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seriousficWhich is also boring (but in blue!).
Okay, so the episode starts out with Martha giving Clark and Lois an early wedding present: the deed to the farm. Clark wonders if this means she wants him to sell it. Instead of, here's a novel idea, calling her and asking what she thinks of selling the barn, this episode happens.
Evil Clark from the alternate universe a few episodes back shows up. Watching Fringe has given me an appreciation for silly alt-names, so… ClarKKK? CounterKent? Duperman? Anyway, even though he was last seen helpless and in the hands of his greatest enemies, now he's just strolling around, chilling like the villain. Sharp writing.
Clark finds the mirrorbox CounterKent used to hop dimensions, whereupon CounterKent strolls up to him, asks him about the weather, borrows his paper, and comments on last night's football game before bitch-slapping Clark to the mirror universe. Yes, ample warning that his evil opposite number is on the offensive, and Clark still gets his ass handed to him. Just goes to show, evil will always triumph because good is dumb.
According to the quantum mechanics rule that dimension-travelers will always show up where the plot is most important, Clark finds himself at the funeral of Oliver Queen (Fauxllie?). He gets Kryped by Lois, but he easily convinces her that he's the good twin, whereupon she tells him that Ollie has spread the word about "Ultraman's" Kryptonite vulnerability, so everyone is lugging around a chunk. Yes, everyone in the world is holding a radioactive material that turns them into murderous freaks. That'll end well. Clark, of course, doesn't think this is worth mentioning, so he heads back to the barn to commiserate with dear old Pa.
Back in reality, CounterKent is proving his opposite's woeful equal in competency by pretending to be Clark with Lois (that awkward moment when you suggest spying on Lionel Luthor as a bedroom activity and Lois is kinda into it) and then Tess, both of whom see right through him. Look, CounterKent, just furrow your brow a lot and shout whenever you see someone having fun. It's not that hard.
Did I mention that a real estate agent showed up at the Kent Farm for no reason, apparently just hoping she could browbeat the occupants into selling their place? Because that happened.
CounterKent hits on Tess, who has been nursing a long-standing crush on Clark (!!!) and so is tempted by his offer to both sex her up and kill Lionel Luthor. Not at the same time. Hopefully. This is silly on multiple fronts. Okay, so let's say Tess is in love with Clark (hasn't been established at all, not her type, way too good for him, WHYYYYYYYYY?). We can assume that this love would include his personality. And going by the show, Clark is kind, respectful, only-mind-rapes-people-when-it's-important (not that any of this shows up on screen, it's more of a "laboring under the delusion that" sorta thing). So, why would she be attracted to someone with THE COMPLETE OPPOSITE PERSONALITY? Unless her attraction is purely physical, in which case, GREAT, now you have the man of your dreams and he's also a kill-happy psycho! Enjoy your lives together!
While Lois and Dr. Gaeta try to repair the mirrorbox that our Clark destroyed (have you ever noticed this Superman has an entire support staff whose full-time job is basically saving his dumb ass from himself?), Tess gets a present from CounterKent. A pretty dress! And he superspeeds over to her just to leer over her shoulder and make Chris Hansen comments. Hey, remember a few episodes back when Connor tried to date-rape Lois because he had Lex's rapist DNA? Well, CounterKent doesn't have any of that and he seems to be doing just fine on the creeper front. And Clark mind-raped Chloe all on his own...
Just saying, maybe Lex has 'respect women and practice consensual sex' DNA. Clark.
There's also an invitation to dinner inside. Tess goes, but she also brings a chunk of Kryptonite, because she'd have to be an absolute vegetable not to…
Yeah, you see where I'm going with this.
Clark and Tess bag on their sexual tension a bit, and Tess is oddly reluctant to kill Lionel. Uh, Tess, remember that time you tried to kill your quasi-adopted son? When was it, last Wednesday? Impressive set of moral convictions you got since then. CounterKent drags her to her office, where he demands she access Lionel's GPS for him. But she was using that to monitor the migratory habits of the wild John Glover!
Speaking of which, didn't Lionel try to fraudulently take over Luthorcorp? I mean, as far as anyone knows, he's a fake pretending to be Lionel. Don't you go to jail for that, or is it just a 'boys will be boys' thing? "Alright, young man, I'll let you off with a warning this time, but don't you try to swindle any other businesses, or I'll tell your mother on you!"
Tess gives CounterKent the coordinates, but at the last minute reprograms it so instead he ends up at a depository full of Kryptonite. Just kidding, he comes back and chokes her until Clark saves her (do you really want me to get into the Jonathan Kent storyline? No, you don't). Also, somehow Clark manages to grab her despite the fact that she's dangling out the window. What, did he jump from window-washer to window-washer?
Clark and CounterKent get into a dust-up, but then they run all the way to the Fortress of Solitude (CounterKent apparently never thinking something seems fishy as he travels all the way to the Antarctic). They talk a bit, with Clark arguing that there's still good in CounterKent because he hesitated a little before killing Tess. Or, maybe he just likes to gloat like every other villain on this show? But no, Clark actually talks CounterKent into going back to his Earth and giving the "not being a mass-murdering quasi-rapist" thing a chance, with the guidance of Jor-El. Because there's someone perfectly qualified to be a moral compass. Jor-Baby-Killer-El.
Now, whatever small points the show may earn by having Clark actually act a little Superman-ish by trying to redeem CounterKent, the execution is shit. So, is CounterKent going to accept punishment for all the murdering and quasi-raping he did, or is he just going to superhero nicely until people get over the whole reign of fear he had going? Is Clark going to check up on him or is he just going to trust that everything worked out hunky-dory with the dangerously unstable psychopath playing hero and the ENTIRE WORLD that hates and fears him? I mean, Jesus.
Also, this really backs up in an unpleasant way the show's conviction that people are born good or evil, right down to their rapist DNA. If you're a bad guy, like Lex, it doesn't matter that you can sincerely want to do good… you're going to end up evil. And if you're a good guy, like Clark, it doesn't matter if you've spent YOUR ENTIRE LIFE BEING ABUSED AND TRAINED IN THE WAYS OF THE SITH, you just need a thirty-second pep talk and you're a hero!
Next week, Big Barda! Yes! Finally! She's only the most popular character in this whole Darkseid storyline, so it's about…
Oh.
Booster Gold.
Right. Okay.
Female characters in bold.
Fake!Lex
Deadshot
Kara
Godfrey
Brainiac 5
Isis (Note: reimagined as an evil villain)
Rick Flag/Suicide Squad (technically, there's a woman in the Suicide Squad. Now name her. My point exactly)
Granny Goodness
Slade Wilson
Arthur Curry/Mera (a woman, but kinda a side order with AC. She didn't really do anything)
Lionel Luthor
Black Canary (also not the focus of an episode)
Carter Hall
Chloe
Other!Fake!Lex
Desaad
Amos Fortune
Jonathan Kent
Booster Gold
Blue Beetle
Zod
Real!Lex (maybe.)
Also, a lot of those male characters, like Deadshot, the Lexes, and Lionel, show up again and again. Meanwhile, Kara is apparently Jor-El's golden girl and we haven't seen hide nor hair of her. And Cat Grant joined the cast, sorta? Both Isis and Mera were pretty sexualized, if you wanna dig into that, but then, didn't that Mera episode also have AC in bondage or something? I don't know, the Secretary of State is a woman, I'm living in a post-sexual America, maybe you all should too. All I'm saying is, one Barda is worth four fucking Deadshots.
I know Smallville doesn't have the budget to show Clark going to Apokolips and kick around a thousand Parademons, but I was hoping the show could be imaginative in its use of restraint and show Earth as a small but vital battlefield in a, more epic conflict. Sorta like Frodo's story in Lord of the Rings. Sure, he doesn't kill a Balrog or defend a kingdom, but he's at the right place in the right time.
So, without showing that Parademon army, you could have cosmic characters like Zod or J'onn build up Darkseid as a huge, implacable threat. You could have Fourth World characters like Orion or the Forever People show up to drive an episode or two, giving their own perspective on the conflict. Without ever showing a large-scale battle, you could deal with things like weapons research, deserters, espionage, medics, war correspondents… non-frontline stuff. If you got bored of Fourth World characters, you could even bring in other space characters like a Green Lantern, Adam Strange, or Starfire. Finally, you could have the main event, Darkseid showing up to kick ass and take names, and Clark fighting him.
Instead, we've gotten this skim milk version of Darkseid, the barest image of the guy, stripped of all context and grandeur. It's like a Star Wars/Star Trek crossover. You'd expect to see Kirk hitting on Leia, Scotty fixing R2-D2, Chewie and Spock playing 3D chess. Instead, we get Darth Vader showing up for five minutes, not having one line, and the real bad guys are a bunch of Romulans who have learned to use the Force. Whereas Darkseid used to represent tyranny in the battle between order and chaos, now he's just a stand-in for generic nastiness, a fucking plot point for other stories. He's kinda marginally involved in this VRA plotline (completely unnecessarily, since neither Amanda Waller or the Justice Society's enemies required Darkseid to justify their anti-vigilante activity. In fact, it cheapens the story to have a perfectly logical if wrong-headed objection to vigilantism now handwaved as the work of an evil god) and some generic freaks of the week talk him up a little, but he has no goals or agency of his own. And now he's been shanghaied into the Luthor plotline, probably to do no more than give Michael Rosenbaum an in to reappear.
Not to mention that we're three episodes from the endgame and the conflict hasn't intensified, it's DIED. Lionel Luthor is out of power, Connor Kent is firmly on the side of good, the VRA has been defeated, most of Darkseid's generals have been routed… Team Kansas has Great Darkseid on the ropes! And we're still having filler episodes!
Really, I think we'd all have been better off if the show hasn't written a check its cast couldn't cash in Darkseid and just focused on the (much more affordable and interesting) Lionel Luthor/Crime Syndicate storyline. I could totally buy Lionel as being able to pull off the VRA, and this way the Lex/Lionel/Connor/Tess quadrangle could take its rightful place as the main plot. Instead, we just whiz through all this conflict and character development, with Connor being light-switched from good to evil with each episode and Lionel being deposed practically as soon as he's crowned king.
I'm just saying. As borked as the Kandor storyline was, it was actually about Kandor. Even the Checkmate subplot was ABOUT Kandor, not just "influenced" by Zod.
P.S. Note this April Fool's gag. The joke is that Smallville is so creatively bankrupt it would introduce Krypto the Superdog. The real joke is that Smallville already introduced Krypto, only he wasn't an alien dog, because that would be silly. Instead, he was a Golden Retriever that dog superpowers. Named Shelby.
Basically, Smallville is literally too stupid to parody. A porn parody of it would have no choice but to make more sense, just by depicting a linear series of events based around fucking.
Okay, so the episode starts out with Martha giving Clark and Lois an early wedding present: the deed to the farm. Clark wonders if this means she wants him to sell it. Instead of, here's a novel idea, calling her and asking what she thinks of selling the barn, this episode happens.
Evil Clark from the alternate universe a few episodes back shows up. Watching Fringe has given me an appreciation for silly alt-names, so… ClarKKK? CounterKent? Duperman? Anyway, even though he was last seen helpless and in the hands of his greatest enemies, now he's just strolling around, chilling like the villain. Sharp writing.
Clark finds the mirrorbox CounterKent used to hop dimensions, whereupon CounterKent strolls up to him, asks him about the weather, borrows his paper, and comments on last night's football game before bitch-slapping Clark to the mirror universe. Yes, ample warning that his evil opposite number is on the offensive, and Clark still gets his ass handed to him. Just goes to show, evil will always triumph because good is dumb.
According to the quantum mechanics rule that dimension-travelers will always show up where the plot is most important, Clark finds himself at the funeral of Oliver Queen (Fauxllie?). He gets Kryped by Lois, but he easily convinces her that he's the good twin, whereupon she tells him that Ollie has spread the word about "Ultraman's" Kryptonite vulnerability, so everyone is lugging around a chunk. Yes, everyone in the world is holding a radioactive material that turns them into murderous freaks. That'll end well. Clark, of course, doesn't think this is worth mentioning, so he heads back to the barn to commiserate with dear old Pa.
Back in reality, CounterKent is proving his opposite's woeful equal in competency by pretending to be Clark with Lois (that awkward moment when you suggest spying on Lionel Luthor as a bedroom activity and Lois is kinda into it) and then Tess, both of whom see right through him. Look, CounterKent, just furrow your brow a lot and shout whenever you see someone having fun. It's not that hard.
Did I mention that a real estate agent showed up at the Kent Farm for no reason, apparently just hoping she could browbeat the occupants into selling their place? Because that happened.
CounterKent hits on Tess, who has been nursing a long-standing crush on Clark (!!!) and so is tempted by his offer to both sex her up and kill Lionel Luthor. Not at the same time. Hopefully. This is silly on multiple fronts. Okay, so let's say Tess is in love with Clark (hasn't been established at all, not her type, way too good for him, WHYYYYYYYYY?). We can assume that this love would include his personality. And going by the show, Clark is kind, respectful, only-mind-rapes-people-when-it's-important (not that any of this shows up on screen, it's more of a "laboring under the delusion that" sorta thing). So, why would she be attracted to someone with THE COMPLETE OPPOSITE PERSONALITY? Unless her attraction is purely physical, in which case, GREAT, now you have the man of your dreams and he's also a kill-happy psycho! Enjoy your lives together!
While Lois and Dr. Gaeta try to repair the mirrorbox that our Clark destroyed (have you ever noticed this Superman has an entire support staff whose full-time job is basically saving his dumb ass from himself?), Tess gets a present from CounterKent. A pretty dress! And he superspeeds over to her just to leer over her shoulder and make Chris Hansen comments. Hey, remember a few episodes back when Connor tried to date-rape Lois because he had Lex's rapist DNA? Well, CounterKent doesn't have any of that and he seems to be doing just fine on the creeper front. And Clark mind-raped Chloe all on his own...
Just saying, maybe Lex has 'respect women and practice consensual sex' DNA. Clark.
There's also an invitation to dinner inside. Tess goes, but she also brings a chunk of Kryptonite, because she'd have to be an absolute vegetable not to…
Yeah, you see where I'm going with this.
Clark and Tess bag on their sexual tension a bit, and Tess is oddly reluctant to kill Lionel. Uh, Tess, remember that time you tried to kill your quasi-adopted son? When was it, last Wednesday? Impressive set of moral convictions you got since then. CounterKent drags her to her office, where he demands she access Lionel's GPS for him. But she was using that to monitor the migratory habits of the wild John Glover!
Speaking of which, didn't Lionel try to fraudulently take over Luthorcorp? I mean, as far as anyone knows, he's a fake pretending to be Lionel. Don't you go to jail for that, or is it just a 'boys will be boys' thing? "Alright, young man, I'll let you off with a warning this time, but don't you try to swindle any other businesses, or I'll tell your mother on you!"
Tess gives CounterKent the coordinates, but at the last minute reprograms it so instead he ends up at a depository full of Kryptonite. Just kidding, he comes back and chokes her until Clark saves her (do you really want me to get into the Jonathan Kent storyline? No, you don't). Also, somehow Clark manages to grab her despite the fact that she's dangling out the window. What, did he jump from window-washer to window-washer?
Clark and CounterKent get into a dust-up, but then they run all the way to the Fortress of Solitude (CounterKent apparently never thinking something seems fishy as he travels all the way to the Antarctic). They talk a bit, with Clark arguing that there's still good in CounterKent because he hesitated a little before killing Tess. Or, maybe he just likes to gloat like every other villain on this show? But no, Clark actually talks CounterKent into going back to his Earth and giving the "not being a mass-murdering quasi-rapist" thing a chance, with the guidance of Jor-El. Because there's someone perfectly qualified to be a moral compass. Jor-Baby-Killer-El.
Now, whatever small points the show may earn by having Clark actually act a little Superman-ish by trying to redeem CounterKent, the execution is shit. So, is CounterKent going to accept punishment for all the murdering and quasi-raping he did, or is he just going to superhero nicely until people get over the whole reign of fear he had going? Is Clark going to check up on him or is he just going to trust that everything worked out hunky-dory with the dangerously unstable psychopath playing hero and the ENTIRE WORLD that hates and fears him? I mean, Jesus.
Also, this really backs up in an unpleasant way the show's conviction that people are born good or evil, right down to their rapist DNA. If you're a bad guy, like Lex, it doesn't matter that you can sincerely want to do good… you're going to end up evil. And if you're a good guy, like Clark, it doesn't matter if you've spent YOUR ENTIRE LIFE BEING ABUSED AND TRAINED IN THE WAYS OF THE SITH, you just need a thirty-second pep talk and you're a hero!
Next week, Big Barda! Yes! Finally! She's only the most popular character in this whole Darkseid storyline, so it's about…
Oh.
Booster Gold.
Right. Okay.
Female characters in bold.
Fake!Lex
Deadshot
Kara
Godfrey
Brainiac 5
Isis (Note: reimagined as an evil villain)
Rick Flag/Suicide Squad (technically, there's a woman in the Suicide Squad. Now name her. My point exactly)
Granny Goodness
Slade Wilson
Arthur Curry/Mera (a woman, but kinda a side order with AC. She didn't really do anything)
Lionel Luthor
Black Canary (also not the focus of an episode)
Carter Hall
Chloe
Other!Fake!Lex
Desaad
Amos Fortune
Jonathan Kent
Booster Gold
Blue Beetle
Zod
Real!Lex (maybe.)
Also, a lot of those male characters, like Deadshot, the Lexes, and Lionel, show up again and again. Meanwhile, Kara is apparently Jor-El's golden girl and we haven't seen hide nor hair of her. And Cat Grant joined the cast, sorta? Both Isis and Mera were pretty sexualized, if you wanna dig into that, but then, didn't that Mera episode also have AC in bondage or something? I don't know, the Secretary of State is a woman, I'm living in a post-sexual America, maybe you all should too. All I'm saying is, one Barda is worth four fucking Deadshots.
I know Smallville doesn't have the budget to show Clark going to Apokolips and kick around a thousand Parademons, but I was hoping the show could be imaginative in its use of restraint and show Earth as a small but vital battlefield in a, more epic conflict. Sorta like Frodo's story in Lord of the Rings. Sure, he doesn't kill a Balrog or defend a kingdom, but he's at the right place in the right time.
So, without showing that Parademon army, you could have cosmic characters like Zod or J'onn build up Darkseid as a huge, implacable threat. You could have Fourth World characters like Orion or the Forever People show up to drive an episode or two, giving their own perspective on the conflict. Without ever showing a large-scale battle, you could deal with things like weapons research, deserters, espionage, medics, war correspondents… non-frontline stuff. If you got bored of Fourth World characters, you could even bring in other space characters like a Green Lantern, Adam Strange, or Starfire. Finally, you could have the main event, Darkseid showing up to kick ass and take names, and Clark fighting him.
Instead, we've gotten this skim milk version of Darkseid, the barest image of the guy, stripped of all context and grandeur. It's like a Star Wars/Star Trek crossover. You'd expect to see Kirk hitting on Leia, Scotty fixing R2-D2, Chewie and Spock playing 3D chess. Instead, we get Darth Vader showing up for five minutes, not having one line, and the real bad guys are a bunch of Romulans who have learned to use the Force. Whereas Darkseid used to represent tyranny in the battle between order and chaos, now he's just a stand-in for generic nastiness, a fucking plot point for other stories. He's kinda marginally involved in this VRA plotline (completely unnecessarily, since neither Amanda Waller or the Justice Society's enemies required Darkseid to justify their anti-vigilante activity. In fact, it cheapens the story to have a perfectly logical if wrong-headed objection to vigilantism now handwaved as the work of an evil god) and some generic freaks of the week talk him up a little, but he has no goals or agency of his own. And now he's been shanghaied into the Luthor plotline, probably to do no more than give Michael Rosenbaum an in to reappear.
Not to mention that we're three episodes from the endgame and the conflict hasn't intensified, it's DIED. Lionel Luthor is out of power, Connor Kent is firmly on the side of good, the VRA has been defeated, most of Darkseid's generals have been routed… Team Kansas has Great Darkseid on the ropes! And we're still having filler episodes!
Really, I think we'd all have been better off if the show hasn't written a check its cast couldn't cash in Darkseid and just focused on the (much more affordable and interesting) Lionel Luthor/Crime Syndicate storyline. I could totally buy Lionel as being able to pull off the VRA, and this way the Lex/Lionel/Connor/Tess quadrangle could take its rightful place as the main plot. Instead, we just whiz through all this conflict and character development, with Connor being light-switched from good to evil with each episode and Lionel being deposed practically as soon as he's crowned king.
I'm just saying. As borked as the Kandor storyline was, it was actually about Kandor. Even the Checkmate subplot was ABOUT Kandor, not just "influenced" by Zod.
P.S. Note this April Fool's gag. The joke is that Smallville is so creatively bankrupt it would introduce Krypto the Superdog. The real joke is that Smallville already introduced Krypto, only he wasn't an alien dog, because that would be silly. Instead, he was a Golden Retriever that dog superpowers. Named Shelby.
Basically, Smallville is literally too stupid to parody. A porn parody of it would have no choice but to make more sense, just by depicting a linear series of events based around fucking.
