovers, he keeps up the charade of being blind to see how people act around him. Lionel is an observant creature, and that's why he's always on top of his game.
  Despite being antagonistic, he is not the central villain of the show, or the season in fact. Give him time, though. I'm sure something's going to happen to push him into a major role.

Two actors from the Superman film series were brought on board in supporting roles: Christopher Reeve himself played Dr. Virgil Swann, a scientist who had deciphered the Kryptonian language and appeared in the episode Rosetta, helping Clark uncover a little more of his origin.

The other actor was Terence Stamp, in voice only though, as Jor-El, Clark's biological father. It's kind of amusing that the actor who once said the son of Jor-El would bow before him is now expecting his son to... obey his commands without question and act like Clark is meant to rule.

...Yeah, I can see why there was a theory it was General Zod in disguise. Still, when you want an authoritative voice, Stamp delivers. Though don't expect too much from him this season, as he speaks to Clark towards the end of the season.

This season also contains some “sequel episodes” featuring one-shot characters from last season. The episode Ryan is a sequel to Stray, which was about a boy with the power of mind-reading, who was living with lousy parents who abused his gift. Both episodes were great and I liked the character of Ryan.

Also, Visage was the sequel to X-Ray, involving a shape-shifting villain obsessed with Lana (gee, what a shock). It reminds me of the comics themselves, with recurring villains who will often be away for extended periods to lick their wounds and as such, it makes for great continuity and storytelling opportunity.

If there is one gripe I have with this season (besides Lana and the school still being pretty much a backdrop), it's that some of the one-shot villains have powers and abilities that aren't meteor-powered, and their explanation is absent. So... we're already introducing metas and magical beings? Bit early, don't you think?

Take the episode Redux. The villainess sucks the lifeforce out of a victim to keep herself young. She's been doing this for about 80 years. So, unless another meteor hit back then, this is something that needs explanation.

But anyway, Season 2 is a little better than Season 1, which I didn't hate. It still maintains the “freak of the week” feel but introduces little things over time to start a proper arc.

And with the finale of Season 2 (spoilers here) involving Clark defying Jor-El's commands, leading to the explosion of the spaceship Clark found about last season and the subsequent departure to escape the situation, things can only get more serious from here.

My top episodes: Rush, Exodus, Red, Heat and Ryan

Least favourite: Witness, Skinwalker, Accelerate, Nocturne and Prodigal

Next post: the third season and the return of the prodigal son (no pun intended)

How Many Admirers Can One Girl Have?

Sometimes, I have DVD's sitting around for ages and ages and always put off on watching them, usually because I have other TV shows to watch that won't take as long (I usually like to marathon a show when I have the entire run) or some other such reason. Smallville, for example, I've had the first nine seasons since... December last year, and Season 10 since April. So now, with my to-watch pile getting ever shorter, it's time to go through it all.

So, I'm going to do a blog for every season, giving my thoughts on things like character development, the story arc (should one be present) and probably a small list of my pick for best episodes of the season. As for themes, well, I don't know if I'm smart enough to go into great detail, but we'll see.

For those unaware of what I'm talking about, Smallville is based on the Superman mythology, focusing on Clark's teenage years in the titular town, as he learns the truth about who he is and where he comes from, while keeping his friends and family out of harm's way.

The show ran for 10 seasons, but continues in comic book form, under the same name, effectively functioning as Season 11.

Now, with the intro out of the way, let's look at our cast of characters:

• Clark Kent (Tom Welling), a polite and helpful young man. Almost always willing to give the benefit of the doubt to anyone needing aid, he races into any situation with the smallest provocation, which is promising for the man who will be Superman. As young people do, he constantly struggles with issues like his romantic feelings for a friend (a friend dating some jerk, no less) and of finding out how he fits into this world (though with Clark being adopted, it goes a bit deeper for him).
  On the subject of his adoption, his desire to find out about his origins isn't so prominent here, though the discovery of a spaceship just trigger questions for him.
  Power-wise, he starts off with super strength, super speed (primarily how he gets to all disaster scenes, since his flight hasn't developed yet, due to the rule the producers had of “No flights, no tights”), invulnerability and in the fourth episode, X-Ray, he gains... well, X-ray powers. It was a wise move on the part of the creative team not to start him off with a platter of powers, not just because it would mean every episode was easily resolved, but also due to the metaphor of puberty and the growing changes within a young man (though that aspect isn't really explored in great detail. Next season, however, they bring it up)
• Pete Ross (Sam Jones III) is Clark's best friend and while he doesn't get a whole lot of development, he's already got dimension to him, and is a nice, funny guy. Much like Clark, he'll defend someone getting picked on without hesitation and is always eager to help.
• Lana Lang (Kristin Kreuk) is Clark's love interest and... well, to put it lightly, is often considered the most useless character in the show. And, well, there's good reason for that: in my opinion, she's basically a living prop. She has no real purpose beyond being a love interest. And not just for Clark, or her boyfriend Whitney (who I won't be doing a paragraph on, so here's the abridged version: writers couldn't decide if he was a jerk or a decent guy. He was written out after this season so he's really irrelevant in most matters), but for some of the villains too.
  And that's one of the biggest problems of the show: so many people are attracted to Lana, but beyond being nice and non-threatening, why are they attracted to her above all others? What makes her so special? I can't say she's a creator's pet since she was in the comics, but I suppose being a different version, she kind of is. There's really not much else to say about her.
  Well... there is one comment I need to make: in the pilot, we see a young Lana Lang, as she watches her parents get killed by part of a meteor (which is hilarious in itself, they just freakin' stand there as it hurtles towards them! It's like “Oh hai, meteor, how's your-” *BOOM!*). The young Lana looks more grumpy than upset. And let me tell you, emoting incorrectly or not at all is not something she grew out of.
• Chloe Sullivan (Allison Mack), on the other hand, is one of my favourite characters in the show. She's quirky, snarky and HAS an actual use, being... well, for lack of a better analogy, this show's version of Oracle, in the sense that she's Clark's information broker and computer expert. She's extremely supportive of Clark, and wishes he would share the same feelings she has for him. Her pining for Clark reminds me of Willow's desire for Xander in the early seasons of Buffy... come to think of it, there's a few Buffy comparisons. More on those later
• Martha and Jonathan Kent (Anette O'Toole and John Schneider) are Clark's adoptive parents and are incredibly supportive when it comes to Clark and his powers. Jonathan can come close to menacing at times, but it's not like he's going to hit Clark (what's the point if Clark can't feel it?), but both he and Martha always take Clark at his word when something strange happens and he couldn't really ask for better parents.
• Lastly, there's Lex Luthor (Michael Rosenbaum). He's my other favourite. His scenes with Clark tend to be the best aspects of the show so far, with Lex taking all the weirdness in stride and trusting Clark with his life. He's smart, sincere and is quick to step in when a friend needs him. It's kind of sad when you know that he and Clark will become each other's archnemesis in years to come, but for now, we have two friends who stick their necks out for each other without hesitation (I must admit, I did laugh at this line: “It's a foil, Clark. Every hero should have one”. Yeah, it's a fencing term but that was well played).

Rather than start off with an arc, or even a series of arcs, the first season is purely made up of “freaks of the week”, which basically means one-shot villains on an episodic basis. On the one hand, you can't have a status quo from the get-go, so maybe it is a good idea to not try and shake things up before you've had a chance to establish yourself. New shows need to find their feet, and taking on too much too soon might scare people off.

On the other, this season has twenty-one episodes and repetition does set in quickly. This does lead to the question “How many bloody rocks are in Smallville?!”, since almost every villain Clark faces gains their powers from the meteorite that brought him to Smallville in the first place, which I don't think gets referred to as Kryptonite until the next season.

They're almost all high school students, too, so that doesn't help shake off the Buffy comparisons.

I should probably go into that now. I kept thinking of Buffy while I was watching the first season, mainly due to the following:

• The main character has super powers and has to keep them a secret (Buffy's difference being her parents had no idea as opposed to Clark's, but her friends all knew. Clark's are kept in the dark).
• The series begins in high school and the gang normally meets in one room to discuss the current situation (difference being Smallville lacks a Giles).
• Two of the main characters dance around their feelings for each other, even though it's obvious to others how they feel (Buffy/Angel, Clark/Lana)
• The main character has a friend who wants to tell them how they feel but just can't (Xander to Buffy, and Willow to Xander, and for Smallville, Chloe to Clark)

And there's probably more than that but those are the biggest.

Aside from Lana and the repetition, I have one other problem with the first season: the high school setting is pretty much just a back-drop. The gang rarely goes to class, we don't see the principal all that often, it really just seems like a way for Clark to find out who his next opponent will be, like he's Scott Pilgrim minus the fighting-for-the-woman-he-loves part. Sure, Buffy didn't have all that many scenes in class, but I do remember some of them, and at least by meeting in the library, it was justified.

Despite all that, it is a good start for the show, and things can only get better from here. There is a little set-up towards the end for the next season, with the spaceship, something we'll explore next time.

My top episodes: Nicodemus, Stray, Reaper, Craving and Leech.

Least favourite: Drone, Zero, Kinetic, Shimmer and Hourglass.

Next post: the second season, and the first real arc's seeds are planted.