My problems with Smallville in a nutshell
Feb. 23rd, 2009 10:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kilroyI'm not marking this as spoilers because the info's three years out of date. But I feel the need to recount the 100th episode.
So, Clark and Lana's relationship has always been rocky. There are trust issues, he's never told her that he's got powers, and they've gotten together and broken up something like twice a season for the duration of the show. Currently they are on again, but they are about to break apart because they got together while Clark had lost his powers and could have sex with Lana, and now he has them back and is afraid to boff her again even though she keeps asking him to.
Fume meter: 4/10. I've gotten used to this sort of crap by now with this show, but the fact that I've gotten used to it bothers me.
Clark decides that he can't live without Lana, so he tells her his secret. He flies her to the fortress, does a few super-stunts, and within two real-time minutes of telling her--while she is still in shock about the whole "Oh crap, my boyfriend is an alien!" thing--he compresses a lump of coal into a diamond and asks her to marry him.
Fume meter: 6/10. Clark, you're being a dick. Seriously. Now is not the time.
To the show's credit, she says she needs to think about it. Unfortunately "thinking about it" takes less than five real time minutes. I think it takes one brief scene for her to decide. She says yes.
Fume meter: 8/10. Look, can we consider her perspective for a minute here? She doesn't trust him. That's the one thing in their relationship that has fundamentally grown over five seasons. She trusts him less now than she ever has, and coming out with this one secret isn't going to fix the several dozen times he has lied to her and screwed her over. If she was going to say yes, she would say yes after she's had a month to process the whole "he's an alien" thing. Her saying yes at this point doesn't make sense and it's bad storytelling to boot-- way, way too quick. ARGH.
So, Lana goes to see Lex because she's his friend and he's distraught. Lex is drunk, has a confrontation with her involving a) his feelings about her and b) the fact that she obviously knows something about Clark now (he can just tell). She leaves, he chases, car accident ensues, she dies. I celebrate for a few moments. Then Clark goes to Jor-El, who has a magical crystal that can take him back in time to fix it.
Fume meter: 10/10. You have got to be fucking kidding me. Well, now we know why she had to decide in the first ten minutes-- so when she dies in minute twelve it can be extra tragic, and so they have another 30 minutes to wave a magic wand and fix it!
Jor-El utters the usual dire warnings about how there will be consequences, are you sure you really want to do this, time travel bad, blah blah. Clark goes anyway. Does he go back to stop the car from hitting her? No. Does he tell Lana what happened so that she can not repeat her mistake? No. Does he do anything even remotely heroic to try and fix the problem? No. He decides that the best way to prevent the accident is just not to tell her his secret in the first place. Chloe actually suggests alternative solutions; but no, telling Lana would just place her in danger eventually from someone.
Fume meter: 11/10. *repeated, frustrated headdesk* For the whole. Fucking. Series. We've been waiting for Clark to just tell her. It's the narratively correct move. Now he tells her, something like three seasons too late... and they take it back within fifteen minutes. You throw in the world's lamest plot device and you waste it on this. Words cannot express my feelings at this point. Violence could conceivably express my feelings.
So, the status quo is maintained. Some predictable time-travel parallelism occurs and Lana is saved from dying again. But since she doesn't go, Jonathan Kent dies of a heart attack instead. And they squeeze that and the entire over-produced funeral sequence into the same episode.
I just... come on. This is NormalView material here.
So, Clark and Lana's relationship has always been rocky. There are trust issues, he's never told her that he's got powers, and they've gotten together and broken up something like twice a season for the duration of the show. Currently they are on again, but they are about to break apart because they got together while Clark had lost his powers and could have sex with Lana, and now he has them back and is afraid to boff her again even though she keeps asking him to.
Fume meter: 4/10. I've gotten used to this sort of crap by now with this show, but the fact that I've gotten used to it bothers me.
Clark decides that he can't live without Lana, so he tells her his secret. He flies her to the fortress, does a few super-stunts, and within two real-time minutes of telling her--while she is still in shock about the whole "Oh crap, my boyfriend is an alien!" thing--he compresses a lump of coal into a diamond and asks her to marry him.
Fume meter: 6/10. Clark, you're being a dick. Seriously. Now is not the time.
To the show's credit, she says she needs to think about it. Unfortunately "thinking about it" takes less than five real time minutes. I think it takes one brief scene for her to decide. She says yes.
Fume meter: 8/10. Look, can we consider her perspective for a minute here? She doesn't trust him. That's the one thing in their relationship that has fundamentally grown over five seasons. She trusts him less now than she ever has, and coming out with this one secret isn't going to fix the several dozen times he has lied to her and screwed her over. If she was going to say yes, she would say yes after she's had a month to process the whole "he's an alien" thing. Her saying yes at this point doesn't make sense and it's bad storytelling to boot-- way, way too quick. ARGH.
So, Lana goes to see Lex because she's his friend and he's distraught. Lex is drunk, has a confrontation with her involving a) his feelings about her and b) the fact that she obviously knows something about Clark now (he can just tell). She leaves, he chases, car accident ensues, she dies. I celebrate for a few moments. Then Clark goes to Jor-El, who has a magical crystal that can take him back in time to fix it.
Fume meter: 10/10. You have got to be fucking kidding me. Well, now we know why she had to decide in the first ten minutes-- so when she dies in minute twelve it can be extra tragic, and so they have another 30 minutes to wave a magic wand and fix it!
Jor-El utters the usual dire warnings about how there will be consequences, are you sure you really want to do this, time travel bad, blah blah. Clark goes anyway. Does he go back to stop the car from hitting her? No. Does he tell Lana what happened so that she can not repeat her mistake? No. Does he do anything even remotely heroic to try and fix the problem? No. He decides that the best way to prevent the accident is just not to tell her his secret in the first place. Chloe actually suggests alternative solutions; but no, telling Lana would just place her in danger eventually from someone.
Fume meter: 11/10. *repeated, frustrated headdesk* For the whole. Fucking. Series. We've been waiting for Clark to just tell her. It's the narratively correct move. Now he tells her, something like three seasons too late... and they take it back within fifteen minutes. You throw in the world's lamest plot device and you waste it on this. Words cannot express my feelings at this point. Violence could conceivably express my feelings.
So, the status quo is maintained. Some predictable time-travel parallelism occurs and Lana is saved from dying again. But since she doesn't go, Jonathan Kent dies of a heart attack instead. And they squeeze that and the entire over-produced funeral sequence into the same episode.
I just... come on. This is NormalView material here.