![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seriousficI'm just going to go by characters.
- Lois spends the episode knowing Clark is Superman and going out of the way to hide his secret from herself, going so far as to spend a minute looking for a pen so that Superman can super-speed a file out of a cabinet (instead of just walking over to the cabinet and picking it up). She even seems to be able to hear Clark coming and going at super-speed now. What did she think that noise was before she knew his secret identity? "Gasp! Someone saved me from Dr. Destructo, and my tinnitus is acting up again! I begin to wonder if it's possible to parody a self-parody. Then at the end, she goes to Africa for no reason. Probably to motivate Clark to be a better hero, because that's the only reason anyone does anything on this show.
- So having ended last season with Ollie being captured by mysterious assailants -- who turn out to be not a horde of Parademons, loyal to the command of Great Darkseid, but some commando dudes -- yeah, I don't know how or why they bashed in the sides of the duct Ollie was in either -- Ollie spends the entire episode in a rip-off of the carpet beater scene from Casino Royale, only without the testicular damage (disappointing countless Babs/Dinah shippers).
- So with her boyfriend having been captured by evil guv'mint forces, Chloe decides to pace herself and get a healthy fruit salad before rescuing him, since she wants to keep her energy up without indulging in any fattie foods. After all, she has been in this exact same situation literally within the past few weeks. Oh, sure, she *loves* Ollie, but she's been a Clark stan for ages and he's almost gotten himself killed about a bazillion times. But Allison Mack is leaving the show, so THIS TIME, she doesn't even mention the situation to her nigh-omnipotent BFF or try any of the methods which have worked time and time again, preferring to put on Dr. Fate's helmet. All this seems to do is give her the power to tell Clark he won't wear black in the future. Phenomenal cosmic power, you use it to give fashion tips. Good one, Sullivan! Then she TRADES HERSELF to the evil government guys in exchange for Ollie. You know what would've been great? If she knew some kind of nigh-omnipotent superhero who could, while she was being traded for Ollie, just beaten up everyone who looked shifty and then taken her and Ollie out for ice cream. Or, you know, given one of the twenty other superheroes she knows a call. Apparently, love is indistinguishable from some of the higher-end learning disabilities.
Now, maybe I'm amiss in assuming these are the same guys as Checkmate... how many evil government agencies do we need policing superheroes, after all?... but didn't Jackie Brown say that they WANTED the superheroes running around, since they needed them to fight the apocalypse? If that's the case, what's the big idea of torturing Ollie and now Gitmoing Chloe? Won't that just weaken your first line of defense, and at the very least, make it really awkward to work together when it's time to put all your cards on the table?
But then, apparently this is a completely new (and boring) batch of evil spies, since they don't know about Kandorians or anything. Really, Jackie Brown should be on top of this.
Evil spy 1: So, during that big alien invasion thing, this one billionaire's satellite was active. I'm just gonna kidnap him, knock him around a bit, that cool? I mean, no one will get suspicious that we've disappeared a captain of industry, and he won't hold a grudge after I shock him like he was Mel Gibson in a Lethal Weapon movie?
Evil spy 2: Huh? Oh, no, we've got that covered. Forget about the aliens, you'd better worry about them nukes in North Korea.
Evil spy 1: Why? Are there mutants involved?
Evil spy 2: No... just nuclear weapons.
Evil spy 1: I hardly think that's the job of the Evil CIA.
- Tess wakes up in Cadmus Labs, having gotten an exfoliating treatment to save her from last season's case of Two-Face. Who brought her there? Why? No clue. The lab is an old Luthorcorp project set up to clone Lex so he has spare parts... that seems a little exceptionally psychotic for him. How do you go from "I must protect the Earth!" to "I am Sean Bean in The Island"? And what have these clones been doing for the last two years that Lex has been dead? Just... chilling? Someone has to be coming in to feed 'em and make sure they don't escape and stuff. Who? Why? Who's even paying them?
And how does cloning people lead to being able to save Tess's face, let alone her life? You could say they cloned her some new organs, but it's apparent they need to clone an entire human being to do that. So is there a Teess wandering around somewhere, asking if anyone's seen half of her face?
So Tess finds a keycard which not only gives her run of the place, but also lets her ACCIDENTALLY let out a terrible actor playing a psychotic Lex clone. You'd think maybe they would require a password on that door... maybe a Post-It note? In a grievous display of their understanding of the audience, the showrunners decide to open their final season with an actor who is not Michael Rosenbaum playing a fake version of Lex. Is it even possible to give less of a shit? Tess winds up adopting, I guess, a little kid clone of Lex. So I guess we can look forward to an entire subplot addressing the relationship between two characters who have never been on-screen together.
- Clark is all over the place, but that's nothing new. There's always some arbitrary life lesson he has to learn before he can be a true hero, but he has the memory of a goldfish, so he has to keep relearning obvious stuff like "don't play football when you have superpowers." This week, he's wrathful and pride-y and vain. So after getting stabbed in the chest and dropped off a building, while human mind you, Clark ends up only having a near-death experience. Didn't that chick in the S9 opener get a little pin-prick and keel over? I guess she didn't want it bad enough.
Jor-El contacts Clark in his death-y vision-y place... okay, I know the Kryptonians are advanced, but accessing the afterlife via Wi-Fi? Is there anything at all they can't do?... and gives the traditional "son, I am disappoint" speech. Clark yells for a second chance... isn't he on chance 27 by now? And meanwhile, in the real world, Lois takes a break from crying over Clark (much better than calling 911) to pull the knife out of his chest. And since she doesn't have any idea about Kryponite, I take it she just thinks it's a smashing idea to making a gaping chest wound EVEN BIGGER. But this works, and in a few minutes, Clark is right as rain. Blah blah blah, he meets up with Fake Bitch, Not Luthor, who tells him that he's only a hero because he cleans up the messes he himself makes. Valid point? I don't know, the general public doesn't even know about a lot of that, and he wasn't the one who caused Doomsday or Kandor, except in a general "standing around, not being nonexistent" sort of way.
Still, somehow this goads Clark into nearly rage-fucking Lex, which in turns causes Jor-El to believe he'll never be the world's savior, saying that it was only ever his emotions that blinded him to Clark's assyness. What emotions? He's a computer program.
Clark, for his part, is assy in bragging about how he's taken out Brand-Lex, believing him to be the ultimate evil of which Jor-El spoke. Yes, the old and gnarly version of Lex with the lifespan of a sea monkey, he's the one you have to worry about. Jor-El chews him out, and both of them are such inconsistent flip-floppers that I couldn't care less. For all his talk about "I should've let you die," who else is Jor-El going to get to do the destiny thing? What's he going to do without Clark, Farmville?
Jor-El's big thing is actually more insipid than sea monkey Lex being the Big Bad. He says CLARK is the great evil, if he turns to the Dark Side or whatever. Honestly? Hasn't Jor-El spent half the show "pretending" to be a tyrannical dickhead as a "test" to see if Clark would go bad? And this whole shit-thing with Clark being willing to kill... he did kill! Dude from the WWF! Phantom! He felt bad about it, he admitted it was necessary, he moved on. Jor-El goes on to tell Clark that he can't be a hero while he has darkness in his heart. What kind of mentoring is it again where you spend five years inflicting psychological trauma on someone, then talk about how totally unacceptable emotional baggage is in a superhero? I mean, the happiness and lights program probably should've started before you flambe'd a chick in front of him.
Oh, and at the end, Clark has a long talk with Jonathan Kent, who assures him that he's awesome. So, either Clark can see dead people, or he's having full-blown audiovisual hallucinations. I know that's what I'm looking for in Earth's greatest hero.
- Oh, at the end, a cloud of dust blows around and turns into a very talented 8-year-old's concept art of Darkseid for a totally bitchin' JLA movie where, like, you get to see Wonder Woman's tits and everything. Haven't we learned anything from the second Fantastic Four movie? Turning awe-inspiring cosmic villains into mean clouds doesn't get you a plausible villain, it just makes you wonder what's taking the hero so long to reach for a Dustbuster. Honestly, he's a big guy with a craggy face and red eyes. I think make-up technology has advanced to the point where we can pull this off.
For even less reason, Jor-El zaps up the super-suit Clark's mom gave him and stores it in the Fortress. Because he's not ready for it yet? C'mon, the whole "he's getting ready to be Superman!" thing wore thin during the Bush Administration. He's in Metropolis, working at the Daily Planet and fucking Lois Lane. He's Superman. We've reached that point. And why should Jor-El care what Clark wears? Generally, he's just a Blur. He could do that naked. We would call him the Streak!
ETA: In fact, what's to stop the bad guys from grabbing both Ollie and Chloe? Who's handling her end of the exchange? Because whoever it is, they'd have to advocate the "why are we giving our word of honor to a bunch of rights-violating torturers?" angle. They're just guys with guns. Even if you've only got Black Canary and Hawkman and they both have food poisoning, they pretty much beat up guys with guns as a hobby. To say nothing of the dubious equality that is sacrificing a female character who's been the show since the pilot so that a johnny-come-lately male character can be front and center (and presumably have aaaaaaaaangst).
Really, would it be so hard to have Darkseid attack Chloe and capture her, or put her in the hospital? That would establish him as a worthy foe a lot better than five seconds of snarling at the camera.
- Lois spends the episode knowing Clark is Superman and going out of the way to hide his secret from herself, going so far as to spend a minute looking for a pen so that Superman can super-speed a file out of a cabinet (instead of just walking over to the cabinet and picking it up). She even seems to be able to hear Clark coming and going at super-speed now. What did she think that noise was before she knew his secret identity? "Gasp! Someone saved me from Dr. Destructo, and my tinnitus is acting up again! I begin to wonder if it's possible to parody a self-parody. Then at the end, she goes to Africa for no reason. Probably to motivate Clark to be a better hero, because that's the only reason anyone does anything on this show.
- So having ended last season with Ollie being captured by mysterious assailants -- who turn out to be not a horde of Parademons, loyal to the command of Great Darkseid, but some commando dudes -- yeah, I don't know how or why they bashed in the sides of the duct Ollie was in either -- Ollie spends the entire episode in a rip-off of the carpet beater scene from Casino Royale, only without the testicular damage (disappointing countless Babs/Dinah shippers).
- So with her boyfriend having been captured by evil guv'mint forces, Chloe decides to pace herself and get a healthy fruit salad before rescuing him, since she wants to keep her energy up without indulging in any fattie foods. After all, she has been in this exact same situation literally within the past few weeks. Oh, sure, she *loves* Ollie, but she's been a Clark stan for ages and he's almost gotten himself killed about a bazillion times. But Allison Mack is leaving the show, so THIS TIME, she doesn't even mention the situation to her nigh-omnipotent BFF or try any of the methods which have worked time and time again, preferring to put on Dr. Fate's helmet. All this seems to do is give her the power to tell Clark he won't wear black in the future. Phenomenal cosmic power, you use it to give fashion tips. Good one, Sullivan! Then she TRADES HERSELF to the evil government guys in exchange for Ollie. You know what would've been great? If she knew some kind of nigh-omnipotent superhero who could, while she was being traded for Ollie, just beaten up everyone who looked shifty and then taken her and Ollie out for ice cream. Or, you know, given one of the twenty other superheroes she knows a call. Apparently, love is indistinguishable from some of the higher-end learning disabilities.
Now, maybe I'm amiss in assuming these are the same guys as Checkmate... how many evil government agencies do we need policing superheroes, after all?... but didn't Jackie Brown say that they WANTED the superheroes running around, since they needed them to fight the apocalypse? If that's the case, what's the big idea of torturing Ollie and now Gitmoing Chloe? Won't that just weaken your first line of defense, and at the very least, make it really awkward to work together when it's time to put all your cards on the table?
But then, apparently this is a completely new (and boring) batch of evil spies, since they don't know about Kandorians or anything. Really, Jackie Brown should be on top of this.
Evil spy 1: So, during that big alien invasion thing, this one billionaire's satellite was active. I'm just gonna kidnap him, knock him around a bit, that cool? I mean, no one will get suspicious that we've disappeared a captain of industry, and he won't hold a grudge after I shock him like he was Mel Gibson in a Lethal Weapon movie?
Evil spy 2: Huh? Oh, no, we've got that covered. Forget about the aliens, you'd better worry about them nukes in North Korea.
Evil spy 1: Why? Are there mutants involved?
Evil spy 2: No... just nuclear weapons.
Evil spy 1: I hardly think that's the job of the Evil CIA.
- Tess wakes up in Cadmus Labs, having gotten an exfoliating treatment to save her from last season's case of Two-Face. Who brought her there? Why? No clue. The lab is an old Luthorcorp project set up to clone Lex so he has spare parts... that seems a little exceptionally psychotic for him. How do you go from "I must protect the Earth!" to "I am Sean Bean in The Island"? And what have these clones been doing for the last two years that Lex has been dead? Just... chilling? Someone has to be coming in to feed 'em and make sure they don't escape and stuff. Who? Why? Who's even paying them?
And how does cloning people lead to being able to save Tess's face, let alone her life? You could say they cloned her some new organs, but it's apparent they need to clone an entire human being to do that. So is there a Teess wandering around somewhere, asking if anyone's seen half of her face?
So Tess finds a keycard which not only gives her run of the place, but also lets her ACCIDENTALLY let out a terrible actor playing a psychotic Lex clone. You'd think maybe they would require a password on that door... maybe a Post-It note? In a grievous display of their understanding of the audience, the showrunners decide to open their final season with an actor who is not Michael Rosenbaum playing a fake version of Lex. Is it even possible to give less of a shit? Tess winds up adopting, I guess, a little kid clone of Lex. So I guess we can look forward to an entire subplot addressing the relationship between two characters who have never been on-screen together.
- Clark is all over the place, but that's nothing new. There's always some arbitrary life lesson he has to learn before he can be a true hero, but he has the memory of a goldfish, so he has to keep relearning obvious stuff like "don't play football when you have superpowers." This week, he's wrathful and pride-y and vain. So after getting stabbed in the chest and dropped off a building, while human mind you, Clark ends up only having a near-death experience. Didn't that chick in the S9 opener get a little pin-prick and keel over? I guess she didn't want it bad enough.
Jor-El contacts Clark in his death-y vision-y place... okay, I know the Kryptonians are advanced, but accessing the afterlife via Wi-Fi? Is there anything at all they can't do?... and gives the traditional "son, I am disappoint" speech. Clark yells for a second chance... isn't he on chance 27 by now? And meanwhile, in the real world, Lois takes a break from crying over Clark (much better than calling 911) to pull the knife out of his chest. And since she doesn't have any idea about Kryponite, I take it she just thinks it's a smashing idea to making a gaping chest wound EVEN BIGGER. But this works, and in a few minutes, Clark is right as rain. Blah blah blah, he meets up with Fake Bitch, Not Luthor, who tells him that he's only a hero because he cleans up the messes he himself makes. Valid point? I don't know, the general public doesn't even know about a lot of that, and he wasn't the one who caused Doomsday or Kandor, except in a general "standing around, not being nonexistent" sort of way.
Still, somehow this goads Clark into nearly rage-fucking Lex, which in turns causes Jor-El to believe he'll never be the world's savior, saying that it was only ever his emotions that blinded him to Clark's assyness. What emotions? He's a computer program.
Clark, for his part, is assy in bragging about how he's taken out Brand-Lex, believing him to be the ultimate evil of which Jor-El spoke. Yes, the old and gnarly version of Lex with the lifespan of a sea monkey, he's the one you have to worry about. Jor-El chews him out, and both of them are such inconsistent flip-floppers that I couldn't care less. For all his talk about "I should've let you die," who else is Jor-El going to get to do the destiny thing? What's he going to do without Clark, Farmville?
Jor-El's big thing is actually more insipid than sea monkey Lex being the Big Bad. He says CLARK is the great evil, if he turns to the Dark Side or whatever. Honestly? Hasn't Jor-El spent half the show "pretending" to be a tyrannical dickhead as a "test" to see if Clark would go bad? And this whole shit-thing with Clark being willing to kill... he did kill! Dude from the WWF! Phantom! He felt bad about it, he admitted it was necessary, he moved on. Jor-El goes on to tell Clark that he can't be a hero while he has darkness in his heart. What kind of mentoring is it again where you spend five years inflicting psychological trauma on someone, then talk about how totally unacceptable emotional baggage is in a superhero? I mean, the happiness and lights program probably should've started before you flambe'd a chick in front of him.
Oh, and at the end, Clark has a long talk with Jonathan Kent, who assures him that he's awesome. So, either Clark can see dead people, or he's having full-blown audiovisual hallucinations. I know that's what I'm looking for in Earth's greatest hero.
- Oh, at the end, a cloud of dust blows around and turns into a very talented 8-year-old's concept art of Darkseid for a totally bitchin' JLA movie where, like, you get to see Wonder Woman's tits and everything. Haven't we learned anything from the second Fantastic Four movie? Turning awe-inspiring cosmic villains into mean clouds doesn't get you a plausible villain, it just makes you wonder what's taking the hero so long to reach for a Dustbuster. Honestly, he's a big guy with a craggy face and red eyes. I think make-up technology has advanced to the point where we can pull this off.
For even less reason, Jor-El zaps up the super-suit Clark's mom gave him and stores it in the Fortress. Because he's not ready for it yet? C'mon, the whole "he's getting ready to be Superman!" thing wore thin during the Bush Administration. He's in Metropolis, working at the Daily Planet and fucking Lois Lane. He's Superman. We've reached that point. And why should Jor-El care what Clark wears? Generally, he's just a Blur. He could do that naked. We would call him the Streak!
ETA: In fact, what's to stop the bad guys from grabbing both Ollie and Chloe? Who's handling her end of the exchange? Because whoever it is, they'd have to advocate the "why are we giving our word of honor to a bunch of rights-violating torturers?" angle. They're just guys with guns. Even if you've only got Black Canary and Hawkman and they both have food poisoning, they pretty much beat up guys with guns as a hobby. To say nothing of the dubious equality that is sacrificing a female character who's been the show since the pilot so that a johnny-come-lately male character can be front and center (and presumably have aaaaaaaaangst).
Really, would it be so hard to have Darkseid attack Chloe and capture her, or put her in the hospital? That would establish him as a worthy foe a lot better than five seconds of snarling at the camera.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-09-28 01:36 am (UTC)haha!
Date: 2010-09-30 07:58 am (UTC)But for the record, I don't mind my comic book heroes in stupid plots, as long as they get to bash baddies up and fly off into the sunset. But that's just me.
Rock on!
no subject
Date: 2010-10-06 09:09 pm (UTC)Final season of Smallville. You’d think they would pull out all the stops for the season opener, not serve up this confusing rehash.
-Lois knows Clark’s secret identity but pretends to not know…Umm, why exactly? So they could dust off the S4 Chloe-knows-Clark’s-secret, but-he-doesn’t-know-she-knows scripts? Are we supposed to love Lois’s wacky high-jinx, like the scrounging for a pen under the desk scene, as she tries to keep Clark clueless?
-Or Chloe making the prisoner exchange without clueing in Clark or the JLA…Because keeping Clark in the dark has worked so well in the past.
-Apparently, love is indistinguishable from some of the higher-end learning disabilities.
(Okay that was priceless.) :p
-And the irreverent use of Dr. Fate’s helmet has given us what---the red Thriller jacket seen in episode 2?
-What exactly was that schizo exchange between Clark and Jor-El in the Fortress?