thoughts on recent episode
pete rose
stands, yet this week, it didn't appear to matter. Lex and Clark were
back to being good buddies. It didn't seem to bother Clark much that
Lex let out a huge toxic cloud that almost killed the entire town, but
I guess being careless while researching biological warfare is not
nearly as bad as having one night stands.
I would think there'd be a reason that the antidote took 5+ hours to
reach 1000 degrees Kelvin.. like maybe it had to be heated slowly?
Clark was pretty careless there. What if he overheated it or otherwise
screwed it up? It would've been hillarious if the doctor said "Crap,
the machine malfunctioned, it's all ruined now". If the antidote
could've been cooked that fast, I think the piece of medical equipment
could've heated it up a lot faster than 5 hours.
Lionel not wanting to leave jail because "That's where I belong" was
just plain goofy. It would've been much better if he was pleasantly
surprised and happy, yet wondering how it happened. That whole scene
with the warden made me want to heave. Come on, Lionel can't possibly
enjoy sitting at that table all day waiting for someone to visit him.
Anyone want to bet that Dr. Quinn pulled the strings to get him out?
I hope Chloe reserves some space in Bellreeve.. Won't that be fun,
maybe she'll get to roommate with one of the Krytonite freaks she
helped put away...
What's the deal with Jason? He ruins his life by quitting school and
following Lana back to Smallville.. and then decides to bolt 4 weeks
later, because he's too embarrassed about asking Lex for a job? WTF?
Or maybe Jason is the smartest guy in town.. after all, he's been shot
at, had his girlfriend possessed, and been poisoned by LutherCorp.
hahaha. Maybe he's the only one smart enough to get out of town.
Actually, if he is really leaving permanently (which I doubt), it
would've been funny if he said he's tired of his life being in danger
every week.
Clark's nightmare was kind of cool. Lex's was ok.. the others were
pretty weak.
Robert Goodman
> Lionel not wanting to leave jail because "That's where I belong" was
> just plain goofy.
Yet notice that he still claims not to be guilty of the crime he was
originally convicted of. I think it would be very interesting to find
out that he really wasn't, despite the effects of the truth juice on
Chloe!
> It would've been much better if he was pleasantly
> surprised and happy, yet wondering how it happened. That whole scene
> with the warden made me want to heave.
In large measure it was to evoke Prometheus. See "Prometheus Bound".
> What's the deal with Jason? He ruins his life by quitting school and
> following Lana back to Smallville.. and then decides to bolt 4 weeks
> later, because he's too embarrassed about asking Lex for a job? WTF?
He's hiding something. (Why should he be different from anybody else
in Smallville?)
> Clark's nightmare was kind of cool. Lex's was ok.. the others were
> pretty weak.
They were all fairly ho-hum to me, and Lex's was mostly reused
footage. :-(
Robert in the Bronx
Robert Goodman
> I hope Chloe reserves some space in Bellreeve.. Won't that be fun,
> maybe she'll get to roommate with one of the Krytonite freaks she
> helped put away...
Notice the inversion of the plot of "Arsenic & Old Lace"? Instead of
learning she's NOT part of a family with hereditary insanity...!
pete rose
> bfor...@yahoo.com (pete rose) wrote in message news:<a8253271.04120...@posting.google.com>...
>
> > Lionel not wanting to leave jail because "That's where I belong" was
> > just plain goofy.
>
> Yet notice that he still claims not to be guilty of the crime he was
> originally convicted of. I think it would be very interesting to find
> out that he really wasn't, despite the effects of the truth juice on
> Chloe!
>
Yeah, that was really wierd. I think he is really guilty though of
killing his parents. Although I agree, it would be hilarious if he
wasn't. But that whole converstation with the warden was dumb.
> > What's the deal with Jason? He ruins his life by quitting school and
> > following Lana back to Smallville.. and then decides to bolt 4 weeks
> > later, because he's too embarrassed about asking Lex for a job? WTF?
>
> He's hiding something. (Why should he be different from anybody else
> in Smallville?)
>
Of course, I'm sure the writers had a specific reason to bring him in,
just like liver-platlet-zombie boy was brought in as Lana's boyfriend
LOL.
> > Clark's nightmare was kind of cool. Lex's was ok.. the others were
> > pretty weak.
>
> They were all fairly ho-hum to me, and Lex's was mostly reused
> footage. :-(
>
Now I agree. All in all, it was a pretty weak episode. I really don't
care if Chloe is going to go batty in 5-20 years.
Robert Goodman
> > > Lionel not wanting to leave jail because "That's where I belong" was
> > > just plain goofy.
> > Yet notice that he still claims not to be guilty of the crime he was
> > originally convicted of. I think it would be very interesting to find
> > out that he really wasn't, despite the effects of the truth juice on
> > Chloe!
> Yeah, that was really wierd. I think he is really guilty though of
> killing his parents. Although I agree, it would be hilarious if he
> wasn't. But that whole converstation with the warden was dumb.
Now I'm thinking it was done that way partly to reflect Prometheus's
speech in "Prometheus Bound" -- saying he was guilty and a bad guy
when we all know he is (or at least, in Lionel's case, THINKS he is)
the good guy.
> All in all, it was a pretty weak episode. I really don't
> care if Chloe is going to go batty in 5-20 years.
I have a feeling they're going to speed up that timetable.
Robert in the Bronx
Gary
> stands, yet this week, it didn't appear to matter. Lex and Clark were
> back to being good buddies. It didn't seem to bother Clark much that
> Lex let out a huge toxic cloud that almost killed the entire town, but
> I guess being careless while researching biological warfare is not
> nearly as bad as having one night stands.
I think it was subtle, but there was a chill in the air between Clark and
Lex. I dont think all is rosy in their garden.
> I would think there'd be a reason that the antidote took 5+ hours to
> reach 1000 degrees Kelvin.. like maybe it had to be heated slowly?
> Clark was pretty careless there.
His parents, friends and half the town are on the verge of dying. I would
take my chances too.
> Lionel not wanting to leave jail because "That's where I belong" was
> just plain goofy.
I thought it was very clever, something fishy going on. The smile at the
every end of the show makes me very suspicious of Lionel.
Gary.
Todd
>Clark got real upset last week at Lex for having all those 1 night
>stands, yet this week, it didn't appear to matter. Lex and Clark were
>back to being good buddies. It didn't seem to bother Clark much that
>Lex let out a huge toxic cloud that almost killed the entire town, but
>I guess being careless while researching biological warfare is not
>nearly as bad as having one night stands.
The carelessness wasn't Lex's fault; it was his employees' faults.
Lex was willing to use his resources to make things right.
>I would think there'd be a reason that the antidote took 5+ hours to
>reach 1000 degrees Kelvin.. like maybe it had to be heated slowly?
>Clark was pretty careless there. What if he overheated it or otherwise
>screwed it up? It would've been hillarious if the doctor said "Crap,
>the machine malfunctioned, it's all ruined now". If the antidote
>could've been cooked that fast, I think the piece of medical equipment
>could've heated it up a lot faster than 5 hours.
Yeah, that didn't quite make since, unless we assume Clark's heat
vision, being a psionic power, allows him to heat in just the right
way, without the wait.
>Lionel not wanting to leave jail because "That's where I belong" was
>just plain goofy. It would've been much better if he was pleasantly
>surprised and happy, yet wondering how it happened. That whole scene
>with the warden made me want to heave. Come on, Lionel can't possibly
>enjoy sitting at that table all day waiting for someone to visit him.
>Anyone want to bet that Dr. Quinn pulled the strings to get him out?
I'm leaning towards Swann's assistant, but I wouldn't rule out Jason's
mom. Lionel seems to represent the comic book Luthor from Byrne's
reboot to his "death" from Kryptonite cancer, and Lex represents the
Luthor in cloned body that was restored by Neron.
>Clark's nightmare was kind of cool. Lex's was ok.. the others were
>pretty weak.
I thought Jason's was the best, and Clark's was just atrocious.
Seriously, a second Kryptonite meteor shower was the best thing he/the
writers could come up with? How about a gun-toting maniac who's mad
because the doctors aren't helping his/her significant other. And Lex
could be the one with the Kryptonite, since he's known since season
one that it effects Clark. (If he doesn't, he's too stupid to be
Superman's worst enemy.)
Brent McKee
"Todd" <no...@nowhere.com> wrote in message
news:b0c7s0takavrjdlrp...@4ax.com...
Sorry but Clark's biggest fear, the fear that has kept him from telling Lana
about his powers and his origins has always been that she would blame him
for the meteor shower that killed her parents. That's the key factor about
the nightmare that Clark had -- the meteor shower simply gave a final twist
to it, namely that Lana wouldn't just hate him for being "responsible" for
her parents' deaths but would deliberately take an active or passive role in
either killing him or letting him die of Kryptonite poisoning.
--
Brent McKee http://brentmckee.blogspot.com/
To reply by email, please remove the capital letters (S and N) from
the email address
"If we cease to judge this world, we may find ourselves, very quickly,
in one which is infinitely worse."
- Margaret Atwood
"Nothing is more dangerous than a dogmatic worldview - nothing more
constraining, more blinding to innovation, more destructive of
openness to novelty. "
- Stephen Jay Gould (1941-2002)
Bozo the Evil Klown
>And Lex
>could be the one with the Kryptonite, since he's known since season
>one that it effects Clark. (If he doesn't, he's too stupid to be
>Superman's worst enemy.)
Which ep did Lex see that?
*****
The Joker in the Eeeeeeevil Cabal Deck of Cards.
By Grabthar's Hammer, by Pollock's Putty Knife, by the sparkling, refreshing
Screwdriver of Smirnoff- YOU SHALL BE QUOTED!!!!!!
Todd
>Now I'm thinking it was done that way partly to reflect Prometheus's
>speech in "Prometheus Bound" -- saying he was guilty and a bad guy
>when we all know he is (or at least, in Lionel's case, THINKS he is)
>the good guy.
You think American television writers have ever read anything like
"Prometheus Bound", or even know what it is?
Yeah, sure.
Todd
>Notice the inversion of the plot of "Arsenic & Old Lace"? Instead of
>learning she's NOT part of a family with hereditary insanity...!
Are you suggesting that's deliberate, or just think it's an
interesting comparison? I'm not sure what "Arsenic and Old Lace" is,
unless it's an old movie, and would be surprised to learn the authors
know it.
Rivervillagelady
>From: Todd no...@nowhere.com
>Date: 12/18/2004 1:14 AM Eastern Standard Time
>Message-id: <b0c7s0takavrjdlrp...@4ax.com>
>
>bfor...@yahoo.com (pete rose) wrote:
>>I would think there'd be a reason that the antidote took 5+ hours to
>>reach 1000 degrees Kelvin.. like maybe it had to be heated slowly?
>>Clark was pretty careless there. What if he overheated it or otherwise
>>screwed it up?
I can't decide whether there was an implied screw up of Clark almost getting
caught using his heat vision, or whether there was the suggestion of Clark
starting to let Lex in on his secrets with a
"well-what-did-you-expect-me-to-do" sort of shrug to Lex, when Lex turned to
look at him when after the alarms sounded.
--Diane
Micky DuPree
<bSm...@shaw.caN> writes:
: "Todd" <no...@nowhere.com> wrote in message
: news:b0c7s0takavrjdlrp...@4ax.com...
:: bfor...@yahoo.com (pete rose) wrote:
::: Clark's nightmare was kind of cool. Lex's was ok.. the others were
::: pretty weak.
::
:: I thought Jason's was the best, and Clark's was just atrocious.
:: Seriously, a second Kryptonite meteor shower was the best thing he/
:: the writers could come up with? [....]
:
: Sorry but Clark's biggest fear, the fear that has kept him from
: telling Lana about his powers and his origins has always been that she
: would blame him for the meteor shower that killed her parents.
True, but that means that the problem with Clark's biggest fear is that
it's old news. I think the strongest reason for doing a nightmare
episode is to reveal important things we didn't really know before and
wouldn't otherwise be let in on in dramatic fashion. But Clark's
nightmare(s)? We pretty much already knew. Lana's? So old and
repetitious that it's really hard to care. Jason's? Care even less at
this point. I didn't mind him when he was Clark's agreeable coach, but
he's straying partway back into Adam territory: the useless story
appendage of an already superfluous character. ("The Adventures of
Superboy's Ex-Girlfriend's New Boyfriend"? Pretty tenuous connection to
the story there.)
: That's the key factor about the nightmare that Clark had -- the meteor
: shower simply gave a final twist to it, namely that Lana wouldn't just
: hate him for being "responsible" for her parents' deaths but would
: deliberately take an active or passive role in either killing him or
: letting him die of Kryptonite poisoning.
I took the meteor shower to be the "dream logic" plot device of Clark's
mind for revealing the dreaded information to Lana. The Lana-kills-
Clark ending strikes me as an outrageously exaggerated take on the high-
school geek fear of being shot down by the Princess. "Me go out with
you? But you're a geek (alien)! You're not the captain of the football
team. You're not even one of the cool kids (human)! Everything about
you would ruin my life. You are unworthy." Then take that to murderous
extremes.
On the good side, Chloe's nightmare was new, and somewhat interesting.
(You know those mother-and-child reunions they have on _Oprah_?
Doesn't always work out like that.) It makes me cast ahead to wonder
how they're going to get her out of Clark's life eventually even though
she, not Lois or Clark, is the one you'd think most destined to go on to
work at the _Daily Planet_.
On the very interesting side, we now know that even at this stage, Lex
already fears that he will try to destroy the world. Whoa. What puts a
fear like that into a 24-year-old who will risk his own life to bring
his employees back from the brink? I guess Ryan, Lionel, and Lex
himself weren't exaggerating when they said that he has a lot of
darkness inside him. Problem is, Lex still has a lot of decency in him
and I've yet to see cold malice in him apart from wanting to see Lionel
suffer (which is Lionel-specific, not aimed at the rest of the world).
I'm beginning to wonder if they're leaving Lex's turn towards evil till
too late in the story to be believable. I don't see anything in Lex's
background to date that explains the missiles, unless one resorts to
Lillian's lesson that you have to kill the thing you love in order to
make it happy.
On the fooey side, I'd love to have seen Jonathan and Martha's worst
fears. Even though we can kind of guess at them (the government taking
Clark away and trying to put him under a microscope?), they've never
given them full articulation, and it would be interesting to see
Schneider and O'Toole play having the exact same nightmare and then
comparing notes with each other later.
It would have also given some depth and sympathy to the Kent mindset of
protecting the Big Secret at all costs. If we could see what kind of
threat they feel they're laboring under, they wouldn't seem quite so
paranoid and insular.
Given all the close calls they've had, though, I do have to wonder why
they haven't all sat around the kitchen table by now and discussed
contingency plans for what they're going to do if they're finally found
out. If Lex hadn't killed Roger Nixon, the jig would have been up two
years ago. If "Kara" hadn't killed Agent Loder, he would have been on
to them by now. You'd think the Kents would have come up with something
to fall back on.
An uneven episode for me overall. On the one hand both Clark and Lex
had the moral courage to step up when others' lives were in the balance,
and Lex was willing to put his life on the line as well. Lex was also
willing to decline Clark's offer of what he suspects are alien tissue
samples in favor of concentrating on cleaning up the immediate mess, and
you know that had to hurt.
On the other hand, practically nothing else in the LuthorCorp lab scenes
made sense, particularly their reliance on Lex's reaction to the
antidote when it's already been established that Lex knows (and Clark
suspects) that Lex is a meteor freak whose system fights off both
pathogens and toxins better than an ordinary human's. The dialogue in
the lab sounded histrionic, almost caricaturish of movie serials at
times, and I pitied the guy playing Dr. Ford, because he was handed the
worst lines. There's contrived and then there's contrived. Lex
violating quarantine protocol and Dr. Ford letting him, just so Lex
could become exposed? And someone's already mentioned Clark getting
script protection for his decision that an unfamiliar substance reaching
1000 degrees Kelvin in ten seconds rather than in five hours yields
exactly the same result. "Your puny science is no match for me!"
-Micky
Micky DuPree
bford...@yahoo.com (pete rose) writes:
: robgo...@bestweb.net (Robert Goodman) wrote in message
: news:<efcc2f4e.04120...@posting.google.com>...
:: bford...@yahoo.com (pete rose) wrote in message
:: news:<a8253271.04120...@posting.google.com>...
::: Lionel not wanting to leave jail because "That's where I belong" was
::: just plain goofy.
::
:: Yet notice that he still claims not to be guilty of the crime he was
:: originally convicted of. I think it would be very interesting to
:: find out that he really wasn't, despite the effects of the truth
:: juice on Chloe!
:
: Yeah, that was really wierd. I think he is really guilty though of
: killing his parents. Although I agree, it would be hilarious if he
: wasn't. But that whole converstation with the warden was dumb.
Never seen Angel on _Buffy_ living in the gutter for years because he
was wallowing in remorse?
The only way I can get Lionel's account in "Scared" to jibe with his
admission under the influence in "Truth" is if he had second thoughts.
If he actually did give the order to blow up his parents, then his
admission on Chloe's voicemail (both versions) is true. But if he later
rescinded the order only to have Edge balk and say it was too late, that
the deal with the slumlord was already in place, then I think that
technically Lionel wouldn't be guilty of first-degree murder (although
they might could get him on something else, like conspiracy).
But I doubt the writers put that much thought into it. I think it's
just a contradictory retcon (not the first on the series) and from now
on we're supposed to take as fact that Lionel is not and has never been
guilty of killing his parents. This despite the fact that his guilt was
a driving plot point of the third season, up to and including being the
underlying motivation behind Lionel reluctantly having Lex committed to
an asylum and having his brain fried in order to forget something that
now never actually happened.
<snip>
: I really don't care if Chloe is going to go batty in 5-20 years.
I do, but having the threat hang over her right now is even more
significant.
-Micky
Micky DuPree
<g...@garywhittle.co.uk> writes:
: bfor...@yahoo.com (pete rose) wrote:
:: Clark got real upset last week at Lex for having all those 1 night
:: stands, yet this week, it didn't appear to matter. Lex and Clark were
:: back to being good buddies. It didn't seem to bother Clark much that
:: Lex let out a huge toxic cloud that almost killed the entire town,
:: but I guess being careless while researching biological warfare is
:: not nearly as bad as having one night stands.
:
: I think it was subtle, but there was a chill in the air between Clark
: and Lex. I dont think all is rosy in their garden.
In fact, they were pretty testy with each other at the beginning of
"Scare," with Clark suspicious of LuthorCorp and Lex trying to deal with
Clark's illegal entry to the plant on top of a major industrial
accident. By the end of the episode, though, Lex had basically turned
down confirmation of Clark's Big Secret and risked his own life to make
right the disaster that had happened under his command. You can't get
better proof than that of the kind of person Lex is at least trying to
be.
:: I would think there'd be a reason that the antidote took 5+ hours to
:: reach 1000 degrees Kelvin.. like maybe it had to be heated slowly?
:: Clark was pretty careless there.
:
: His parents, friends and half the town are on the verge of dying. I
: would take my chances too.
If Clark really wanted to minimize the risks to the infected people, he
would have asked Dr. Ford what the effects of more rapid heating would
be on the antidote before he gambled the whole batch on his own secret
experiment. If he got the green light, then he'd go ahead and heat the
stuff up. But that would mean breaking cover, and the writers don't
want that, so Clark gets script protection against unwanted side effects
to these inexpert decisions he makes. No wonder he has so much
trouble with the "Actions have consequences" lesson. Too often they
don't, at least not negative ones.
:: Lionel not wanting to leave jail because "That's where I belong" was
:: just plain goofy.
:
: I thought it was very clever, something fishy going on. The smile at
: the every end of the show makes me very suspicious of Lionel.
Though Lionel has been struck by the win-the-lottery version of
redemption with no heavy lifting required, I think they're trying to
play it as genuine. There's no percentage to original-recipe Lionel in
going on and on to the warden about what a bad, bad man he's been
*after* she's told him that his conviction has been overturned.
"Overturned" means with no strings attached, no parole, no probation.
Lionel doesn't even need the warden's good opinion of him to stay out of
prison now. I can't for the life of me figure out why the writers want
Lionel to be genuinely redeemed (unless it's to be an expositional
shortcut to insight on Lex's psyche, like he was in "Bound"), but that
seems to be the way they're going. No bets on whether they'll let it be
permanent, though.
-Micky
Micky DuPree
evilk...@aol.comedy (Bozo the Evil Klown) writes:
: Todd posts:
:: And Lex could be the one with the Kryptonite, since he's known since
:: season one that it effects Clark. (If he doesn't, he's too stupid to
:: be Superman's worst enemy.)
:
: Which ep did Lex see that?
Arguably in the pilot, when Lex saw the weakened Clark as the scarecrow
wearing Lana's necklace, and then saw Clark's rapid recovery when he was
separated from the necklace.
In "Metamorphosis," Lex had the opportunity to see Clark react again to
the necklace when he returned it to Clark. He also got to see Clark's
response when the necklace was covered once more by the lead box.
Then again, Lionel should have clued in after seeing Clark's reaction to
the kryptonite key in "Exodus" ("Clark? You don't look well. Are you
all right?"), but they dumbed him down to the point of retcon for
"Transference" so that he had no clue as to Clark's specific abilities
nor his Achilles' heel ("What weakens me?"). If they're willing to do
it to Lionel, who's to say they're not willing to do it to Lex, too, as
if his extensive Clark archive never existed?
-Micky
BucketButt
> I took the meteor shower to be the "dream logic" plot device of Clark's
> mind for revealing the dreaded information to Lana. The Lana-kills-
> Clark ending strikes me as an outrageously exaggerated take on the high-
> school geek fear of being shot down by the Princess. "Me go out with
> you? But you're a geek (alien)! You're not the captain of the football
> team. You're not even one of the cool kids (human)! Everything about
> you would ruin my life. You are unworthy." Then take that to murderous
> extremes.
I agree about the "high-school geek fear" -- and the producers/writers
actually did some clever preparatory work for this, although perhaps by
accident. While Clark as an alien is in a way the ultimate high school
geek, he has spent his entire life hiding his geekiness, and so far he has
succeeded fairly well; but he fears being exposed and then being rejected
-- not only by Lana, but by everyone he knows. And while he isn't the
team captain, he is now the starting quarterback, and he's leading his
team to a winning season; but being a football star isn't enough because
Lana's in love with the (former) coach! No matter what Clark does, he's
afraid it will never be enough to win fair lady.
> On the good side, Chloe's nightmare was new, and somewhat interesting.
> (You know those mother-and-child reunions they have on _Oprah_?
> Doesn't always work out like that.) It makes me cast ahead to wonder
> how they're going to get her out of Clark's life eventually even though
> she, not Lois or Clark, is the one you'd think most destined to go on to
> work at the _Daily Planet_.
If we didn't know that Chloe isn't part of the DC Universe (at this point,
anyway), she'd be the odds-on favorite to become the famous reporter as
well as Clark's eventual One True Love. That's why I believe the
producers will either kill the character or set her on a different career
path ... or possibly let her follow her mother into madness.
> On the very interesting side, we now know that even at this stage, Lex
> already fears that he will try to destroy the world. Whoa. What puts a
> fear like that into a 24-year-old who will risk his own life to bring
> his employees back from the brink? I guess Ryan, Lionel, and Lex
> himself weren't exaggerating when they said that he has a lot of
> darkness inside him. Problem is, Lex still has a lot of decency in him
> and I've yet to see cold malice in him apart from wanting to see Lionel
> suffer (which is Lionel-specific, not aimed at the rest of the world).
> I'm beginning to wonder if they're leaving Lex's turn towards evil till
> too late in the story to be believable. I don't see anything in Lex's
> background to date that explains the missiles, unless one resorts to
> Lillian's lesson that you have to kill the thing you love in order to
> make it happy.
In previous versions of the DC Universe Lex Luthor was either undiluted
evil or the sort of "above morality" person we saw in pre-Transference
Lionel. According to The DC Comics Encyclopedia, the most recent version
of Lex in the DCU tepmpers that a bit: he's ruthless but not entirely
heartless, and he does care about the future of humanity (which is why he
doesn't trust "the alien"). What we see in Smallville-Lex is someone who
does care about people (some people, at least) and wants to do good, but
whose ambition and distrust of most people are combining to overpower his
better nature.
> On the fooey side, I'd love to have seen Jonathan and Martha's worst
> fears. Even though we can kind of guess at them (the government taking
> Clark away and trying to put him under a microscope?), they've never
> given them full articulation, and it would be interesting to see
> Schneider and O'Toole play having the exact same nightmare and then
> comparing notes with each other later.
>
> It would have also given some depth and sympathy to the Kent mindset of
> protecting the Big Secret at all costs. If we could see what kind of
> threat they feel they're laboring under, they wouldn't seem quite so
> paranoid and insular.
>
> Given all the close calls they've had, though, I do have to wonder why
> they haven't all sat around the kitchen table by now and discussed
> contingency plans for what they're going to do if they're finally found
> out. If Lex hadn't killed Roger Nixon, the jig would have been up two
> years ago. If "Kara" hadn't killed Agent Loder, he would have been on
> to them by now. You'd think the Kents would have come up with something
> to fall back on.
I'm sure they've given it lots of thought, and probably even discussed the
problem a few times; but realistically, what CAN they do if the secret
ever gets out? Consider a partial list of those who know some or all of
Clark's secret: Pete Ross, Dr. Dropkick, Dr. Swan (assuming he's still
alive), Bridgette Crosby, "Jor-El", Bart Allen. Some people know enough
to suspect that Clark is more than just an average teenage boy: Chloe
Sullivan, Lana Lang, Lex and Lionel Luthor, Perry White, various others.
And then there are still more who knew some or all of the secret but are
now dead or otherwise unable to tell anyone. As secrets go, this one
hasn't been kept all that well.
But the Kents aren't murderers, and the writers haven't introduced
Amnesium (yet), so there are only two things they can do: try to keep the
secret from becoming more widely known; and persuade people that Clark
isn't responsible for the sometimes-incredible things that seem to happen
wherever he goes. Even trying to pass him off as just another a "Freak Of
The Week" would be unsatisfactory, since FOTWs have a tendency to cause a
lot of grief for the inhabitants of our favorite Kansas town.
--
Walter Luffman Medina, TN USA
Amateur curmudgeon, equal opportunity annoyer
When you see Dan Rather, you CBS
Todd
>Sorry but Clark's biggest fear, the fear that has kept him from telling Lana
>about his powers and his origins has always been that she would blame him
>for the meteor shower that killed her parents. That's the key factor about
>the nightmare that Clark had -- the meteor shower simply gave a final twist
>to it, namely that Lana wouldn't just hate him for being "responsible" for
>her parents' deaths but would deliberately take an active or passive role in
>either killing him or letting him die of Kryptonite poisoning.
I understand about Clark's biggest fear. I've even reminded people
about it in another recent thread. However, I just felt that a second
meteor storm was a stupid reason for all this to come out.
The nut with the gun would have worked just as well. He shoots at
someone, Clark speeds in to catch the bullet, heat visions the gun.
Lana says "you're not human." Lex steps up, with a shard of
Kryptonite and tells Lana that Clark brought the meteor shower with
him. She says "you killed my parents." Stabs him with the Kryptonite
shard. End of dream.
Could use a little work, but it beats what the writers came up with.
If they really needed a meteor storm, it could have been Lana's
nightmare. Have it kill Clark, Chloe, Jason, and the Kents. She has
a reason to fear it.
Todd
>>And Lex
>>could be the one with the Kryptonite, since he's known since season
>>one that it effects Clark. (If he doesn't, he's too stupid to be
>>Superman's worst enemy.)
evilk...@aol.comedy (Bozo the Evil Klown) wrote:
>Which ep did Lex see that?
Somewhere in season one. Lex has, I think, Lana's necklace, and he
brings it close to Clark. Clark tries to hide that it has some effect
on him, but isn't quite successful.
BucketButt
> I understand about Clark's biggest fear. I've even reminded people
> about it in another recent thread. However, I just felt that a second
> meteor storm was a stupid reason for all this to come out.
Of course it's stupid, but nightmares don't have to make sense. Clark's
worst-fear dream (I *think* it was a dream) was built on fragments of his
real experiences, but not in a consistent manner. In real life, Lana
might be unable to love Clark because his presence would remind her of the
event that killed her parents; but I doubt she would hold him responsible
for the meteor shower itself. He didn't direct the meteors' course, after
all. (Hmm ... did the ship cause them to accompany it, perhaps?)
> The nut with the gun would have worked just as well. He shoots at
> someone, Clark speeds in to catch the bullet, heat visions the gun.
> Lana says "you're not human." Lex steps up, with a shard of
> Kryptonite and tells Lana that Clark brought the meteor shower with
> him. She says "you killed my parents." Stabs him with the Kryptonite
> shard. End of dream.
>
> Could use a little work, but it beats what the writers came up with.
Lana could easily assume that Clark is just another meteor-freak rather
than a "strange visitor from another planet". After all, Smallville has
certainly seen its share of meteor-freaks but few of its residents have
(knowingly) seen an actual space-alien.
I'm not persuaded that Clark would consider being killed by Lana a greater
fear than being rejected by her and dying as a result. In fact, that may
be what his fear-dream was really about: a feeling that he couldn't go on
living if Lana completely rejected him.
> If they really needed a meteor storm, it could have been Lana's
> nightmare. Have it kill Clark, Chloe, Jason, and the Kents. She has
> a reason to fear it.
Now, that's a good idea, and it could have worked very well.
Micky DuPree
<bucke...@bellsouth.net> writes:
: On Mon, 27 Dec 2004 11:32:13 +0000, Micky DuPree wrote:
:: The Lana-kills-Clark ending strikes me as an outrageously exaggerated
:: take on the high-school geek fear of being shot down by the Princess.
:: "Me go out with you? But you're a geek (alien)! You're not the
:: captain of the football team. You're not even one of the cool kids
:: (human)! Everything about you would ruin my life. You are
:: unworthy." Then take that to murderous extremes.
:
: I agree about the "high-school geek fear" -- and the producers/writers
: actually did some clever preparatory work for this, although perhaps
: by accident.
I think it was deliberate. Though Clark defensively tells Lois that he
sees himself, not as a geek, but as an outsider, it amounts to the same
kind of differentiation from the mainstream. Just working on the
_Torch_ evidently sets one apart as geeky at Smallville High (which I
guess is supposed to explain why it was manned entirely by freshmen when
the series began and they haven't had anyone else rush to join the staff
since). All the main characters except for Lana (and Whitney and Jason,
if they even count as main characters) see themselves or are seen as
outsiders to some extent. Jonathan used to be mainstream (ex-star
athlete) but he retreated to the fringe when he and Martha adopted
Clark.
: While Clark as an alien is in a way the ultimate high school geek, he
: has spent his entire life hiding his geekiness, and so far he has
: succeeded fairly well ...
See above re _Torch_. Clark has shunned competitive sports until very
recently, and that's obviously a big deal in Smallville. Since the
Kents are reclusive (e.g., no birthday parties for young Clark) to keep
Clark's Secret protected, he's already been socially marginalized to
some extent. True, the Kents have succeeded in keeping Clark's literal
alienness hidden, but it's come at the cost of social alienation and a
life bounded on all sides by fear of discovery. This takes a kid who
really could be captain of the football team and puts him into a geek
role. The Big Secret warps all the Kents somewhat and keeps them from
being an ideal nuclear family.
: ... but he fears being exposed and then being rejected -- not only by
: Lana, but by everyone he knows.
He does, but notice he didn't have a nightmare about the others. He had
a nightmare about Lana, and through the magic of plot contrivance, we
therefore know for a fact that this is his number-one fear. This isn't
really news either. He knows he doesn't have to worry about Pete's
reaction anymore (although at this stage Pete's name may never even come
up again). Clark has already seen Lex's reaction to revelation with his
own eyes in "Shattered" and "Asylum," and the response was not
rejection. Clark polled Chloe on the subject in "Visitor" and she said
that aliens might actually be an improvement on humans, but in the same
episode he also polled Lana and she admitted she'd be "a little freaked
out" by an alien. The big stumbling block for him has always been Lana,
and he's blamed himself for messing up her life ever since the pilot.
His nightmare projects that onto her.
: And while he isn't the team captain, he is now the starting
: quarterback, and he's leading his team to a winning season; but being
: a football star isn't enough because Lana's in love with the (former)
: coach! No matter what Clark does, he's afraid it will never be enough
: to win fair lady.
I think Jason's just a red herring to give Lana something to do in a
separate plot line now that she's no longer a serious love interest for
the hero of the series (in fact, she's not hanging out much with any of
the other regular characters). As long as Clark sees and treats his
origins as a curse to be hidden, then no superficial gridiron victory is
ever going to overcome that. When he goes home at night, he's still
going to be the alien that's passing for human, the pale-skinned black
person during Jim Crow, the assimilated Jew in the restricted club, the
closeted gay, whatever. They've exhaustively gone through this already.
Clark can't have Lana without telling her the truth, and he's unwilling
to tell it to her. Even if Jason weren't in the picture, there'd still
be no other way to break the impasse. We got that a few seasons ago.
:: I don't see anything in Lex's background to date that explains the
:: missiles, unless one resorts to Lillian's lesson that you have to
:: kill the thing you love in order to make it happy.
:
: In previous versions of the DC Universe Lex Luthor was either
: undiluted evil or the sort of "above morality" person we saw in
: pre-Transference Lionel. According to The DC Comics Encyclopedia, the
: most recent version of Lex in the DCU tepmpers that a bit: he's
: ruthless but not entirely heartless, and he does care about the future
: of humanity (which is why he doesn't trust "the alien").
If there really were an alien that powerful and unaccountable, Lex's
version of the legend of Naman and Sageeth would actually be the more
reasonable one. No fallible being should be able to wield that much
power over others without checks and balances. But in fiction, Superman
is posited as an ideal, therefore we trust both his morals and his
judgment without question.
: What we see in Smallville-Lex is someone who does care about people
: (some people, at least) and wants to do good, but whose ambition and
: distrust of most people are combining to overpower his better nature.
Yeah, but I can't draw a line between that and launching the missiles
and then smiling about it. That's just simple physical nihilism. Does
President Luthor feel he has to destroy humanity in order to save it? I
can't get there from here, which is why I think they're leaving some
crucial parts of his characterization until too late to be believable.
:: Given all the close calls [the Kents have] had, though, I do have to
:: wonder why they haven't all sat around the kitchen table by now and
:: discussed contingency plans for what they're going to do if they're
:: finally found out. If Lex hadn't killed Roger Nixon, the jig would
:: have been up two years ago. If "Kara" hadn't killed Agent Loder, he
:: would have been on to them by now. You'd think the Kents would have
:: come up with something to fall back on.
:
: I'm sure they've given it lots of thought, and probably even discussed
: the problem a few times ...
I won't believe they have done so until I see it. The Kents' lives seem
predicated on pretending they can keep on going the way they always
have.
: ... but realistically, what CAN they do if the secret ever gets out?
1) Try to go into hiding. That's what I'd expect them to think of. 2)
Beat the discloser to the punch, go to the press themselves, and hope
for the best. 3) Threaten the potential discloser with grievous bodily
harm to themselves and their loved ones. (I'd expect the Kents to
reject this one, but it's worth bringing up even if only to hear them
reject it.) 4) Try to bribe the potential discloser with super-favors
of some sort. 5) Tell Lex first and ask him to call in some favors of
his own to protect them. 6) Surely I've missed one or two. People live
with secrets all the time in real life.
It's a question worth asking and answering, showing what the Kents are
made of, but I don't expect it ever to be broached, because the writers
seem to want them to be made of denial.
: Consider a partial list of those who know some or all of Clark's
: secret: Pete Ross, Dr. Dropkick, Dr. Swan (assuming he's still alive),
: Bridgette Crosby, "Jor-El", Bart Allen.
What about them? Knowledge of the Secret made Pete a target, arguing
against disclosure, if only to protect the other person. Dr. Bryce
turned out to be a bad risk, although being wanted for attempted murder
probably prevents her from telling the authorities. "Jor-El" has his/
its own agenda. Bart Allen has his own secret to protect at the moment,
as does Kyle Tippet (the surviving Handshake Guy from "Hug"). Of them
all, only Swann and his associates can be seen as wild cards, and as it
turns out, the reclusive Dr. Swann tends to hoard his discoveries. He
kept the lid on his decryption of an alien message for years before he
ever came in contact with Clark, and at least so far, he's still not
sharing it with the rest of the world.
: Some people know enough to suspect that Clark is more than just an
: average teenage boy: Chloe Sullivan, Lana Lang, Lex and Lionel Luthor,
: Perry White, various others.
Suspecting it is one thing; proving it in the face of skeptical
authorities and an uncooperative Clark is another. Even the sheriff of
Smallville, who's seen some very weird stuff by now, doesn't subscribe
to paranormal theories. Perry tried to tell people about the flying
tractor and just got ridiculed for his trouble.
: And then there are still more who knew some or all of the secret but
: are now dead or otherwise unable to tell anyone. As secrets go, this
: one hasn't been kept all that well.
On the contrary, the Big Secret is fiatted by the script to be kept
well, even when logic says it shouldn't be. The writers will never tire
of meting out amnesia, coma, death, and discredit (in the form of
psychiatric commitment) to most of those who get too close to the
Secret. Most of the rest have their own secrets to protect, for
whatever reasons of their own. The Kents have come close to being
exposed numerous times, but they still don't treat exposure as something
to plan for, like a natural disaster you hope won't happen but that you
want to be prepared for anyway. At the *least*, I'd expect them to want
their friends to hear it from them rather than reading about it in the
papers.
: But the Kents aren't murderers ...
Jonathan seemed willing to sacrifice both himself and Nixon if that was
what it would take to keep the Secret intact. But no, in general,
they're not going to go hunt down and kill people in the know.
: ...and the writers haven't introduced Amnesium (yet) [....]
???
: Even trying to pass him off as just another a "Freak Of The Week"
: would be unsatisfactory, since FOTWs have a tendency to cause a lot of
: grief for the inhabitants of our favorite Kansas town.
But not necessarily. Kyle Tippet was an exception. So was Chloe's
super-stretching auto mechanic who was killed in "Extinction." As
Jonathan theorized, there could be a lot of meteor freaks whom they
don't hear about, simply because they go about their lives not causing
trouble for others. Though he grew up warped, Cyrus in "Visitor" didn't
use his healing power for evil purposes (or to be more precise, he
didn't withhold it from a tormentor). Jordan the death-seer in
"Hereafter" wasn't evil. Arguably, Cassandra in "Hourglass" was a
meteor freak, and she wasn't evil. Lana got a meteor rock power in
"Obscura" and it didn't turn her evil. Lex is a meteor freak, but when
he finally gets around to going evil, I don't think it's going to be
because of his surfeit of white blood cells. In fact, I wouldn't be
surprised if "meteor freak afraid to come out of the closet" is already
Chloe's working hypothesis for explaining Clark's odd behavior, since
it's the explanation that's covered most of the odd behavior she's come
across in Smallville.
-Micky
Todd
>But I doubt the writers put that much thought into it. I think it's
>just a contradictory retcon (not the first on the series) and from now
>on we're supposed to take as fact that Lionel is not and has never been
>guilty of killing his parents. This despite the fact that his guilt was
>a driving plot point of the third season, up to and including being the
>underlying motivation behind Lionel reluctantly having Lex committed to
>an asylum and having his brain fried in order to forget something that
>now never actually happened.
Maybe the writers forgot exactly why Lionel was in prison. They may
think he was in prison for the attempt on Chloe's life, which he
always insisted he was not responsible for.
BucketButt
> I think it was deliberate. Though Clark defensively tells Lois that he
> sees himself, not as a geek, but as an outsider, it amounts to the same
> kind of differentiation from the mainstream. Just working on the
> _Torch_ evidently sets one apart as geeky at Smallville High (which I
> guess is supposed to explain why it was manned entirely by freshmen when
> the series began and they haven't had anyone else rush to join the staff
> since).
I'm sure Clark is a bit geeky, or at least nerdy, by nature. But that's
just normal human-teenager geekiness, the result of how he was raised.
He's still hiding (for the most part) the fact that he's an alien ubergeek
and can never truly fit in completely with the people around him.
But being a geek isn't always a bad thing. Bill Gates may well be the
closest thing to an ubergeek to gain any degree of fame, and he has done
very well indeed. Plenty of other geeks have managed to achieve lesser,
but still considerable, success in their chosen fields. Assuming Chloe is
neither killed nor sidetracked, she'll probably become a very successful
journalist -- that's a big leap from being "leader of the geeks" at The
Torch, such a leap that few (if any) people will consider her even
slightly geeky. One can only guess how many of yesterday's geeks who
studied music instead of playing stickball are today's successful (and
decidedly non-geeky) music stars. And when Clark eventually adopts the
cape and costume, most who follow that part of his career will consider
him a geek ... even though he'll still be the ultimate outsider, an alien
from another world. Sometimes how one deals with geekiness is the key to
overcoming it.
> All the main characters except for Lana (and Whitney and Jason,
> if they even count as main characters) see themselves or are seen as
> outsiders to some extent.
Even Lana is an outsider to a degree; she's an orphan like Clark, but
unlike Clark she was adopted by an unmarried (read: spinster) aunt.
And with Nell marrying and moving on, she had to finish her teenage years
without even one surrogatee parent.
> : ... but he fears being exposed and then being rejected -- not only by
> : Lana, but by everyone he knows.
>
> He does, but notice he didn't have a nightmare about the others. He had
> a nightmare about Lana, and through the magic of plot contrivance, we
> therefore know for a fact that this is his number-one fear.
Yes, being rejected by Lana is his number-one fear. He may fear being
rejected by others, and even by the world in general, but Lana is the only
one who really matters. After all, she's the center of his teenage,
hormone-influenced universe; anyone who's gone through puberty can
identify with how he feels.
> I think Jason's just a red herring to give Lana something to do in a
> separate plot line now that she's no longer a serious love interest for
> the hero of the series (in fact, she's not hanging out much with any of
> the other regular characters).
But Lana *is* a serious love interest for the hero of the series; Clark
still has eyes only for her. The fact that she has found someone else and
is no longer available to him (for the moment at least) hurts, but I don't
expect him to get over her soon. Unrequited love is extremely painful;
again, I think anyone who's gone through puberty can identify with how he
feels.
It's all the more painful for Clark because there was a time (near the
end of Season Two) when Lana was returning his feelings. He finally had
the love he had sought for so long; but then came the events that resulted
in him taking Jonathan's Harley and riding away from Lana and Smallville.
Their relationship would never the same again. He isn't over her, and in
truth she isn't over him either; the difference is, at least she is trying
to move on.
> : ... but realistically, what CAN they do if the secret ever gets out?
>
> 1) Try to go into hiding. That's what I'd expect them to think of.
Far easier said than done, especially in this time of increased security.
Maybe if they had plenty of liquid assets they could move to a place where
people don't take much notice of Euro-American strangers ... but they
don't, and I'm not so sure such a place exists anymore.
> 2)
> Beat the discloser to the punch, go to the press themselves, and hope
> for the best.
Unlikely. They know that Clark would quickly wind up in government
custody and examined (dissected, if they could find a way) by some
alphabet-agency. Even if he somehow avoided that fate, it's *very* likely
that he'd be seen as some sort of walking sideshow act, and (because he
did not reveal himself willingly) someone to distrust.
> 3) Threaten the potential discloser with grievous bodily
> harm to themselves and their loved ones. (I'd expect the Kents to
> reject this one, but it's worth bringing up even if only to hear them
> reject it.) 4) Try to bribe the potential discloser with super-favors
> of some sort.
A possibility to be considered, but a very dangerous one to actually use.
Some people, like Pete, will keep the secret without being bribed. Nearly
everyone else will use it for continued blackmail. Hardly anyone will be
bought off easily.
> 5) Tell Lex first and ask him to call in some favors of
> his own to protect them.
This would never have happened in Season One because of Jonathan's
blinding distrust of the Luthor family. It might have been the number-one
choice in Season Two and most of Season Three, when Lex was on better
terms with the elder Kents. Right now, it's a possible contingency but
not one they'd accept comfortably because of the strained relationship
between Clark and Lex. And eventually it will become the worst thing they
could possibly do ... but of course they don't know that yet.
> 6) Surely I've missed one or two. People live
> with secrets all the time in real life.
The fewer people know a secret, the easier it is to keep. Nearly as good
is making those who know the secret believe it's too trivial to even
mention, but obviously that isn't going to happen with this secret.
Jonathan and Martha would rather die than expose Clark; Pete might talk
under certain circumstances (if convinced it was in the nation's interest,
for example); I'd like to think Lana and Chloe would keep the secret as
well as Pete if they knew it, but we won't know until/unless they actually
know it.
Lex would keep the secret from Lionel, the public at large, and probably
the government, but his curiosity would eventually get the better of him
and he'd try to learn the "nuts and bolts" of Clark's abilities ... which
would mean hiring researchers who would could not be kept entirely in the
dark about what/who they're studying. This applies only until Superman
introduces himself to the world, of course; the current Lex could probably
be trusted to keep the dual-identity secret, but he'd want something in
return ... which might be nothing more than an exclusive opportunity to
study his friend's physiology and the extent of his powers. (Remember,
I'm talking about Lex as he is today on Smallville, not Lex as he will
become.)
> It's a question worth asking and answering, showing what the Kents are
> made of, but I don't expect it ever to be broached, because the writers
> seem to want them to be made of denial.
I doubt the writers and producers are brave enough to let Jonathan, Martha
and Clark explore this issue deeply on-camera. I'm sure they wouldn't
spend much time on it because they would see it as boring: "You want the
Kents to just sit around the kitchen table and *talk*? A scene with no
sexual tension, no villains or freaks, no super-action? Not on this show,
dude. We might say it happened, but we'll never show it; having Clark just
sit down and talk to his parents for more than twenty seconds at a time
would be a major tune-out factor for our core audience." The sad thing
is, that probably *would* be the case if the writers handled such a scene
without some sort of "spice" such as already having Clark's secret in
jeopardy.
> What about them? Knowledge of the Secret made Pete a target, arguing
> against disclosure, if only to protect the other person. Dr. Bryce
> turned out to be a bad risk, although being wanted for attempted murder
> probably prevents her from telling the authorities. "Jor-El" has his/
> its own agenda. Bart Allen has his own secret to protect at the moment,
> as does Kyle Tippet (the surviving Handshake Guy from "Hug").
Pete's loyal to Clark. The others are looking out for they own best
interests.
> Of them
> all, only Swann and his associates can be seen as wild cards, and as it
> turns out, the reclusive Dr. Swann tends to hoard his discoveries. He
> kept the lid on his decryption of an alien message for years before he
> ever came in contact with Clark, and at least so far, he's still not
> sharing it with the rest of the world.
This could make Swann as dangerous as Lionel would be in the same
position; but somehow I don't think Swann ever intended to reveal Clark's
secret, although he might have wanted to reveal "Superman" if-and-when.
Swann is the sort who seeks knowledge but shuns fame; in his first
appearance he was portrayed as somewhat hermit-like.
> : Some people know enough to suspect that Clark is more than just an
> : average teenage boy: Chloe Sullivan, Lana Lang, Lex and Lionel Luthor,
> : Perry White, various others.
>
> Suspecting it is one thing; proving it in the face of skeptical
> authorities and an uncooperative Clark is another.
Except in court, people seldom require proof for their beliefs about
others. If they believe Clark is more than merely human, then he is ...
in their minds ... and it doesn't much matter if he really is or not.
> Even the sheriff of
> Smallville, who's seen some very weird stuff by now, doesn't subscribe
> to paranormal theories. Perry tried to tell people about the flying
> tractor and just got ridiculed for his trouble.
Sheriff Nancy is a very unimaginative person, which isn't necessarily a
bad thing for a law enforcement officer in most cases. She doesn't
entertain supernatural/superhuman explanations for anything. Either
she finds a perfectly normal explanation for any event ... or there's a
perfectly normal explantion that she just hasn't found yet.
> : ...and the writers haven't introduced Amnesium (yet) [....]
>
> ???
>
This was a dodge used by writers in the Silver Age comics. Amnesium was a
rare mineral whose radiations erased the memories of normal humans,
beginning with the most recent and going back in time with additional
exposure. The only known specimen of Amnesium on Earth was kept in
Superman's Fortress of Solitude. As gimmicks go, I considered it even
worse than the "imaginary story" that those same writers used fairly often.
> : Even trying to pass him off as just another a "Freak Of The Week"
> : would be unsatisfactory, since FOTWs have a tendency to cause a lot of
> : grief for the inhabitants of our favorite Kansas town.
>
> But not necessarily. Kyle Tippet was an exception. So was Chloe's
> super-stretching auto mechanic who was killed in "Extinction." As
> Jonathan theorized, there could be a lot of meteor freaks whom they
> don't hear about, simply because they go about their lives not causing
> trouble for others. Though he grew up warped, Cyrus in "Visitor" didn't
> use his healing power for evil purposes (or to be more precise, he
> didn't withhold it from a tormentor). Jordan the death-seer in
> "Hereafter" wasn't evil. Arguably, Cassandra in "Hourglass" was a
> meteor freak, and she wasn't evil. Lana got a meteor rock power in
> "Obscura" and it didn't turn her evil. Lex is a meteor freak, but when
> he finally gets around to going evil, I don't think it's going to be
> because of his surfeit of white blood cells. In fact, I wouldn't be
> surprised if "meteor freak afraid to come out of the closet" is already
> Chloe's working hypothesis for explaining Clark's odd behavior, since
> it's the explanation that's covered most of the odd behavior she's come
> across in Smallville.
Good point. We don't really know who many FOTWs are hiding their
abilities, or perhaps don't even realize yet they have special abilities.
For all we know, Lana, Pete and perhaps even Chloe are Freaks themselves,
either closeted or simply unaware. (Lana is especially likely, since she
wore a chunk of Green Kryptonite around her neck daily for a number of
years.) Perhaps Chloe assumes Clark is a Freak-in-hiding because she is
herself a Freak-in-hiding. (Wonder what her power would be? Her "truth
power" was a temporary thing, but maybe she has a genuine "nose for news"
that unerringly leads her to interesting stories. Or maybe she just
has the ability to be hot-looking and still come across as somewhat
geeky.<g>)
BucketButt
Wouldn't be the first time the writers apparently forgot something
important.
It's really a shame more TV producers don't follow the example J. Michael
Straczynski set with Babylon 5: he plotted out the entire planned
five-year series run and put together a comprehensive "series bible"
before the first episode began production. (Of course, JMS also wrote
most of his own scripts, which aided continuity immeasurably.) The ironic
thing is, most of the source material Millar/Gough would need for a series
bible already existed over at DC Comics, requiring only minor changes for
their own storylines.
Micky DuPree
<no...@nowhere.com> writes:
: MDu...@theworld.com.snip.to.reply (Micky DuPree) wrote:
Four problems. 1) Lionel was already in a federal prison (though he
should have been in a county jail) awaiting trial and getting his head
sheared (though I've never figured out a good reason why) when the
Sullivans' safe house got blown up. (The head-shearing montage was
visually striking but it didn't make much sense.) 2) We never heard of
a single shred of evidence linking Lionel to the explosion at the safe
house, nor did we ever hear he was charged with that crime. All the
characters were convinced that Lionel was going to go free once they
thought Chloe was dead. 3) It was an important plot point that Chloe
had to be in court to testify in order to secure the conviction. We
were told this over and over again. (This would be problematic in the
real world, but there's so much about the case against Lionel that
wouldn't stand up in the real world that one more snag doesn't make much
difference.) If the crime that he was convicted of had been the
attempted murder of the Sullivans, then they wouldn't have needed
Chloe's testimony, because she knew bugger-all about who tried to kill
her apart from the educated guesses we all made. Nevertheless, we were
told that Chloe did testify, and that this was the clinching factor. 4)
The front page of the _Daily Planet_ that we got in lieu of any trial
footage said "Founder and CEO of Luthor Corp Lionel Luthor [couldn't
read this part] found guilty of murder [....]" Note "murder," not
"attempted murder."
O.K., five problems: this is fairly recent history, the beginning of
this very season, which is slightly less than half over. If they've
forgotten all that by now, the turnaround time for authorial amnesia is
pretty short. I think they're crashing the bullet train of deliberate
retcon into the unsuspecting car of established canon. Sometimes they
just seem to think it's more fun if they change history.
-Micky
David Johnston
MDu...@theworld.com.snip.to.reply (Micky DuPree) wrote:
>O.K., five problems: this is fairly recent history, the beginning of
>this very season, which is slightly less than half over. If they've
>forgotten all that by now, the turnaround time for authorial amnesia is
>pretty short. I think they're crashing the bullet train of deliberate
>retcon into the unsuspecting car of established canon. Sometimes they
>just seem to think it's more fun if they change history.
>
You know, it's probably an absurd idea, totally out of character for
Lionel, but do you suppose that maybe he lied about both his innocence
of the crime in question and his reformed character? Is it possible
that a character who has been the veritable icon of forthright dealing
throughout the season could now be revealed as dishonest?
Micky DuPree
<bucke...@bellsouth.net> writes:
: On Sat, 01 Jan 2005 00:34:50 +0000, Micky DuPree wrote:
:: Though Clark defensively tells Lois that he sees himself, not as a
:: geek, but as an outsider, it amounts to the same kind of
:: differentiation from the mainstream. Just working on the _Torch_
:: evidently sets one apart as geeky at Smallville High (which I guess
:: is supposed to explain why it was manned entirely by freshmen when
:: the series began and they haven't had anyone else rush to join the
:: staff since).
:
: I'm sure Clark is a bit geeky, or at least nerdy, by nature. But
: that's just normal human-teenager geekiness, the result of how he was
: raised. He's still hiding (for the most part) the fact that he's an
: alien ubergeek and can never truly fit in completely with the people
: around him.
In classic _Smallville_ fashion, it's not enough to have a normal trait
or a typical problem. It has to be paranormally exaggerated. Clark
manages to hide the literal alienness, but until recently, wasn't too
successful at shedding the more conventionally geeky image (which is
just the tip of the iceberg of Clark's true outsider status). I think
this exaggerated outsider status is a deliberate theme, not an accident.
: But being a geek isn't always a bad thing.
There's certainly a sleepwalking aspect to the mainstream, exacerbated
in restrictive environments like K-12 school. Chloe tried to cheer up
Lois by telling her that a lot of people would love to repeat their
senior year in high school, but how sad is it that someone would have
nothing better to with their adult life than to relive a year of high
school, no matter how great those years might have been?
I think that overtly, _Smallville_ takes the stance that the mainstream
is deeply flawed, with the mainstream's male heroes being closet or even
open bullies (football players hazing the "scarecrow" and the mascot)
and its most exalted females belittling other females and emasculating
the males (cheerleaders in "Devoted"). Implicitly, though, I think
there's a subterranean strain of envy that's at odds with the explicit
text. Clark still pines for the same alpha perquisite homecoming queen
that most of the other guys seem to want (and even some of the gals),
not for the geekily brilliant female Fox Mulder of Smallville who drives
half the plots. He still wants to be a football star despite Whitney
finally saying he wanted to do something more substantive than play
ball, and Jason admitting it's only a game. I found it disturbing that
Jonathan eventually capitulated on the subject after he finally got
around to making the one argument that Clark can't make go away: even if
he injures no one and loses every game on purpose, it's still a lie.
: Assuming Chloe is neither killed nor sidetracked, she'll probably
: become a very successful journalist -- that's a big leap from being
: "leader of the geeks" at The Torch, such a leap that few (if any)
: people will consider her even slightly geeky. [....] And when Clark
: eventually adopts the cape and costume, most who follow that part of
: his career will consider him a geek ... even though he'll still be the
: ultimate outsider, an alien from another world. Sometimes how one
: deals with geekiness is the key to overcoming it.
Oh, we're on the same side of this issue. If all it takes to be in the
geek ranks is talent or academic achievement, then the geeks tend to
come into their own in college and beyond. If what sets someone apart
is a positive thing, then they usually should embrace it, not deny it.
I think part of the point of _Smallville_, though, is how people deal
with that early experience of being different, before the world opens up
for them. Like Abigail in "Facade," Clark can't seem to see beyond high
school. They both see their senior year as their last chance to make
their mark, instead of seeing high school as a small pond that no one
will care about a year from now.
:: All the main characters except for Lana (and Whitney and Jason, if
:: they even count as main characters) see themselves or are seen as
:: outsiders to some extent.
:
: Even Lana is an outsider to a degree; she's an orphan like Clark, but
: unlike Clark she was adopted by an unmarried (read: spinster) aunt.
: And with Nell marrying and moving on, she had to finish her teenage
: years without even one surrogatee parent.
Well, she didn't *have* to finish high school without a live-in
guardian, but between staying behind on the one hand and ditching
everything in her life except Nell and moving to Metropolis on the
other, Lana's choice strikes me as sympathetic. Still, as Chloe once
pointed out, the nuclear family in this town has been nuked. The only
onscreen family that comes close to the _Leave It to Beaver_ mold now is
the one with the adopted space baby.
Lana does have a pathological fatalism from her experiences with dying
loved ones, but at least to most of her classmates in school, she
appears mainstream.
::: ... but he fears being exposed and then being rejected -- not only
::: by Lana, but by everyone he knows.
::
:: He does, but notice he didn't have a nightmare about the others. He
:: had a nightmare about Lana, and through the magic of plot
:: contrivance, we therefore know for a fact that this is his number-one
:: fear.
:
: Yes, being rejected by Lana is his number-one fear. He may fear being
: rejected by others, and even by the world in general, but Lana is the
: only one who really matters. After all, she's the center of his
: teenage, hormone-influenced universe; anyone who's gone through
: puberty can identify with how he feels.
I think there's both more and less going on there than just puberty. In
"Calling," Clark reveals that he's been pining for Lana ever since he
was five. That's not puberty. He's been pining for a girl that he
wasn't even able to talk to until he was 14. I think the fatalistic
Lana gives off a "saaaave me" vibe that the heroic Clark reflexively
responds to. In the pilot, though, Clark connects his presence on Earth
with that crying little girl on the cover of _Time_, as if he had been
the thing that she needed saving from.
:: I think Jason's just a red herring to give Lana something to do in a
:: separate plot line now that she's no longer a serious love interest
:: for the hero of the series (in fact, she's not hanging out much with
:: any of the other regular characters).
:
: But Lana *is* a serious love interest for the hero of the series;
: Clark still has eyes only for her.
In his own mind, fine, but from a storytelling standpoint, she's not.
Unless the writers decide to throw them together YET again (god, no, not
again), then it's going to be hard to come up with reasonable pretexts
for including Lana in the lives of the other characters. She's not
dating Clark. She's not living with Chloe. She's not Lex's business
partner. She's not the manager of the local hangout. She doesn't write
for the _Torch_. She's never really been bitten by the Scooby Doo bug
like Chloe and Clark. She's not a cheerleader at the football games.
The insertion of Jason into the story reminds me an awful lot of the
insertion of Adam into the story: something for Lana to do onscreen
since she doesn't interact with Clark much anymore. I'm sure later
they'll find a way to tie Jason into the Clark plot more, just as they
did with Adam, but if it's as tenuous as Adam's raison d'etre, it won't
be one of the prouder features of season four. In terms of sheer screen
time, he's there to give Lana someone to interact with and her own
subplot.
: It's all the more painful for Clark because there was a time (near the
: end of Season Two) when Lana was returning his feelings. He finally
: had the love he had sought for so long; but then came the events that
: resulted in him taking Jonathan's Harley and riding away from Lana and
: Smallville. Their relationship would never the same again. He isn't
: over her, and in truth she isn't over him either; the difference is,
: at least she is trying to move on.
But we don't actually need much Lana screen time in order for Clark to
pine over her, and we don't need a new character in the opening credits
to get across the message that Lana's trying to move on. Lana could
date lots of different guys and learn to enjoy playing the field instead
of feeling like she always has to have one guy to cling to while she's
still in high school. Lana could have stayed in Paris and left the
series and it would have achieved the same basic results in Clark's love
life.
Or to put it another way, Jason isn't the obstacle standing between
Clark and Lana. The Big Secret is the obstacle, and Clark damn well
knows it. Notice how Clark's worst fear didn't involve another guy at
all, whereas Jason's biggest fear involved Clark, and I think he had
good reason for it. If Clark were to go for broke and tell Lana the
Secret, his romantic success wouldn't boil down to Lana deciding whom
she loved more, Clark or Jason. I think that's a no-brainer. It would
hinge on whether or not Lana could deal with the Secret. In the absence
of disclosure, Jason has been Lana's consolation plot line because the
producers want to keep her around anyway.
::: ... but realistically, what CAN they do if the secret ever gets out?
::
:: 1) Try to go into hiding. That's what I'd expect them to think of.
:
: Far easier said than done, especially in this time of increased
: security.
I didn't say it would be easy. I didn't even say they'd be successful.
I said that's what I'd expect the Kents to think of. I think that would
be their natural first impulse, since they've been hiding in the open
all along. If they did want to go this route, they'd do well to plan
ahead for it.
:: 2) Beat the discloser to the punch, go to the press themselves, and
:: hope for the best.
:
: Unlikely.
Depends on who's coming at them and how. I could imagine circumstances
where they'd run out of options and would decide that the only measure
of control they can regain over the situation would be to neutralize a
blackmailer by disclosure and hope to control the spin somewhat.
: They know that Clark would quickly wind up in government custody and
: examined (dissected, if they could find a way) by some
: alphabet-agency.
Now *that's* far easier said than done if Clark doesn't want to go
quietly. It argues for Jonathan and Martha going into hiding first to
keep them from being held hostage against Clark's cooperation, though.
If they can't go into hiding, then full disclosure to the press would
raise questions in the event of the mysterious disappearance of the Kent
parents. Think about it: the Kents in Perry White's office, saying what
they fear will happen and giving him the exclusive story in return for
the watchful eye of the free press. I think Perry would promise to
raise a stink in print if anything happened to them. Yeah, it's a bit
Capraesque, but it's worth their while to ask themselves what they're
going to do if one of those alphabet agencies is *already* hot on their
heels. Roll over and give up?
Oh, just thought of another possibility: go to Swann and ask him to use
his influence to protect them. No, I don't think they fully trust him,
but isn't it better than waiting for the greater of two evils to bust
down the door back at the farm?
Another possibility, Perry White's own insurance policy: multiple copies
of documentation placed with multiple attorneys with instructions to
disseminate if the Kents are ever whisked away by the government against
their will.
The very fact that's it's a tough problem is all the more reason to
explore all their options before they're in a crisis situation and the
clock is ticking.
<snip>
: The fewer people know a secret, the easier it is to keep. Nearly as
: good is making those who know the secret believe it's too trivial to
: even mention, but obviously that isn't going to happen with this
: secret.
:
: Jonathan and Martha would rather die than expose Clark [....]
I'm talking about the Kents discussing their admittedly constrained and
unpleasant options in the event that exposure has *already* accidentally
taken place or is imminent and unavoidable. I'm sure that in most such
situations they'd consider telling one other person (Lex, Perry,
whomever) to be preferable to having the whole world know. Or, in the
case of the alphabet agencies catching up with him, I think it's worth
considering public disclosure to be preferable to Clark possibly
disappearing into the shadow government system (assuming they learn how
to contain him via kryptonite) never to be heard from again. And I'm
sure that if the whole world is going to find out anyway (e.g., if Roger
Nixon had gotten away with his videotape), that they'd like to have some
measure of control over how that information gets out.
: Lex would keep the secret from Lionel, the public at large, and
: probably the government, but his curiosity would eventually get the
: better of him and he'd try to learn the "nuts and bolts" of Clark's
: abilities ... which would mean hiring researchers who would could not
: be kept entirely in the dark about what/who they're studying.
But Lex's curiosity mostly concerns the very thing that we're proposing
that Clark come right out and tell him. Lex's curiosity so far hasn't
manifested in a Swann-like basic research way, but in a forensic
reconstruct-the-inexplicable-events-of-his-life way. Lex wants
validation -- proof that his life does make sense after all and proof
that Clark considers him his friend -- more than he wants raw data. He
resorts to gathering the latter because he can't get the former. One of
the tragedies of the tension between them is that Naman could probably
subdue Sageeth in a mythic judo move by capitulating and coopting him
rather than by fighting him. In his heart of hearts, Clark even
suspects as much, as revealed in one of his dreams in "Slumber":
LEX: The irony is all you had to do was come to me, Clark. I was
your friend. I would've protected your secret. I would've
protected you. But I couldn't be trusted because I'm a
Luthor.
CLARK: No, that's not it!
LEX: I don't care! I'm going to dedicate myself to ensuring the
whole world knows who Clark Kent really is.
:: It's a question worth asking and answering, showing what the Kents
:: are made of, but I don't expect it ever to be broached, because the
:: writers seem to want them to be made of denial.
:
: I doubt the writers and producers are brave enough to let Jonathan,
: Martha and Clark explore this issue deeply on-camera.
I agree, unfortunately.
: I'm sure they wouldn't spend much time on it because they would see it
: as boring: "You want the Kents to just sit around the kitchen table
: and *talk*? [....]
Actually, yes, I do, but that's just my personal preference.
: The sad thing is, that probably *would* be the case if the writers
: handled such a scene without some sort of "spice" such as already
: having Clark's secret in jeopardy.
But they could do it that way. Though less practical, they could treat
it as crisis-management brainstorming, with the clock ticking like a
time bomb because exposure has already been threatened in a given
episode. "Hey, folks, Roger Nixon is about to publish a story on me
with damaging photos. What do we do now?" In a kind of default way,
they already did that: Jonathan decided on the spur of the moment that
he'd be willing to sacrifice both himself and Nixon to keep the Secret
intact. He did something even more half-assed in "Legacy," coming after
Lionel and his minions in the cave with a shotgun. Yeah, going to
prison in shame for murder is a great way to protect your family and a
great example to set for your son.
They have come close to exposure SO many times that just considering one
alternative per each such incident, even if only to discard it, would
give us a respectable cumulative body of explored options by now and a
fuller picture of the Kents. But as you say, I don't think the writers
and producers are brave enough even to venture into this territory.
:: Of them all, only Swann and his associates can be seen as wild cards,
:: and as it turns out, the reclusive Dr. Swann tends to hoard his
:: discoveries. He kept the lid on his decryption of an alien message
:: for years before he ever came in contact with Clark, and at least so
:: far, he's still not sharing it with the rest of the world.
:
: This could make Swann as dangerous as Lionel would be in the same
: position; but somehow I don't think Swann ever intended to reveal
: Clark's secret, although he might have wanted to reveal "Superman"
: if-and-when. Swann is the sort who seeks knowledge but shuns fame; in
: his first appearance he was portrayed as somewhat hermit-like.
I agree. It may seem at first that the whole world already knows
Clark's Secret, but when you examine those in the know more closely,
most of them are carefully constrained to have their own reasons for not
blabbing.
And call me a softie, but I think Swann really does like to see himself
in a mentor role for Clark. I don't think it's just an act to gain the
trust of an alien specimen. True, he has his own agenda based on
scientific curiosity, but I think it's also interesting that he tends to
become an active player in the great Kryptonian Scavenger Hunt at times
when it might be a good thing for mankind to keep those artifacts out of
the hands of the demonstrably scary "Kal-El" and the two dark and driven
Luthors.
::: Some people know enough to suspect that Clark is more than just an
::: average teenage boy: Chloe Sullivan, Lana Lang, Lex and Lionel
::: Luthor, Perry White, various others.
::
:: Suspecting it is one thing; proving it in the face of skeptical
:: authorities and an uncooperative Clark is another.
:
: Except in court, people seldom require proof for their beliefs about
: others. If they believe Clark is more than merely human, then he is
: ... in their minds ... and it doesn't much matter if he really is or
: not.
Out of that list, though, the only one who really represented a threat
was Lionel. And as I expected (though I couldn't in a million years
have predicted the manner they chose), the writers simply neutralized
that threat. Pity, that, but they evidently wanted a two-fer, healing
him in mind and body. It would have been great if it had been a race
against time, Lionel knowing the Big Secret and trying to use it somehow
before he died of his liver disease. Even in the wake of his
redemption, they could have allowed him to retain knowledge of the
Secret precisely because he wants to do good now. But the writers are
even more protective of the Secret than the Kents are.
::: ...and the writers haven't introduced Amnesium (yet) [....]
::
:: ???
:
: This was a dodge used by writers in the Silver Age comics. <snip
: explanation>
Thanks. Huh. I cut my teeth on Silver Age DC comics, but I managed to
miss that bit. (And may we miss it evermore.)
::: Even trying to pass him off as just another a "Freak Of The Week"
::: would be unsatisfactory, since FOTWs have a tendency to cause a lot
::: of grief for the inhabitants of our favorite Kansas town.
::
:: But not necessarily. <snip list of exceptions>
:
: Good point. We don't really know who many FOTWs are hiding their
: abilities, or perhaps don't even realize yet they have special
: abilities.
It's not an ideal solution, but I think that Clark passing himself off
as yet another meteor freak to those who know about such matters would
circumvent some uncomfortable questions about Krypton, spaceships, and
crusades to rule the world.
-Micky
BucketButt
> In article <pan.2005.01.02....@bellsouth.net>, BucketButt
> <bucke...@bellsouth.net> writes:
>
> : I'm sure Clark is a bit geeky, or at least nerdy, by nature. But
> : that's just normal human-teenager geekiness, the result of how he was
> : raised. He's still hiding (for the most part) the fact that he's an
> : alien ubergeek and can never truly fit in completely with the people
> : around him.
>
> In classic _Smallville_ fashion, it's not enough to have a normal trait
> or a typical problem. It has to be paranormally exaggerated. Clark
> manages to hide the literal alienness, but until recently, wasn't too
> successful at shedding the more conventionally geeky image (which is
> just the tip of the iceberg of Clark's true outsider status). I think
> this exaggerated outsider status is a deliberate theme, not an accident.
I don't doubt that for a second. Writers for both comics and electronic
media tend to overplay their characters, umm, characteristics. And one
long-running theme in the Superman legend has been his two conflicting
personae. Superman has literally nothing except physical appearance in
common with the people of Earth, and everyone knows it, but Superman is
loved by the public; it's Clark, who presumably is just an ordinary guy,
who suffers the insecurities and unrequited love that most "ordinary
guys" know so well. Clark could win over the major holdouts in his
personal life, Lana and Lois, if only he would be completely open and
honest with them about who he really is ... but that route holds dangers
for both them and himself.
I understand (I haven't read them for myself) that the current treatment
in the comics has Clark enjoying a bit more personal achievement, so that
he doesn't fade into the woodwork quite as much as he did in the past.
he's a little more assertive, less nerdy, a nice guy who doesn't let
himself become a doormat for everyone else. I like that, and I think that
may be one reason why the TV producers decided to let Clark finally join
the football team.
> There's certainly a sleepwalking aspect to the mainstream, exacerbated
> in restrictive environments like K-12 school. Chloe tried to cheer up
> Lois by telling her that a lot of people would love to repeat their
> senior year in high school, but how sad is it that someone would have
> nothing better to with their adult life than to relive a year of high
> school, no matter how great those years might have been?
Chloe is often wise beyond her years ... but this time I think the writers
were projecting a bit too much of their own point of view into a teenage
character. Sure, I would love to relive my high school days, but I'm
pretty far removed from those days. Lois is, as far as I can discern,
only a year out of high school herself and seems to have her focus firmly
fixed on the adult world. (As an Army brat she may have considered the
typical teenager's life a bit boring even while she was a part of it.
I'll go just a tiny bit further and suggest that Lois may herself feel a
little like an alien now that she's a fulltime resident of the civilian
world. The two lives aren't all that different, but they *are* different.)
> I think that overtly, _Smallville_ takes the stance that the mainstream
> is deeply flawed, with the mainstream's male heroes being closet or even
> open bullies (football players hazing the "scarecrow" and the mascot)
> and its most exalted females belittling other females and emasculating
> the males (cheerleaders in "Devoted").
TV writers aren't subtle; they usually can't afford to be. The characters
are overplayed to make sure we recognize their good and bad
characteristics. But Smallville exaggerates the characters more than
usual when they do FOTW stories. I might buy the idea of one cheerleader
in "Devoted" being a chemistry whiz, but two or more? Especially when
these cheerleaders were presented as being stereotypically shallow because
they used their scientific skills just to get their own "Stepford toy boys".
> Implicitly, though, I think
> there's a subterranean strain of envy that's at odds with the explicit
> text. Clark still pines for the same alpha perquisite homecoming queen
> that most of the other guys seem to want (and even some of the gals),
> not for the geekily brilliant female Fox Mulder of Smallville who drives
> half the plots. He still wants to be a football star despite Whitney
> finally saying he wanted to do something more substantive than play
> ball, and Jason admitting it's only a game.
People naturally want what they can't have, especially if they have the
ability but the prize itself is forbidden. Clark's just a teenager, and
he sees playing football as important to his peer group ... not to mention
his father, the former football star. It's understandable that he'd want
the experience for himself.
> I found it disturbing that
> Jonathan eventually capitulated on the subject after he finally got
> around to making the one argument that Clark can't make go away: even if
> he injures no one and loses every game on purpose, it's still a lie.
That bothered me a bit too. At the same time, I'm glad he did finally
allow Clark to play; among other things, it gave us a male-bonding scene
between father and son when Clark asked Jonathan if he was going to let
someone else teach his kid how to play.
> Like Abigail in "Facade," Clark can't seem to see beyond high
> school. They both see their senior year as their last chance to make
> their mark, instead of seeing high school as a small pond that no one
> will care about a year from now.
I didn't see my senior year in high school that way, but maybe some do.
Or maybe this was another case where the writers expressed their own
points of view (as adults) through teenage characters.
> Well, she didn't *have* to finish high school without a live-in
> guardian, but between staying behind on the one hand and ditching
> everything in her life except Nell and moving to Metropolis on the
> other, Lana's choice strikes me as sympathetic. Still, as Chloe once
> pointed out, the nuclear family in this town has been nuked. The only
> onscreen family that comes close to the _Leave It to Beaver_ mold now is
> the one with the adopted space baby.
Yep. Lana is the only character who could have gotten away with living
alone while in high school; I still don't think it was a great idea, but
at least she was the logical choice if one of the teenagers had to. And
being out on her own did give her the freedom to decide she'd go to
France, while the others would have to discuss the move with parents.
But based on relative maturity (as I perceive it) I think Chloe would have
been more likely to spend a summer in Europe. Not as good for the series,
but slightly more reasonable from a real-world perspective.
> Lana does have a pathological fatalism from her experiences with dying
> loved ones, but at least to most of her classmates in school, she
> appears mainstream.
If Lana is "mainstream", then the whole student body must consist of
overachievers ... and sometimes I think that's precisely the case. She
didn't seem all that talented or motivated to run a business, but she took
over as manager of The Talon and apparently did well enough to keep the
doors open; Lex might have been humoring her a bit, but he's still a
businessman and wouldn't pour money into an unsuccessful business very
long. She saved enough money to live in Paris for a few months. She
actually had a reason (art studies) for wanting to go to France. She was
apparently mature enough to associate with an older guy who grew up with
wealth and had enjoyed fame due to his athletic skills -- Jason could
easily have found plenty of single (and more mature) French women to spend
his time with. Lana probably isn't "mainstream" even by Smallville
standards, but the writers can't waste time with "mainstream" characters;
so she'll do until we see an actual C-student who bags groceries after
school.
> : Yes, being rejected by Lana is his number-one fear. He may fear being
> : rejected by others, and even by the world in general, but Lana is the
> : only one who really matters. After all, she's the center of his
> : teenage, hormone-influenced universe; anyone who's gone through
> : puberty can identify with how he feels.
>
> I think there's both more and less going on there than just puberty. In
> "Calling," Clark reveals that he's been pining for Lana ever since he
> was five. That's not puberty.
Could be just puppy-love combined with being unable to appracher because
of that necklace. Or did she have the necklace when she was that young?
> He's been pining for a girl that he
> wasn't even able to talk to until he was 14. I think the fatalistic
> Lana gives off a "saaaave me" vibe that the heroic Clark reflexively
> responds to. In the pilot, though, Clark connects his presence on Earth
> with that crying little girl on the cover of _Time_, as if he had been
> the thing that she needed saving from.
Unreasoning guilt. Been there, done that.
> : But Lana *is* a serious love interest for the hero of the series;
> : Clark still has eyes only for her.
>
> In his own mind, fine, but from a storytelling standpoint, she's not.
> Unless the writers decide to throw them together YET again (god, no, not
> again), then it's going to be hard to come up with reasonable pretexts
> for including Lana in the lives of the other characters. She's not
> dating Clark. She's not living with Chloe. She's not Lex's business
> partner. She's not the manager of the local hangout. She doesn't write
> for the _Torch_. She's never really been bitten by the Scooby Doo bug
> like Chloe and Clark. She's not a cheerleader at the football games.
Maybe when Jason fades out she'll throw herself into school activities;
this is her senior year, after all. She may also re-embrace her friends,
and even start going with someone (probably Clark, but not necessarily) on
the rebound. Hmmm, now that she's reinforced her pattern of dating older
guys (Whitney, now Jason) she'll become interested in Lex. I'm already
convinced that Lex is interested in her, although I don't know for certain
that his interest is romantic ... and until/unless it gets to that point,
we won't know if he'd risk further damage to his friendship with Clark by
allowing himself to become involved with her.
> But we don't actually need much Lana screen time in order for Clark to
> pine over her, and we don't need a new character in the opening credits
> to get across the message that Lana's trying to move on.
I always thought Kristin Kreuk's Lana got a lot of her screen time as a
concession to the males in the audience who can never get enough
eye-candy. But maybe that's just me. (And if it is, note to producers: I
prefer watching Allison Mack and Erica Durance anyway. Also Annette
O'Toole and Lex's various older babes ... but I'm considerably older than
the average audience for the show.)
> Lana could
> date lots of different guys and learn to enjoy playing the field instead
> of feeling like she always has to have one guy to cling to while she's
> still in high school. Lana could have stayed in Paris and left the
> series and it would have achieved the same basic results in Clark's love
> life.
At this point I would imagine Lana has a bit of a "reputation",
regardless of whether she's actually done anything to earn it. She went
steady with a senior when she was a freshman. She went to France for the
summer after her junior year, and came back with an older boyfriend who
moved to Smallville just to be near her. People will talk, especially in
small towns, and they don't need anything but suspicions to fuel their
rumors. Lana does not need to play the field much if she doesn't want a
scarlet letter pinned to her sweater.
> Or to put it another way, Jason isn't the obstacle standing between
> Clark and Lana. The Big Secret is the obstacle, and Clark damn well
> knows it. Notice how Clark's worst fear didn't involve another guy at
> all, whereas Jason's biggest fear involved Clark, and I think he had
> good reason for it. If Clark were to go for broke and tell Lana the
> Secret, his romantic success wouldn't boil down to Lana deciding whom
> she loved more, Clark or Jason. I think that's a no-brainer. It would
> hinge on whether or not Lana could deal with the Secret. In the absence
> of disclosure, Jason has been Lana's consolation plot line because the
> producers want to keep her around anyway.
Very well reasoned, and I agree completely.
robg...@bestweb.net
> I think that overtly, _Smallville_ takes the stance that the
mainstream
> is deeply flawed,
It's at least taken the pose that the vast majority of families are
dysfunctional. "Smallville" has taken every opportunity to say that,
if this is a prequel-explanation of Superman's personality traits, then
it's only by some fantastic fluke that he didn't grow up to be
Supervillain, Superneurotic, Superjerk, or kill himself.
> Clark still pines for the same alpha perquisite homecoming queen
> that most of the other guys seem to want (and even some of the gals),
> not for the geekily brilliant female Fox Mulder of Smallville who
drives
> half the plots. He still wants to be a football star despite Whitney
> finally saying he wanted to do something more substantive than play
> ball, and Jason admitting it's only a game. I found it disturbing
that
> Jonathan eventually capitulated on the subject after he finally got
> around to making the one argument that Clark can't make go away: even
if
> he injures no one and loses every game on purpose, it's still a lie.
That really bothered me about the beginning of season 4. They
trivialized themselves for the sake of some plotting -- brought on the
cognitive dissonance. Makes it hard to figure out whether we should
take Clark's thinking seriously at any given point or not.
> Lana does have a pathological fatalism from her experiences with
dying
> loved ones, but at least to most of her classmates in school, she
> appears mainstream.
Maybe we're supposed to assume that without contrary evidence, but it's
not clear to me that she so appears to them. I think the problem may
be in assuming the existence of a mainstream, rather than Smallville HS
being balkanized into a plethora of cliques, which it may be.
> : But Lana *is* a serious love interest for the hero of the series;
> : Clark still has eyes only for her.
> In his own mind, fine, but from a storytelling standpoint, she's not.
> Unless the writers decide to throw them together YET again (god, no,
not
> again), then it's going to be hard to come up with reasonable
pretexts
> for including Lana in the lives of the other characters. She's not
> dating Clark. She's not living with Chloe. She's not Lex's business
> partner. She's not the manager of the local hangout. She doesn't
write
> for the _Torch_. She's never really been bitten by the Scooby Doo
bug
> like Chloe and Clark. She's not a cheerleader at the football games.
If only they could kill her. Or get her to go back to France. Or send
her to Belle Reve. Or reveal that she's always been an android robot
and have her recalled by the mfr. Or have a delayed-action witch's
spell on her turn her into a cockroach, preferably not one like artie
or a fly on the wall, but an insignficant one.
> But we don't actually need much Lana screen time in order for Clark
to
> pine over her,
You got it; just have him take frequent trips to the cemetery where
she's buried. She can still be in the commercials.
> ::: ... but realistically, what CAN they do if the secret ever gets
out?
> :: 1) Try to go into hiding. That's what I'd expect them to think
of.
> : Far easier said than done, especially in this time of increased
> : security.
Maybe it's not such a time in the Smallverse. The Marines are in
Indonesia, but we don't know why.
> :: It's a question worth asking and answering, showing what the Kents
> :: are made of, but I don't expect it ever to be broached, because
the
> :: writers seem to want them to be made of denial.
> : I doubt the writers and producers are brave enough to let Jonathan,
> : Martha and Clark explore this issue deeply on-camera.
> I agree, unfortunately.
Heh. 'Twould be fun if Clark were some day to stumble upon a cached
message left by them for such a contingency.
> : I'm sure they wouldn't spend much time on it because they would see
it
> : as boring: "You want the Kents to just sit around the kitchen table
> : and *talk*? [....]
It'd work if the message were in the form of video.
> They have come close to exposure SO many times that just considering
one
> alternative per each such incident, even if only to discard it, would
> give us a respectable cumulative body of explored options by now and
a
> fuller picture of the Kents. But as you say, I don't think the
writers
> and producers are brave enough even to venture into this territory.
I don't understand how bravery figures. You saying the chances of
fucking this up are so great that it daunts the writers? Do writers
actually get a bad rep from slipping on the path to a great story?
> Out of that list, though, the only one who really represented a
threat
> was Lionel. And as I expected (though I couldn't in a million years
> have predicted the manner they chose), the writers simply neutralized
> that threat. Pity, that, but they evidently wanted a two-fer,
healing
> him in mind and body. It would have been great if it had been a race
> against time, Lionel knowing the Big Secret and trying to use it
somehow
> before he died of his liver disease. Even in the wake of his
> redemption, they could have allowed him to retain knowledge of the
> Secret precisely because he wants to do good now.
As if someone who wants to do good couldn't represent a threat thereby!
Robert
BucketButt
> In article <pan.2005.01.02....@bellsouth.net>, BucketButt
> <bucke...@bellsouth.net> writes:
>
> : On Sat, 01 Jan 2005 00:34:50 +0000, Micky DuPree wrote:
>
> ::: ... but realistically, what CAN they do if the secret ever gets out?
> ::
> :: 1) Try to go into hiding. That's what I'd expect them to think of.
> :
> : Far easier said than done, especially in this time of increased
> : security.
>
> I didn't say it would be easy. I didn't even say they'd be successful.
> I said that's what I'd expect the Kents to think of. I think that would
> be their natural first impulse, since they've been hiding in the open
> all along. If they did want to go this route, they'd do well to plan
> ahead for it.
People run away from their pasts and try to start over all the time; some
of those who actually plan it out ahead of time succeed for years, perhaps
permanently. In the Kents' case much might depend on who's looking for
them, how well they planned, and what they're willing to do to raise money
for the effort. (Clark hasn't started squeezing coal into diamonds yet,
and I doubt he'd be very comfortable playing "teenage strongman" in a
sideshow. Construction work's a possibility, and high-steel work pays
well ... if he can conquer his fear of heights.)
> :: 2) Beat the discloser to the punch, go to the press themselves, and
> :: hope for the best.
> :
> : Unlikely.
>
> Depends on who's coming at them and how. I could imagine circumstances
> where they'd run out of options and would decide that the only measure
> of control they can regain over the situation would be to neutralize a
> blackmailer by disclosure and hope to control the spin somewhat.
Clark would still become an object of curiosity and perhaps fear, and
might still end up in the clutches of some government agency.
> : They know that Clark would quickly wind up in government custody and
> : examined (dissected, if they could find a way) by some
> : alphabet-agency.
>
> Now *that's* far easier said than done if Clark doesn't want to go
> quietly. It argues for Jonathan and Martha going into hiding first to
> keep them from being held hostage against Clark's cooperation, though.
> If they can't go into hiding, then full disclosure to the press would
> raise questions in the event of the mysterious disappearance of the Kent
> parents.
Confine the Kents "for their own safety", fake their deaths, tell Clark
he's actually doing his patriotic duty as an American ... unless, of
course, he'd rather just be considered an alien with no rights at all. It
could be done, if the people doing it are ruthless enough. All they'd
have to do is get to Jonathan and Martha before the Kents could make a
counter-move.
> Think about it: the Kents in Perry White's office, saying what
> they fear will happen and giving him the exclusive story in return for
> the watchful eye of the free press. I think Perry would promise to
> raise a stink in print if anything happened to them. Yeah, it's a bit
> Capraesque, but it's worth their while to ask themselves what they're
> going to do if one of those alphabet agencies is *already* hot on their
> heels. Roll over and give up?
No, not if they have a choice.
> Oh, just thought of another possibility: go to Swann and ask him to use
> his influence to protect them.
I like this. Except at this pint it would have to be Swann's
organization, meaning Crosby.
> Another possibility, Perry White's own insurance policy: multiple copies
> of documentation placed with multiple attorneys with instructions to
> disseminate if the Kents are ever whisked away by the government against
> their will.
That'll work as long as no one wants to find Clark badly enough to put a
LOT of money and effort into it. Perry was never a great danger to
anyone, at least not enough that his threat couldn't be neutralized by
just having him blacklisted in the "respectable" media.
> I'm sure that in most such
> situations they'd consider telling one other person (Lex, Perry,
> whomever) to be preferable to having the whole world know.
Agreed.
> Or, in the
> case of the alphabet agencies catching up with him, I think it's worth
> considering public disclosure to be preferable to Clark possibly
> disappearing into the shadow government system (assuming they learn how
> to contain him via kryptonite) never to be heard from again.
A good disinformation campaign could make Clark look like a danger to
humanity who had to be taken into federal custody. Lionel (in his prime)
could do this easily enough; so could a rogue government agency, or
perhaps even one that hasn't gone rogue.
> And I'm
> sure that if the whole world is going to find out anyway (e.g., if Roger
> Nixon had gotten away with his videotape), that they'd like to have some
> measure of control over how that information gets out.
Granted. I just don't think they'd have that much control if someone
really powerful decides to expose them or exploit Clark.
> But Lex's curiosity mostly concerns the very thing that we're proposing
> that Clark come right out and tell him. Lex's curiosity so far hasn't
> manifested in a Swann-like basic research way, but in a forensic
> reconstruct-the-inexplicable-events-of-his-life way. Lex wants
> validation -- proof that his life does make sense after all and proof
> that Clark considers him his friend -- more than he wants raw data. He
> resorts to gathering the latter because he can't get the former.
To quote that poster in Mulder's X-Files office, "I want to believe ... "
All through the series so far, including now, I believe Lex is just as you
describe him. Maybe Clark does too. But Jonathan certainly does not, and
I don't think Martha does either. If Clark shared his secret with Lex
right now I'm sure Lex would keep the secret (except for bringing in a few
researchers who might not now all that much but could probably guess).
That would probably be enough to keep Lex from turning against
Clark/Superman later. But there is still the danger that Lex would still
cross over to the Dark Side of his destiny, or that Lionel would return to
his old ways and buy the loyalty of people on "Lex's mysterious research
project." Personally, I'd take the chance ... today, but not in the
future.
> One of
> the tragedies of the tension between them is that Naman could probably
> subdue Sageeth in a mythic judo move by capitulating and coopting him
> rather than by fighting him. In his heart of hearts, Clark even
> suspects as much, as revealed in one of his dreams in "Slumber":
Concur. Clark is bound by loyalty and a strong sense of right-and-wrong;
Lex, not so much. Lex knows how to manipulate people for his own
purposes, having learned from a master of the art. In spite of himself,
he would be tempted to exploit Clark's powers for both altruistic and
self-serving purposes ... and once he began, it would become easier for
both him and Clark to continue down that path.
> LEX: The irony is all you had to do was come to me, Clark. I was
> your friend. I would've protected your secret. I would've
> protected you. But I couldn't be trusted because I'm a
> Luthor.
> CLARK: No, that's not it!
> LEX: I don't care! I'm going to dedicate myself to ensuring the
> whole world knows who Clark Kent really is.
And of course future-Lex would do exactly that ... except somehow he'll
never get the opportunity. I suspect the producers will have him forget
much of what he already knows, although probably not with another series
of electroshock and drugs. (They'll want to do something new and
different; it's a Hollywood thing, I suppose.)
> : I doubt the writers and producers are brave enough to let Jonathan,
> : Martha and Clark explore this issue deeply on-camera.
>
> I agree, unfortunately.
It's not a bad way to handle things, from the writers' point of view.
Letting the Kents live in denial of the secret's vulnerability is easier
than facing it head-on, and it is how most people deal with such things.
"As long as no one knows, we're safe." Except that some people already
know parts of the secret and others surely have strong suspicions.
> : I'm sure they wouldn't spend much time on it because they would see it
> : as boring: "You want the Kents to just sit around the kitchen table
> : and *talk*? [....]
>
> Actually, yes, I do, but that's just my personal preference.
I think it would make for good drama. But doing it right would take a lot
of screen time, and the core audience would surely get bored. It is an
acton-adventure series, after all, and one that targets a young audience;
while good drama might hold that audience, I doubt you'd ever convince
anyone at TheWB of it.
> : The sad thing is, that probably *would* be the case if the writers
> : handled such a scene without some sort of "spice" such as already
> : having Clark's secret in jeopardy.
>
> But they could do it that way. Though less practical, they could treat
> it as crisis-management brainstorming, with the clock ticking like a
> time bomb because exposure has already been threatened in a given
> episode. "Hey, folks, Roger Nixon is about to publish a story on me
> with damaging photos. What do we do now?" In a kind of default way,
> they already did that: Jonathan decided on the spur of the moment that
> he'd be willing to sacrifice both himself and Nixon to keep the Secret
> intact. He did something even more half-assed in "Legacy," coming after
> Lionel and his minions in the cave with a shotgun. Yeah, going to
> prison in shame for murder is a great way to protect your family and a
> great example to set for your son.
Now, *this* I like! I don't mean having Jonathan actually kill someone to
keep the secret, but showing him (or better still, Martha) willing to kill
to protect Clark from exploitation. Perhaps having Clark choose to
sacrifice himself and his secret to keep his parents from doing anything
drastic, with a twist at the end that keeps the secret anyway.
> They have come close to exposure SO many times that just considering one
> alternative per each such incident, even if only to discard it, would
> give us a respectable cumulative body of explored options by now and a
> fuller picture of the Kents. But as you say, I don't think the writers
> and producers are brave enough even to venture into this territory.
In the real world (so to speak) they would all consider their options,
both individually and in family council. And the writers could always
write a little dialog to tell us that the Kents have already discussed
this more than once, but never with a single satisfactory plan of action
coming out of those discussions.
> And call me a softie, but I think Swann really does like to see himself
> in a mentor role for Clark. I don't think it's just an act to gain the
> trust of an alien specimen. True, he has his own agenda based on
> scientific curiosity, but I think it's also interesting that he tends to
> become an active player in the great Kryptonian Scavenger Hunt at times
> when it might be a good thing for mankind to keep those artifacts out of
> the hands of the demonstrably scary "Kal-El" and the two dark and driven
> Luthors.
Too bad Christopher Reeve's own death means we won't get to learn a lot
about Swann's own past. He could be a very interesting character,
especially with regards to how and why he would aid Clark in the future.
> Out of that list, though, the only one who really represented a threat
> was Lionel. And as I expected (though I couldn't in a million years
> have predicted the manner they chose), the writers simply neutralized
> that threat.
At least for now. Possibly permanently (by which I mean "until the
character is killed off"). Indeed, the "new" Lionel Luthor could end up
being an ally who helps protect Clark's secret ... if he still knows it
and is already hiding it, or if he has truly lost it and stumbles across
it later.
> Pity, that, but they evidently wanted a two-fer, healing
> him in mind and body. It would have been great if it had been a race
> against time, Lionel knowing the Big Secret and trying to use it somehow
> before he died of his liver disease. Even in the wake of his
> redemption, they could have allowed him to retain knowledge of the
> Secret precisely because he wants to do good now. But the writers are
> even more protective of the Secret than the Kents are.
I don't put anything past the writers. If they decide Lionel can be
useful as an ally, they could easily restore his memory -- or just say he
never actually lost it.
> It's not an ideal solution, but I think that Clark passing himself off
> as yet another meteor freak to those who know about such matters would
> circumvent some uncomfortable questions about Krypton, spaceships, and
> crusades to rule the world.
And the best part is, it isn't a complete lie. His powers are tied to the
meteors in a very real way, since his powers result from his Kryptonian
heritage -- and presumably a bunch of meteors (not all arriving on Earth)
are all that's left of Krypton.
Rivervillagelady
>From: Todd no...@nowhere.com
>Date: 12/30/2004 5:29 A.M. Eastern Standard Time
>Message-id: <9i07t0psse56hrfh3...@4ax.com>
>
>Somewhere in season one. Lex has, I think, Lana's necklace, and he
>brings it close to Clark. Clark tries to hide that it has some effect
>on him, but isn't quite successful.
>
>
True, but from the first episode, where Lex saw it hung around Clark's neck
while he was strung up like a scarecrow, Lex could also have attributed his
pulling away as a reaction to a reminder of a bad experience.
Diane
robg...@bestweb.net
> >Somewhere in season one. Lex has, I think, Lana's necklace, and he
> >brings it close to Clark. Clark tries to hide that it has some
effect
> >on him, but isn't quite successful.
Clark wasn't trying to hide anything. He was only then learning that
it had an effect on him.
> True, but from the first episode, where Lex saw it hung around
Clark's neck
> while he was strung up like a scarecrow, Lex could also have
attributed his
> pulling away as a reaction to a reminder of a bad experience.
There was no "pulling away" on Clark's part in that scene.
Robert
Micky DuPree
<bucke...@bellsouth.net> writes:
: On Mon, 03 Jan 2005 13:43:48 +0000, Micky DuPree wrote:
:: In classic _Smallville_ fashion, it's not enough to have a normal
:: trait or a typical problem. It has to be paranormally exaggerated.
:: Clark manages to hide the literal alienness, but until recently,
:: wasn't too successful at shedding the more conventionally geeky image
:: (which is just the tip of the iceberg of Clark's true outsider
:: status). I think this exaggerated outsider status is a deliberate
:: theme, not an accident.
:
: I don't doubt that for a second. Writers for both comics and
: electronic media tend to overplay their characters, umm,
: characteristics. And one long-running theme in the Superman legend
: has been his two conflicting personae. Superman has literally nothing
: except physical appearance in common with the people of Earth, and
: everyone knows it, but Superman is loved by the public; it's Clark,
: who presumably is just an ordinary guy, who suffers the insecurities
: and unrequited love that most "ordinary guys" know so well.
Well, there is his upbringing, which is almost entirely terrestrial.
The public will eventually know that he grew up on Earth, even if they
don't know where, right? I can think of a couple of exceptions, but
_Smallville_ leans heavily on the Nurture theory of adult character.
Even Swann once told Clark, "Humanity is not only about biology." Clark
doesn't seem to appreciate that much, despite his parents' reassurances
that he has the power to choose not to conquer Earth, perhaps because
it's like trying to get a fish to notice the water he's swimming in.
: Clark could win over the major holdouts in his personal life, Lana and
: Lois, if only he would be completely open and honest with them about
: who he really is ... but that route holds dangers for both them and
: himself.
We have foreknowledge from past versions that Lois will eventually
accept Clark's true origins, but I don't know that she would right now
in the _Smallville_ story. She doesn't know him that well yet.
Lana, I dunno. The way they've written her in the past suggests that
she likes to keep a certain distance between herself and her boyfriend,
no further, but no closer either, despite all her talk about complete
truthfulness. If things are too distant, she pressures for more
closeness, fewer secrets. But if things get too close or too
complicated (which sometimes amounts to the same thing), she gets
uncomfortable and pushes away. I'm not convinced she would handle the
truth about Clark's origins well, at least not in the present (which
makes Clark damned if he does and damned if he doesn't).
: I understand (I haven't read them for myself) that the current
: treatment in the comics has Clark enjoying a bit more personal
: achievement, so that he doesn't fade into the woodwork quite as much
: as he did in the past. he's a little more assertive, less nerdy, a
: nice guy who doesn't let himself become a doormat for everyone else.
: I like that, and I think that may be one reason why the TV producers
: decided to let Clark finally join the football team.
I like the sound of it too, but there's a huge difference between
genuinely competing on a level *intellectual* playing field and merely
pretending to compete on the football field when he could walk away with
it every time. Football is supposed to be a competition between teams
roughly in the same "weight class" (pros don't play college teams;
college teams don't play high-school teams) to see which team is better.
Even if Clark doesn't use his alien abilities to win every time, even if
he never hurts anyone, his presence on the field is still a massive
deception. Even the guys on his own team are under the delusion that
they're all normal guys trying their best. Imagine learning that one of
your teammates is just pretending to do his best but is actually holding
way back because he wants to pretend that he's just another one of the
guys, so every game your team has played with him was a sham.
:: There's certainly a sleepwalking aspect to the mainstream,
:: exacerbated in restrictive environments like K-12 school. Chloe
:: tried to cheer up Lois by telling her that a lot of people would love
:: to repeat their senior year in high school, but how sad is it that
:: someone would have nothing better to with their adult life than to
:: relive a year of high school, no matter how great those years might
:: have been?
:
: Chloe is often wise beyond her years ... but this time I think the
: writers were projecting a bit too much of their own point of view into
: a teenage character.
My impression swings the other way, on two points. One is that I think
Chloe was being cheerfully ironic. She's right about some people's
high-school years being the best of their lives, but I don't think she
was seriously implying that this was going to be true for either Lois or
herself (if only because they both show great promise for their adult
years). I think she was looking forward to having Lois' company (I
imagine that for only children, first cousins assume a greater
importance as their closest familial peers), and she was giving Lois a
good-natured ribbing about how to reconcile herself to her fate at
Smallville High.
The other point is that I can't shake the feeling that the writers
identify more with Joss Whedon's "High school is hell" viewpoint than
with the "High school is a golden time" outlook. I think _Smallville_
has a pro-geek outlook, though with some perhaps unacknowledged
ambivalence that maybe the grass really was greener in the pastures they
weren't allowed to graze on.
: Sure, I would love to relive my high school days, but I'm pretty far
: removed from those days.
My senior year wasn't actually that bad, but there's too much that's
better now. Go back to the confines of legal minority? Not on your
life.
: I'll go just a tiny bit further and suggest that Lois may herself feel
: a little like an alien now that she's a fulltime resident of the
: civilian world. The two lives aren't all that different, but they
: *are* different.)
It makes sense to me. In fact, it sounds like she had a strange
upbringing even for an Army brat. (Or as Clark put it, "And I thought
my father was overprotective.")
: But Smallville exaggerates the characters more than usual when they do
: FOTW stories. I might buy the idea of one cheerleader in "Devoted"
: being a chemistry whiz, but two or more? Especially when these
: cheerleaders were presented as being stereotypically shallow because
: they used their scientific skills just to get their own "Stepford toy
: boys".
If memory serves, there were just two cheerleaders who came up with the
kryptade because they were lab partners, and their science project was
nothing more than adding meteor rock to the brain chemical found in
chocolate. If you add meteor rock to anything in Smallville, you get
the same thing back, only ever so much more so.
:: Implicitly, though, I think there's a subterranean strain of envy
:: that's at odds with the explicit text. Clark still pines for the
:: same alpha perquisite homecoming queen that most of the other guys
:: seem to want (and even some of the gals), not for the geekily
:: brilliant female Fox Mulder of Smallville who drives half the plots.
:: He still wants to be a football star despite Whitney finally saying
:: he wanted to do something more substantive than play ball, and Jason
:: admitting it's only a game.
:
: People naturally want what they can't have, especially if they have
: the ability but the prize itself is forbidden. Clark's just a
: teenager, and he sees playing football as important to his peer group
: ... not to mention his father, the former football star. It's
: understandable that he'd want the experience for himself.
It's not that by itself that leads me to think that _Smallville_ is
partially subverting itself. As mentioned before ...
:: I found it disturbing that Jonathan eventually capitulated on the
:: subject after he finally got around to making the one argument that
:: Clark can't make go away: even if he injures no one and loses every
:: game on purpose, it's still a lie.
:
: That bothered me a bit too.
It's Jonathan's capitulation that leads me to think that there's a
strain of geek envy of the mainstream in not just Clark as a character,
but in the authorial point of view as well. Except when he loses his
temper, Jonathan is generally the anchor of morality and wisdom on the
show. I didn't mind at all that Buffy Summers sometimes screwed up.
She was young and sometimes people have to make mistakes in order to
learn. What bothered me was when her mentor patted her on the back for
making a mistake, and I'm getting that same feeling of the writers
approving of what Clark's doing on the football field now. It's like
geek wish-fulfillment, reliving one's senior year, only now beating the
jocks at their own game. It feels petty and it feels uncomfortable.
: At the same time, I'm glad he did finally allow Clark to play; among
: other things, it gave us a male-bonding scene between father and son
: when Clark asked Jonathan if he was going to let someone else teach
: his kid how to play.
The scene was cute, particularly Clark dunking the football, but
Jonathan could teach Clark how to play football without Clark actually
joining the school team. Jonathan and Clark could bond over Jonathan
honestly telling Clark that by saving countless lives, he's already far
outstripped his old man's passing record and made him immensely proud.
Football's just a game. What Clark routinely does with his powers is
the real thing.
:: Like Abigail in "Facade," Clark can't seem to see beyond high school.
:: They both see their senior year as their last chance to make their
:: mark, instead of seeing high school as a small pond that no one will
:: care about a year from now.
:
: I didn't see my senior year in high school that way ...
Neither did I. It was obvious to me from early on that what you did in
your minority didn't count for much in the real world. High school was
just marking time. You had to lay down an impressive paper record for
college admissions, but once you got through that door, no one would
give a damn what award you got in the 11th grade or whom you went with
to the senior prom. High-pressure sports are perhaps their own self-
contained world, but very few can make a paying adult career out of
them.
: ... but maybe some do. Or maybe this was another case where the
: writers expressed their own points of view (as adults) through teenage
: characters.
I don't get the impression that this is the writers' adult view, at
least not their primary one. After all, they know full well that Clark
is supposed to go on to be Superman, the most powerful being in his
world. How can playing high-school football possibly compare to that?
I think that, at least on an overt level, we're supposed to see this as
the blinders of youth.
: Lana is the only character who could have gotten away with living
: alone while in high school; I still don't think it was a great idea,
: but at least she was the logical choice if one of the teenagers had
: to.
I never heard of a plot reason for writing it this way. Maybe the
actress who played Nell wanted to leave and they decided it was just
easier to write her out than to never show her again? Maybe they wanted
to turn Lana into a bigger bag of anxiety than she already was? Dunno.
: And being out on her own did give her the freedom to decide she'd go
: to France, while the others would have to discuss the move with
: parents.
It's not clear to me that she didn't need Nell's signature on something
in order to do that. Despite discrepancies in her onscreen birthdays, I
got the impression that we're supposed to think that Lana turned 18
while in Paris. But Nell has another life now, and may not concern
herself much with the almost grown kid who didn't want to move with her.
She might sign anything that Lana snail-mailed to her.
: But based on relative maturity (as I perceive it) I think Chloe would
: have been more likely to spend a summer in Europe. Not as good for
: the series, but slightly more reasonable from a real-world
: perspective.
Same here. Chloe strikes me as the one most ready to tackle the adult
world. She evidently made a good impression at the _Daily Planet_ until
she crossed an evil billionaire (and won't that just spoil your day).
:: Lana does have a pathological fatalism from her experiences with
:: dying loved ones, but at least to most of her classmates in school,
:: she appears mainstream.
:
: If Lana is "mainstream", then the whole student body must consist of
: overachievers ... and sometimes I think that's precisely the case.
Heh. I didn't mean that she's average. She's the mainstream's ideal,
what the mainstream aspires to. She's what females are supposed to want
to be and what males are supposed to want in a female. Vice versa for
Whitney and Jason.
: She didn't seem all that talented or motivated to run a business, but
: she took over as manager of The Talon and apparently did well enough
: to keep the doors open ...
But that didn't seem motivated so much by entrepreneurial spirit as by
her root fatalism: trying to bring people who were long departed close
to her. When that nostalgia faded, she had few qualms about divesting
her half (although the details of how that worked were never clear to
me, since the buyer was killed and Lex seemed to end up sole owner).
: ... Lex might have been humoring her a bit, but he's still a
: businessman and wouldn't pour money into an unsuccessful business very
: long.
Despite his claims to the contrary, Lex did get sentimental over the
Talon and held onto it when it wasn't bringing in any income.
: She saved enough money to live in Paris for a few months.
I thought she was living off of capital, not savings per se. I got the
impression that the Talon didn't do much better than paying for its own
upkeep.
: She was apparently mature enough to associate with an older guy who
: grew up with wealth and had enjoyed fame due to his athletic skills --
: Jason could easily have found plenty of single (and more mature)
: French women to spend his time with.
Well, there's the question of whether or not his mother had a hand in
bringing them together, but entirely apart from that, it's possible to
look at it from another angle: it's the immature gals who are more
easily swept up by older guys, and emotionally immature guys who are
more comfortable being with substantially younger gals, so I'm skeptical
of an argument for Lana's maturity based on age difference.
Besides, almost no one on the show can fight it. Lana is supposed to be
the pinnacle of feminine beauty. Males stalk Lana. Females stalk Lana.
Little children stalk Lana. Dead witches stalk Lana. There's room on
the bandwagon for everyone. Jason's fate was preordained.
:: I think there's both more and less going on there than just puberty.
:: In "Calling," Clark reveals that he's been pining for Lana ever since
:: he was five. That's not puberty.
:
: Could be just puppy-love combined with being unable to appracher
: because of that necklace.
Wouldn't surprise me. You can build up a pretty ideal fantasy in your
head over the course of nine years.
: Or did she have the necklace when she was that young?
In "Metamorphosis," Lana says Nell gave it to her when she adopted Lana,
which probably wasn't long after Lana was orphaned. We know she had it
as early as 10 years old, since Emily wanted a necklace because Lana had
a necklace.
:: He's been pining for a girl that he wasn't even able to talk to until
:: he was 14. I think the fatalistic Lana gives off a "saaaave me" vibe
:: that the heroic Clark reflexively responds to. In the pilot, though,
:: Clark connects his presence on Earth with that crying little girl on
:: the cover of _Time_, as if he had been the thing that she needed
:: saving from.
:
: Unreasoning guilt. Been there, done that.
Yep. I think it even fits with Clark's personality. Despite all the
good he's done, he sometimes gets on a kick where he thinks everyone
would be better off without him.
:: Unless the writers decide to throw them together YET again (god, no,
:: not again), then it's going to be hard to come up with reasonable
:: pretexts for including Lana in the lives of the other characters.
: Maybe when Jason fades out she'll throw herself into school
: activities; this is her senior year, after all. She may also
: re-embrace her friends, and even start going with someone (probably
: Clark, but not necessarily) on the rebound. Hmmm, now that she's
: reinforced her pattern of dating older guys (Whitney, now Jason)
: she'll become interested in Lex. I'm already convinced that Lex is
: interested in her, although I don't know for certain that his interest
: is romantic ...
I've always gotten the impression that Lex's interests in the high-
schoolers is an attempt to be the older brother he never got to be in
his own family. In real life, if a rich 21-year-old with a wild
reputation rolled into town and made friends only with 14- and 15-year-
olds, it would raise some eyebrows, but I think it's strictly a sibling-
like impulse. He values Clark and Lana in particular for what he
perceives as their goodness and purity. When Lex started to get
impatient with Clark's secretiveness, it strangely seemed like the most
relaxed relationship Lex had was with Lana, because neither of them was
in love with the other and neither of them was pressing the other to
spill all their secrets or else be branded a horrible person.
Of course, ever since Lana came back tattooed, even she's been keeping
secrets from Lex, and Lex knows it. What I can't understand is what the
big deal is about keeping this particular secret. Her tattoo is not
like Clark's secret. Neither Lex nor Clark is going to sic a government
alphabet agency on her if she confides in them, so her fear of
disclosure seems wholly without foundation to me.
:: But we don't actually need much Lana screen time in order for Clark
:: to pine over her, and we don't need a new character in the opening
:: credits to get across the message that Lana's trying to move on.
:
: I always thought Kristin Kreuk's Lana got a lot of her screen time as
: a concession to the males in the audience who can never get enough
: eye-candy. But maybe that's just me.
Not just you. :)
: (And if it is, note to producers: I prefer watching Allison Mack and
: Erica Durance anyway. Also Annette O'Toole and Lex's various older
: babes ... but I'm considerably older than the average audience for the
: show.)
So am I, as well as the wrong gender for the question. But I suspect
that Kreuk is the producers' favorite eye-candy as well, and since it's
their show, their tastes prevail.
-Micky
Micky DuPree
robg...@bestweb.net writes:
: Micky DuPree wrote:
:: I think that overtly, _Smallville_ takes the stance that the
:: mainstream is deeply flawed [....]
:
: It's at least taken the pose that the vast majority of families are
: dysfunctional.
Well, it ain't _Our Town_, if that's what you mean. The Luthors are the
most abusive family I've ever seen on American broadcast television, and
the producers could probably get away with that only because Lex is an
adult when the story begins. But except for the Luthors, I think that
the dysfunctions in the regular characters' families aren't that
radical. The number of one-parent households is unusually high even by
contemporary standards, but Nell Potter, Gabe Sullivan, and Abby Ross
don't seem to be horrific parents and their kids aren't growing up
locked in bitter battles or absurd dependencies with them. Some of the
meteor mutants' families are in bad shape, but I presume we see them
precisely because things are going horribly wrong. The people in stable
families don't make waves and don't come to our attention.
: "Smallville" has taken every opportunity to say that, if this is a
: prequel-explanation of Superman's personality traits, then it's only
: by some fantastic fluke that he didn't grow up to be Supervillain,
: Superneurotic, Superjerk, or kill himself.
Heh. I do think they've driven home the point that Clark will be able
to carry off the awesome responsibilities of his powers because he had
that ideal _Our Town_ upbringing that you hear about a lot but rarely
see in real life. "You are your upbringing" is a recurring message.
(Or as Lucas Luthor once pointed out, if Clark and Lex had switched
fathers, Clark would be rich and miserable and Lex would be the one
wearing plaid.)
:: I found it disturbing that Jonathan eventually capitulated on the
:: subject [of joining the football team] after he finally got around to
:: making the one argument that Clark can't make go away: even if he
:: injures no one and loses every game on purpose, it's still a lie.
:
: That really bothered me about the beginning of season 4. They
: trivialized themselves for the sake of some plotting -- brought on the
: cognitive dissonance. Makes it hard to figure out whether we should
: take Clark's thinking seriously at any given point or not.
Worse: whether we can take Jonathan's thinking seriously, and since I
had previously gotten the feeling that Jonathan often spoke for the
authorial point of view, now I have to wonder if I can take the writers'
thinking seriously anymore.
:: Lana does have a pathological fatalism from her experiences with
:: dying loved ones, but at least to most of her classmates in school,
:: she appears mainstream.
:
: Maybe we're supposed to assume that without contrary evidence, but
: it's not clear to me that she so appears to them.
Evidently the impression given to us by the story -- that everyone
covets Lana or her life or both -- isn't so far off from the characters'
perception either. As Van McNulty said of her in "Extinction," "That
girl's got so many guys tailing her she should qualify for Secret
Service protection."
: I think the problem may be in assuming the existence of a mainstream,
: rather than Smallville HS being balkanized into a plethora of cliques,
: which it may be.
They tend to give us an overwhelming impression of the culture of
football and cheerleading. The pilot opened on the flashback to the
whole town being excited over the homecoming victory. When Coach Walt
in "Hothead" was abusing the players and breaking the academic rules,
Principal Kwan couldn't get any help from the school board because Walt
had coached most of them. If I went to a high school that was plastered
wall to wall with happy-sappy pep posters, I'd find it oppressive.
:: Unless the writers decide to throw them together YET again (god, no,
:: not again), then it's going to be hard to come up with reasonable
:: pretexts for including Lana in the lives of the other characters.
: If only they could kill her. Or get her to go back to France. Or
: send her to Belle Reve. Or reveal that she's always been an android
: robot and have her recalled by the mfr. Or have a delayed-action
: witch's spell on her turn her into a cockroach, preferably not one
: like artie or a fly on the wall, but an insignficant one.
Heh. Don't be shy now.
:: But we don't actually need much Lana screen time in order for Clark
:: to pine over her [....]
:
: You got it; just have him take frequent trips to the cemetery where
: she's buried. She can still be in the commercials.
lol. She is pretty much dead air when she's in these separate plot
lines, like Adam and Jason. (Man, I couldn't believe the editing
decisions in "Asylum." One minute Lex is fighting to keep his mind
intact and then they'd cut to Lana trying to decide how much weight to
put on her foot this week. Talk about a discrepancy in dramatic import.
What were they thinking?)
::: I doubt the writers and producers are brave enough to let Jonathan,
::: Martha and Clark explore this issue deeply on-camera.
::
:: I agree, unfortunately.
:
: Heh. 'Twould be fun if Clark were some day to stumble upon a cached
: message left by them for such a contingency.
Not bad. It's a bit melodramatic for Jonathan and Martha, but I'd
settle for that. In less than a year, Clark will be 18. Then if
something drastic happens to both his parents, he could end up as their
legal guardian and steward of the farm. I think it's time they talk
about contingencies like that with him, living will (dead will, too, for
that matter), that sort of thing, in addition to the stranger things
that might happen to a family with a superpowered son.
::: I'm sure they wouldn't spend much time on it because they would see
::: it as boring: "You want the Kents to just sit around the kitchen
::: table and *talk*? [....]
:
: It'd work if the message were in the form of video.
Especially if the forces of doom were already breathing down his neck,
but it pretty much precludes Clark offering his input. And in most
situations, it's hard to see why they would be keeping Clark on a need-
to-know-right-now basis. He's not the one the f. of d. are going to
want to torture to order to find out the location of Jonathan and
Martha.
:: But as you say, I don't think the writers and producers are brave
:: enough even to venture into this territory.
:
: I don't understand how bravery figures. You saying the chances of
: fucking this up are so great that it daunts the writers? Do writers
: actually get a bad rep from slipping on the path to a great story?
Sometimes they can, in the form of being called overambitious. Most of
these guys are going to want to work in the industry again when
_Smallville_ is over, and one's reputation for reliably delivering
commercial success is important. But I was thinking more about the
limitations of genre and convention. Genre and convention can be
wonderful structuring agents, but there are times when the story would
be artistically better off bending or at least extending those
conventions somewhat. However, the conventions are commercially safe
and familiar. The audience knows what to expect and shows up to get
their weekly dose of it. There's always a commercial risk to fooling
around with that, and sometimes there's just an internal fear of
breaking out, of doing the unfamiliar, of rocking the boat. There are
practical responsibilities to take into account, too. A lot of money
and a lot of jobs could be affected by the decision to do something
unexpected. I imagine that would make the decision-makers nervous.
:: Even in the wake of his redemption, they could have allowed [Lionel]
:: to retain knowledge of the Secret precisely because he wants to do
:: good now.
:
: As if someone who wants to do good couldn't represent a threat
: thereby!
I'm just saying that, given the redemption, the writers have the perfect
pretext for writing Lionel as no longer a threat even if they allowed
him to retain knowledge of Clark's Big Secret. It's sad when you
automatically know whose brain is going to be dipped in White-Out before
the end of the episode based on how much they've found out.
-Micky
Micky DuPree
<bucke...@bellsouth.net> writes:
: On Mon, 03 Jan 2005 13:43:48 +0000, Micky DuPree wrote:
:: In article <pan.2005.01.02....@bellsouth.net>, BucketButt
:: <bucke...@bellsouth.net> writes:
::: On Sat, 01 Jan 2005 00:34:50 +0000, Micky DuPree wrote [to
::: BucketButt]:
:::: ... but realistically, what CAN they do if the secret ever gets
:::: out?
::::
:::: 1) Try to go into hiding. That's what I'd expect them to think of.
:::
::: Far easier said than done, especially in this time of increased
::: security.
::
:: I didn't say it would be easy. I didn't even say they'd be
:: successful. I said that's what I'd expect the Kents to think of.
:
: People run away from their pasts and try to start over all the time;
: some of those who actually plan it out ahead of time succeed for
: years, perhaps permanently.
By now everyone knows the trick of applying for the birth certificate of
someone who died in infancy. As far as I know, state agencies still
don't cross-reference birth and death stats. Once you have the birth
certificate, you can get a driver's license and Social Security card.
Jonathan and Clark could both do day labor under the radar and Martha
could waitress until they get established somewhere. The first step
would be the psychological hurdle of grappling with the idea that they
may have to abandon the farm at a moment's notice and never look back.
:::: 2) Beat the discloser to the punch, go to the press themselves, and
:::: hope for the best.
:::
::: Unlikely.
::
:: Depends on who's coming at them and how. I could imagine
:: circumstances where they'd run out of options and would decide that
:: the only measure of control they can regain over the situation would
:: be to neutralize a blackmailer by disclosure and hope to control the
:: spin somewhat.
:
: Clark would still become an object of curiosity and perhaps fear, and
: might still end up in the clutches of some government agency.
Yeah, he might at that. Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, life
just doesn't go your way. I'd still expect them to go down struggling,
though, rather than let them take Clark away without a peep.
::: They know that Clark would quickly wind up in government custody and
::: examined (dissected, if they could find a way) by some
::: alphabet-agency.
::
:: Now *that's* far easier said than done if Clark doesn't want to go
:: quietly. It argues for Jonathan and Martha going into hiding first
:: to keep them from being held hostage against Clark's cooperation,
:: though. If they can't go into hiding, then full disclosure to the
:: press would raise questions in the event of the mysterious
:: disappearance of the Kent parents.
:
: Confine the Kents "for their own safety", fake their deaths, tell
: Clark he's actually doing his patriotic duty as an American ...
: unless, of course, he'd rather just be considered an alien with no
: rights at all. It could be done, if the people doing it are ruthless
: enough. All they'd have to do is get to Jonathan and Martha before
: the Kents could make a counter-move.
You sound like you're arguing that they're right to never even consider
options, on the grounds that it's all hopeless anyway.
:: Yeah, it's a bit Capraesque, but it's worth their while to ask
:: themselves what they're going to do if one of those alphabet agencies
:: is *already* hot on their heels. Roll over and give up?
:
: No, not if they have a choice.
No, I didn't think so.
:: Oh, just thought of another possibility: go to Swann and ask him to
:: use his influence to protect them.
:
: I like this. Except at this pint it would have to be Swann's
: organization, meaning Crosby.
Yeah. <sigh>
:: Another possibility, Perry White's own insurance policy: multiple
:: copies of documentation placed with multiple attorneys with
:: instructions to disseminate if the Kents are ever whisked away by the
:: government against their will.
:
: That'll work as long as no one wants to find Clark badly enough to put
: a LOT of money and effort into it. Perry was never a great danger to
: anyone, at least not enough that his threat couldn't be neutralized by
: just having him blacklisted in the "respectable" media.
Perry and Lionel seemed to reach an effective stalemate (which is damned
impressive for anyone facing off against Lionel), but I got the
impression that what was tilting the scales against Perry was the
drinking and cynical dissolution.
:: Or, in the case of the alphabet agencies catching up with him, I
:: think it's worth considering public disclosure to be preferable to
:: Clark possibly disappearing into the shadow government system
:: (assuming they learn how to contain him via kryptonite) never to be
:: heard from again.
:
: A good disinformation campaign could make Clark look like a danger to
: humanity who had to be taken into federal custody. Lionel (in his
: prime) could do this easily enough; so could a rogue government
: agency, or perhaps even one that hasn't gone rogue.
Before we go too deep into _X-Files_ country and posit an unrelentingly
threatening world for _Smallville_, perhaps we should ask how Superman
can possibly survive to become a costumed crimefighter if his debut into
the public eye is necessarily going to be followed close upon by
kidnapping, life imprisonment, and torture in the form of forced
experimentation under kryptonite. Are his hands going to be (literally)
tied until Jonathan and Martha are dead by fair means or foul?
:: And I'm sure that if the whole world is going to find out anyway
:: (e.g., if Roger Nixon had gotten away with his videotape), that
:: they'd like to have some measure of control over how that information
:: gets out.
:
: Granted. I just don't think they'd have that much control if someone
: really powerful decides to expose them or exploit Clark.
That suggests allying with someone else really powerful (Swann, Lex).
If General Lane has a conscience, he's another possibility. There's
also the question of what do if it's *not* someone really powerful, just
someone who has accidentally seen Clark use his powers.
We have the foreknowledge that someday Clark will don the tights and let
the entire world know that a superbeing lives among them. Why isn't
that necessarily going to lead to your dismal conclusion?
:: But Lex's curiosity mostly concerns the very thing that we're
:: proposing that Clark come right out and tell him. Lex's curiosity so
:: far hasn't manifested in a Swann-like basic research way, but in a
:: forensic reconstruct-the-inexplicable-events-of-his-life way. Lex
:: wants validation -- proof that his life does make sense after all and
:: proof that Clark considers him his friend -- more than he wants raw
:: data. He resorts to gathering the latter because he can't get the
:: former.
:
: To quote that poster in Mulder's X-Files office, "I want to
: believe ... "
Heh. Yeah. Me too.
: All through the series so far, including now, I believe Lex is just as
: you describe him. Maybe Clark does too. But Jonathan certainly does
: not, and I don't think Martha does either.
I see contrary indications. Martha is the one who pleads Lex's case
even when the menfolk are turning a deaf ear: "Ever since [Lex] met you,
he's been surrounded by things he can't explain. We can't really blame
him for trying to find the truth." Even Jonathan will sometimes throw
in a good word: "Clark, as much as I hate to admit this, Lex had a hand
in this too. He did make good on his promise to protect Chloe." If
anything, at least in the fourth season, it was Clark who was nursing
hurt feelings until Lex repented and turned in his files on Clark.
: If Clark shared his secret with Lex right now I'm sure Lex would keep
: the secret (except for bringing in a few researchers who might not now
: all that much but could probably guess).
That's just it. I see Lex bringing in all manner of researchers *until*
Clark confides with him. Afterwards, no. Dr. Swann might want all
manner of tissue samples and tests run if he had the opportunity, just
because he's curious to get the scientific data for its own sake. Lex
pursues scientific data, not for its own sake, but in order to establish
the fact of the Secret itself. Tell him the Secret outright and he
won't feel the need to sequence Kryptonian DNA just for the hell of it.
: That would probably be enough to keep Lex from turning against Clark/
: Superman later.
If Lex has a fault in this area, it's that his sense of personal loyalty
is so great that he lets it cloud his judgment when it comes to a more
general sense of morality. "The truth is, I'd do anything to protect my
friends" (Lex in "Zero"). Arguably, no one was better off because he
lied to shield his friend Amanda from the police investigation in
"Zero." She shot her fiance' in Lex's defense after the fiance' had
stabbed Lex with a knife. That's justifiable homicide, and while going
through the justice system even when innocent (probably especially when
innocent) is very unpleasant, they had Lex's knife wound and witnesses
on their side. It's conceivable that Amanda might still be alive today
if she had done things by the book and been publicly exonerated rather
than having to live with the lie.
I'm not even convinced that Lillian and Lex were better off in the long
run because of Lex shielding her from the consequences of her actions,
but I can understand why Lex would side with his mother against his
father.
Lex could have used Clark's Secret as a bargaining chip to keep Lionel
from possibly turning him into a vegetable in "Asylum." At the end of
Lex's first meeting with Clark in Belle Reve, Lex yelled that he'd never
forgive him. Of course, Clark showing up in the nick of time anyway AND
de-cloaked AND demonstrably putting himself in harm's way in the
process, were all the proof of friendship Lex needed. Lex wouldn't sell
out someone who had just done all that for him, even at the cost of his
own mind. Lex remembers nothing of that now, but it's a strong
indicator of his priorities.
: But there is still the danger that Lex would still cross over to the
: Dark Side of his destiny, or that Lionel would return to his old ways
: and buy the loyalty of people on "Lex's mysterious research project."
: Personally, I'd take the chance ... today, but not in the future.
Yes, but it's not logical for the Kents to behave as if they have the
benefit of reading _Superman_ comics. In fact, the biggest problem with
Lex in the past has been his tissue-thin physical security, since Lionel
ended up learning almost everything Lex knew, presumably including
everything in his Clark archive (not that it matters much if the writers
are just going to pretend he knew nothing after all). In the wake of
Lionel's redemption (and even if you don't believe it, Clark seems to),
the biggest danger in telling Lex the Secret is gone.
:: One of the tragedies of the tension between them is that Naman could
:: probably subdue Sageeth in a mythic judo move by capitulating and
:: coopting him rather than by fighting him.
: Concur. Clark is bound by loyalty and a strong sense of right-and-
: wrong; Lex, not so much.
I think Lex feels bound by loyalty to those who trust him. But bound to
a sense of right and wrong? Much less so. He borrows too much from
Lionel's "the ends justify the means" playbook. Unfortunately, all the
regular characters indulge in this to some degree, including Clark
himself. In particular, Clark, Lex, and Chloe style themselves as
benevolent vigilantes entitled to break laws and invade privacy because
they consider their ends and their motives just too gosh-darned good to
be denied.
: Lex knows how to manipulate people for his own purposes, having
: learned from a master of the art. In spite of himself, he would be
: tempted to exploit Clark's powers for both altruistic and self-serving
: purposes ... and once he began, it would become easier for both him
: and Clark to continue down that path.
I disagree. Lex is at a crossroads. I think one of the things that
would take him down the right road is letting him get emotionally
invested in taking that road. One of the things that would get him to
see "Naman" as trustworthy rather than as the potential dictator of
Earth is "Naman" coming clean.
:: In his heart of hearts, Clark even suspects as much, as revealed in
:: one of his dreams in "Slumber":
:: LEX: The irony is all you had to do was come to me, Clark. I was
:: your friend. I would've protected your secret. I would've
:: protected you. But I couldn't be trusted because I'm a
:: Luthor.
:: CLARK: No, that's not it!
:: LEX: I don't care! I'm going to dedicate myself to ensuring the
:: whole world knows who Clark Kent really is.
:
: And of course future-Lex would do exactly that ...
Yes. Because Clark won't trust him.
: ... except somehow he'll never get the opportunity. I suspect the
: producers will have him forget much of what he already knows, although
: probably not with another series of electroshock and drugs. (They'll
: want to do something new and different; it's a Hollywood thing, I
: suppose.)
Hey, look at Lionel. Completely clueless in "Transference." Gee, that
was easy.
::: I doubt the writers and producers are brave enough to let Jonathan,
::: Martha and Clark explore this issue deeply on-camera.
::
:: I agree, unfortunately.
:
: It's not a bad way to handle things, from the writers' point of view.
: Letting the Kents live in denial of the secret's vulnerability is
: easier than facing it head-on, and it is how most people deal with
: such things. "As long as no one knows, we're safe." Except that some
: people already know parts of the secret and others surely have strong
: suspicions.
Yeah, and they've had SO many close calls. You'd think that would light
a fire under them. It's not as if they can deny it can happen, since it
already has.
::: I'm sure they wouldn't spend much time on it because they would see
::: it as boring: "You want the Kents to just sit around the kitchen
::: table and *talk*? [....]
::
:: Actually, yes, I do, but that's just my personal preference.
:
: I think it would make for good drama.
It can be done. I've seen it. And it has its own inherent drama. It
doesn't even need the artificial ramp-up of the bad guys barrelling down
the road on their way to the farm. The very fact that the subject under
discussion would be the Kents' radical contingency plans for what to do
if their world comes apart would lend the scene an edge. It wouldn't be
like discussing how to save money by changing brands of breakfast
cereal.
: But doing it right would take a lot of screen time, and the core
: audience would surely get bored. It is an acton-adventure series,
: after all, and one that targets a young audience; while good drama
: might hold that audience, I doubt you'd ever convince anyone at TheWB
: of it.
I can understand this anxiety, which is why I suggested the alternative
of having the Kents broach just one possible alternative each time
they're actually threatened. Over the course of time, it would cover
the same ground.
:: In a kind of default way, they already did that: Jonathan decided on
:: the spur of the moment that he'd be willing to sacrifice both himself
:: and Nixon to keep the Secret intact. He did something even more
:: half-assed in "Legacy," coming after Lionel and his minions in the
:: cave with a shotgun. Yeah, going to prison in shame for murder is a
:: great way to protect your family and a great example to set for your
:: son.
:
: Now, *this* I like! I don't mean having Jonathan actually kill
: someone to keep the secret, but showing him (or better still, Martha)
: willing to kill to protect Clark from exploitation. Perhaps having
: Clark choose to sacrifice himself and his secret to keep his parents
: from doing anything drastic, with a twist at the end that keeps the
: secret anyway.
It was the kind of thing that made one sit up and take notice, but since
Clark had to pull Jonathan off of Lionel with alarm in "Legacy," I'd
expect Clark to insist they talk about alternatives NOW, even if his
parents want to pretend it couldn't possibly happen again. Jonathan was
adamant that he hadn't raised a murderer in "Phoenix." As you say, is
Clark going to let Jonathan become a murderer just to shield Clark?
:: They have come close to exposure SO many times that just considering
:: one alternative per each such incident, even if only to discard it,
:: would give us a respectable cumulative body of explored options by
:: now and a fuller picture of the Kents. But as you say, I don't think
:: the writers and producers are brave enough even to venture into this
:: territory.
:
: In the real world (so to speak) they would all consider their options,
: both individually and in family council. And the writers could always
: write a little dialog to tell us that the Kents have already discussed
: this more than once, but never with a single satisfactory plan of
: action coming out of those discussions.
True, we don't have to be privy to the actual discussions. Simple
references to such discussions would suffice to suggest a broader
awareness and gravity on the part of the Kents.
:: And call me a softie, but I think Swann really does like to see
:: himself in a mentor role for Clark. I don't think it's just an act
:: to gain the trust of an alien specimen. True, he has his own agenda
:: based on scientific curiosity, but I think it's also interesting that
:: he tends to become an active player in the great Kryptonian Scavenger
:: Hunt at times when it might be a good thing for mankind to keep those
:: artifacts out of the hands of the demonstrably scary "Kal-El" and the
:: two dark and driven Luthors.
:
: Too bad Christopher Reeve's own death means we won't get to learn a
: lot about Swann's own past. He could be a very interesting character,
: especially with regards to how and why he would aid Clark in the
: future.
Yeah. A loss to the story as well as to the world. They need to kill
Swann off eventually. Having shown him twice, they can't just keep not
showing him now.
:: Out of that list, though, the only one who really represented a
:: threat was Lionel. And as I expected (though I couldn't in a million
:: years have predicted the manner they chose), the writers simply
:: neutralized that threat.
:
: At least for now. Possibly permanently (by which I mean "until the
: character is killed off").
Yeah, even in the face of Clark declaring, "I could see it in his eyes,"
our dogged suspiciousness persists. :) You find yourself asking if a
lion can really turn vegetarian. Actually, while I find redeemed-Lionel
disarmingly straightforward and helpful, I'm still pouting about the
fact that they went the magical redemption route at all.
: Indeed, the "new" Lionel Luthor could end up being an ally who helps
: protect Clark's secret ... if he still knows it and is already hiding
: it, or if he has truly lost it and stumbles across it later.
Given that they've gone this route, I'd love it if they let Lionel
retain what he learned during the body swap, but the writers' paranoia
at letting characters retain knowledge of the Secret is even greater
than the Kents'. Based on that, rather than on anything in the text,
I'm fairly confident that whatever the current state of Lionel's soul,
his mind is pretty thoroughly wiped of all of Clark's secrets, dating
back even further than the time of the body swap. Very selective this
script amnesia trick. After all, when Lionel went back to his cell, he
would have been greeted by Edgar the cryptologist and walls covered in
Kryptonian symbols. Is Lionel supposed to have forgotten all that
knowledge as well? There's no logical reason in the story why he should
have, but I bet the story acts as if he has (although it would be great
if Swann secured his release in order to get his help in obtaining the
other artifacts).
:: Pity, that, but they evidently wanted a two-fer, healing him in mind
:: and body. It would have been great if it had been a race against
:: time, Lionel knowing the Big Secret and trying to use it somehow
:: before he died of his liver disease. Even in the wake of his
:: redemption, they could have allowed him to retain knowledge of the
:: Secret precisely because he wants to do good now. But the writers
:: are even more protective of the Secret than the Kents are.
:
: I don't put anything past the writers. If they decide Lionel can be
: useful as an ally, they could easily restore his memory -- or just say
: he never actually lost it.
They have the theoretical ability to do practically anything, be it
good, bad, or ugly. They always have the ability to jump out from
behind the furniture and say, "Psych! Ha ha, fooled you!" later. But
given that they've already committed themselves to the magical
redemption plot line, there's a lot that wouldn't make sense if they
were to throw all that into reverse gear now. There is simply no
percentage to evil-Lionel in flagellating himself in front of the warden
*after* she's already said his conviction has been overturned. None.
The evil Lionel that we've always known would have shut the hell up at
that point and gladly hopped on this new horse that was trotting in a
favorable direction. He wouldn't keep babbling on and on about other
crimes. Even if we go so far as to say he had taken up the risky sport
of taunting his captors in his old age, he wouldn't taunt them with "so
many other crimes," but by confessing to the crime he was convicted of,
because they couldn't try him for it again.
And from the perspective of structuring the long-term arc on this, it
doesn't make sense to build up a phony redemption story only to have
Lionel sprung for completely unrelated reasons. It's just unnecessarily
cluttered, unnecessarily "busy." Either you go all-out with the phony
redemption angle and have Lionel use that to effect his release/escape/
revenge/some combination of the above, or else you heal his liver but
leave his soul alone and introduce the release out of the blue (just as
it was). Interrupting a *phony* redemption plot line to spring him for
unrelated reasons just feels like a structural mess. Where do you go
with that? It's not like anyone believes in Lionel's redemption anyway
except for Clark (although I could well imagine Swann guessing what
happened based on studying the transformation stone; Swann is even more
intuitive than Lex, and that's saying something).
:: It's not an ideal solution, but I think that Clark passing himself
:: off as yet another meteor freak to those who know about such matters
:: would circumvent some uncomfortable questions about Krypton,
:: spaceships, and crusades to rule the world.
:
: And the best part is, it isn't a complete lie. His powers are tied to
: the meteors in a very real way, since his powers result from his
: Kryptonian heritage -- and presumably a bunch of meteors (not all
: arriving on Earth) are all that's left of Krypton.
He did this once already in "Obsession." He told Alicia, "Everything's
pretty much connected to the meteor shower, right?" and dodged the
direct truth.
-Micky
Todd
>sideshow. Construction work's a possibility, and high-steel work pays
>well ... if he can conquer his fear of heights.)
A fear of heights in an invulnerable man is just stupid. You want to
get over your fear of heights, fall from some buildings until you find
the height where you start to hurt. Start with the barn, then the
water tower. I suppose he'd have to go to Metropolis to find anything
higher than the water tower.
Micky DuPree
<no...@nowhere.com> writes:
: BucketButt <bucke...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
:: Construction work's a possibility, and high-steel work pays well ...
:: if he can conquer his fear of heights.)
:
: A fear of heights in an invulnerable man is just stupid.
From what they've said, Clark didn't reach true invulnerability until
around the end of the first season. In "Hug," the bullets that Lex shot
at Clark left bruises, and yet Martha seemed amazed that the injuries
were so slight:
MARTHA: I can't believe each one of these bruises was a bullet.
In "Tempest," after walking away from the truck explosion, Clark said:
CLARK: The truth is, I barely felt the heat this time. And the
debris didn't leave any bruises.
MARTHA: As you get older, your body must be getting stronger.
So apparently he grew up physically more vulnerable than he is now.
Just thinking out loud: What if he witnessed his entry into Earth's
atmosphere as a toddler and that's given him a fear of falling ever
since?
: You want to get over your fear of heights, fall from some buildings
: until you find the height where you start to hurt. Start with the
: barn, then the water tower.
If it were rational, it wouldn't be a phobia. Ordinary people have
phobias about all manner of things that won't really hurt them either.
: I suppose he'd have to go to Metropolis to find anything higher than
: the water tower.
He did leap off the dam in "Dichotic" and off the _Daily Planet_
building in "Insurgence." Those ought to count for something towards
getting over the fear.
-Micky
W. Blaine Dowler
> So apparently he grew up physically more vulnerable than he is now.
> Just thinking out loud: What if he witnessed his entry into Earth's
> atmosphere as a toddler and that's given him a fear of falling ever
> since?
He's been afraid of heights since he hung out in a treehouse riddled with
kryptonite as a child. Climbing up that high put him in a position where
he became sick, and everyone interpreted it as a fear of heights, which
actually created the phobia. See episode 2, "Metamorphosis."
He's shown an ability to overcome that fear, and I hope that they'll show an
elimination of that phobia by the end of the series.
--
- Blaine
You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him find it within
himself.
- Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) Italian physicist and astronomer.
BucketButt
> Well, there is his upbringing, which is almost entirely terrestrial.
> The public will eventually know that he grew up on Earth, even if they
> don't know where, right?
Right. And Clark/Superman has the advantage of looking essentially like
most of the people where he lives. He may not feel "mainstream" because
he has to hide parts of himself from the world, but what he can't see is
that most of his peers have the same concerns about being accepted by
their peers ... and they hide parts of themselves too.
> We have foreknowledge from past versions that Lois will eventually
> accept Clark's true origins, but I don't know that she would right now
> in the _Smallville_ story. She doesn't know him that well yet.
Not necessarily in the Smallverse, because it won't extend that far into
the future; but yes, she'll eventually accept both Clark and Superman,
separately and as the same person.
> Lana, I dunno. The way they've written her in the past suggests that
> she likes to keep a certain distance between herself and her boyfriend,
> no further, but no closer either, despite all her talk about complete
> truthfulness. If things are too distant, she pressures for more
> closeness, fewer secrets. But if things get too close or too
> complicated (which sometimes amounts to the same thing), she gets
> uncomfortable and pushes away. I'm not convinced she would handle the
> truth about Clark's origins well, at least not in the present (which
> makes Clark damned if he does and damned if he doesn't).
You may be correct regarding Smallverse-Lana. You are almost certainly
correct regarding Smallverse-Lana as we see her today. She's at an
awkward point in her life; part of her is the young woman who has enough
self-assurance to live on her own and even go to France by herself, but
part of her is still the child who hasn't quite sorted out the differences
between friendship and popularity. I have no idea if Smallville's
producers will eventually reconcile their version of Lana with the DCU
version, but the two certainly aren't the same today.
> : I understand (I haven't read them for myself) that the current
> : treatment in the comics has Clark enjoying a bit more personal
> : achievement ...
>
> I like the sound of it too, but there's a huge difference between
> genuinely competing on a level *intellectual* playing field and merely
> pretending to compete on the football field when he could walk away with
> it every time.
Clark is a farmer's son, a pretty good farmhand in his own right. He's
tall, lean and muscular. While he might also enjoy astronomy, algebra and
other intellectual activities, he's used to physical activity and he seems
to enjoy it. More important, he wants to fit in with his peer group, even
if it means reining in his abilities and being only a "human-good"
football player. While he could easiy break every existing athletic
record, all he really wants is to be part of a team.
Okay, he also wants a college scholarship, but that's so he can further
his education without putting his parents further into debt. I'm guessing
he'll be offered a football scholarship at Metropolis University, but
either it won't be a "full ride" or he'll turn it down and work his way
through school instead. I'm not sure why I think this, but somehow I just
don't see Clark as even a potential football star in college.
> : Chloe is often wise beyond her years ... but this time I think the
> : writers were projecting a bit too much of their own point of view into
> : a teenage character.
>
> My impression swings the other way, on two points. One is that I think
> Chloe was being cheerfully ironic. She's right about some people's
> high-school years being the best of their lives, but I don't think she
> was seriously implying that this was going to be true for either Lois or
> herself (if only because they both show great promise for their adult
> years).
Maybe Chloe is acknowledging that high school is a time when one gains
adult privileges and benefits without having to take on all the
corresonding responsibilities immediately; high school seniors are a bit
like birds who have just begun flying but haven't yet been kicked
permanently from the nest. High school is no place to live an entire
life, but a nice place to be for awhile. And it's certainly a nice part
of life to look back on. Either Chloe is able to see things from a
perspective years beyond where she is right now, or the writers scripted
that bit from their own perspective.
> I think she was looking forward to having Lois' company (I
> imagine that for only children, first cousins assume a greater
> importance as their closest familial peers), and she was giving Lois a
> good-natured ribbing about how to reconcile herself to her fate at
> Smallville High.
That, too.
> The other point is that I can't shake the feeling that the writers
> identify more with Joss Whedon's "High school is hell" viewpoint than
> with the "High school is a golden time" outlook. I think _Smallville_
> has a pro-geek outlook, though with some perhaps unacknowledged
> ambivalence that maybe the grass really was greener in the pastures they
> weren't allowed to graze on.
High school can be both hell and a golden time. Maybe not at the exact
same moment, and more of one than the other, but it can be both wonderful
and miserable. At least that's the way it was for me, oh so long ago.
> My senior year wasn't actually that bad, but there's too much that's
> better now. Go back to the confines of legal minority? Not on your
> life.
I think it's more than just going through the high school experience
again; it's also reliving a simpler time, or at least a time that you know
you will survive because you *did* survive it. For me, senior year meant
I could be going to Vietnam in the near future ... or maybe someone would
just put the nuclear button. It also meant I would be leaving an
environment I knew well (especially in my case, since it was a
twelve-grade school) and entering a new world that was both exciting and
intimidating. I wouldn't want to go back to high school in 2005, but I
could see benefits to turning back the clock and reliving 1967.
(Especially if I could be a teenager again, but one guided by my adult
experience.)
Okay, maybe Chloe isn't that deep a thinker. But it does make me wonder:
is Allison Mack having fun playing the part of a high school senior? I'll
bet she is, as long as she can rejoin the adult world at the end of the
day.
> ... it sounds like she had a strange
> upbringing even for an Army brat. (Or as Clark put it, "And I thought
> my father was overprotective.")
IIRC her father is a lieutenant general (three stars). Depending on how
quickly he rose through the ranks, she may not remember a time when she
didn't get the "general's daughter" treatment, although she doesn't seem
to be overly spoiled by it. I'm sure she made life miserable for the MPs
wherever Daddy happened to be assigned, but she'd probably have been just
as much of a handful if she'd been a civilian kid hanging out in malls.
She's spunky, I like that in her.
> If memory serves, there were just two cheerleaders who came up with the
> kryptade because they were lab partners, and their science project was
> nothing more than adding meteor rock to the brain chemical found in
> chocolate. If you add meteor rock to anything in Smallville, you get
> the same thing back, only ever so much more so.
Good point, I hadn't thought of it that way.
Makes me glad they didn't do their project on caffeine instead. The whole
football team could have ended up as fast as Clark or Bart Allen, but too
jittery to catch the ball!
> It's Jonathan's capitulation that leads me to think that there's a
> strain of geek envy of the mainstream in not just Clark as a character,
> but in the authorial point of view as well. Except when he loses his
> temper, Jonathan is generally the anchor of morality and wisdom on the
> show.
Clark is nearing adulthood and has to begin making some decisions for
himself. Jonathan can advise, can urge a course of direction, can even
put his foot down when it's really important -- but for the most part, he
has to start letting Clark choose what he will do. And this is a good
thing, since Clark can learn (sometimes faster) from his mistakes.
> The scene was cute, particularly Clark dunking the football, but
> Jonathan could teach Clark how to play football without Clark actually
> joining the school team.
Learning how to play isn't as satisfying as actually playing, of being
part of the team. I'm not so sure Clark had to be a quarterback, though;
he's big enough and (in the eyes of those who don't know The Secret)
strong enough to be a lineman, where he'd still have a chance at a
scholarship without being the star of the team.
> It was obvious to me from early on that what you did in
> your minority didn't count for much in the real world. High school was
> just marking time. You had to lay down an impressive paper record for
> college admissions, but once you got through that door, no one would
> give a damn what award you got in the 11th grade or whom you went with
> to the senior prom.
High school is more than just marking time for those who value an
education. It's the groundwork for college, and indeed for life itself.
Clark might be more interested in football (or The Torch, or Lana) than he
is in academics, but apparently he's also a good student. (And yes, I'm
sure he could be an honors student, even develop a reputation as a
boy-genius, if he really wanted to devote himself to academics; but he
holds back there too, in order to fit in better.)
> High-pressure sports are perhaps their own self-
> contained world, but very few can make a paying adult career out of
> them.
Clark could, of course. Even if he kept his speed and strength in check
as he does now, he'd be one player who never goes on the disabled list.
And imagine the surreptitious advantage his super-hearing would give him
when the other team's in a huddle!
> I don't get the impression that this is the writers' adult view, at
> least not their primary one. After all, they know full well that Clark
> is supposed to go on to be Superman, the most powerful being in his
> world. How can playing high-school football possibly compare to that? I
> think that, at least on an overt level, we're supposed to see this as
> the blinders of youth.
I'm sure it is the blinders of youth. Clark may be super-powerful, but
he's also a typical teenager: insecure, eager to stand out while
simultaneously blending in, and (being male) "a walking hormone". He
wants the same things most other teenagers want, and that includes being
admired by his peers at Smallville High. Superman WILL be admired by his
peers, but right now Clark is still just Clark.
> I never heard of a plot reason for writing it this way. Maybe the
> actress who played Nell wanted to leave and they decided it was just
> easier to write her out than to never show her again?
Good possibility.
> Maybe they wanted
> to turn Lana into a bigger bag of anxiety than she already was? Dunno.
I'd like to think the producers would never do something like that, they
they have more sense. Then I remember that we're talking about TV
writers, and writers for a WB series at that.
> It's not clear to me that she didn't need Nell's signature on something
> in order to do that.
Yes, she probably did need Nell's signature. But Nell has already agreed
to let Lana live on her own, and Lana has handled that well enough.
> Despite discrepancies in her onscreen birthdays, I
> got the impression that we're supposed to think that Lana turned 18
> while in Paris. But Nell has another life now, and may not concern
> herself much with the almost grown kid who didn't want to move with her.
> She might sign anything that Lana snail-mailed to her.
I don't know a lot about Nell's background, but perhaps she was pretty
independent herself at Lana's age. If I were Lana's legal guardian I
probably wouldn't let her go by herself, but I'm not Nell -- I'm an
old-fashioned male, and perhaps a bit overly protective to boot.
> : She didn't seem all that talented or motivated to run a business, but
> : she took over as manager of The Talon and apparently did well enough
> : to keep the doors open ...
>
> But that didn't seem motivated so much by entrepreneurial spirit as by
> her root fatalism: trying to bring people who were long departed close
> to her.
I hadn't thought of it that way. Yes, she probably sees The Talon as part
of her past she could hold onto.
> : She saved enough money to live in Paris for a few months.
>
> I thought she was living off of capital, not savings per se. I got the
> impression that the Talon didn't do much better than paying for its own
> upkeep.
Oops, another mental brown-out on my part. I forgot that she had money
from the sale of her interest in The Talon.
> : She was apparently mature enough to associate with an older guy who
> : grew up with wealth and had enjoyed fame due to his athletic skills --
> : Jason could easily have found plenty of single (and more mature)
> : French women to spend his time with.
>
> Well, there's the question of whether or not his mother had a hand in
> bringing them together, but entirely apart from that, it's possible to
> look at it from another angle: it's the immature gals who are more
> easily swept up by older guys, and emotionally immature guys who are
> more comfortable being with substantially younger gals, so I'm skeptical
> of an argument for Lana's maturity based on age difference.
Could be some of both -- Lana's mature beyond her years, Jason's a bit
immature for his age. Personally, if I were living in France I think I'd
be far too interested in all the local mademoiselles to notice a
girl-child from Kansas. (Although if I were living in Kansas .... )
> Besides, almost no one on the show can fight it. Lana is supposed to be
> the pinnacle of feminine beauty. Males stalk Lana. Females stalk Lana.
> Little children stalk Lana. Dead witches stalk Lana. There's room on
> the bandwagon for everyone. Jason's fate was preordained.
At least the producers never showed us a scene where she was stalked or
attacked by her horse! (I'm guessing it might have been a stallion, since
it was originally Whitney's horse and Whitney isn't the sort to want a
mare or -- shudder -- gelding.)
> I've always gotten the impression that Lex's interests in the high-
> schoolers is an attempt to be the older brother he never got to be in
> his own family.
Could be that. Could be more than that.
> Of course, ever since Lana came back tattooed, even she's been keeping
> secrets from Lex, and Lex knows it. What I can't understand is what the
> big deal is about keeping this particular secret. Her tattoo is not
> like Clark's secret. Neither Lex nor Clark is going to sic a government
> alphabet agency on her if she confides in them, so her fear of
> disclosure seems wholly without foundation to me.
I can buy the possibility that Lana is both embarrassed by the tattoo (and
its location) and too confused about it to talk openly about it to her
friends. She doesn't know what it means, how she got it, or even what it
is, although she has an idea or two. While she might see a doctor (as she
did with Abigail's mother) about having it removed, that's not the same as
talking to people who know her personally ... and especially male friends.
jberger
news:pan.2005.01.07....@bellsouth.net...
> On Wed, 05 Jan 2005 02:41:59 +0000, Micky DuPree wrote:
>
>> <JEST A LITTLE BIT OF A BANDWIDTH SAVE..... LA-DA-DEE-DAH..... SAVIN'
>> BANDWIDTH.....>
Hey, guys! I would very much prefer if you posted 30 different posts on
different topics/ideas than justify your Masters thesis. It's interesting
stuff, and all that, but some of us have to get back to work and we don't
want our bosses to see us spend over ten minutes reading each post.
;-)
BucketButt
> By now everyone knows the trick of applying for the birth certificate of
> someone who died in infancy. As far as I know, state agencies still
> don't cross-reference birth and death stats. Once you have the birth
> certificate, you can get a driver's license and Social Security card.
> Jonathan and Clark could both do day labor under the radar and Martha
> could waitress until they get established somewhere. The first step
> would be the psychological hurdle of grappling with the idea that they
> may have to abandon the farm at a moment's notice and never look back.
It is getting harder to obtain someone else's birth certificate, mostly as
a result of 9/11/2001. But I have little doubt that the Kents could do
that, or whatever else was necessary, to disappear from the view of most
people. (But not the hypothetical alphabet-agency, not even the Luthors
if they were determined to find them.)
> : Clark would still become an object of curiosity and perhaps fear, and
> : might still end up in the clutches of some government agency.
>
> Yeah, he might at that. Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, life
> just doesn't go your way. I'd still expect them to go down struggling,
> though, rather than let them take Clark away without a peep.
They'd fight to the end, with every resource they could muster. But
they'd still be restrained to a degree by their own moral code ... which I
happen to think is a good thing.
> : Confine the Kents "for their own safety", fake their deaths, tell
> : Clark he's actually doing his patriotic duty as an American ...
> : unless, of course, he'd rather just be considered an alien with no
> : rights at all. It could be done, if the people doing it are ruthless
> : enough. All they'd have to do is get to Jonathan and Martha before
> : the Kents could make a counter-move.
>
> You sound like you're arguing that they're right to never even consider
> options, on the grounds that it's all hopeless anyway.
Absolutely not; even if it were hopeless, that doesn't mean they should
give up. But they would have to consider those options thoroughly and
have contingency plans ready to go. Basically, they'd have to put a lot
more time and thought into planning than we have, and they'd have to
actually do more than just discuss those plans; they'd need "bug out"
gear, fake IDs, emergency cash on hand, etc. As far as I've seen, they
haven't done any of this ... although I suppose they could always have
done these things without the producers telling us. (And they just might,
if they haven't already plotted out the entire series, or if something
forces them to change their plans.)
> Perry and Lionel seemed to reach an effective stalemate (which is damned
> impressive for anyone facing off against Lionel), but I got the
> impression that what was tilting the scales against Perry was the
> drinking and cynical dissolution.
Could be that Lionel was prepared to do more, but Perry's drinking
saved him the trouble.
> Before we go too deep into _X-Files_ country and posit an unrelentingly
> threatening world for _Smallville_, perhaps we should ask how Superman
> can possibly survive to become a costumed crimefighter if his debut into
> the public eye is necessarily going to be followed close upon by
> kidnapping, life imprisonment, and torture in the form of forced
> experimentation under kryptonite. Are his hands going to be (literally)
> tied until Jonathan and Martha are dead by fair means or foul?
Sorry, I was thinking of an alternate universe -- the animated Justice
League Unlimited. That series recently showed a super-secret agency that
apparently has gathered a lot of intel on all of Earth's costumed and
super-powered people -- one of them addressed Batman as "rich boy". This
agency (probably) doesn't exist in the Smallverse ....
> There's
> also the question of what do if it's *not* someone really powerful, just
> someone who has accidentally seen Clark use his powers.
People have seen Clark use his powers, but haven't understood what they
saw. Others know Clark did something they can't explain, but didn't
actually see anything so they just don't talk about it much. And some who
have seen Clark in action are now dead, or amnesiacs, or catatonics in
Belle Reve, or otherwise unable to talk about it.
> We have the foreknowledge that someday Clark will don the tights and let
> the entire world know that a superbeing lives among them. Why isn't
> that necessarily going to lead to your dismal conclusion?
Knowing that there is a Superman would be a shocker, but nothing compared
to discovering that Superman is actually the ordinary-seeming guy who sat
behind you in algebra class.
> Martha is the one who pleads Lex's case
> even when the menfolk are turning a deaf ear: "Ever since [Lex] met you,
> he's been surrounded by things he can't explain. We can't really blame
> him for trying to find the truth." Even Jonathan will sometimes throw
> in a good word: "Clark, as much as I hate to admit this, Lex had a hand
> in this too. He did make good on his promise to protect Chloe." If
> anything, at least in the fourth season, it was Clark who was nursing
> hurt feelings until Lex repented and turned in his files on Clark.
Martha likes Lex and wants to believe the best about him, but that may be
maternal instinct -- Lex grew up without a mother, and his father hasn't
exactly been the most nurturing person, but Martha clearly is a nurturer.
That said, if she ever had to choose between trusting Lex and protecting
Clark, I have no doubt how she'd decide, although the decision might be
agonizing for her.
> Lex
> pursues scientific data, not for its own sake, but in order to establish
> the fact of the Secret itself. Tell him the Secret outright and he
> won't feel the need to sequence Kryptonian DNA just for the hell of it.
Imagine you're Lex; you were raised for greatness, and you're ambitious
enough to want to exceed your father's greatest achievements. You also
want to do good things for people. Clark is your best friend, but that
friendship has never been as solid as you wish and lately you've begun
thinking more and more about making your mark in the world. Are you
certain you would settle for just knowing what your friend can do, or
would you want to find out if those powers and abilities can be induced in
other people? Would you ask your friend to do things (legal, of course)
that might be too difficult or dangerous for other people?
That's how Lex could begin using Clark. It might be all Lex would ever
ask of Clark, since they are friends. And most likely, Clark would
cooperate out of friendship and a willingness to use his gifts to help
the entire world. That scenario might have benefits for Clark, and might
also keep Lex from turning completely to the Dark Side; but Lex has
already begun to turn, and it may be too late for him.
> : That would probably be enough to keep Lex from turning against Clark/
> : Superman later.
>
> If Lex has a fault in this area, it's that his sense of personal loyalty
> is so great that he lets it cloud his judgment when it comes to a more
> general sense of morality.
I wish he could stay that way, but I have seen the future (so to speak).
> Lex could have used Clark's Secret as a bargaining chip to keep Lionel
> from possibly turning him into a vegetable in "Asylum." At the end of
> Lex's first meeting with Clark in Belle Reve, Lex yelled that he'd never
> forgive him. Of course, Clark showing up in the nick of time anyway AND
> de-cloaked AND demonstrably putting himself in harm's way in the
> process, were all the proof of friendship Lex needed. Lex wouldn't sell
> out someone who had just done all that for him, even at the cost of his
> own mind. Lex remembers nothing of that now, but it's a strong
> indicator of his priorities.
Reinforcing that loyalty is Lex's hatred of Lionel. As much as Lex might
want to love his father -- as much as Lex would like to have a father who
sees him as a son instead of just an heir -- he would never tell or give
Lionel anything that would increase Lionel's power. The Secret is/was
valuable in itself, but it's even more valuable to Lex because Lionel does
not possess it.
> In fact, the biggest problem with
> Lex in the past has been his tissue-thin physical security, since Lionel
> ended up learning almost everything Lex knew, presumably including
> everything in his Clark archive (not that it matters much if the writers
> are just going to pretend he knew nothing after all). In the wake of
> Lionel's redemption (and even if you don't believe it, Clark seems to),
> the biggest danger in telling Lex the Secret is gone.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I think the producers/writers overplayed that hand.
Lionel knew too much; I see him as the type who would have used that
knowledge long ago, all the while seeking to learn more. Lionel Luthor
just doesn't strike me as the sort who would let anything valuable remain
out of his grasp. Of course, if Lionel *had* acted earlier he might have
driven the Kents into hiding or even made Clark so stubbornly
uncooperative that he would lose any personal advantage. There's also
the possibility that Clark would turn out to be someone who can be pushed
into violence; Lionel may not fear death especially, but he would
positively hate being killed when he's on the verge of his greatest
acquisition ... and especially at the hands of that "acquisition".
> I think Lex feels bound by loyalty to those who trust him. But bound to
> a sense of right and wrong? Much less so. He borrows too much from
> Lionel's "the ends justify the means" playbook. Unfortunately, all the
> regular characters indulge in this to some degree, including Clark
> himself. In particular, Clark, Lex, and Chloe style themselves as
> benevolent vigilantes entitled to break laws and invade privacy because
> they consider their ends and their motives just too gosh-darned good to
> be denied.
Yep. Clark hates some of the things he has done to keep The Secret, most
of all lying to his friends. The others (not sure about Lana) have all
done things they can't be entirely comfortable with, although always with
honorable intentions. They may console themselves with the idea that the
ends have justified the means, but they have still operated outside the
letter of the law on occasion.
> Lex is at a crossroads. I think one of the things that
> would take him down the right road is letting him get emotionally
> invested in taking that road. One of the things that would get him to
> see "Naman" as trustworthy rather than as the potential dictator of
> Earth is "Naman" coming clean.
I can't disagree with that, but it's still a huge risk for Clark and his
parents to take.
> Hey, look at Lionel. Completely clueless in "Transference." Gee, that
> was easy.
Too easy. The writers need to put a little more brain-sweat into the
scripts.
> The very fact that the subject under
> discussion would be the Kents' radical contingency plans for what to do
> if their world comes apart would lend the scene an edge. It wouldn't be
> like discussing how to save money by changing brands of breakfast
> cereal.
For some reason I get this mental image of the Kent farmhouse morphing
into Section One from /La Femme Nikita/. (Maybe it's just the Mark Snow
soundtrack.) I can almost hear Operations (Jonathan) and Madeline
(Martha) briefing Nikita (Clark), perhaps with Birkoff (Pete) contributing
data. (Or perhaps Chloe is Birkoff and Pete is Michael ... oh, I've got
to stop having leftover chili for a bedtime snack!)
> I can understand this anxiety, which is why I suggested the alternative
> of having the Kents broach just one possible alternative each time
> they're actually threatened. Over the course of time, it would cover
> the same ground.
Sounds like somethat that could work. But the producers chose to take the
story in a different direction, and we'll just have to go where they take
us.
> It was the kind of thing that made one sit up and take notice, but since
> Clark had to pull Jonathan off of Lionel with alarm in "Legacy," I'd
> expect Clark to insist they talk about alternatives NOW, even if his
> parents want to pretend it couldn't possibly happen again. Jonathan was
> adamant that he hadn't raised a murderer in "Phoenix." As you say, is
> Clark going to let Jonathan become a murderer just to shield Clark?
I'm certain Clark would stop Jonathan if he's around. But he can't be
everywhere all the time. So the best approach would be a discussion or
series of discussions on contingencies. Maybe they'll do it at some point
this season or next ... or maybe not.
> And from the perspective of structuring the long-term arc on this, it
> doesn't make sense to build up a phony redemption story only to have
> Lionel sprung for completely unrelated reasons. It's just unnecessarily
> cluttered, unnecessarily "busy."
Either they'll pull all the loose ends together before the series ends, or
they won't. My guess is that they won't, and this group will still be
discussing things the writers should have done long after the last
episode has aired in first-run. (Unless we all shift our focus to
problems with the upcoming Superman movie.)
Ya know, the producers and writers have a big advantage over us when it
comes to the sort of things we're discussing. Our thoughts are here in
glowing electrons for all to see, and maybe they're reading this too; but
we won't know if we're anywhere near what they're actually going to do
until the episodes air. Worse, if they learn what we're speculating
about, they might scrap similar plans just to keep us guessing.
BucketButt
> He did leap off the dam in "Dichotic" and off the _Daily Planet_
> building in "Insurgence." Those ought to count for something towards
> getting over the fear.
Yes, and he climbed that tall windmill with Lana (so she could see the
Metropolis skyline) in a Season One episode. He's overcoming his fear of
heights, but I suspect it will continue to linger to some degree. After
all, it provides for an interesting irony -- he'll have to conquer this
fear if he's ever going to fly. Maybe he has that power of flight now
(Kal-El did, after all), but just can't bring himself to try yet.
I can see it now. He'll come downstairs one morning by gliding just
above the banister. At breakfast he'll comment on how fluffy Martha's
biscuits are, and float out his chair while nibbling on one. Later he'll
change a light bulb without using a ladder. These are small steps, but in
no time at all he'll be retrieving kites from trees and hovering outside
the window of Lana's apartment above The Talon ... or maybe not.<g>
Micky DuPree
<fiz...@NOSPAMbureau42.com> writes:
: Micky DuPree wrote:
:: What if [Clark] witnessed his entry into Earth's atmosphere as a
:: toddler and that's given him a fear of falling ever since?
:
: He's been afraid of heights since he hung out in a treehouse riddled
: with kryptonite as a child. Climbing up that high put him in a
: position where he became sick, and everyone interpreted it as a fear
: of heights, which actually created the phobia. See episode 2,
: "Metamorphosis."
But it wasn't the treehouse that was riddled with kryptonite. In
"Metamorphosis," Clark was fine around the treehouse itself. It was the
abandoned Creekside Foundry that was riddled with kryptonite, and Greg
the Bug Boy remarked on it when they fought inside the foundry:
GREG: You haven't changed at all, Clark. You still get sick
around this place, just like when we were kids.
Clark reported the treehouse as being a hundred yards away from the
foundry. Evidently, when they were little, the boys would pass by the
foundry on the way to the treehouse, and it was Pete who attributed
Clark's reaction to the foundry as a phobic anticipation of the
treehouse:
PETE: Clark never liked it. He used to get dizzy just walking
over there.
CHLOE: How come?
PETE: He was afraid of heights.
I don't see where Clark drew the connection between his acrophobia and
his kryptonite sickness, though. It just seems like his acrophobia
conveniently covered up his inhuman reaction to the foundry, so no one
thought to investigate it further.
: He's shown an ability to overcome that fear, and I hope that they'll
: show an elimination of that phobia by the end of the series.
He seems to be well on the way there already. In addition to the
instances already cited, he went up in a balloon with Ryan. If the
writers were to decide that the phobia is now officially gone as of his
experience flying as "Kal-El," it wouldn't bother my sense of character
development a bit.
-Micky
Micky DuPree
<bucke...@bellsouth.net> writes:
: On Wed, 05 Jan 2005 02:41:59 +0000, Micky DuPree wrote:
:: Well, there is [Clark's] upbringing, which is almost entirely
:: terrestrial. The public will eventually know that he grew up on
:: Earth, even if they don't know where, right?
:
: Right. And Clark/Superman has the advantage of looking essentially
: like most of the people where he lives. He may not feel "mainstream"
: because he has to hide parts of himself from the world, but what he
: can't see is that most of his peers have the same concerns about being
: accepted by their peers ... and they hide parts of themselves too.
Occasionally he seems to get a glimpse of what other people go through,
e.g., Chloe hiding the info about her mother's genetically linked mental
illness. But he's still wrapped up primarily in his own fears, which is
understandable. As you mentioned before, it's ironic that he will one
day be more accepted for the thing he now hides (the public adoration he
will receive as the alien superbeing) than he will be for the regular-
guy persona that he's actually grown up with and shows to people in
order to be accepted. I suppose there's a parable of the double-edged
sword of celebrity in there somewhere.
:: I'm not convinced [Lana] would handle the truth about Clark's origins
:: well, at least not in the present (which makes Clark damned if he
:: does and damned if he doesn't).
:
: You may be correct regarding Smallverse-Lana. You are almost
: certainly correct regarding Smallverse-Lana as we see her today.
We got a hint in "Hereafter" that one day Clark will spill the beans to
Lana. Jordan's vision of Lana's death in old age has her wearing her
clarified kryptonite necklace. Presumably, Clark tells her the truth at
some point and gives the necklace back.
: She's at an awkward point in her life; part of her is the young woman
: who has enough self-assurance to live on her own and even go to France
: by herself, but part of her is still the child who hasn't quite sorted
: out the differences between friendship and popularity.
I think it's more fundamental. At least the way they're writing her (as
her worst nightmare revealed in "Scare"), she hasn't sorted out the
difference between accident and destiny. It's like she's still stuck in
the same rut of obsessing about dead loved ones that she was stuck in
all the way back in the pilot, and can relate to others only on the
basis of being sure they're going to die or leave her. Sometimes this
leads to her leaving first.
:: [...] there's a huge difference between genuinely competing on a
:: level *intellectual* playing field and merely pretending to compete
:: on the football field when he could walk away with it every time.
:
: Clark is a farmer's son, a pretty good farmhand in his own right.
: He's tall, lean and muscular. While he might also enjoy astronomy,
: algebra and other intellectual activities, he's used to physical
: activity and he seems to enjoy it. More important, he wants to fit in
: with his peer group, even if it means reining in his abilities and
: being only a "human-good" football player. While he could easiy break
: every existing athletic record, all he really wants is to be part of a
: team.
I understand the impulse. The drive to conform is powerful. I think
it's good characterization that the teenaged Clark feels that drive.
But unless you count the Flash and the occasional mutant, Clark doesn't
have any physical peers. The deception that he is his classmates' peer
in a physical competition is morally wrong. It's not fair to the other
players nor to the spectators. (And if he says, "But if no one finds
out, then no one will be hurt," he should realize that was Lex's excuse
for investigating him, hardly a worthy response.) I realize it's tough
on Clark, but unpleasant truths are also a part of growing up. This is
the argument that I think Jonathan dropped too easily, focusing instead
on the fear that Clark would injure someone on the football field, which
Clark was skilled enough to dispel.
: Okay, he also wants a college scholarship, but that's so he can
: further his education without putting his parents further into debt.
I can understand this impulse, too. I'm sure it doesn't seem fair to
him that less capable people get their college paid for while he and his
family have to struggle.
: I'm guessing he'll be offered a football scholarship at Metropolis
: University, but either it won't be a "full ride" or he'll turn it down
: and work his way through school instead. I'm not sure why I think
: this, but somehow I just don't see Clark as even a potential football
: star in college.
I think it would look wrong, but I don't know what the writers are going
to end up saying. Jonathan capitulating on Clark playing football is
one of only two times when I thought they were writing a character as
psychologically implausible.
:: [...] I think Chloe was being cheerfully ironic. She's right about
:: some people's high-school years being the best of their lives, but I
:: don't think she was seriously implying that this was going to be true
:: for either Lois or herself (if only because they both show great
:: promise for their adult years).
:
: Maybe Chloe is acknowledging that high school is a time when one gains
: adult privileges and benefits without having to take on all the
: corresonding responsibilities immediately; high school seniors are a
: bit like birds who have just begun flying but haven't yet been kicked
: permanently from the nest.
I don't know that I'd read all that into Chloe's remark to Lois. Chloe
enjoys a lot of freedom without responsibility, in the form of almost
transparent access to any shred of information on the planet whether
it's legal or moral for her to gain access or not. But that's neither
an adult privilege nor a perk of minority; that's just Chloe and plot
convenience. Judging by the reactions of her late editor at the _Daily
Planet_, she could almost fit into the world of adult journalism
already. Going back to doing only the _Torch_ after doing her own
column on "a major metropolitan newspaper" had to be like a growing fish
being forced back into a tiny pond.
: High school is no place to live an entire life, but a nice place to be
: for awhile. And it's certainly a nice part of life to look back on.
: Either Chloe is able to see things from a perspective years beyond
: where she is right now, or the writers scripted that bit from their
: own perspective.
I have to disagree. I think Chloe was being ironic, and I think the
writers see high school more through the eyes of the yearly "scarecrow"
than through the eyes of Whitney and the guys stringing the "scarecrow"
up.
:: The other point is that I can't shake the feeling that the writers
:: identify more with Joss Whedon's "High school is hell" viewpoint than
:: with the "High school is a golden time" outlook. I think
:: _Smallville_ has a pro-geek outlook, though with some perhaps
:: unacknowledged ambivalence that maybe the grass really was greener in
:: the pastures they weren't allowed to graze on.
:
: High school can be both hell and a golden time.
It can be. I remember some people complaining about Joss Whedon's
_Buffy_, in that they didn't share his view of high school, so they
thought he hammered the point too hard in the show.
: Maybe not at the exact same moment, and more of one than the other,
: but it can be both wonderful and miserable. At least that's the way
: it was for me, oh so long ago.
It was all right for me, neither the pinnacle of my experience nor the
nadir, but I was talking about the writers. One of the things I think
it's easy to draw from both _Buffy_ and _Smallville_ is that there isn't
a single, universal high-school experience. The star quarterback has a
different high-school experience than that of "Scabby Abby." However,
the high-school experience of the main character of _Smallville_ until
very recently has been that of an outsider.
:: My senior year wasn't actually that bad, but there's too much that's
:: better now. Go back to the confines of legal minority? Not on your
:: life.
:
: I think it's more than just going through the high school experience
: again; it's also reliving a simpler time, or at least a time that you
: know you will survive because you *did* survive it.
Once again, I'm moved to point out that there is no single, universal
high-school experience. In particular, there's more to that time than
just the school aspect of it. There's also living as a minor in someone
else's house. Perhaps if the Kents had been my parents, I'd never want
to leave the nest, who knows.
: For me, senior year meant I could be going to Vietnam in the near
: future ... or maybe someone would just put the nuclear button.
Clark Kent isn't facing a draft, and from talking to my students, I
think that high-profile school shootings have put an everyday fear into
them that most American baby boomers never knew.
: It also meant I would be leaving an environment I knew well
: (especially in my case, since it was a twelve-grade school) and
: entering a new world that was both exciting and intimidating. I
: wouldn't want to go back to high school in 2005, but I could see
: benefits to turning back the clock and reliving 1967. (Especially if
: I could be a teenager again, but one guided by my adult experience.)
O.K., but I think this has more to do with BucketButt than with Chloe.
(Is the name a pun?)
: Okay, maybe Chloe isn't that deep a thinker.
I think she has her moments, but she also has a sarcastic sense of
humor.
: But it does make me wonder: is Allison Mack having fun playing the
: part of a high school senior? I'll bet she is, as long as she can
: rejoin the adult world at the end of the day.
She seems to get into the story line. She did an audio commentary for
"Truth" on the DVD release, and she was really on top of what was going
on. She doesn't just show up, say her lines, and go home.
I don't know what Mack thinks, but I think Chloe is by far the meatiest
female role on the series. Lana's the love object. Martha is a mother
figure in a story that centers far more heavily on father figures. But
Chloe actually drives the plots half the time. She's like a teenaged
Fox Mulder, and that sort of role, where her chief reason for being
isn't her effect on the male characters' emotional lives, isn't as easy
for female performers to come by as it is for male performers.
:: [...] it sounds like [Lois] had a strange upbringing even for an Army
:: brat. (Or as Clark put it, "And I thought my father was
:: overprotective.")
:
: IIRC her father is a lieutenant general (three stars). Depending on
: how quickly he rose through the ranks, she may not remember a time
: when she didn't get the "general's daughter" treatment, although she
: doesn't seem to be overly spoiled by it.
Yep, but also, by her own account, this particular general had lost his
wife and was determined not to lose his daughter as well.
: She's spunky, I like that in her.
She annoys me sometimes. I don't think Clark was just being a pain when
he described her as rude and bossy. But she did get Lionel Luthor to
stop and think. That shows promise.
: Makes me glad they didn't do their project on caffeine instead. The
: whole football team could have ended up as fast as Clark or Bart
: Allen, but too jittery to catch the ball!
Heh. Next week on _Smallville_: a meteor rock slips into the Talon
espresso machine. This series is so overdue for a comedy episode.
:: It's Jonathan's capitulation that leads me to think that there's a
:: strain of geek envy of the mainstream in not just Clark as a
:: character, but in the authorial point of view as well. Except when
:: he loses his temper, Jonathan is generally the anchor of morality and
:: wisdom on the show.
:
: Clark is nearing adulthood and has to begin making some decisions for
: himself. Jonathan can advise, can urge a course of direction, can
: even put his foot down when it's really important -- but for the most
: part, he has to start letting Clark choose what he will do.
This I don't mind so much, but in "Facade," Jonathan made the pertinent
point:
JONATHAN: And with you, it's never going to be a fair competition.
As of "Jinx," Jonathan seemed to abandon the moral argument to
concentrate solely on the practical problem of injuring others. Since
this turned out not to be a problem for Clark, that seemed to be
Jonathan's cue to be jubilant over Clark's football victories even
though the games were a sham. That strikes me as a terribly false note
compared to Jonathan's previous characterization.
: And this is a good thing, since Clark can learn (sometimes faster)
: from his mistakes.
Problem is, no one in the story is treating it as a mistake anymore. At
the end of "Jinx":
JONATHAN: But we're very proud of you.
MARTHA: For everything.
:: It was obvious to me from early on that what you did in your minority
:: didn't count for much in the real world. High school was just
:: marking time. You had to lay down an impressive paper record for
:: college admissions, but once you got through that door, no one would
:: give a damn what award you got in the 11th grade or whom you went
:: with to the senior prom.
:
: High school is more than just marking time for those who value an
: education.
You act like sitting patiently waiting to be called on is the only way
to get an education. There wasn't anything in high school I couldn't
have learned faster (and in many ways, better) in supervised independent
study or by being tutored. I think that's true of almost everyone who
values their education. It's the ones that don't value an education who
have to be regimented in order to get one. If you go to a decent
college, the environment will actually value education, but high school
is hit or miss, depending on the particular high school, the particular
teachers, and the particular guidance counselors you end up with. K-12
is charged with processing people who may or may not want to be there
and is run by people who may or may not find K-12 to be their calling.
By contrast, the students at the university level had to make a choice
to be there, and the instructors presumably prefer teaching at that
level, or else they'd get into K-12. (Yeah, I know a lot of exceptions,
too, but I think the generalizations hold.)
And once you get out into the real world, nobody really cares that you
were vice-president of your class in the 10th grade. Nobody really
cares what your SAT scores were (which is why the middle-aged nerds
comparing scores on _The West Wing_ were such a hoot, because if you're
a nerd, that's how you were taught to keep score). Unless you married
your high-school sweetheart, it really doesn't matter whom you dated in
high school. At the time, these things are invested with life-or-death
importance. A little perspective about what the adult world is really
like would help the average teenager there.
: Clark might be more interested in football (or The Torch, or Lana)
: than he is in academics, but apparently he's also a good student.
Seems so. In "Redux," when Principal Reynolds upbraided Clark for being
a slacker, he just mentioned extracurriculars and tardiness. Clark said
his grades were "very good," and Reynolds didn't contradict him.
: (And yes, I'm sure he could be an honors student, even develop a
: reputation as a boy-genius, if he really wanted to devote himself to
: academics; but he holds back there too, in order to fit in better.)
I don't get that impression at all. "Very good grades" suggests an A-B
average to me, and I don't think Clark's parents would tolerate his
holding back in academics.
:: High-pressure sports are perhaps their own self-contained world, but
:: very few can make a paying adult career out of them.
:
: Clark could, of course. Even if he kept his speed and strength in
: check as he does now, he'd be one player who never goes on the
: disabled list. And imagine the surreptitious advantage his
: super-hearing would give him when the other team's in a huddle!
Clark could do almost any physical job superbly, but it's interesting
that we've never heard him propose to make a living at football. If he
doesn't see anything wrong with playing high-school ball, then why not
plan a multimillion-dollar pro career around it? I'm holding out hope
that there will come a time when he'll see there's something wrong with
his "competing" in sports, and that he'll want to do something more
productive with his day job.
:: Maybe they wanted to turn Lana into a bigger bag of anxiety than she
:: already was? Dunno.
:
: I'd like to think the producers would never do something like that,
: they they have more sense. Then I remember that we're talking about
: TV writers, and writers for a WB series at that.
I could swear they see something attractive in it. Maybe it makes her a
permanent damsel in distress and that's supposed to bring out the latent
hero impulse in guys. In real life, though, if someone had a constant
fear that all their loved ones were about to die or abandon them, I'd
tell them to get some serious therapy. Most children don't see both
their parents die in front of them, and that's not something Clark is
ever going to be able to save her from, so I have to wonder just what
the writers thought they were going to end up with they wrote Lana that
way.
: At least the producers never showed us a scene where she was stalked
: or attacked by her horse! (I'm guessing it might have been a
: stallion, since it was originally Whitney's horse and Whitney isn't
: the sort to want a mare or -- shudder -- gelding.)
Lana had at least two horses in her original stable. Neither of them
was Tyson, Whitney's horse. (The one she was supposed to compete on at
one point was called Donatello.) 'Tyson' does sound masculine, but in
the horsy set, gelding is a practical matter, not a sentimental one.
Few stallions are ever bred, and a certain percentage of them won't make
good saddle mounts if they're not gelded.
:: I've always gotten the impression that Lex's interests in the high-
:: schoolers is an attempt to be the older brother he never got to be in
:: his own family.
:
: Could be that. Could be more than that.
He's come right out and said as much about Clark. Lana's legally an
adult now and there's no Nell around to look askance. If Lex wants to
make a play for Lana, now's his chance. I wouldn't hold my breath,
though. He sees her as pure. She's not his type.
: I can buy the possibility that Lana is both embarrassed by the tattoo
: (and its location) and too confused about it to talk openly about it
: to her friends. She doesn't know what it means, how she got it, or
: even what it is, although she has an idea or two. While she might see
: a doctor (as she did with Abigail's mother) about having it removed,
: that's not the same as talking to people who know her personally ...
: and especially male friends.
She didn't even tell Chloe, the female keeper of the Wall of Weird.
Given that she eventually told the story straight up to Jason, I really
don't get the impression that she thinks she got drunk, got tattooed,
and now can't remember it, so she's afraid her friends will think less
of her. Coupled with the blackout and the weird dreams, the fact that
the symbol is on the cave wall should set off paranormal alarms, not
personal embarrassment. This is the kind of thing you need other
people's input on, not something you need to keep secret. And yet
Lana's acting like the tattoo is the equivalent of Clark's Big Secret,
and I see no reason why she should. What is she seriously afraid Clark
or Lex would do if they found out? They're all veterans of strange
happenings.
-Micky
Micky DuPree
: On Wed, 05 Jan 2005 03:41:28 +0000, Micky DuPree wrote:
:: Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, life just doesn't go your way.
:: I'd still expect them to go down struggling, though, rather than let
:: them take Clark away without a peep.
:
: They'd fight to the end, with every resource they could muster. But
: they'd still be restrained to a degree by their own moral code ...
: which I happen to think is a good thing.
As do I, and that code would be thrown into high relief by the
consideration of their options.
::: Confine the Kents "for their own safety", fake their deaths, tell
::: Clark he's actually doing his patriotic duty as an American ...
::: unless, of course, he'd rather just be considered an alien with no
::: rights at all. It could be done, if the people doing it are
::: ruthless enough. All they'd have to do is get to Jonathan and
::: Martha before the Kents could make a counter-move.
::
:: You sound like you're arguing that they're right to never even
:: consider options, on the grounds that it's all hopeless anyway.
:
: Absolutely not; even if it were hopeless, that doesn't mean they
: should give up. But they would have to consider those options
: thoroughly and have contingency plans ready to go.
My point exactly.
: As far as I've seen, they haven't done any of this ... although I
: suppose they could always have done these things without the producers
: telling us.
Yeah, but purely offscreen speculation doesn't get the cows fed. Clark
could be an exotic dancer without the producers telling us. The stuff
that happens offscreen in Smallville could be as good as _The Sopranos_
without the producers telling us.
The Kents sure don't act like people who have considered contingency
plans. Where would they have been if Lex hadn't killed Roger Nixon and
"Kara" hadn't killed Agent Loder? Surely the Kents didn't say to
themselves offscreen, "Aren't we lucky those people are dead now? If
someone else ever learns the secret in the future, surely an unforeseen
benefactor will come along to kill them for us. And all those comas and
all that amnesia? Let's bottle some of that for a rainy day."
:: Perry and Lionel seemed to reach an effective stalemate (which is
:: damned impressive for anyone facing off against Lionel), but I got
:: the impression that what was tilting the scales against Perry was the
:: drinking and cynical dissolution.
:
: Could be that Lionel was prepared to do more, but Perry's drinking
: saved him the trouble.
I can't see Lionel leaving it to chance. People do sometimes go into
recovery. Even Lex seemed skeptical that Perry would still be standing
there if he really did have something on Lionel:
LEX: If this information is so damning, why did my father stop
at simply destroying your career?
PERRY: Multiple copies, plus multiple attorneys all with, in the
event of my death, instructions to disseminate -- well,
you do the math.
:: There's also the question of what do if it's *not* someone really
:: powerful, just someone who has accidentally seen Clark use his
:: powers.
:
: People have seen Clark use his powers, but haven't understood what
: they saw.
Then consider the example of Roger Nixon. He wasn't a government agent.
He wasn't even a respectable journalist. But he could have made trouble
with his videotape if he hadn't been stopped (although just pulling tape
out of a cassette isn't going to "expose" it like film, but let that
pass).
: And some who have seen Clark in action are now dead, or amnesiacs, or
: catatonics in Belle Reve, or otherwise unable to talk about it.
We know the Kents will always end up protected, even if it requires
outlandish means to do it. Problem is, the Kents don't know that, and
yet they act as if they do.
:: We have the foreknowledge that someday Clark will don the tights and
:: let the entire world know that a superbeing lives among them. Why
:: isn't that necessarily going to lead to your dismal conclusion?
:
: Knowing that there is a Superman would be a shocker, but nothing
: compared to discovering that Superman is actually the ordinary-seeming
: guy who sat behind you in algebra class.
I'm trying to figure out why the appearance of a superbeing wouldn't
mobilize those government agencies that you postulate will stop at
nothing to capture Superman once they know he exists. If you have the
resources of all these high-powered agencies, how hard would it be to
locate someone that markedly different once you knew he existed? Clark
is already a suspicious character, mentioned more than once as
frequenting crime scenes, and that's without the nefarious agencies even
knowing there's someone out there worth looking for.
:: Martha is the one who pleads Lex's case even when the menfolk are
:: turning a deaf ear: "Ever since [Lex] met you, he's been surrounded
:: by things he can't explain. We can't really blame him for trying to
:: find the truth." Even Jonathan will sometimes throw in a good word:
:: "Clark, as much as I hate to admit this, Lex had a hand in this too.
:: He did make good on his promise to protect Chloe." If anything, at
:: least in the fourth season, it was Clark who was nursing hurt
:: feelings until Lex repented and turned in his files on Clark.
:
: Martha likes Lex and wants to believe the best about him, but that may
: be maternal instinct -- Lex grew up without a mother, and his father
: hasn't exactly been the most nurturing person, but Martha clearly is a
: nurturer. That said, if she ever had to choose between trusting Lex
: and protecting Clark, I have no doubt how she'd decide, although the
: decision might be agonizing for her.
But we haven't been led to believe that she sees herself as forced to
choose. Of them all, Martha seems most to believe that the two actions
-- trusting Lex and protecting Clark -- are not so incompatible.
:: Lex pursues scientific data, not for its own sake, but in order to
:: establish the fact of the Secret itself. Tell him the Secret
:: outright and he won't feel the need to sequence Kryptonian DNA just
:: for the hell of it.
:
: Imagine you're Lex; you were raised for greatness, and you're
: ambitious enough to want to exceed your father's greatest
: achievements. You also want to do good things for people. Clark is
: your best friend, but that friendship has never been as solid as you
: wish [....]
But the reason why that is currently true would vanish with full
disclosure. It's the Secret that has caused Lex to suspect Clark, and
it's Lex's suspicion that has caused Clark to doubt Lex. Eliminate the
Secret and the friendship would be much more solid.
Admittedly, there's still something fundamentally creepy about this
virus going around Smallville that makes people think that friends are
entitled to know every damned thing about one another. Lana's caught
the bug, and Chloe has to fight it off every so often too. Lex
certainly has a bad case of it, but Clark doesn't have any other secrets
of such magnitude as his abilities and origin.
: Are you certain you would settle for just knowing what your friend can
: do, or would you want to find out if those powers and abilities can be
: induced in other people? Would you ask your friend to do things
: (legal, of course) that might be too difficult or dangerous for other
: people?
The important point is whether or not Lex would get Clark's consent
before performing any research on him. Post-disclosure, I think the
answer would be yes. I don't see any problem with consensual
investigation. I got the impression you were convinced Lex would keep
on investigating without Clark's consent.
Rather than using Clark to turn humans into more superbeings like Clark
(I'm not even sure how they'd try to explain such a thing), I would
sooner expect both Lex and Clark to be motivated to explore the question
that they both know has already been raised by Dr. Teng: using something
in Clark's blood as a regenerative/healing agent. If the continuity
hadn't been so bad in "Scare," I'd even go so far as to say Lex already
turned down this particular option even *with* Clark's consent because
he wanted to protect Clark when Clark volunteered his tissue samples in
the LuthorCorp lab. But I'm suspicious of the writers' level of
consciousness of these previously raised issues. After all, Lex, a
meteor mutant who is able to fight off both pathogens and poisons better
than the average human, wasn't a good test subject for a potentially
dangerous antidote that they wanted to be able to use safely on average
humans. The writers who forgot that could also have forgotten that
Clark's blood might have been able to save every infected person in
Smallville, and it wouldn't have taken the "months" or "years" that Dr.
Ford insisted would be required. As it is, my impression is that Lex
took Dr. Ford's pronouncement that it would take months or years to
research Clark's tissues at face value. Therefore Lex had an
opportunity to obtain Clark's volunteered tissue samples, but resisted
temptation both to focus on the people who were dying right now, and
because he couldn't bring himself to abuse Clark's trust like that.
::: That would probably be enough to keep Lex from turning against
::: Clark/Superman later.
::
:: If Lex has a fault in this area, it's that his sense of personal
:: loyalty is so great that he lets it cloud his judgment when it comes
:: to a more general sense of morality.
:
: I wish he could stay that way, but I have seen the future (so to
: speak).
Actually, I wish it could be turned the other way. Blind loyalty to
people who do the wrong things just creates more problems. I remember
some people thinking the Unabomber's brother was a bad person for
turning in "his own brother," but hell, don't you have a responsibility
to other people as well? If Clark told Lex his Big Secret, and Lex were
to kick into his usual hyper-loyal mode thereafter, I somehow doubt Lex
would rat Clark out if Clark went on another redrock rampage through
Metropolis or if "Kal-El" got the upper hand and resumed the great
Kryptonian Scavenger Hunt. (I bet it ends under the Big W.) But Lex
should rat Clark out in such cases, at least to other people who could
help rein him in.
:: Lex could have used Clark's Secret as a bargaining chip to keep
:: Lionel from possibly turning him into a vegetable in "Asylum." At
:: the end of Lex's first meeting with Clark in Belle Reve, Lex yelled
:: that he'd never forgive him. Of course, Clark showing up in the nick
:: of time anyway AND de-cloaked AND demonstrably putting himself in
:: harm's way in the process, were all the proof of friendship Lex
:: needed. Lex wouldn't sell out someone who had just done all that for
:: him, even at the cost of his own mind. Lex remembers nothing of that
:: now, but it's a strong indicator of his priorities.
:
: Reinforcing that loyalty is Lex's hatred of Lionel. As much as Lex
: might want to love his father -- as much as Lex would like to have a
: father who sees him as a son instead of just an heir -- he would never
: tell or give Lionel anything that would increase Lionel's power. The
: Secret is/was valuable in itself, but it's even more valuable to Lex
: because Lionel does not possess it.
But there was more at stake in that scene than just the chess game
between father and son. Though we in the audience know that everything
turned out all right in the end, for all Lex knew going into the shock
treatments, he was experiencing the last lucid, conscious moments of his
life. The chessboard advantage of keeping valuable information out of
Lionel's hands would be rendered academic if Lex was a vegetable and
could no longer play the game. Lex offered the attendant money. He
offered Lionel nothing. He wouldn't sell Clark out even if the cost was
his own mind. Lex knew Lionel would have been interested in that
information. He knew Lionel was obsessed with Clark. And we know that
Lionel would have suspended the shock treatments rather than erase that
information from Lex's brain, because Lionel was angry that he wasn't
shown the surveillance video of Lex saying, "I know your secret, Clark,"
until after the shock treatments were over.
: Maybe I'm wrong, but I think the producers/writers overplayed that
: hand. Lionel knew too much; I see him as the type who would have used
: that knowledge long ago, all the while seeking to learn more. Lionel
: Luthor just doesn't strike me as the sort who would let anything
: valuable remain out of his grasp.
Both Lex and Lionel (before the retconned Lionel) suspected enough to
piece together almost everything about Clark except the proper nouns.
But they were starved for corroboration. The really hard evidence
always seemed to elude them. Whenever Lionel seemed to be about to lay
his hands on something definite, something would intervene, sometimes
accidentally or incidentally. Dr. Hamilton "showed" Lionel the
spaceship, but Hamilton was dead before the end of the episode and Clark
whisked the spaceship away before Lionel could get confirmation. If it
hadn't been for Lex's abortive attempt to bug Lionel's office, Martha
wouldn't have had a chance to steal the key back from Lionel. When
Lionel was about to use his kryptonite key to unlock the secrets of the
cave, Clark decided he wanted that key for his own purposes, which had
the effect of destroying Lionel's key and blocking him from the keyhole.
When Lionel had Clark's vial of blood, Clark ended up stealing it from
him without even realizing that's what he was doing. Lionel did get
another sample, but through anger and bad timing, let his chance to
figure out who the source was slip through his fingers. Lionel had a
knowledgeable Lex in captivity and ended up wiping that knowledge out of
his brain. With his own eyes, Lionel saw the key behave in a paranormal
way, only for it to vanish, seemingly into the cave wall (but actually
somehow into Swann's hands). Lionel finally learned almost everything
by inhabiting Clark's body, only to get mind-wiped. Lionel's a very
unlucky guy in that respect.
On the other hand, as a friend of mine pointed out, why did Lionel take
the strangely indirect route of bribing Chloe to spy on Clark instead of
just planting electronic bugs in the Kent house? The answer is
obviously because that would be too easy.
: Clark hates some of the things he has done to keep The Secret, most of
: all lying to his friends. The others (not sure about Lana) have all
: done things they can't be entirely comfortable with, although always
: with honorable intentions. They may console themselves with the idea
: that the ends have justified the means, but they have still operated
: outside the letter of the law on occasion.
Occasionally it's even hard to justify the ends. It's one thing for
Clark to tell himself that if he doesn't spy on someone with his x-ray
vision, someone might die. But he had no such exigent circumstances
when he decided he was entitled to x-ray Whitney's backpack in "Shimmer"
and read Whitney's father's private medical information on his
prescription pill bottle.
:: Lex is at a crossroads. I think one of the things that would take
:: him down the right road is letting him get emotionally invested in
:: taking that road. One of the things that would get him to see
:: "Naman" as trustworthy rather than as the potential dictator of
:: Earth is "Naman" coming clean.
:
: I can't disagree with that, but it's still a huge risk for Clark and
: his parents to take.
I think it would reduce risk in the long run. However, I can appreciate
that they're fighting the ingrained fear of a lifetime. How many people
will end up acting contrary to their most ingrained fears, even when
it's in their own best interests?
<snip>
: Ya know, the producers and writers have a big advantage over us when
: it comes to the sort of things we're discussing. Our thoughts are
: here in glowing electrons for all to see, and maybe they're reading
: this too; but we won't know if we're anywhere near what they're
: actually going to do until the episodes air. Worse, if they learn
: what we're speculating about, they might scrap similar plans just to
: keep us guessing.
I doubt anyone in the crew reads Usenet. On the whole, the world is
shifting to the web.
-Micky
Micky DuPree
<jbe...@sprynet.com> writes:
: Hey, guys! I would very much prefer if you posted 30 different posts
: on different topics/ideas than justify your Masters thesis. It's
: interesting stuff, and all that, but some of us have to get back to
: work and we don't want our bosses to see us spend over ten minutes
: reading each post. ;-)
About ten years ago, I tried to change my posting habits (and by
extension, the posting habits of others) in a manner much like you
suggest. The results were unsatisfactory. Since those days, I've
resigned myself to topic drift and embraced post bloat. I'm sorry if
that means I've lost a reader, but I'm too set in my ways and usually
too short on time to take the trouble to launch a new thread for every
tangential thought that emerges (and which may die after the next post
anyway). Gobs of choppy little messages are also one of the many
reasons I don't like web-based message boards. I'm just a Usenet gal at
heart.
For what it's worth, I do try to trim quoted material a bit, which seems
to be a dying art.
-Micky
robg...@bestweb.net
> Clark could do almost any physical job superbly, but it's interesting
> that we've never heard him propose to make a living at football. If
he
> doesn't see anything wrong with playing high-school ball, then why
not
> plan a multimillion-dollar pro career around it? I'm holding out
hope
> that there will come a time when he'll see there's something wrong
with
> his "competing" in sports, and that he'll want to do something more
> productive with his day job.
I'm reminded of the movie "Dogma". God loved playing ski-ball, which
entailed assuming human form, and apparently foregoing all his god-ness
except for the ability to shazam himself back to being God.
BTW, when I keyboarded the above, I initially misspelled Dogma
"Dogman". That could've led to an interesting discussion!
Robert
robg...@bestweb.net
> Blind loyalty to
> people who do the wrong things just creates more problems. I
remember
> some people thinking the Unabomber's brother was a bad person for
> turning in "his own brother," but hell, don't you have a
responsibility
> to other people as well?
At an appearance by the Unabomber's brother a year ago, he claimed that
he'd been tricked into giving out the incriminating info.
robg...@bestweb.net
> I don't see where Clark drew the connection between his acrophobia
and
> his kryptonite sickness, though. It just seems like his acrophobia
> conveniently covered up his inhuman reaction to the foundry, so no
one
> thought to investigate it further.
But any covering up was not deliberate on his part. He didn't know he
was allergic to kryptonite until Whitney punched him with Lana's
necklace and then put it on him.
Robert
BucketButt
> About ten years ago, I tried to change my posting habits (and by
> extension, the posting habits of others) in a manner much like you
> suggest. The results were unsatisfactory. Since those days, I've
> resigned myself to topic drift and embraced post bloat. <snip>
I try to keep things short when I can, but sometimes it just isn't easy.
At least I split the thread into two shorter (but still long) posts, and I
was about to split those into still smaller bits.
> For what it's worth, I do try to trim quoted material a bit, which seems
> to be a dying art.
Same here. Sometimes it's difficult to trim enough quoted material
without losing context. Other times I just trim entire sections because
there just isn't anything more to be said.
BucketButt
> The Kents sure don't act like people who have considered contingency
> plans.
I think they're basically trusting as well as rather private people.
Despite everything that's happened, they don't want to believe that the
family secret will be exposed; it's a form of denial, I suppose.
> Where would they have been if Lex hadn't killed Roger Nixon and
> "Kara" hadn't killed Agent Loder?
They remind me of a boss I had once who liked to put off unpleasant tasks
in hopes that his bosses would eventually forget about them. This
actually worked sometimes; more often he got a "reminder" at the last
minute and the department had to hustle to get things done. Naturally,
things never went as well as they would have if we had used all the
time we should have had for planning. The really silly part was, most
of these events were recurring situations that we could anticipate
year-to-year.
The Kents don't have the luxury of knowing in advance when the next
threat to their secret will happen or who will be involved. But they
certainly know that Clark can't always hide his differences, and sooner or
later someone who wants to "go public" will actually keep both life and
memory long enough to do so.
> I can't see Lionel leaving it to chance. People do sometimes go into
> recovery. Even Lex seemed skeptical that Perry would still be standing
> there if he really did have something on Lionel:
>
> LEX: If this information is so damning, why did my father stop
> at simply destroying your career?
> PERRY: Multiple copies, plus multiple attorneys all with, in the
> event of my death, instructions to disseminate -- well, you do
> the math.
Lionel probably learned about those multiple attorneys early and had
agents trying to identify them; maybe he intended to steal the copies they
held or buy off the attorneys themselves. But once Perry started
participating in the destruction of his career, Lionel may have decided to
back off and just keep an eye on Perry and the lawyers. He could still
move in quickly if he had to, but if Perry was willing to defeat himself
Lionel might not have to get his own hands dirty.
> Then consider the example of Roger Nixon. He wasn't a government agent.
> He wasn't even a respectable journalist. But he could have made trouble
> with his videotape if he hadn't been stopped (although just pulling tape
> out of a cassette isn't going to "expose" it like film, but let that
> pass).
I'd consider Nixon aamong the "powerful people" -- not as powerful as
either Luthor, not even as powerful as a reporter for the Planet, but
powerful enough (with his proof on videotape) that the story would quickly
go worldwide. AAMOF, I got the impression that he intended to bypass the
Inquisitor and offer the tape to whoever would pay the most for it -- one
of the networks, a major news magazine, Lex, Lionel, whoever.
> We know the Kents will always end up protected, even if it requires
> outlandish means to do it. Problem is, the Kents don't know that, and
> yet they act as if they do.
I guess we'll just have to assume that they spend a lot of time thinking
about exposure, just not on-camera. It's the only way I see to make sense
of this, since they aren't likely to live in permanent denial-mode.
> I'm trying to figure out why the appearance of a superbeing wouldn't
> mobilize those government agencies that you postulate will stop at
> nothing to capture Superman once they know he exists.
Just speculation, but I'd say Superman's first public actions aren't
completely believed by anyone in government, despite whatever evidence
there is: "It must be a trick of some sort. A good trick, but that's
all." And he probably doesn't show all of his abilities, or their extent,
right away. By the time any paranoid government types become concerned
enough to take action, Superman is already a beloved hero who has
demonstrated his intentions. That wouldn't stop a truly paranoid (and
possibly rogue) government agency ... and apparently in the DC Universe
there is at least one such group that has taken on the mission of
developing defenses against superbeings ... but I doubt such an agency
exists in Season Four of Smallville, although a predecessor agency might.
> Of them all, Martha seems most to believe that the two actions
> -- trusting Lex and protecting Clark -- are not so incompatible.
She's a good judge of character. Jonathan is too; but unlike Martha, he
considers the possibility that Lex's character may change over time.
> I got the impression you were convinced Lex would keep
> on investigating without Clark's consent.
Even though Lex has apparently discontinued all efforts to learn why he is
still alive when he should be dead at the bottom of a river, a lot has
happened since then that defies explanation. Surely he still wonders
about all these strange occurrences, and why Clark always seems to be
involved in some manner. Sooner or later his curiosity is likely to get
the best of him.
> Rather than using Clark to turn humans into more superbeings like Clark
> (I'm not even sure how they'd try to explain such a thing),
This would be the approach I would expect if Lex and that Clark was
different but did not yet know why. Once Clark told him about his
extraterrestrial origin, Lex might (or might not) be persuaded that no
Earth-human could attain superpowers via gene-splicing or some other
method.
> I would
> sooner expect both Lex and Clark to be motivated to explore the question
> that they both know has already been raised by Dr. Teng: using something
> in Clark's blood as a regenerative/healing agent.
And Clark would cooperate with that, I'm sure of it.
If the continuity
> hadn't been so bad in "Scare," I'd even go so far as to say Lex already
> turned down this particular option even *with* Clark's consent because
> he wanted to protect Clark when Clark volunteered his tissue samples in
> the LuthorCorp lab.
Lex had a lot on his mind at that particular moment. And he knew he would
have (or could arrange) another opportunity where Clark would make that
particular offer.
> If Clark told Lex his Big Secret, and Lex were
> to kick into his usual hyper-loyal mode thereafter, I somehow doubt Lex
> would rat Clark out if Clark went on another redrock rampage through
> Metropolis or if "Kal-El" got the upper hand and resumed the great
> Kryptonian Scavenger Hunt. (I bet it ends under the Big W.) But Lex
> should rat Clark out in such cases, at least to other people who could
> help rein him in.
He'd certainly tell and do enough to bring Clark under control, but would
probably do all he could to keep whatever part of The Secret hadn't
already been exposed. No sense hiding or denying any powers that
Clark/Kal-El has used publicly before people who can identify him; but
perhaps he could still conceal any other, unused powers, or his Kryptonite
weakness. And if Clark had the presence of mind to hide his face ....
> But there was more at stake in that scene than just the chess game
> between father and son. Though we in the audience know that everything
> turned out all right in the end, for all Lex knew going into the shock
> treatments, he was experiencing the last lucid, conscious moments of his
> life.
Yes, Lex was willing to take the secret with him to "the end", except in
this case it was just the end of his memory. And he might not have
expected to lost that particular memory, since the extent of memory loss
after electroshock isn't the same in every instance.
> On the other hand, as a friend of mine pointed out, why did Lionel take
> the strangely indirect route of bribing Chloe to spy on Clark instead of
> just planting electronic bugs in the Kent house? The answer is
> obviously because that would be too easy.
I think the pre-retcon Lionel just liked using people. Especially if
using them now leaves an opening to continue using them later. It was his
hard luck that Chloe was just stubborn enough to stop being used and make
it stick.
BucketButt
> I understand the impulse. The drive to conform is powerful. I think
> it's good characterization that the teenaged Clark feels that drive.
> But unless you count the Flash and the occasional mutant, Clark doesn't
> have any physical peers.
True. The world at large doesn't know that (yet), but Clark does.
Or does he? Kara came out of the Phantom Zone, and conceivably others
including "Jor-El" could someday do the same. Kryptonians including
Jor-El have visited Earth in the past, and some may have been off-world
when that planet exploded.
> The deception that he is his classmates' peer
> in a physical competition is morally wrong. It's not fair to the other
> players nor to the spectators. (And if he says, "But if no one finds
> out, then no one will be hurt," he should realize that was Lex's excuse
> for investigating him, hardly a worthy response.)
Okay, so he's rationalizing his own behavior, even though he was hurt when
Lex did much the same thing.
> I don't know that I'd read all that into Chloe's remark to Lois. Chloe
> enjoys a lot of freedom without responsibility, in the form of almost
> transparent access to any shred of information on the planet whether
> it's legal or moral for her to gain access or not.
Internet ethics -- "Information wants to be free." It's actually a lousy
justification, but probably good enough for Chloe when she's in search of
truth, justice and her friends' best interests.
> Going back to doing only the _Torch_ after doing her own
> column on "a major metropolitan newspaper" had to be like a growing fish
> being forced back into a tiny pond.
Yes, but this is her senior year and she might well be too busy to do a
column for the Planet and serve as editor of the Torch. She feels a
loyalty to the school paper, and probably gets academic credit for it as
well, so she's putting all her journalistic interests into it for now. It
might not take away all the pain of losing the Planet column -- especially
considering how she lost it -- but she's probably too busy to let it get
her down.
> The star quarterback has a
> different high-school experience than that of "Scabby Abby." However,
> the high-school experience of the main character of _Smallville_ until
> very recently has been that of an outsider.
Clark doesn't want to be an outsider -- he wants to be the star
quarterback, or at least "one of the guys". I can't blame him.
> In particular, there's more to that time than
> just the school aspect of it. There's also living as a minor in someone
> else's house. Perhaps if the Kents had been my parents, I'd never want
> to leave the nest, who knows.
My parents were like the Kents in a number of ways. I enjoyed growing up
in their home, but I also wanted to be out on my own when the opportunity
arose. (Today I live in the house I grew up in ... and my widowed mother
lives here with me. Long story, not at all interesting.)
> O.K., but I think this has more to do with BucketButt than with Chloe.
> (Is the name a pun?)
I was dubbed BucketButt by an officer at my first "permanent party"
assignment in the Army. I had lost over 60 lbs. and six inches from my
waistline during basic training, but when I reported to Fort Polk I still
had my original uniforms ... and while dress greens can be tailored,
fatigues are another story. The first time I wore those baggy fatigues to
work and sat down ....
> Heh. Next week on _Smallville_: a meteor rock slips into the Talon
> espresso machine. This series is so overdue for a comedy episode.
St. Patrick's Day is coming, and it offers a multitude of comedic
opportunities. Print the Talon with glowing green ink, serve glowing green
beer at the local tavern, have everyone go around wearing shamrocks (which
grew atop "realrocks") ....
> JONATHAN: And with you, it's never going to be a fair competition.
Regarding ordinary athletics against ordinary people, he's right. But
both Jonathan and Clark have already seen that not everyone is "normal",
and Clark has already had to go all-out against some of them. It's
reasonable for them to assume he'll have other opponents with comparable
powers in his future; it is the Smallverse, after all.
> As of "Jinx," Jonathan seemed to abandon the moral argument to
> concentrate solely on the practical problem of injuring others. Since
> this turned out not to be a problem for Clark, that seemed to be
> Jonathan's cue to be jubilant over Clark's football victories even
> though the games were a sham. That strikes me as a terribly false note
> compared to Jonathan's previous characterization.
Jonathan might have been cheering in part because he knew Clark was
actually competing against someone more powerful than the opposing team.
The fans in the stands only saw Clark make the winning touchdown; Jonathan
knew about Mxyzptlk even if he didn't actually see what Clark did.
BucketButt
> You act like sitting patiently waiting to be called on is the only way
> to get an education. There wasn't anything in high school I couldn't
> have learned faster (and in many ways, better) in supervised independent
> study or by being tutored. I think that's true of almost everyone who
> values their education.
I'm sure Clark could learn more using a different method, but public
schooling is the mainstream method, and possibly the only one the Kents
could afford. It also has the benefit of extracurricular activities,
which Clark needs in order to "fit in" as an ordinary human.
> I don't get that impression at all. "Very good grades" suggests an A-B
> average to me, and I don't think Clark's parents would tolerate his
> holding back in academics.
Wouldn't Clark attract unwanted attention if he scored 100-percent on
every test and homework assignment? He deomonstrated both photographic
memory and math skills in a Season One episode when Martha was going over
the budget trying to find a solution to their latest financial plight.
Add superspeed, which would let him devote more attention to his studies
than any ordinary student, and he could easily be a straight-A student if
he gave it his full effort. This doesn't mean he doesn't actually learn
more than the other students at Smallville High, but he hides it by being
less than perfect on tests and homework.
His grades might also suffer a bit because he misses class occasionally --
due to Kryptonite, or investigating the latest Freak Of The Week, or
whatever. (I seem to recall that he had a perfect attendance record until
some point in Season One, but I don't remember just what ended it.)
> Clark could do almost any physical job superbly, but it's interesting
> that we've never heard him propose to make a living at football.
He did once, again in Season One (I've been watching the DVDs this week.)
Again, it had to do with the family's financial problems; when Martha
expressed shock at the idea, Clark said he was just trying to lighten the
mood a bit.
> If he
> doesn't see anything wrong with playing high-school ball, then why not
> plan a multimillion-dollar pro career around it?
High school football is amateur athletics; professional football is a
career, and a very lucrative one. The Kents aren't into into amassing
great wealth, but Clark was willing to help them out of the present
financial jam.
> She didn't even tell Chloe, the female keeper of the Wall of Weird.
Wouldn't you hesitate to tell someone who lives, eats and breathes
journalism, even if she was your closest female friend?
> Given that she eventually told the story straight up to Jason, I really
> don't get the impression that she thinks she got drunk, got tattooed,
> and now can't remember it, so she's afraid her friends will think less
> of her.
She knows she didn't get drunk and wander into a tattoo parlor, but she
doesn't know *how* it got there. (She also knows now that it isn't a
normal tattoo.) Lana told Jason, because she was the man with whom she
was in love and he had been with her in France both before and after the
actual moment when she received the tattoo.
Lana might want to tell Clark and/or Lex, but they're men ... and the
tattoo is in a place she isn't comfortable showing them. (She could
always wear a bikini swimsuit, but it would still seem somewhat
exhibitionistic.)
Michael C.
BucketButt <bucke...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> Lana might want to tell Clark and/or Lex, but they're men ... and the
> tattoo is in a place she isn't comfortable showing them. (She could
> always wear a bikini swimsuit, but it would still seem somewhat
> exhibitionistic.)
I'm pretty sure that Lana did show Clark the tattoo in one of the
last episodes before the hiatus.
Michael C.
--
mcsu...@usol.com http://mcsuper5.freeshell.org/
"I can not bring myself to believe that if knowledge presents danger,
the solution is ignorance" - Isaac Asimov
Bozo the Evil Klown
>being an ideal nuclear family.
Which is funny when you think about it- is there anything closer to the ideal
nuclear family on TV??
*****
The Joker in the Eeeeeeevil Cabal Deck of Cards.
By Grabthar's Hammer, by Pollock's Putty Knife, by the sparkling, refreshing
Screwdriver of Smirnoff- YOU SHALL BE QUOTED!!!!!!
Jeremy Billones
Micky DuPree <MDu...@theworld.com.snip.to.reply> wrote:
>In article <pan.2005.01.07....@bellsouth.net>, BucketButt
><bucke...@bellsouth.net> writes:
>: Makes me glad they didn't do their project on caffeine instead. The
>: whole football team could have ended up as fast as Clark or Bart
>: Allen, but too jittery to catch the ball!
>
>Heh. Next week on _Smallville_: a meteor rock slips into the Talon
>espresso machine. This series is so overdue for a comedy episode.
Huh? I thought this *was* the comedy episode. Between Chloe-as-cheerleader
and that slapstick "Clark 'seduces' cheerleader while Lois gets report"
sequence, how could it not be?
(Also, the confrontation at the end, where Clark zaps the steam pipe in
full view of Lois, is lazy even by Smallville standards if you consider
this a 'real' episode.)
--
Jeremy Billones
"Excel balances out our desire to throttle that annoying talking paper
clip by being chock-full of useful features."
- Aaron Schatz, footballoutsiders.com
Micky DuPree
(Jeremy Billones) writes:
: In article <crmtn1$sva$1...@pcls4.std.com>, Micky DuPree
: <MDu...@theworld.com.snip.to.reply> wrote:
:: This series is so overdue for a comedy episode.
:
: Huh? I thought ["Devoted"] *was* the comedy episode. Between
: Chloe-as-cheerleader and that slapstick "Clark 'seduces' cheerleader
: while Lois gets report" sequence, how could it not be?
Uh oh. When you put it like that, I suppose it was. It's just that
when I think "comedy," I think "funny." Rather than straight comedy, it
all comes off to me like a tame PG attempt at mixing the conventions of
sex farce with fantasy drama, and it only half-heartedly works. _A
Midsummer Night's Dream_ it ain't (although if they want to rip off a
classic fantasy plot from a public-domain source, that wouldn't be a bad
one to do). It felt like they were shooting more for teenage
titillation than for laughs, and without any of the gentle irony of "be
careful what you wish for" that you'd get in the Buffyverse. Chloe
under the influence in a cheerleader outfit was just kind of pathetic
(though well played). I wonder if the writers would consider sexually
based enslavement to be as much of a hoot if the genders had been
reversed and the football players had been the ones leading the
cheerleaders around on a leash and having sex with them while they were
Stepfordized. A "most lamentable comedy."
What would be funny is if Clark fell under the influence of a "love
molecule" mixed with red kryptonite instead of green, and suddenly Chloe
got what she wished for, to her alarm and dismay. Funny would be a
Nicodemus-style episode for Martha where she gets a snootful of
kryptonite dust and says, "Screw the farm, screw poverty, I'm going to
Disneyland," and starts coming onto Lionel, but the redeemed Lionel
finally gets what he wished for at the exact moment in his life when he
can't take advantage of it. He finds himself backing away from Martha,
putting furniture between him and her, and muttering under his breath,
"This is some sort of test, isn't it?"
When I think back, I can recall isolated snickers in "Devoted." I kind
of liked the poor-man's Cyrano bit with Lois trying to mime to the
inexperienced Clark how to "devote" himself to Mandy. I did think it
was funny when Lois and Chloe finally showed up again and Clark jumped
up and hid behind them. To give Welling credit, he does a convincing
saving-himself-for-marriage virgin, pretty much an endangered species.
But the funny was thin on the ground.
: (Also, the confrontation at the end, where Clark zaps the steam pipe
: in full view of Lois, is lazy even by Smallville standards if you
: consider this a 'real' episode.)
Eh, _Smallville_ standards are exceptionally lazy (you want me to start
a list?), and I think it's pretty obvious that only the audience can see
the shimmer effect of the heat vision.
-Micky
BucketButt
> What would be funny is if Clark fell under the influence of a "love
> molecule" mixed with red kryptonite instead of green, and suddenly Chloe
> got what she wished for, to her alarm and dismay. Funny would be a
> Nicodemus-style episode for Martha where she gets a snootful of
> kryptonite dust and says, "Screw the farm, screw poverty, I'm going to
> Disneyland," and starts coming onto Lionel, but the redeemed Lionel
> finally gets what he wished for at the exact moment in his life when he
> can't take advantage of it. He finds himself backing away from Martha,
> putting furniture between him and her, and muttering under his breath,
> "This is some sort of test, isn't it?"
I think you are onto something here, Micky. Smallville could use a few
more light moments; and since the writers already use Kryptonite as the
cause of nearly everthing that happens on the series, why not work in a
comedic twist now and then? And if they can work in a little levity
without resorting to Kryptonite, so much the better.
Smallville doesn't have to lose all its angst, but it would not hurt to
give the viewers (and perhaps the cast) a chuckle now and then. "Spell"
may have been an attempt to do just that, and indeed it did give me a
couple of smiles, but otherwise that episode left me disappointed;
"Devoted" worked a bit better. But even an otherwise totally-serious
episode might use a touch of comedy relief now and then, as long as it
doesn't come across as something out of place that was force-fit into the
episode.
Note to producers/writers: And if you *must* force-fit humor into an
episode, at least let it come early in the story before things get too
heavy. Consider the scene in the pilot where Clark approaches Lana,
stumbles and ends up sprawled on the ground at her feet, with Pete and
Chloe betting on how long it will take for him to become a klutz in her
proximity. Good bit of light humor, well placed, and it even advanced the
storyline a bit. I'm not saying this bit of humor was forced at all; the
point is, it would not have fit as well later in the episode when things
needed to be more serious. It was also a nice payoff (no pun intended) to
the preceding scene where they bet on whether he'd be on time for the
schoolbus.
HiRene23
>that a character who has been the veritable icon of forthright dealing
>throughout the season could now be revealed as dishonest?
Naah.
;)
Micky DuPree
robg...@bestweb.net writes:
: Micky DuPree wrote:
Well, I'm sure that'll help get some people off his back, but blind
loyalty to destructive people is still a problem, not something to
admire.
-Micky
Micky DuPree
robg...@bestweb.net writes:
: Micky DuPree wrote:
Yeah, I'm not saying that Clark connected all the dots when he was a
little kid, but neither do we hear Clark voice the theory about the
sickness induced by the abandoned foundry being the cause of his fear of
heights. In fact, he did just fine in the tree house when he went to
confront Greg and rescue Lana. He didn't get dizzy or hesitant. He
didn't have any problems until he chased Greg to the foundry (the first
of, count 'em, three foundries near Smallville).
-Micky
Rivervillagelady
(Micky DuPree) writes:
>t's not an ideal solution, but I think that Clark passing himself
>:: off as yet another meteor freak to those who know about such matters
>:: would circumvent some uncomfortable questions about Krypton,
>:: spaceships, and crusades to rule the world.
After reading the previous post a few times, I'm beginning to think this would
be the best solution for letting Lex marginally in on his secrets. Lex already
appears to suspect that he is himself one of the meteor-affected and probably
(or definately) suspects the same of Clark. Letting him in on that much of the
secret, would give a semi-rational basis for Lex to explain Clark's involvement
in the bizarre events in Smallville as well as another point on which he could
feel a common bond with Clark.
It might also get Clark an invite to the research level 33.1 (I think) that Lex
took Mxyzptlk to at the end of that episode... which should be interesting.
After being targeted by McNulty, as a meteor-freak, does anyone think that Lex
might have been motivated to create a haven for meteor freaks to safely and
anonymously learn to control and explore their powers?
Rivervillagelady
robg...@bestweb.net writes:
>> True, but from the first episode, where Lex saw it hung around
>Clark's neck
>> while he was strung up like a scarecrow, Lex could also have
>attributed his
>> pulling away as a reaction to a reminder of a bad experience.
>There was no "pulling away" on Clark's part in that scene.
>
No, not in that the part where he was strung up, but later when Lex returns the
necklace, Clark does shy away from the open box. If I remember the scene
correctly, they did have Lex notice the reaction, but imo Lex could have
attributed Clark's reaction to the necklace as avoiding a reminder of the
unpleasant experience (being strung up)... instead of figuring out that it was
a cause of Clark's weakness.
Rivervillagelady
(Micky DuPree) writes:
>Interrupting a *phony* redemption plot line to spring him for
>unrelated reasons just feels like a structural mess. Where do you go
>with that? It's not like anyone believes in Lionel's redemption anyway
>except for Clark
I don't know, I can see a storyline working itself out here... tying together
Lois's assertion that Lionel was being set-up, the warden's assertion that the
release was managed by someone more powerful than Lionel, and Clark's belief
that Lionel is redeemed (and now as worthy of Clark's protection as anyone
else). Resulting in Clark's attempting to protect Lionel, despite Lex's
warnings that Lionel can't be trusted, only to discover that Lionel is indeed
unredeemed/unredeemable as he walks into a trap. If Lionel can get him trapped
into Garner's tank, what could someone more powerful do? This would also give
the opportunity for Lex to step in and save Clark... something that I think
needs to happen more often to cement the epic friendship before everything goes
to dust.
Diane
Rivervillagelady
(Micky DuPree) writes:
>Even the guys on his own team are under the delusion that
>they're all normal guys trying their best. Imagine learning that one of
>your teammates is just pretending to do his best but is actually holding
>way back because he wants to pretend that he's just another one of the
>guys, so every game your team has played with him was a sham.
>
At the same time, there's the comment he made to Martha that he when he feels
more like himself than at anyother time. Arguably, his desire to continue
playing football isn't due to the enjoyment of overcoming physical challenges--
when he can't miss or trip (without help) or just from the freedom of letting
go... because he doesn't do that either. To me, it has an interesting
connotation for the concept of his dual/multiple personalities... when he's
feels more himself shamming his teammates for the glory and recognition it
brings him! Any wonder that one of his adult personaes wheres brightly colored
tights?
Rivervillagelady
(Micky DuPree) writes:
>Well, there's the question of whether or not his mother had a hand in
>bringing them together, but entirely apart from that, it's possible to
>look at it from another angle: it's the immature gals who are more
>easily swept up by older guys, and emotionally immature guys who are
>more comfortable being with substantially younger gals, so I'm skeptical
>of an argument for Lana's maturity based on age difference.
>
>Besides, almost no one on the show can fight it. Lana is supposed to be
>the pinnacle of feminine beauty. Males stalk Lana. Females stalk Lana.
>Little children stalk Lana. Dead witches stalk Lana. There's room on
>the bandwagon for everyone. Jason's fate was preordained.
>
Particularly, if Jason had a hand in bringing it about. Still thinking about
Jason's worst nightmare. Aside from showing the requisite jealously for Clark,
Jason's fears included Lana beginning to recognize that his accidental meeting
with her wasn't quite as it seems and that she's afraid of him. We're told
outright at the end that he's lying about why he leaves her. Add to that the
fact that he is the one who chose Isabelle's tomb for Lana to do the brass
rubbing, and, despite being new to the bizarreness of Smallville, he has no
trouble accepting that Lana's body gets co-opted by Isabelle.
Even Jonathon who's seen and accepted a lot of weird stuff including that
mxyzptlk can affect Clark just by saying a word -- has difficulty accepting
magic, but Jason doesn't even blink when he makes the connection between the
tattoo and the book. Well maybe he blinks, but only fro a few seconds. Had
Jason been aware of precedence for tattoos being the mode of body snatching
that make the concept a logical jump? Somehow, I suspect that he's going to
prove far less innocent than he may appear.
Diane
robg...@bestweb.net
> No, not in that the part where he was strung up, but later when Lex
returns the
> necklace, Clark does shy away from the open box. If I remember the
scene
> correctly, they did have Lex notice the reaction, but imo Lex could
have
> attributed Clark's reaction to the necklace as avoiding a reminder of
the
> unpleasant experience (being strung up)... instead of figuring out
that it was
> a cause of Clark's weakness.
They played that scene very cleverly to lead a sizable portion of the
audience to think that Lex noticed the effect of the rock. My late
friend David Lindelof was so taken in, as was at least one poster here.
The makers of "Smallville" are great at leading the audience astray; I
can say the same about Dave's son Damon's product, "Lost". I and
others were strongly led to believe Lionel, faking blindness, learned
more about Clark than would be consistent with events since then, and I
don't think that's because of an error on the writers' part.
Robert
HiRene23
>prove far less innocent than he may appear.
I have read a theory that Jason may turn out to be Jason Blood, a DC Universe
character who contains a demon(Etrigan) inside him. This character has some
interesting familial ties to Merlin, and Morgan LaFay.
Remember what he said to Lana in his "Scare" dream: "Clark can’t protect you
from me. Nobody can."
I think it's an intriguing theory.
BucketButt
> I have read a theory that Jason may turn out to be Jason Blood, a DC Universe
> character who contains a demon(Etrigan) inside him. This character has some
> interesting familial ties to Merlin, and Morgan LaFay.
Interesting theory, and I suppose it could happen in the Smallverse. But
in the larger DC Universe Jason Blood was around in the time of King
Arthur, so it's unlikely that he'd have a mother living in the present.
Unless Genevieve isn't really his mother ....
> Remember what he said to Lana in his "Scare" dream: "Clark can’t protect you
> from me. Nobody can."
Jason didn't know that Clark is more than he seems. Besides, it was a
dream, so maybe he dreamed that he was invincible. Or maybe you're right
and Jason is also more than he seems.
Micky DuPree
<bucke...@bellsouth.net> writes:
: On Fri, 07 Jan 2005 22:54:50 +0000, Micky DuPree wrote:
:: The Kents sure don't act like people who have considered contingency
:: plans.
:
: I think they're basically trusting as well as rather private people.
Um, trusting of whom? Or what? 'Cause the answer sure isn't "other
people." They treat the entire outside world as a potential threat to
Clark. That's understandable. I don't always agree with it, but it's
understandable and usually sympathetic. They don't have the resources
of, say, the Luthors to protect themselves with should they be found
out. Secrecy is their first line of defense and usually their last as
well. But the word that comes to my mind isn't 'trusting.'
: Despite everything that's happened, they don't want to believe that
: the family secret will be exposed; it's a form of denial, I suppose.
Now that's the word that comes to mind. :) It strikes me as arising
more from authorial denial, though, than from character denial (though
it's the characters who come off as ostriches by default). The writers
want to keep the Kents in a permanently agitated state of near-
discovery to keep up the story tension, but they never want the Kents to
reach a premise-altering revelation. Even having the characters discuss
the possibility would disturb this stasis that the writers perceive as a
winning formula. They don't stop to reflect on the implausibility of
characters who are that devoted to protecting the Big Secret not having
a Plan B should they be discovered (again).
:: Where would they have been if Lex hadn't killed Roger Nixon and
:: "Kara" hadn't killed Agent Loder?
:
: They remind me of a boss I had once who liked to put off unpleasant
: tasks in hopes that his bosses would eventually forget about them.
: This actually worked sometimes; more often he got a "reminder" at the
: last minute and the department had to hustle to get things done.
Heh. It does sometimes work, but a crafty procrastinator has to know
when the drop-dead point is to make this work.
: The Kents don't have the luxury of knowing in advance when the next
: threat to their secret will happen or who will be involved. But they
: certainly know that Clark can't always hide his differences, and
: sooner or later someone who wants to "go public" will actually keep
: both life and memory long enough to do so.
You'd also think that Jonathan and Martha would be better-safe-than-
sorry types, especially where Clark is concerned. They would do almost
anything to keep him inside the bubble of anonymity. It's also part of
a pragmatism you'd expect from running a farm. If you get hit by a
couple of storms, you build a storm cellar. You don't tell yourself
those storms were just flukes and could never happen again.
:: I can't see Lionel leaving it to chance. People do sometimes go into
:: recovery. Even Lex seemed skeptical that Perry would still be
:: standing there if he really did have something on Lionel:
::
:: LEX: If this information is so damning, why did my father stop
:: at simply destroying your career?
:: PERRY: Multiple copies, plus multiple attorneys all with, in the
:: event of my death, instructions to disseminate -- well, you
:: do the math.
:
: Lionel probably learned about those multiple attorneys early and had
: agents trying to identify them; maybe he intended to steal the copies
: they held or buy off the attorneys themselves. But once Perry started
: participating in the destruction of his career, Lionel may have
: decided to back off and just keep an eye on Perry and the lawyers. He
: could still move in quickly if he had to, but if Perry was willing to
: defeat himself Lionel might not have to get his own hands dirty.
Nah, I just can't see it, for a number of reasons. First is that even
dead drunk, Perry White was sharper than most of the sober people around
him. (He was obnoxious, but it was fun to watch him call bullshit every
time someone, particularly Clark, tried to play dumb on him.) The whole
belt-and-suspenders approach of multiple copies placed with multiple
attorneys showed that he wasn't naive like the small-town Sheriff Ethan
was (whose single attorney Lionel did buy off).
Second is that Lionel isn't the type to back off and leave things to
chance, particularly when it's never possible to guarantee that he could
"still move in quickly if he had to." It would take missing only one
attorney to blow the whole ball game, and how would Lionel ever be able
to be absolutely certain that he had found them all? Perry "The
Pitbull" White was an experienced hand at the rough game of
investigative journalism. He might have been squirreling away his
insurance before he even showed up on Lionel's radar.
Third is that there was always the possibility that Perry would clean up
his act or even get a terminal disease and feel he had nothing left to
lose. Perry told Clark that he still had some friends at the _Daily
Planet_, and did you notice that in "Gone," the story on the front page
of the _Planet_ that we got in lieu of Lionel's trial had Perry's
byline? (It's hard to read on low-resolution tape, unfortunately, but
it's there.) Demonstrably, Perry did make a comeback, and Lionel wasn't
able to stop him, despite the fact that Lionel also had pull at the
_Planet_.
:: Then consider the example of Roger Nixon. He wasn't a government
:: agent. He wasn't even a respectable journalist. But he could have
:: made trouble with his videotape if he hadn't been stopped [....]
:
: I'd consider Nixon aamong the "powerful people" -- not as powerful as
: either Luthor, not even as powerful as a reporter for the Planet, but
: powerful enough (with his proof on videotape) that the story would
: quickly go worldwide.
Then any random non-powerful person armed with a simple videocamera and
an extreme zoom lens could spy on the Kent Farm and end up posing the
same threat as Roger Nixon, because the tape could get into the hands of
someone like Nixon or conceivably even into Perry White's hands or at
least into the hands of someone like Perry (it's an open question now as
to whether Perry would feel too obliged to Clark to expose him). The
point stands that the Kents should plan for such a contingency.
:: We know the Kents will always end up protected, even if it requires
:: outlandish means to do it. Problem is, the Kents don't know that,
:: and yet they act as if they do.
:
: I guess we'll just have to assume that they spend a lot of time
: thinking about exposure, just not on-camera.
Nah, not me. I don't mind when they use hints and casual allusions
rather than giving all the details, because I like to think I'm quick
enough to grasp the implications. I'll hand-wave my way around smaller
points (like assuming that the lack of lawsuits at the end of "Scare"
was the Dept. of Defense coming down on everyone in the name of national
security), and for mental exercise, I'll even conjure up fanwanks to try
to plug major holes. But at the end of the day, if absolutely
everything has to happen off-camera, without so much as one on-camera
allusion or hint that it's there, then we're doing the writers' work for
them.
For example, what if off-camera, the entire rest of the world already
knows about Clark's Big Secret, but they've decided not to tell the
people in Kansas because watching them get so close and yet remain
clueless on hidden cameras has become the highest rated reality show in
America. "Next week on _Alien Antics_: Clark attributes his strength to
eating Wheaties and the town believes him." Anything could
theoretically be happening off-camera, which is why it's hard for me to
give any more credence to one off-camera theory than another. Besides,
there are times when I think it's valid to say that the writing has
fallen down on the job. This is one of them.
:: I'm trying to figure out why the appearance of a superbeing wouldn't
:: mobilize those government agencies that you postulate will stop at
:: nothing to capture Superman once they know he exists.
: [....] By the time any paranoid government types become concerned
: enough to take action, Superman is already a beloved hero who has
: demonstrated his intentions. That wouldn't stop a truly paranoid (and
: possibly rogue) government agency ...
Exactly, and yet I don't get the impression that Gough and Millar
foresee a future life in kryptonite captivity for Clark.
: ... and apparently in the DC Universe there is at least one such group
: that has taken on the mission of developing defenses against
: superbeings ...
That doesn't actually strike me as a bad thing. No one should have veto
power over the rest of humanity. It's making preemptively offensive
strikes against beings who haven't done anyone any harm that's morally
worrisome, and that you had previously posited as an inevitable response
to disclosure.
:: Of them all, Martha seems most to believe that the two actions --
:: trusting Lex and protecting Clark -- are not so incompatible.
:
: She's a good judge of character. Jonathan is too; but unlike Martha,
: he considers the possibility that Lex's character may change over
: time.
I take your point about Jonathan's mistrust, but I think he would
express it in opposite terms: that Lex will never change. That he'll
always be the guy who investigates Clark behind his back and who behaves
the way he's learned to behave from his father. Clark likes to believe
in the best in people (except when he feels he's just been stabbed in
the back), and I agree that Martha looks at Lex with motherly eyes.
:: I got the impression you were convinced Lex would keep on
:: investigating without Clark's consent.
:
: Even though Lex has apparently discontinued all efforts to learn why
: he is still alive when he should be dead at the bottom of a river, a
: lot has happened since then that defies explanation. Surely he still
: wonders about all these strange occurrences, and why Clark always
: seems to be involved in some manner. Sooner or later his curiosity is
: likely to get the best of him.
I think you're mixing together two hypothetical futures. You gave me
the impression that you were convinced that Lex would keep on
investigating without Clark's consent *even* *after* Clark told Lex his
Big Secret. I don't think Lex would. Lex has intellectual curiosity,
but I think his drive to find someone he can trust is greater.
Now, as for the far more likely possible future, the one where Clark
does not disclose to Lex: I don't think Lex is currently investigating
Clark specifically, but he's made no secret of the fact that he wants to
continue to explore the caves and the language therein. This basically
puts Clark on the spot. Clark knows that Lex has strongly suspected the
link between Clark and the caves in the past (Lex has come right out and
told him so), but since Clark has repeatedly denied any such connection,
then he has to treat Lex's investigation of the caves as completely
innocent even though you can't really investigate the caves without
doing a background investigation (i.e., of his Kryptonian heritage and
the prophecy of Naman) on Clark as well. So Lex and Clark continue to
put on this mutual pretense for each other.
But I don't think Lex will go back to keeping files on Clark himself
until such a time comes as Lex thinks that Clark has betrayed him. Then
the kid gloves will come off. I think Lex currently still lives in hope
that someday Clark will trust him enough to divulge.
:: I would sooner expect both Lex and Clark to be motivated to explore
:: the question that they both know has already been raised by Dr. Teng:
:: using something in Clark's blood as a regenerative/healing agent.
:
: And Clark would cooperate with that, I'm sure of it.
Exactly, and as long as Clark gave informed consent to the research, I
wouldn't have a moral problem with Lex doing this.
:: If the continuity hadn't been so bad in "Scare," I'd even go so far
:: as to say Lex already turned down this particular option even *with*
:: Clark's consent because he wanted to protect Clark when Clark
:: volunteered his tissue samples in the LuthorCorp lab.
:
: Lex had a lot on his mind at that particular moment.
He had some heavy responsibilities weighing on him, and I think we were
meant to see Lex as taking Dr. Ford's word for it that there wasn't
enough time to use Clark to save the afflicted.
But it's not like Dr. Ford had his hands full at that particular moment.
He and Lex were just standing around waiting for the antidote to come
out of the oven. Lex could easily have ordered, "Oh, go on, Doc, let
him give samples. We've got nothing to lose." But I think Lex did not
want to take advantage of Clark. Not at this stage. He still wants to
be told without false pretenses.
: And he knew he would have (or could arrange) another opportunity where
: Clark would make that particular offer.
How could Lex possibly know such a thing in advance? It's not like they
schedule industrial biohazard accidents at the plant. And I don't think
Lex would arrange such a thing under the current state of their
relationship.
:: If Clark told Lex his Big Secret, and Lex were to kick into his usual
:: hyper-loyal mode thereafter, I somehow doubt Lex would rat Clark out
:: if Clark went on another redrock rampage through Metropolis or if
:: "Kal-El" got the upper hand and resumed the great Kryptonian
:: Scavenger Hunt. (I bet it ends under the Big W.) But Lex should rat
:: Clark out in such cases, at least to other people who could help rein
:: him in.
:
: He'd certainly tell and do enough to bring Clark under control, but
: would probably do all he could to keep whatever part of The Secret
: hadn't already been exposed.
Whom do you think Lex would tell who didn't already know (like his
parents)? And I'm not convinced Clark would necessarily be exposed by
crossing the line. He managed not to be exposed when he was partying
hardy in Metropolis. He wore a mask during the bank heist, he's
invisible at superspeed, and based on what he did in the elevator in
"Obsession," I'm guessing he heat-visioned the security cameras in the
ATMs he boosted. Only Edge managed to trace him back to Smallville
(though it wasn't explained how).
: No sense hiding or denying any powers that Clark/Kal-El has used
: publicly before people who can identify him; but perhaps he could
: still conceal any other, unused powers, or his Kryptonite weakness.
: And if Clark had the presence of mind to hide his face ....
Which Clark has done in the past. I'm not sure what Metropolis made of
the masked man during the summer of 2003, but they've already been given
something to think about.
:: But there was more at stake in that scene [in the electroshock room
:: in "Asylum"] than just the chess game between father and son. Though
:: we in the audience know that everything turned out all right in the
:: end, for all Lex knew going into the shock treatments, he was
:: experiencing the last lucid, conscious moments of his life.
:
: Yes, Lex was willing to take the secret with him to "the end", except
: in this case it was just the end of his memory.
Yes, but Lex couldn't be sure at the time that that was all he would
lose.
: And he might not have expected to lost that particular memory, since
: the extent of memory loss after electroshock isn't the same in every
: instance.
Everyone involved in the story line was treating this as an experimental
version of shock therapy with much higher risks than what is normally
approved for therapeutic use. We had the proof of Dr. Foster's last
experimental subject, who was in a vegetative state, that this wasn't a
groundless fear. Lex didn't know the specifics, but he did know his
father. I think he had sufficient reason to worry if he'd ever be lucid
and functioning again, so I think his willingness to take Clark's Secret
with him to "the end" was significant.
:: On the other hand, as a friend of mine pointed out, why did Lionel
:: take the strangely indirect route of bribing Chloe to spy on Clark
:: instead of just planting electronic bugs in the Kent house? The
:: answer is obviously because that would be too easy.
:
: I think the pre-retcon Lionel just liked using people. Especially if
: using them now leaves an opening to continue using them later.
Oh, I agree, but I don't see it as an either/or problem. Why not do
both? That way he gets his hooks into Chloe and gets personal insights
not available via tech surveillance, but he also gets the raw direct
data of audiovisual surveillance. That's a win-win solution for Lionel,
and it's not like he can't afford both, nor like he hasn't done both
before. It's just another one of those things that we're not supposed
to notice.
-Micky
Micky DuPree
: On Fri, 07 Jan 2005 21:07:45 +0000, Micky DuPree wrote:
:: The drive to conform is powerful. I think it's good characterization
:: that the teenaged Clark feels that drive. But unless you count the
:: Flash and the occasional mutant, Clark doesn't have any physical
:: peers.
:
: True. The world at large doesn't know that (yet), but Clark does.
:
: Or does he? Kara came out of the Phantom Zone, and conceivably others
: including "Jor-El" could someday do the same. Kryptonians including
: Jor-El have visited Earth in the past, and some may have been
: off-world when that planet exploded.
Numerous problems. "Kara" was merely an augmented human. For all we
know, she would have ended up developing a heart problem because of her
augmentation just as Jonathan did.
"Jor-El" sounds to me like an artificial intelligence simulating the
now-dead real thing. It would have to be copied into a corporeal
Kryptonian form in order be a physical peer to Clark.
None of the beings you mention would be a reasonable candidate for Clark
to play public Earth sports with, nor could they make up entire football
teams for a genuine competition (at least not without breaking cover),
which was my original complaint.
I have a lot of trouble labeling "Jor-El's" hidey-holes as "the Phantom
Zone," because that conjures up all sorts of previous comic book and
movie expectations that I don't see any basis for in the _Smallville_
story at this juncture.
:: The deception that he is his classmates' peer in a physical
:: competition is morally wrong. It's not fair to the other players nor
:: to the spectators. (And if he says, "But if no one finds out, then
:: no one will be hurt," he should realize that was Lex's excuse for
:: investigating him, hardly a worthy response.)
:
: Okay, so he's rationalizing his own behavior, even though he was hurt
: when Lex did much the same thing.
Yep. I can understand it, but I can't give him a pass on it.
:: Chloe enjoys a lot of freedom without responsibility, in the form of
:: almost transparent access to any shred of information on the planet
:: whether it's legal or moral for her to gain access or not.
:
: Internet ethics -- "Information wants to be free." It's actually a
: lousy justification, but probably good enough for Chloe when she's in
: search of truth, justice and her friends' best interests.
In the cases of Clark, Chloe, and Lex (and Pete in the old days), I
think it's more like vigilante ethics. Since they consider their ends
to be good, then breaking rules and violating people's privacy to
further those ends are also good. They're willing to do this in "real
space" as well as in virtual space: breaking and entering, trespass,
bribing/blackmailing clerks for confidential police documents, etc.
:: Going back to doing only the _Torch_ after doing her own column on "a
:: major metropolitan newspaper" had to be like a growing fish being
:: forced back into a tiny pond.
:
: Yes, but this is her senior year and she might well be too busy to do
: a column for the Planet and serve as editor of the Torch.
It didn't seem to be slowing her down before. I didn't see her as
wanting to lose either.
: She feels a loyalty to the school paper, and probably gets academic
: credit for it as well, so she's putting all her journalistic interests
: into it for now.
You act like it was her idea to lose the column at the _Planet_. It
wasn't. It seemed to be a blow to her. Hell, few adults get their own
column in major metropolitan newspapers. Talk about an extracurricular.
It may not get her high-school credit, but it'll look vastly more
impressive on both her college applications and her job applications
than the _Torch_ will.
: It might not take away all the pain of losing the Planet column --
: especially considering how she lost it -- but she's probably too busy
: to let it get her down.
Chloe has a basic optimism and drive about her that seem to keep any
kind of lingering depression from seeping into her, but of all the teens
on _Smallville_ (with the probable exception of Lois), she strikes me as
easily the most ready to move into the adult world.
:: The star quarterback has a different high-school experience than that
:: of "Scabby Abby." However, the high-school experience of the main
:: character of _Smallville_ until very recently has been that of an
:: outsider.
:
: Clark doesn't want to be an outsider --
Few people do.
: -- he wants to be the star quarterback, or at least "one of the guys".
No, you were right the first time. If he wanted to be "one of the
guys," he would fake being an average player so that he would blend in
more. Instead, he's throwing 60-yard touchdown passes to win the
championship. That's not just "one of the guys."
: I can't blame him.
I can't blame him for wanting it. I can and do blame him for crossing a
line to get it, and I'm not convinced the writers are aware of the moral
ambivalence this gives rise to in the text.
:: (Is the name a pun?)
:
: I was dubbed BucketButt by an officer at my first "permanent party"
: assignment in the Army.
Ah, O.K. I was scratching my head trying to figure out a derivation and
all I could come up with was word play on "pale ass" --> "pail ass" -->
"bucketbutt."
:: JONATHAN: And with you, it's never going to be a fair competition.
:
: Regarding ordinary athletics against ordinary people, he's right.
Since the subject under discussion at the time was high-school football,
he was absolutely right. So why did he seem to abandon that stance
later? I can understand Clark making a mistake of youth, but Jonathan
is the moral anchor of the show. What's his excuse?
: But both Jonathan and Clark have already seen that not everyone is
: "normal", and Clark has already had to go all-out against some of
: them.
Irrelevant to my point. So far as we've seen, krypto-villains haven't
been using their powers to cheat at football, and Jonathan has never
told Clark not to use his powers against krypto-villains, just not to
use them in sports competition with normal humans.
: It's reasonable for them to assume he'll have other opponents with
: comparable powers in his future; it is the Smallverse, after all.
But not in terms of playing on an official football team against another
official football team, which is the specific case I'm talking about.
If Superman and the Flash want to publicly race when they're both "out
of the closet" adults, so to speak, I'd have no problem with that.
:: As of "Jinx," Jonathan seemed to abandon the moral argument to
:: concentrate solely on the practical problem of injuring others.
:: Since this turned out not to be a problem for Clark, that seemed to
:: be Jonathan's cue to be jubilant over Clark's football victories even
:: though the games were a sham. That strikes me as a terribly false
:: note compared to Jonathan's previous characterization.
:
: Jonathan might have been cheering in part because he knew Clark was
: actually competing against someone more powerful than the opposing
: team.
When he was in the bleachers, Jonathan could not yet have had any
certain knowledge about Clark's victory over Myxyzptlk. He was joyful
over the winning touchdown pass. Later on, Martha was allowed to speak
for them both (in Jonathan's earshot) when she amended that they were
proud of Clark "for everything."
-Micky
Micky DuPree
evilk...@aol.comedy (Bozo the Evil Klown) writes:
: Micky DuPree wrote:
:: The Big Secret warps all the Kents somewhat and keeps them from being
:: an ideal nuclear family.
:
: Which is funny when you think about it- is there anything closer to
: the ideal nuclear family on TV??
I've heard conflicting reports about _Seventh Heaven_, but apart from
that, no, not these days. (Well, maybe on Pax, dunno.) The Big Secret
is the Kents' only hindering flaw, and compared to other families'
problems, it's livable. But it does make a closed little society out of
them, treating all others as outsiders, like the Mafia code of silence.
-Micky
--
LEX: Little Kent cabal. Such a selective group, aren't you?
And so secretive.
-- "Shattered"
Micky DuPree
: On Fri, 07 Jan 2005 21:07:45 +0000, Micky DuPree wrote:
:: You act like sitting patiently waiting to be called on is the only
:: way to get an education. There wasn't anything in high school I
:: couldn't have learned faster (and in many ways, better) in supervised
:: independent study or by being tutored. I think that's true of almost
:: everyone who values their education.
:
: I'm sure Clark could learn more using a different method, but public
: schooling is the mainstream method, and possibly the only one the
: Kents could afford.
My point stands. You can still value education and yet not find in
retrospect that high school was a matter of life or death as you may
have believed it was at the time. (This all started because of Chloe's
remark to Lois about some people being eager to repeat their senior year
of high school.)
:: I don't get that impression at all. "Very good grades" suggests an
:: A-B average to me, and I don't think Clark's parents would tolerate
:: his holding back in academics.
:
: Wouldn't Clark attract unwanted attention if he scored 100-percent on
: every test and homework assignment?
No. We have no reason to believe that attention focused on Clark for
*academic* excellence would be considered unwanted by the Kents.
: He deomonstrated both photographic memory and math skills in a Season
: One episode when Martha was going over the budget trying to find a
: solution to their latest financial plight.
Can you be more specific? I have only a vague memory of the scene, but
while I do remember him demonstrating good recall and math, I'm 99.9%
sure that we have no reason to believe that Clark's memory is currently
photographic in this version of the myth (it would have been too useful
in other situations if it were) nor that he has savant-like calculating
skills.
The Kent parents have always been insistent on Clark's diligent
application to his schoolwork. Not once have they encouraged him to
hold back or disguise his intellectual abilities.
: Add superspeed, which would let him devote more attention to his
: studies than any ordinary student, and he could easily be a straight-A
: student if he gave it his full effort.
You'd think so, but that's not the way they portray it. If you add
superspeed, Clark should be able to waltz through almost anything, but
the writers don't portray it that way. Superspeed is by far the most
underutilized power on the show given that the writers have invested it
with absurd potential.
: His grades might also suffer a bit because he misses class
: occasionally -- due to Kryptonite, or investigating the latest Freak
: Of The Week, or whatever.
There is that, but we've never once heard Jonathan or Martha caution
Clark about deliberately holding back academically. Quite the contrary.
: (I seem to recall that he had a perfect attendance record until some
: point in Season One, but I don't remember just what ended it.)
I thought he had a habit of being tardy (perhaps because overreliance on
superspeed made him careless about punctuality). Certainly Principal
Reynolds made a note of that, and I don't think he was just talking
about season two.
:: Clark could do almost any physical job superbly, but it's interesting
:: that we've never heard him propose to make a living at football.
:
: He did once, again in Season One (I've been watching the DVDs this
: week.) Again, it had to do with the family's financial problems; when
: Martha expressed shock at the idea, Clark said he was just trying to
: lighten the mood a bit.
Allow me to amend if that will make my meaning clearer: it's interesting
that we've never heard him *seriously* propose to make a living at
football.
:: If he doesn't see anything wrong with playing high-school ball, then
:: why not plan a multimillion-dollar pro career around it?
:
: High school football is amateur athletics; professional football is a
: career, and a very lucrative one. The Kents aren't into into amassing
: great wealth, but Clark was willing to help them out of the present
: financial jam.
So what? Jonathan may have taken a vow of poverty, but Clark isn't
married to the idea of staying a poor farmer all his life. If it's O.K.
to play high-school ball, then it's O.K. to play college ball and pro
ball, too. So what if he gets money to go with the credit, the acclaim,
and the glory? If it's morally fair for him to get all the intangibles,
then it's morally fair for him to get the tangible rewards as well. But
if there's something dubious about accepting money for playing, then
that casts doubt on accepting the intangibles for playing as well.
-Micky
Micky DuPree
<bucke...@bellsouth.net> writes:
: Smallville doesn't have to lose all its angst, but it would not hurt
: to give the viewers (and perhaps the cast) a chuckle now and then.
: "Spell" may have been an attempt to do just that, and indeed it did
: give me a couple of smiles, but otherwise that episode left me
: disappointed; "Devoted" worked a bit better. But even an otherwise
: totally-serious episode might use a touch of comedy relief now and
: then, as long as it doesn't come across as something out of place that
: was force-fit into the episode.
Thinking back, "Perry," though not straight comedy, was pretty
consistently light in tone even as it dealt with serious themes. I
liked it a lot. They could do with more like that.
There's something more effective and generous about humor that comes out
of the characters making their own mistakes and simply trying to cope
with the things that life throws at them than there is in contriving the
characters to be in embarrassingly racy situations, like in "Devoted."
The enslavement of the football players and the implication of sexual
assault (yeah, I can already hear some people saying that the guys
weren't going to complain, but I didn't hear them consenting, and it
would take only one dissenter to make it rape) were supposed to be
comedy? Chloe forced into being a dunderhead against her will? And an
obviously uncomfortable Clark doing some foreplay as a diversion? Oh
yeah, laugh a minute.
If Clark had *wanted* to get into that situation only to discover he was
in over his head and he needed to make his excuses to leave, then it
might have been amusing. If Clark thinks it's high time he had sex
because that's what boys are supposed to do, and then he realizes he's
not ready, that can be played from a humorous angle. Not to put too
grandiose a point on it, it's possible to do comedy that illuminates the
human condition, human foibles, and human strengths. There's genuine
substance in that. It's something Joss Whedon was usually capable of
bringing off, and even _The X-Files_ managed the occasional light
episode. Both were handier with the funny one-liner than _Smallville_
has typically been, too.
I'm not quite sure why _Smallville_ has trouble with humor, except that
they've adopted what the Brits would call a "po-faced" tone as their
primary representation, a doggedly earnest approach perhaps intended to
undercut any latent tendencies to lapse into camp fantasy like the old
_Batman_ series. But I think it's possible to be completely earnest in
your themes and still explore the lighter side of (super)humanity.
_Buffy_ and _Angel_ took their explorations of heroism completely
seriously even though the writers sometimes showed their heroes as
slipping on their own banana peels.
-Micky
Micky DuPree
<mcsu...@usol.com> writes:
: I'm pretty sure that Lana did show Clark the tattoo in one of the last
: episodes before the hiatus.
I checked and you're right. She finally showed it to Clark at the end
of "Spell." In that light, it's strange that she's been letting her
lies to Lex stand without correction. Of course, the implication was
that he was on the trail anyway, since he was inspecting the same glyph
down in the cave, but it means that now he's got both Clark and Lana,
two people he once considered good and pure, lying to his face.
-Micky
Sprockets
DuPree wrote in alt.tv.smallville for all to read:
yada,yada,yada...
<snip>
6 posts with-in an hour block of time.
Who has the time to read all these essays, thesis???
Gee, can't 2 or 3 paragraphs make the point?
Smallville is not Intelligence-ville !!!!!!!
lol,
;-)
Sprockets
Rivervillagelady
Micky DuPree wrote:
>but it means that now he's got both Clark and Lana,
>two people he once considered good and pure, lying to his face.
>
But, considering the dichotomy of love and deception inhereted from his
parents, that combination of purity and perceivable dishonesty would possibly
make them all the more tantalizing as friends.
Perhaps - in the same sense that he seems to be most attracted dangerous,
violent women- Lex might not be have been able to view Clark and Lana as
friends were it not for that dynamic... because otherwise they would not fit
the only models of any familial affection that he has known.
Similarly, the more potentially dangerous that Lana may prove herself to be,
the more he may be attracted to her.
Diane
Rivervillagelady
>A fear of heights in an invulnerable man is just stupid.
And phobias are always logical and smart?
No, more often than not, the lasting fears like spiders, the number 13, clowns
(I heard of a bunch more but can't remember any at the moment) are illogical,
often unreasonable, and frequently born from early traumas. It fits. He knew he
was frightened and made sick by heights, long before he really understood his
invulnerability.
Rivervillagelady
>He did leap off the dam in "Dichotic" and off the _Daily Planet_
>building in "Insurgence." Those ought to count for something towards
>getting over the fear.
Somehow, I doubt they would be effective events to contradict his fears because
in each case, if my memory serves, he was already likely to be somewhat fearful
for the safety of friends and loved ones...
And, if he needed anything to reinforce his anxiety... the scene where he and
Perry were dangling off of the bridge when he clearly didn't have his powers
would have probably been enough.
Diane
Todd
>From what they've said, Clark didn't reach true invulnerability until
>around the end of the first season. In "Hug," the bullets that Lex shot
>at Clark left bruises, and yet Martha seemed amazed that the injuries
>were so slight:
>
> MARTHA: I can't believe each one of these bruises was a bullet.
Well, this was probably the first time he'd ever been shot. Jonathon
and Martha may be dumb, but they're not going to shoot him to see if
he's invulnerable to bullets.
BucketButt
> In article <pan.2005.01.09....@bellsouth.net>, BucketButt
> <bucke...@bellsouth.net> writes:
>
> : I think they're basically trusting as well as rather private people.
>
> Um, trusting of whom? Or what? 'Cause the answer sure isn't "other
> people." They treat the entire outside world as a potential threat to
> Clark. That's understandable. I don't always agree with it, but it's
> understandable and usually sympathetic. They don't have the resources
> of, say, the Luthors to protect themselves with should they be found
> out. Secrecy is their first line of defense and usually their last as
> well. But the word that comes to my mind isn't 'trusting.'
The Kents are generally trusting people, except when it comes to Clark's
origin and powers, or just about anything involving the Luthors. I've
never seen any evidence that they lock their doors; indeed, in good
weather they usually leave their front door wide open, allowing people
to just waslk in on them (even when they're discussing The Secret).
They have no qualms taking in strangers (Lois, Bart, others) as house
guests. Jonathan once let Chloe use his pickup ... then again, his
insurance rates probably couldn't go much higher anyway.<g> The elder
Kents never seem to notice when Lex, Chloe or Lana drive up and go
straight to the barn.
> : The Kents don't have the luxury of knowing in advance when the next
> : threat to their secret will happen or who will be involved. But they
> : certainly know that Clark can't always hide his differences, and
> : sooner or later someone who wants to "go public" will actually keep
> : both life and memory long enough to do so.
>
> You'd also think that Jonathan and Martha would be better-safe-than-
> sorry types, especially where Clark is concerned. They would do almost
> anything to keep him inside the bubble of anonymity. It's also part of
> a pragmatism you'd expect from running a farm. If you get hit by a
> couple of storms, you build a storm cellar. You don't tell yourself
> those storms were just flukes and could never happen again.
Tornadoes have no rhyme or reason, they strike indiscriminately. But as
long as the Kents keep The Secret, they think there's no reason why
anyone would expect there is a secret to be kept, and thus no real
threat. It's silly thinking, of course. All of Clark's friends know
he's keeping *something* about himself hidden; and entirely too many
people have become curious because Clark always seems to be around when
unexplainable events occur. But they are, as you said, responding like
ostriches.
> Nah, I just can't see it, for a number of reasons. First is that even
> dead drunk, Perry White was sharper than most of the sober people around
> him. (He was obnoxious, but it was fun to watch him call bullshit every
> time someone, particularly Clark, tried to play dumb on him.) The whole
> belt-and-suspenders approach of multiple copies placed with multiple
> attorneys showed that he wasn't naive like the small-town Sheriff Ethan
> was (whose single attorney Lionel did buy off).
Perry's sharp enough to see things as they are. But he's also a drunk
who has hit bottom career-wise, runs up debts, and generally has lost
9and is now struggling to regain) any degree of respect from just about
anyone. Lionel might see the continuing danger if he investigated Perry
personally, but I'm not so sure a hired investigator would be that
perceptive.
Having said that, I'll also suggest that perhaps Lionel knows exactly
what evidence Perry had placed with those different lawyers, and had
already fabricated a plausible explanation that shows him "guiltless".
Even if Perry ever publishes his expose', it might not have the impact
now that it would have had earlier.
> Second is that Lionel isn't the type to back off and leave things to
> chance, particularly when it's never possible to guarantee that he could
> "still move in quickly if he had to." It would take missing only one
> attorney to blow the whole ball game, and how would Lionel ever be able
> to be absolutely certain that he had found them all? Perry "The
> Pitbull" White was an experienced hand at the rough game of
> investigative journalism. He might have been squirreling away his
> insurance before he even showed up on Lionel's radar.
Maybe, maybe not. Lionel could even be underestimating Perry, for all I
know. Something tells me we haven't seen the end of this particular
storyline and we'll find out how damning Perry's evidence is ... maybe
this season.
> Third is that there was always the possibility that Perry would clean up
> his act or even get a terminal disease and feel he had nothing left to
> lose. Perry told Clark that he still had some friends at the _Daily
> Planet_, and did you notice that in "Gone," the story on the front page
> of the _Planet_ that we got in lieu of Lionel's trial had Perry's
> byline? (It's hard to read on low-resolution tape, unfortunately, but
> it's there.) Demonstrably, Perry did make a comeback, and Lionel wasn't
> able to stop him, despite the fact that Lionel also had pull at the
> _Planet_.
I did NOT notice that! Maybe Peery is a bigger threat to Lionel than
either Lionel or I realized. Or maybe lionel realized it even when I
didn't. But he's a "new" Lionel now, and that could change things one
way or the other ... if Perry (or anyone else) actually believes he has
changed.
> Then any random non-powerful person armed with a simple videocamera and
> an extreme zoom lens could spy on the Kent Farm and end up posing the
> same threat as Roger Nixon, because the tape could get into the hands of
> someone like Nixon or conceivably even into Perry White's hands or at
> least into the hands of someone like Perry (it's an open question now as
> to whether Perry would feel too obliged to Clark to expose him). The
> point stands that the Kents should plan for such a contingency.
I started to respond, "Why would anyone .... " Then I gave it another
second's thought and realized that Chloe would certainly be curious
enough to do exactly that. So would Lex, "old" Lionel, and several
other people. The fact that Clark does sometimes use his powers around
the farm shows that the Kents haven't given this enough consideration.
> : I guess we'll just have to assume that they spend a lot of time
> : thinking about exposure, just not on-camera.
>
> Nah, not me. I don't mind when they use hints and casual allusions
> rather than giving all the details, because I like to think I'm quick
> enough to grasp the implications. I'll hand-wave my way around smaller
> points (like assuming that the lack of lawsuits at the end of "Scare"
> was the Dept. of Defense coming down on everyone in the name of national
> security), and for mental exercise, I'll even conjure up fanwanks to try
> to plug major holes. But at the end of the day, if absolutely
> everything has to happen off-camera, without so much as one on-camera
> allusion or hint that it's there, then we're doing the writers' work for
> them.
I'll go along with this, for the most part. The series can't show us
everything that happens or tell us everything that's discussed, but
concern about The Secret is not a trivial matter that can be either
ignored or taken for granted. The producers ought to show us that the
Kents are thinking about contingencies.
> Besides,
> there are times when I think it's valid to say that the writing has
> fallen down on the job. This is one of them.
Absolutely! I'm not certain how I would handle things if I were writing
for Smallville, but I expect the people who *are* taking money for
scripts to come up with something acceptable.
> : [....] By the time any paranoid government types become concerned
> : enough to take action, Superman is already a beloved hero who has
> : demonstrated his intentions. That wouldn't stop a truly paranoid (and
> : possibly rogue) government agency ...
>
> Exactly, and yet I don't get the impression that Gough and Millar
> foresee a future life in kryptonite captivity for Clark.
Won't happen, for the simple reason that it hasn't happened in the DC
Universe. (Okay, maybe it did, but that was an exception rather than
the rule.) Here I'll just have to accept as fact the idea that Clark
kept a suitably-low profile until he had become established as the good
guy known as Superman, and that no one saw sufficient need for an agency
to investigate the possibility of such a powerful being.
As supporting evidence, I'll cite the fact that al Qaeda was able to
slip operatives into the U.S., train and equip them to perform their
assigned tasks, and pull off the events of 9/11/2001 -- even though the
organization's existence and general intentions were known to some
people working in government agencies. What I'm saying is, a lot of
things happen that just don't come to the attention of those who can
understand what they mean and take suitable action.
Once superheroes and supervillains "go public" the DC Universe will have
an agency that collects intelligence on them, but the relatively few
"meteor freaks" and others on Smallville apparently haven't caused that
much concern yet.
> I take your point about Jonathan's mistrust, but I think he would
> express it in opposite terms: that Lex will never change. That he'll
> always be the guy who investigates Clark behind his back and who behaves
> the way he's learned to behave from his father. Clark likes to believe
> in the best in people (except when he feels he's just been stabbed in
> the back), and I agree that Martha looks at Lex with motherly eyes.
Maybe it's another example of ostrich-mentality on Jonathan's part. At
first he was extremely suspicious of anything involving either Luthor.
More recently he's become somewhat more trusting (or at least accepting)
of Lex, and may even occasionally think that Lex would be someone they
could turn to in an emergency. He probably doesn't trust Lex
completely, but as long as Lex doesn't appear to be an immediate threat
he's willing to relax his guard a bit ... maybe even a bit too much.
> I think you're mixing together two hypothetical futures. You gave me
> the impression that you were convinced that Lex would keep on
> investigating without Clark's consent *even* *after* Clark told Lex his
> Big Secret. I don't think Lex would. Lex has intellectual curiosity,
> but I think his drive to find someone he can trust is greater.
There are lots of smaller secrets behind the Big Secret, and Lex is a
natrually curious person as well as a businessman who looks for
opportunities to exploit. Just how strong is Clark? How invulnerable
is he? What else can he do? Can any of these abilities be replicated
in ordinary Earth-humans? Can Clark's blood really cure otherwise-fatal
illnesses? Did Lionel really transfer into Clark's body, and did that
transference really cure Lionel? Are there other people like Clark on
Earth? Is Clark really a "Boy Scout type", or is he, like Lex, much
more complex and not always on the side of the angels? These are just a
few of the questions I'd want answers to if I were Lex; and if I could
exploit the results of my "research" in the form of new products to
benefit humanity (without harming Clark), I'd almost certainly do that too.
> Now, as for the far more likely possible future, the one where Clark
> does not disclose to Lex: I don't think Lex is currently investigating
> Clark specifically, but he's made no secret of the fact that he wants to
> continue to explore the caves and the language therein. This basically
> puts Clark on the spot. Clark knows that Lex has strongly suspected the
> link between Clark and the caves in the past (Lex has come right out and
> told him so), but since Clark has repeatedly denied any such connection,
> then he has to treat Lex's investigation of the caves as completely
> innocent even though you can't really investigate the caves without
> doing a background investigation (i.e., of his Kryptonian heritage and
> the prophecy of Naman) on Clark as well. So Lex and Clark continue to
> put on this mutual pretense for each other.
I'm not sure I understand why the producers used the caves in the first
place. The very idea that any Kryptonians (much less Jor-El himself)
visited Earth, interacted with ancestors of Smallville's current
residents, and left powerful technology (the artifacts) behind just
strikes me as being a little too unlikely. What is this fascination
Kryptonians had with our little planet? And why would they choose to
leave alien technology on an inhabited world, even if it is disguised as
symbols on a cave wall or "magic stones"? I'm sure there are answers
that make sense, but I just can't see them.
> But I don't think Lex will go back to keeping files on Clark himself
> until such a time comes as Lex thinks that Clark has betrayed him. Then
> the kid gloves will come off. I think Lex currently still lives in hope
> that someday Clark will trust him enough to divulge.
Lex may not be actively investigating or keeping formal files on Clark
right now, but I'm certain he still has a few suspicions nagging at him.
He already has several pieces of the puzzle, but how the fit together
isn't obvious to him, and he's suppressing his curiosity because of
their friendship. But in his idle moments he may still turn the pieces
over in his mind, trying to visualize the rest of the puzzle.
> : And he knew he would have (or could arrange) another opportunity where
> : Clark would make that particular offer.
>
> How could Lex possibly know such a thing in advance? It's not like they
> schedule industrial biohazard accidents at the plant. And I don't think
> Lex would arrange such a thing under the current state of their
> relationship.
Why not arrange another biohazard, either at the plant or somewhere else
around Smallville? It wouldn't even have to be a deadly-dangerous
hazard, as long as it appeared to be. I'm not saying Lex would actually
do that, but he knows he could if he really wanted to. Or he could just
wait for someone close to Clark to naturally contract a serious illness.
If all else failed, he could just ask Clark outright to let him have a
sample of his blood, and see if Clark would cooperate.
But how much of a sample would Lex really need? Would a sweaty T-shirt,
or a few strands from Clark's hairbrush, be enough to begin preliminary
DNA testing for genetic anomalies that make Clark so special? (Even if
such samples proved resistant to standard genetic testing, that would be
quite revealing. Think of all the things you could do with a single
strand of Clark's unbreakable/uncuttable hair. I mean, besides making
the ultimate cheese-slicer.<g>)
> Whom do you think Lex would tell who didn't already know (like his
> parents)?
I don't necessarily think Lex would tell anyone; but like Jonathan, I
have my concerns when it comes to trusting anyone.
> And I'm not convinced Clark would necessarily be exposed by
> crossing the line. He managed not to be exposed when he was partying
> hardy in Metropolis. He wore a mask during the bank heist, he's
> invisible at superspeed, and based on what he did in the elevator in
> "Obsession," I'm guessing he heat-visioned the security cameras in the
> ATMs he boosted. Only Edge managed to trace him back to Smallville
> (though it wasn't explained how).
This brings up a couple of things that have been bothering me.
Why doesn't the Superman costume include a mask of some sort? I know
Siegel and Shuster originally intended Superman to be a mysterious
figure who wouldn't be seen that often except as a figure in the
distance, but that idea was scrapped pretty early on. "Mild-mannered
Clark" may have been intended to be such a wallflower that no one would
connect him with Superman, but that didn't last either. A baggy suit
and horn-rimmed glasses were never much of a disguise; and the theory
that he can change his face's appearance doesn't seem that plausible to
me. I can't actually imagine Superman wearing a mask, but still it
seems that he should if he wants to maintain a secret identity.
And how did Morgan Edge manage to trace Clark back to Smallville? Would
a man who is himself trying to avoid being discovered be able to conduct
such a successful search for someone who could be literally anywhere
(but would probably be most comfortable in the U.S. or Canada)? After
all, "Kal" had stopped using his powers in ways that would draw police
or media attention, and had returned to a small town instead of moving
to another major city to continue his current lifestyle.
> : Yes, Lex was willing to take the secret with him to "the end", except
> : in this case it was just the end of his memory.
>
> Yes, but Lex couldn't be sure at the time that that was all he would
> lose.
"Dead men tell no tales." Maybe Lex was willing to take his secrets to
the grave, rather than let them fall into Lionel's hands.
Todd
>He seems to be well on the way there already. In addition to the
>instances already cited, he went up in a balloon with Ryan. If the
>writers were to decide that the phobia is now officially gone as of his
>experience flying as "Kal-El," it wouldn't bother my sense of character
>development a bit.
I wonder if they'd get sued if they had him trying to fly a couple of
times like the Greatest American Hero did.
For those who don't know, I believe DC comics sued the producers of
GAH, claiming the character was a rip-off of Superman.
BucketButt
> In article <pan.2005.01.09....@bellsouth.net>, BucketButt
> <bucke...@bellsouth.net> writes:
>
> Numerous problems. "Kara" was merely an augmented human. For all we
> know, she would have ended up developing a heart problem because of her
> augmentation just as Jonathan did.
I guess we"ll never know because Phantom zone Jor-El (apparently) zapped
her out of existence.
> "Jor-El" sounds to me like an artificial intelligence simulating the
> now-dead real thing. It would have to be copied into a corporeal
> Kryptonian form in order be a physical peer to Clark.
With all the other things this entity is able to do, that might be
possible ... if the producers thought of it. I think it's just as well
they didn't.
> None of the beings you mention would be a reasonable candidate for Clark
> to play public Earth sports with, nor could they make up entire football
> teams for a genuine competition (at least not without breaking cover),
> which was my original complaint.
Maybe not football, but Clark could certainly take part in informal
athletic competitions with Bart Allen or a hypthetical
strong-but-not-evil Freak Of The Week. If nothing else, Clark could
lift weights ... really big, really heavy weights.
> I have a lot of trouble labeling "Jor-El's" hidey-holes as "the Phantom
> Zone," because that conjures up all sorts of previous comic book and
> movie expectations that I don't see any basis for in the _Smallville_
> story at this juncture.
I use the term Phantom Zone because that's the term I saw used on either
Kryptonsite or Smallville.net. Besides, Kara came out of someplace and
Clark went into someplace -- call it a different dimension or an
alternate plane of existence if you wish, I prefer to call it the
Phantom Zone.
> : She feels a loyalty to the school paper, and probably gets academic
> : credit for it as well, so she's putting all her journalistic interests
> : into it for now.
>
> You act like it was her idea to lose the column at the _Planet_. It
> wasn't. It seemed to be a blow to her. Hell, few adults get their own
> column in major metropolitan newspapers. Talk about an extracurricular.
> It may not get her high-school credit, but it'll look vastly more
> impressive on both her college applications and her job applications
> than the _Torch_ will.
No question about that. But she did lose the Planet gig, and she still
has to finish high school, so she's moving forward and doing the best
she can with what she has.
> No, you were right the first time. If he wanted to be "one of the
> guys," he would fake being an average player so that he would blend in
> more. Instead, he's throwing 60-yard touchdown passes to win the
> championship. That's not just "one of the guys."
Okay, he's showing off a little. He's the quarterback, it's his job to
put the ball in motion and make it possible for his team to win. He's
walking a fine line, and occasionally he's going to stick a toe or two
across it. After all, he isn't all that accomplished at any of this yet
-- he's a teenager who's still learning what he can do and how best to
do it.
> Ah, O.K. I was scratching my head trying to figure out a derivation and
> all I could come up with was word play on "pale ass" --> "pail ass" -->
> "bucketbutt."
Well, I do bear a certain resemblance to Melville's fictional whale ...
but no, the nickname was inspired by my baggy uniform trousers. That
was then, and this is now; today your idea would be pretty accurate.
> Since the subject under discussion at the time was high-school football,
> he was absolutely right. So why did he seem to abandon that stance
> later? I can understand Clark making a mistake of youth, but Jonathan
> is the moral anchor of the show. What's his excuse?
He realized just how much Clark wanted to play, and finally gave in ...
with an understanding that Clark would keep his powers in check. It's
just that simple. I think. Maybe.
> When he was in the bleachers, Jonathan could not yet have had any
> certain knowledge about Clark's victory over Myxyzptlk. He was joyful
> over the winning touchdown pass. Later on, Martha was allowed to speak
> for them both (in Jonathan's earshot) when she amended that they were
> proud of Clark "for everything."
Sometimes parents just get caught up in the moment. Even Jonathan can
occasionally forget, for just a second, that Clark is anything more than
just an ordinary teenage boy.
BucketButt
> : Wouldn't Clark attract unwanted attention if he scored 100-percent on
> : every test and homework assignment?
>
> No. We have no reason to believe that attention focused on Clark for
> *academic* excellence would be considered unwanted by the Kents.
I was a straight-A student in high school. What's more, I did all my
homework assignments in study hall, so I never had to take a single book
home. I didn't enjoy being seen by some of my classmates as a big-brain
type who made them look bad by comparison, so occasionally I
deliberately blew an exam question and I started taking textbooks home
as mere props. Then I got into a garage band and that became the first
thing people noticed about me, so I stopped hiding how easy I found
schoolwork and just let the grades happen. (High school was *too* easy,
as it turned out; I didn't learn study-discipline, and was a lousy
college student ... but there were jam sessions in my dorm every night.)
> : He deomonstrated both photographic memory and math skills in a Season
> : One episode when Martha was going over the budget trying to find a
> : solution to their latest financial plight.
>
> Can you be more specific? I have only a vague memory of the scene, but
> while I do remember him demonstrating good recall and math, I'm 99.9%
> sure that we have no reason to believe that Clark's memory is currently
> photographic in this version of the myth (it would have been too useful
> in other situations if it were) nor that he has savant-like calculating
> skills.
Martha and Jonathan were going over the books. Clark walked in, glanced
at the figures, and totaled them up in his head before Martha could do
the same on paper. When one of them -- Martha, I think -- suggested a
change in the budget, Clark gave them the new total instantly.
> The Kent parents have always been insistent on Clark's diligent
> application to his schoolwork. Not once have they encouraged him to
> hold back or disguise his intellectual abilities.
My parents didn't either; in fact, they wanted me to be the best student
I could be. But I didn't play sports and I didn't want to a "brainiac"
label, so I did things my way. No real regrets, but I sometimes wish
I'd put more effort into studying in college ... or gotten into a better
band.<g>
> So what? Jonathan may have taken a vow of poverty, but Clark isn't
> married to the idea of staying a poor farmer all his life. If it's O.K.
> to play high-school ball, then it's O.K. to play college ball and pro
> ball, too. So what if he gets money to go with the credit, the acclaim,
> and the glory? If it's morally fair for him to get all the intangibles,
> then it's morally fair for him to get the tangible rewards as well. But
> if there's something dubious about accepting money for playing, then
> that casts doubt on accepting the intangibles for playing as well.
Playing well enough to get a football scholarship eases his parents'
financial burden while letting him go on to college (as they want him to
do), so he can rationalize that he's doing it for their benefit. Playing
pro football would amount to using his powers for personal gain (even if
he also paid off his parents' debts), which goes against how Jonathan
and Martha have raised him -- they've told him repeatedly that he'd use
his powers to save lives and help people "when he's older", although I
don't think they've gone into specifics.
Todd
>Somehow, I doubt they would be effective events to contradict his fears because
>in each case, if my memory serves, he was already likely to be somewhat fearful
>for the safety of friends and loved ones...
>
>And, if he needed anything to reinforce his anxiety... the scene where he and
>Perry were dangling off of the bridge when he clearly didn't have his powers
>would have probably been enough.
Having sunspots affect his powers, especially taking away his powers,
isn't a very good idea, in the long run. You know you can fly, you
know you're invulnerable, but suddenly, both abilities can be taken
away. When you're hundreds of feet in the air! It's that sudden stop
at the bottom that gets ya.
Running however. If you lose your superspeed, you just stop. That
you can deal with. This version of Superman may decide never to fly.
Rivervillagelady
>Running however. If you lose your superspeed, you just stop. That
>you can deal with. This version of Superman may decide never to fly.
Perhaps, or like his heat vision he may accidently do it without
thinking... didn't he levitate during interesting dream of Lana?
-Diane
Micky DuPree
rivervil...@aol.com (Rivervillagelady) writes:
: Micky DuPree wrote:
:: [...] but it means that now [Lex has] got both Clark and Lana, two
:: people he once considered good and pure, lying to his face.
:
: But, considering the dichotomy of love and deception inhereted from
: his parents, that combination of purity and perceivable dishonesty
: would possibly make them all the more tantalizing as friends.
I don't see all of Lex's relationships as operating on that principle,
though. The nonromantic friendships that he consciously pursues seem
calculated and designed by Lex to break out of the mold of the
relationships he grew up in and around. He's trying to create a life
for himself that isn't like the life he's known before. He may idealize
Clark and Lana because of that and hold them to impossibly perfect
standards of loyalty and openness. I don't know of any relationship, no
matter how good, where there are no secrets kept whatsoever. That
wouldn't even strike me as healthy. I think Lex is just overreacting to
growing up in a family where you kept as many secrets as possible as a
means of bettering your position in the power struggle.
: Perhaps - in the same sense that he seems to be most attracted
: dangerous, violent women- Lex might not be have been able to view
: Clark and Lana as friends were it not for that dynamic... because
: otherwise they would not fit the only models of any familial affection
: that he has known.
Except for one. I think Lex has chosen teenagers to bond with because
he had previously idealized the role of being an older sibling and never
got to follow through on it. Julian didn't live long enough to
disillusion him. From "Cool":
LEX: [To Clark.] You're like the younger brother I never had.
Lex doesn't have any points of comparison for that, so he's free to turn
it into the perfect relationship in his mind.
: Similarly, the more potentially dangerous that Lana may prove herself
: to be, the more he may be attracted to her.
I don't know if he'll accept moving a relationship from a conscious
category, that of selected "pure" friend, to an unconscious category,
that of sexual attraction to a "psychopath" via lizard brain imprinting.
It can't be entirely done without the disillusionment of the friendship,
and he can't simply tell himself she'll be gone by morning.
Helen Bryce struck me as a laudably conscious attempt on Lex's part to
break out of his old sexual patterns (he said some explicit things along
those lines) and establish a new relationship and a new life that
included his father as little as possible, but he was still unaware that
his unconscious partner selection criteria included dangerousness.
-Micky
Micky DuPree
rivervil...@aol.com (Rivervillagelady) writes:
: Micky Dupree wrote:
:: He did leap off the dam in "Dichotic" and off the _Daily Planet_
:: building in "Insurgence." Those ought to count for something towards
:: getting over the fear [of heights].
:
: Somehow, I doubt they would be effective events to contradict his
: fears because in each case, if my memory serves, he was already likely
: to be somewhat fearful for the safety of friends and loved ones...
To borrow a line from Lex, I think that surviving would count for
something, especially since each instance of choosing to jump yielded a
net positive result.
: And, if he needed anything to reinforce his anxiety... the scene
: where he and Perry were dangling off of the bridge when he clearly
: didn't have his powers would have probably been enough.
But in addition to surviving and saving the day, the very fact that he
did it all without powers should prove to him that he's equal to the
challenge even under trying circumstances. What more can life throw at
him?
I'm not saying that now he loves heights and will seek them out wherever
he can, but that when situations call for heights, even for leaping off
heights, he can conquer the fear for the sake of practical necessity.
The irrational phobia no longer dictates his behavior.
-Micky
Micky DuPree
<no...@nowhere.com> writes:
: MDu...@theworld.com.snip.to.reply (Micky DuPree) wrote:
My point is that later on in the series, he gets hit by debris and more
bullets and yet does not bruise at all (he also has a line about hardly
feeling a fire at all, which implies that he used to be able to get
burned). The series evidently opens just as Clark is reaching his full
potential of invulnerability, which means that suggesting that the
younger Clark throw himself off of ever increasing heights to get over
his acrophobia would have been ill advised because he would have reached
a point where he would have seriously hurt himself. *Now* he could try
that approach, but the phobia was acquired when young, and by
definition, phobias aren't rational.
-Micky
BucketButt
> I think Lex has chosen teenagers to bond with because
> he had previously idealized the role of being an older sibling and never
> got to follow through on it. Julian didn't live long enough to
> disillusion him.
Makes sense, especially considering Lex put a lot of effort (and some
personal risk) into locating half-brother Lucas. Sure, he also wanted
Lucas' help in taking control of Luthorcorp, but I don't discount the
desire to have a sibling in his life.
Micky DuPree
<bucke...@bellsouth.net> writes:
: Micky DuPree wrote:
:: In article <pan.2005.01.09....@bellsouth.net>, BucketButt
:: <bucke...@bellsouth.net> writes:
::: I think they're basically trusting as well as rather private people.
::
:: Um, trusting of whom? Or what? 'Cause the answer sure isn't "other
:: people."
: The Kents are generally trusting people, except when it comes to
: Clark's origin and powers, or just about anything involving the
: Luthors. I've never seen any evidence that they lock their doors;
: indeed, in good weather they usually leave their front door wide open,
: allowing people to just waslk in on them (even when they're discussing
: The Secret).
True, another area where Smallville seems to be stuck in a 1950s time
warp, but then, you could swear the same thing was true about Luthor
Mansion and LuthorCorp HQ, 'cause I've never seen anyone kept out of
either place. I'd maintain that the reason for this absurdly open-door
policy in both households is merely writer fiat. At the Kent household,
the writers want the audience to be constantly tantalized by the
possibility that maybe Lex or Lionel just heard a juicy tidbit. To that
end, they've given Lex a kind of Spider-Sense that tingles whenever
secrets are being discussed at the Kent Farm so that he can rush right
over. But given just how thoroughly they stripped out Lionel's mind at
the beginning of "Transference," I think it's safe to say that it's all
just a tease.
: They have no qualms taking in strangers (Lois, Bart, others) as house
: guests.
My sense is that they tend to take in young strays and people at loose
ends (add Ryan and Garrett to the list). They have generous natures.
They even gave Lex a place to bunk when he had nowhere else to go. If
Clark has convinced his parents of the efficacy of the Kryptonian mind-
healing trick, they might even have taken in Lionel now if he showed up
the same way the penniless Lex showed up in "Prodigal." (I've also been
told it's a Midwestern plains thing not to turn away travelers who have
no shelter since it's too easy to freeze to death out in the middle of
nowhere, but I wouldn't expect the _Smallville_ writers to know that.)
: Jonathan once let Chloe use his pickup ...
He was afraid she'd get stuck crossing a washed-out creek or something
to that effect. But then, I didn't mean that the Kents are convinced
that everyone's going to steal from them or anything like that. Just
that everyone is a potential source of threat to the Secret.
: ... then again, his insurance rates probably couldn't go much higher
: anyway.<g>
lol. I've never counted up the number of vehicles they've trashed.
: The elder Kents never seem to notice when Lex, Chloe or Lana drive up
: and go straight to the barn.
How do we know that? The camera is seldom in the house when Clark is in
the barn.
:: You'd also think that Jonathan and Martha would be better-safe-than-
:: sorry types, especially where Clark is concerned. They would do
:: almost anything to keep him inside the bubble of anonymity. It's
:: also part of a pragmatism you'd expect from running a farm. If you
:: get hit by a couple of storms, you build a storm cellar. You don't
:: tell yourself those storms were just flukes and could never happen
:: again.
:
: Tornadoes have no rhyme or reason, they strike indiscriminately. But
: as long as the Kents keep The Secret, they think there's no reason why
: anyone would expect there is a secret to be kept, and thus no real
: threat.
It's already happened twice: Nixon and Loder. Both Luthors, possessors
of tremendous resources, have been on Clark's tail at various times.
Swann found him out entirely at long distance. Yes, Swann's an unusual
case, but he does prove that a smart man with motivation can do it. For
people fanatically dedicated to shielding Clark from discovery to act
after each and every time like it was just a fluke and can never happen
again is the equivalent of pretending that all those tornadoes were
flukes and can never happen again therefore no storm cellar is needed.
This just isn't psychologically plausible. It's authorial fiat for the
sake of artificially maintaining tension without disturbing the premise.
:: Nah, I just can't see it, for a number of reasons. First is that
:: even dead drunk, Perry White was sharper than most of the sober
:: people around him. (He was obnoxious, but it was fun to watch him
:: call bullshit every time someone, particularly Clark, tried to play
:: dumb on him.) The whole belt-and-suspenders approach of multiple
:: copies placed with multiple attorneys showed that he wasn't naive
:: like the small-town Sheriff Ethan was (whose single attorney Lionel
:: did buy off).
:
: Perry's sharp enough to see things as they are. But he's also a drunk
: who has hit bottom career-wise, runs up debts, and generally has lost
: 9and is now struggling to regain) any degree of respect from just
: about anyone. Lionel might see the continuing danger if he
: investigated Perry personally, but I'm not so sure a hired
: investigator would be that perceptive.
But you were arguing before that Lionel was so keenly on top of the
situation that he could move in with lightning speed if Perry so much as
dialed the telephone number of _The New York Times_.
: Having said that, I'll also suggest that perhaps Lionel knows exactly
: what evidence Perry had placed with those different lawyers, and had
: already fabricated a plausible explanation that shows him "guiltless".
I always got the impression that what Perry had on Lionel was the same
thing that Mason and Chloe ended up getting on Lionel: strong
circumstantial evidence of his complicity in the murder of his parents,
and Perry offered to trade it to Lex for information on Clark. From
"Perry":
PERRY: You must have something. Give it to me, and I'll deliver
you a story that'll bring new meaning to the phrase "sins
of the father."
LEX: [Grabs him.] You may have been able to neutralize my
father, but not me!
"Sins of the father" is a suggestive double entendre. Given the
voicemail confession, there's no way (in their universe) Lionel could
plausibly pass himself off as guiltless (as his conviction since
demonstrates) even if he actually was.
: Even if Perry ever publishes his expose', it might not have the impact
: now that it would have had earlier.
If what Perry had was the tenement explosion, then there would be no
need for the expose' now.
:: Perry told Clark that he still had some friends at the _Daily
:: Planet_, and did you notice that in "Gone," the story on the front
:: page of the _Planet_ that we got in lieu of Lionel's trial had
:: Perry's byline? (It's hard to read on low-resolution tape,
:: unfortunately, but it's there.) Demonstrably, Perry did make a
:: comeback, and Lionel wasn't able to stop him, despite the fact that
:: Lionel also had pull at the _Planet_.
:
: I did NOT notice that! Maybe Peery is a bigger threat to Lionel than
: either Lionel or I realized. Or maybe lionel realized it even when I
: didn't.
If Perry's big story was the tenement explosion, as I strongly suspect,
then all that has been overtaken by later events. Lionel can't be tried
twice for the same crime, so Perry is no longer a poised threat to
Lionel, although I'm sure Perry would love to dig up some new dirt on
him.
: But he's a "new" Lionel now, and that could change things one way or
: the other ... if Perry (or anyone else) actually believes he has
: changed.
Perry may have ditched some of his cynicism, but I doubt he'll buy into
Lionel's new persona any more than Lex has. (I can't imagine anyone who
used to know Lionel believing in his transformation, with the exceptions
of the Kents and Swann, and that's because they're the only people who
know the whole story or have the wherewithal to deduce it.) Perry
better hope Lionel's redeemed now, though. Perry no longer has a dead-
man's switch set to go off in the event that Lionel decides to exact
vengeance against him.
:: But at the end of the day, if absolutely everything has to happen
:: off-camera, without so much as one on-camera allusion or hint that
:: it's there, then we're doing the writers' work for them.
:
: I'll go along with this, for the most part. The series can't show us
: everything that happens or tell us everything that's discussed, but
: concern about The Secret is not a trivial matter that can be either
: ignored or taken for granted. The producers ought to show us that the
: Kents are thinking about contingencies.
It's only fair. After all, it was their idea to make the Kents as
fearful and insular as they are and then put Nixon and Loder on their
tail. If they expect us to take that seriously they should portray it
seriously.
:: Besides, there are times when I think it's valid to say that the
:: writing has fallen down on the job. This is one of them.
:
: Absolutely! I'm not certain how I would handle things if I were
: writing for Smallville, but I expect the people who *are* taking money
: for scripts to come up with something acceptable.
I'd have killed two birds with one stone in "Unsafe," giving the
characters an organic reason to raise the subject instead of tacking it
onto an unrelated script. Spoilers for "Unsafe":
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Rather than make the audience wonder how the young lovers financed their
Vegas jaunt, I'd have Martha say something about how she checked "the
hiding place" and the "emergency money" was gone. No explanation at
that point (trusting the audience to hang in there). Then when Clark
is finally back home and "detoxed," have Jonathan go into more detail in
the form of a reprimand:
JONATHAN
(concerned, exasperated, angry)
Clark, that money, those papers, they were
supposed to be used as a last resort. What if
someone flashing official badges shows up
tomorrow demanding to take you into custody?
How much of it have you spent?
CLARK
(miserable)
Pretty much all of it.
JONATHAN
So what would you do then?
CLARK
Run real fast?
JONATHAN
Do you see me laughing?
(exits upstairs)
Then pick up where Martha gets in her tongue-lashing about the sanctity
of marriage, skipping the preliminaries.
:: I think you're mixing together two hypothetical futures. You gave me
:: the impression that you were convinced that Lex would keep on
:: investigating without Clark's consent *even* *after* Clark told Lex
:: his Big Secret. I don't think Lex would. Lex has intellectual
:: curiosity, but I think his drive to find someone he can trust is
:: greater.
:
: There are lots of smaller secrets behind the Big Secret, and Lex is a
: natrually curious person as well as a businessman who looks for
: opportunities to exploit. Just how strong is Clark? How invulnerable
: is he? What else can he do? Can any of these abilities be replicated
: in ordinary Earth-humans? Can Clark's blood really cure otherwise-
: fatal illnesses? Did Lionel really transfer into Clark's body, and
: did that transference really cure Lionel? Are there other people like
: Clark on Earth? Is Clark really a "Boy Scout type", or is he, like
: Lex, much more complex and not always on the side of the angels?
: These are just a few of the questions I'd want answers to if I were
: Lex; and if I could exploit the results of my "research" in the form
: of new products to benefit humanity (without harming Clark), I'd
: almost certainly do that too.
If Clark consented to it, yes. But without Clark's consent? After
Clark trusted Lex enough to let him in on the Big Secret? I seriously
don't think so.
:: Now, as for the far more likely possible future, the one where Clark
:: does not disclose to Lex: I don't think Lex is currently
:: investigating Clark specifically, but he's made no secret of the fact
:: that he wants to continue to explore the caves and the language
:: therein.
: I'm not sure I understand why the producers used the caves in the
: first place.
In the first place? As a wellspring of plot contrivances. In the
second place, I think they wanted to give the characters an externalized
way of talking about the whole Superman mythology without making them
completely self-conscious of the fact that they're in the process of
living it. For example, it gave Lex a way to put forth the theory that
maybe the hero of the myth is Sageeth without Lex and Clark having to
gain the future knowledge that one day they will be at odds and Lex will
consider himself the hero of their struggle.
The writers seemed to have begun the whole _Warrior Angel_ comics thread
along the same lines (with Warrior Angel and Devilicus playing the same
roles as Naman and Sageeth), but at some point they decided to scrap
that and go in a different direction to provide internal commentary on
the epic struggle between Good and Evil. Maybe a comic book inside a
comic book didn't seem mythic enough, so they cobbled together some
Campbellesque syncretism with some eyerolling von Daniken.
: The very idea that any Kryptonians (much less Jor-El himself) visited
: Earth, interacted with ancestors of Smallville's current residents,
: and left powerful technology (the artifacts) behind just strikes me as
: being a little too unlikely. What is this fascination Kryptonians had
: with our little planet? And why would they choose to leave alien
: technology on an inhabited world, even if it is disguised as symbols
: on a cave wall or "magic stones"? I'm sure there are answers that
: make sense, but I just can't see them.
Heh, I'm not so sure that there are sensible answers for the mechanics
of it all. If the writers really cared about all that, they'd have
given us some explanation for how the octagonal key went into the cave
wall in Kansas and materialized in New York City.
Thematically, my sense of it all is that the whole Kryptonian riff is
just an elaborate extension of "Jor-El's" urgings that Clark should use
his strength to rule the weaker race. It's another instance of the
Nietzschean uebermensch contrasted with the guardian angel Superman
("might makes right" vs. "might for right").
:: But I don't think Lex will go back to keeping files on Clark himself
:: until such a time comes as Lex thinks that Clark has betrayed him.
:: Then the kid gloves will come off. I think Lex currently still lives
:: in hope that someday Clark will trust him enough to divulge.
:
: Lex may not be actively investigating or keeping formal files on Clark
: right now, but I'm certain he still has a few suspicions nagging at
: him. He already has several pieces of the puzzle, but how the fit
: together isn't obvious to him, and he's suppressing his curiosity
: because of their friendship.
I think quite a lot of the puzzle makes sense to him, although he's
starved for hard evidence. He suspects Clark is an alien who's tough
enough to get hit by a Porsche and strong enough to peel it like a
banana. He connects Clark to the cave, and whether he personally
subscribes to the theory or not, he knows that Dr. Walden, after
apparently learning the alien language, connected Clark to the legends
on the wall. Although it's never explained how Lex knew there was a
blood sample to be stolen and to whom it belonged, he somehow managed to
make that connection too. Then he became privy to the knowledge that
Lionel had the blood sample, and his blood experiments were raising the
dead.
Lex knows there's something important about the Kryptonian artifacts and
that they're related to the cave in Kansas. Since he connects the cave
to Clark, that means he has to strongly suspect some kind of connection
between the artifacts and Clark. Clark can't object to any of Lex's
Kryptonian fetish without giving away the Secret, which gives Lex a free
hand, at least on the surface. So as long as he stays away from
focusing directly on Clark himself, Lex is not suppressing his curiosity
at all. Each knows that the other knows, but there's no way to cut
through the Gordian knot of suspicion unless one of them decides to "be
the grownup."
: But in his idle moments he may still turn the pieces over in his mind,
: trying to visualize the rest of the puzzle.
I don't think Lex has many idle moments in that respect. I think he was
completely honest about no longer keeping files on Clark, but if Clark
isn't going to trust him, he's going to consider everything that Clark
has disavowed with his lies as fair game for investigation. After all,
Clark was the one who lied *first* about the cave, the language, and the
medieval manuscript. If Clark wants him to stop, all Clark has to do is
explain why.
::: And he knew he would have (or could arrange) another opportunity
::: where Clark would make that particular offer.
::
:: How could Lex possibly know such a thing in advance? It's not like
:: they schedule industrial biohazard accidents at the plant. And I
:: don't think Lex would arrange such a thing under the current state of
:: their relationship.
:
: Why not arrange another biohazard, either at the plant or somewhere
: else around Smallville? It wouldn't even have to be a deadly-
: dangerous hazard, as long as it appeared to be. I'm not saying Lex
: would actually do that, but he knows he could if he really wanted to.
But I don't think Lex would willfully deceive Clark into giving up the
Secret, not currently. I think Lex still wants Clark to trust him. If
Lex ever perceives Clark as betraying him, *then* I think Lex would
consider laying traps for him like that.
: If all else failed, he could just ask Clark outright to let him have a
: sample of his blood, and see if Clark would cooperate.
What reason could Lex give, and how would he react if Clark used the
same excuse he used before: that he has a fear of needles? What if
Clark quite rightly accused Lex of investigating him again after Lex
promised to stop? By what standard is one permitted to demand blood
samples from a friend?
:: Whom do you think Lex would tell who didn't already know (like his
:: parents)?
:
: I don't necessarily think Lex would tell anyone; but like Jonathan, I
: have my concerns when it comes to trusting anyone.
I think Lex is fanatically loyal to those he's committed himself to,
past the point of good judgment even. He didn't turn his bastard father
in until Lionel had thrown him to the wolves first.
:: And I'm not convinced Clark would necessarily be exposed by crossing
:: the line. He managed not to be exposed when he was partying hardy in
:: Metropolis. He wore a mask during the bank heist, he's invisible at
:: superspeed, and based on what he did in the elevator in "Obsession,"
:: I'm guessing he heat-visioned the security cameras in the ATMs he
:: boosted. Only Edge managed to trace him back to Smallville (though
:: it wasn't explained how).
:
: This brings up a couple of things that have been bothering me.
:
: Why doesn't the Superman costume include a mask of some sort?
Heh. I can vaguely remember an old comic book story in which they came
up with the bug patch that Clark subconsciously uses super-hypnotism on
everyone who ever sees him, projecting the image of someone who looks
somewhat like Superman, except that he's a little weaker, smaller,
older, frailer, more retiring. So people would look at him and think,
"Well, yeah, he looks a *bit* like Superman," but subjectively he
wouldn't look *exactly* like Superman in their mind's eye. All very
hand-wavy.
If you can't buy into the conceit, none of Superman can follow for you.
:-)
: And how did Morgan Edge manage to trace Clark back to Smallville?
That's a question up there with how did Lex know that there was a vial
of Clark's blood in Bryce's office for the taking when only the Kents
and Bryce knew about it (and none of them told Lex), and how did Lionel
have possession of the octagonal key in "Insurgence" when it was last
seen falling out of the spaceship in the tornado in "Vortex" (for a
piece of a reentry spaceship, that key sure did pop out easily)?
The best hand-wave I can make is that one of the henchmen finally made
the connection between "Kal" at Club Atlantis and the Masked Marvel.
The Masked Marvel superspeeded away and so couldn't be followed, but
"Kal" presumably didn't break cover and therefore could be tailed home
from the club. In fact, that has to be the case because Edge showed up
at Clark's apartment. After that, Edge had the apartment under
surveillance and picked up on Chloe's visit and Lana's visit. He had
someone tail one or both girls back to Smallville to find out who they
were. When Lionel's office was burgled but the goods were not delivered
to Edge, Edge pursued the Smallville connection more assiduously, where
it wasn't that hard to trace a connection between the girls and the
overgrown boy who lived on the Kent Farm.
Well, that's my best effort anyway. It is rather underexplained in the
actual story.
-Micky
Micky DuPree
<bucke...@bellsouth.net> writes:
: Micky DuPree wrote:
:: None of the beings you mention would be a reasonable candidate for
:: Clark to play public Earth sports with, nor could they make up entire
:: football teams for a genuine competition (at least not without
:: breaking cover), which was my original complaint.
:
: Maybe not football, but Clark could certainly take part in informal
: athletic competitions with Bart Allen or a hypthetical strong-but-not-
: evil Freak Of The Week.
I'd have no problem with those, but that's not what Clark is currently
doing on the football field.
:: I have a lot of trouble labeling "Jor-El's" hidey-holes as "the
:: Phantom Zone," because that conjures up all sorts of previous comic
:: book and movie expectations that I don't see any basis for in the
:: _Smallville_ story at this juncture.
:
: I use the term Phantom Zone because that's the term I saw used on
: either Kryptonsite or Smallville.net.
Are those official sites?
: Besides, Kara came out of someplace and Clark went into someplace --
: call it a different dimension or an alternate plane of existence if
: you wish, I prefer to call it the Phantom Zone.
Once the term is employed, it seems to lead people to conjure up all
sorts of images of General Zod etc. etc. from non-_Smallville_ sources,
but there's no evidence in the TV series so far to lead us in that
direction. I'm just saying it could easily mislead expectations, that's
all.
:: No, you were right the first time. If he wanted to be "one of the
:: guys," he would fake being an average player so that he would blend
:: in more. Instead, he's throwing 60-yard touchdown passes to win the
:: championship. That's not just "one of the guys."
:
: Okay, he's showing off a little. He's the quarterback, it's his job
: to put the ball in motion and make it possible for his team to win.
: He's walking a fine line, and occasionally he's going to stick a toe
: or two across it.
No, no, that's not the point. No matter what Clark does on the field,
it's wrong to be there at all under false pretenses. If a heavyweight
were to somehow disguise his size and box in the flyweight class, but he
deliberately threw every fight, it would still be wrong. It's all a
LIE! Once Clark is on the football field, everything that happens from
there on out is a LIE! If he wins by "crossing the line," it's a LIE.
If he wins by staying within the bounds of human performance, it's a
LIE. If he deliberately loses, it's still a LIE. It doesn't matter
which specific actions he chooses to take. He's the world's biggest
heavyweight living a lie in the flyweight division. Every game he's in
is a sham, because it's been stage-managed by Clark to have a specific
outcome, whether it's win, lose, or draw. He's taking the attitude that
as long as the deception is never discovered, then no one's been hurt.
That was Lex's excuse for keeping files on Clark. That was Chloe's
excuse for keeping files on Clark. "Ah, but on me it looks good!"
Now, I've already said that I can buy the youthful Clark giving into
temptation on this point. But I still want to know what Jonathan's
excuse is. That they've all lived a lie so long for survival that
they've now convinced themselves that lying when it isn't in self-
defense is O.K. too? 'Cause if that's the writers' explanation for it,
then the Kents have just crossed into a major quagmire without being
conscious of it. But I don't get any sense that the *writers* recognize
this as a moral problem at all anymore. I think they're caught up in
cheering for Clark too, in living vicariously through his victories.
It's weird, because I would have expected guys to be outraged on the
point of the integrity of sports. I don't give a rat's ass about most
spectator sports. But if you're going to play, shouldn't you do it
honestly?
-Micky
Micky DuPree
In article <35h5fpF...@individual.net>, BucketButt
<bucke...@bellsouth.net> writes:
: Micky DuPree wrote:
:: We have no reason to believe that attention focused on Clark for
:: *academic* excellence would be considered unwanted by the Kents.
:
: I was a straight-A student in high school. What's more, I did all my
: homework assignments in study hall, so I never had to take a single
: book home. I didn't enjoy being seen by some of my classmates as a
: big-brain type who made them look bad by comparison, so occasionally I
: deliberately blew an exam question and I started taking textbooks home
: as mere props.
Are you trying to tell me that your parents wanted you to "throw" tests
to keep you from looking too smart? And if so, you want me to believe
that the Kent parents are like that too? Because we have absolutely no
evidence, none, that the Kent parents have ever encouraged Clark not to
do the best he can intellectually and academically. (I think there
might even be something to that effect on one of the DVD commentaries,
but I wouldn't be able to pin it down without listening to them all
again.)
::: He deomonstrated both photographic memory and math skills in a
::: Season One episode when Martha was going over the budget trying to
::: find a solution to their latest financial plight.
::
:: Can you be more specific? I have only a vague memory of the scene,
:: but while I do remember him demonstrating good recall and math, I'm
:: 99.9% sure that we have no reason to believe that Clark's memory is
:: currently photographic in this version of the myth (it would have
:: been too useful in other situations if it were) nor that he has
:: savant-like calculating skills.
:
: Martha and Jonathan were going over the books. <snip>
I meant a specific episode title or at least narrowing it down some
more. I've learned that interpretation can be a tricky thing.
Besides, instant arithmetic calculation isn't as helpful a skill these
days in high-school academics as it would have been when we were in
school since everyone has access to calculators now. Clark seemed to be
genuinely plodding through mere trigonometry as a senior in "Unsafe."
If Clark's all that and them some upstairs, why not go for the academic
scholarship? Academics are an "open" competition, not "weighted." (In
fact, in high school, they don't usually grade on a curve unless most of
the class blows it, so brainy-Clark wouldn't be competing against his
classmates except maybe jostling for valedictorian with the other
straight-A students.) Many colleges would welcome freakishly sharp
geniuses, which aren't unheard of.
Either Clark isn't academic scholarship material or else the football
playing is not about saving his parents the tuition costs after all.
:: The Kent parents have always been insistent on Clark's diligent
:: application to his schoolwork. Not once have they encouraged him to
:: hold back or disguise his intellectual abilities.
:
: My parents didn't either; in fact, they wanted me to be the best
: student I could be. But I didn't play sports and I didn't want to a
: "brainiac" label, so I did things my way.
I've seen no evidence that Clark is afraid of that label or thinks he
has reason to fear that label. And if his parents are as impressed with
his computational skills as you are, why aren't they as suspicious about
his less than brilliant math performance as you are?
: Playing well enough to get a football scholarship eases his parents'
: financial burden while letting him go on to college (as they want him
: to do), so he can rationalize that he's doing it for their benefit.
You still haven't told me Jonathan's excuse. Why isn't he bothered --
why doesn't he blame *himself* for apparently driving his son to cheat
because he couldn't pay for his son's college expenses?
-Micky
Micky DuPree
<no...@nowhere.com> writes:
: Having sunspots affect his powers, especially taking away his powers,
: isn't a very good idea, in the long run. You know you can fly, you
: know you're invulnerable, but suddenly, both abilities can be taken
: away. When you're hundreds of feet in the air! It's that sudden stop
: at the bottom that gets ya.
Good point. Sunspots taken to their logical conclusion are embarrassing
as plot devices.
: This version of Superman may decide never to fly.
He's a superhero. They can hand-wave it. For example, maybe the reason
Clark has come into his full powers only over the course of time is that
it's taken this long for his "solar battery" to charge this much. As he
gets even older, perhaps he'll have more reserve capacity, enough to
allow him to at least land safely when he feels a sunspot coming on.
Etc., etc., it's live-action comic books. They can cast a magic
protection spell on him if they want. :)
-Micky
Micky DuPree
"Rivervillagelady" <rivervil...@aol.com> writes:
: Jan 23, 12:40 am ... Todd wrote:
:: This version of Superman may decide never to fly.
:
: Perhaps, or like his heat vision he may accidently do it without
: thinking... didn't he levitate during interesting dream of Lana?
Yep. It was implied that he sleep-flew in "Rosetta," too, ending up
lying in the middle of Route 8, which caused Lex's Spider-sense to
tingle and turn his car down that road.
-Micky
BucketButt
> In article <35h0muF...@individual.net>, BucketButt
> <bucke...@bellsouth.net> writes:
>
> : Perry's sharp enough to see things as they are. But he's also a drunk
> : who has hit bottom career-wise, runs up debts, and generally has lost
> : 9and is now struggling to regain) any degree of respect from just
> : about anyone. Lionel might see the continuing danger if he
> : investigated Perry personally, but I'm not so sure a hired
> : investigator would be that perceptive.
>
> But you were arguing before that Lionel was so keenly on top of the
> situation that he could move in with lightning speed if Perry so much as
> dialed the telephone number of _The New York Times_.
Which just goes to show that I'm totally confused. Maybe the writers are
better than I thought. Or maybe they're even less competent that I've
given them credit for being. One way or another, I can't figure out
what's going on with Lionel Luthor.
> Rather than make the audience wonder how the young lovers financed their
> Vegas jaunt, I'd have Martha say something about how she checked "the
> hiding place" and the "emergency money" was gone. No explanation at
> that point (trusting the audience to hang in there). Then when Clark
> is finally back home and "detoxed," have Jonathan go into more detail in
> the form of a reprimand:
Very tidy, and it sounds better than what we actually got last week. I
like it.
> : If all else failed, he could just ask Clark outright to let him have a
> : sample of his blood, and see if Clark would cooperate.
>
> What reason could Lex give, and how would he react if Clark used the
> same excuse he used before: that he has a fear of needles? What if
> Clark quite rightly accused Lex of investigating him again after Lex
> promised to stop? By what standard is one permitted to demand blood
> samples from a friend?
At that point Lex would have to explain why he wanted the sample, I
suppose. But I doubt Lex would flat-out say that he thinks Clark is
extraterrestrial. He'd probably say that he believes Clark's blood has
special healing power, possibly as a result of exposure to all those
strange meteors. Nah, you're right; even that would be insufficient
reason for Lex to ask for a blood sample.
> The best hand-wave I can make is that one of the henchmen finally made
> the connection between "Kal" at Club Atlantis and the Masked Marvel. The
> Masked Marvel superspeeded away and so couldn't be followed, but "Kal"
> presumably didn't break cover and therefore could be tailed home from
> the club. In fact, that has to be the case because Edge showed up at
> Clark's apartment. After that, Edge had the apartment under
> surveillance and picked up on Chloe's visit and Lana's visit. He had
> someone tail one or both girls back to Smallville to find out who they
> were. When Lionel's office was burgled but the goods were not delivered
> to Edge, Edge pursued the Smallville connection more assiduously, where
> it wasn't that hard to trace a connection between the girls and the
> overgrown boy who lived on the Kent Farm.
That explanation hangs together well. I had forgotten for the moment that
both Chloe and Lana had visited Clark in Metropolis. Edge's people could
easily follow them back to Smallville, then nose around town until they
learned that a local kid answering Kal's description was missing. No need
to act on that information until after Kal disappeared ... at which time
he'd know the most likely place this mysterious powerful person had gone.
BucketButt
> : I use the term Phantom Zone because that's the term I saw used on
> : either Kryptonsite or Smallville.net.
>
> Are those official sites?
Smallville.net is TheWBs operation. Kryptonsite is unofficial, although
it has gotten cooperation from people involved with the series.
> Once the term is employed, it seems to lead people to conjure up all
> sorts of images of General Zod etc. etc. from non-_Smallville_ sources,
> but there's no evidence in the TV series so far to lead us in that
> direction. I'm just saying it could easily mislead expectations, that's
> all.
I'll admit I don't know who or what "Phantom zone Jor-El" is, although I
don't buy the idea that it's Jor-El himself. If Jor-El had ready
access to anything even remotely like the Silver Age PZ projector or the
floating mirror-tile from the movies, he would not have needed to shoot
his baby boy into space. While going into the PZ might be one-way without
someone in "real space" to let them back out, it would guarantee that
little Kal-El would survive; that sounds a lot safer than a long ride to
another star-system and hoping he'd be found and raised by good people.
> No, no, that's not the point. No matter what Clark does on the field,
> it's wrong to be there at all under false pretenses. If a heavyweight
> were to somehow disguise his size and box in the flyweight class, but he
> deliberately threw every fight, it would still be wrong. It's all a
> LIE! Once Clark is on the football field, everything that happens from
> there on out is a LIE! If he wins by "crossing the line," it's a LIE.
> If he wins by staying within the bounds of human performance, it's a
> LIE. If he deliberately loses, it's still a LIE. It doesn't matter
> which specific actions he chooses to take. He's the world's biggest
> heavyweight living a lie in the flyweight division. Every game he's in
> is a sham, because it's been stage-managed by Clark to have a specific
> outcome, whether it's win, lose, or draw. He's taking the attitude that
> as long as the deception is never discovered, then no one's been hurt.
> That was Lex's excuse for keeping files on Clark. That was Chloe's
> excuse for keeping files on Clark. "Ah, but on me it looks good!"
What is there about Clark that is not a lie? He pretends to be an
ordinary Earth-human teenager. His parents faked the circumstances of his
adoption with Lionel Luthor's help. He lies about how he accomplishes
things, sometimes even denies doing anything, rather than admit the
existence of his powers. Granted, he lies only to protect The Secret and
let himself fit into society, but he does lie frequently to friends and
strangers alike. I can't recall if Clark has ever actually lied to his
parents, but I wouldn't be surprised if he hasn't at least been less than
totally honest with them in order to spare them a little worry.
> Now, I've already said that I can buy the youthful Clark giving into
> temptation on this point. But I still want to know what Jonathan's
> excuse is. That they've all lived a lie so long for survival that
> they've now convinced themselves that lying when it isn't in self-
> defense is O.K. too? 'Cause if that's the writers' explanation for it,
> then the Kents have just crossed into a major quagmire without being
> conscious of it. But I don't get any sense that the *writers* recognize
> this as a moral problem at all anymore. I think they're caught up in
> cheering for Clark too, in living vicariously through his victories.
The Silver Age Kents I used to know would not lie, even to protect Clark's
secret identity. Instead, they'd say things like, "You must be seeing
things," or "I can't imagine where you got that idea." (And Clark would
use super-speed tricks, a Superboy robot or a friend in the Legion of
Super-Heroes to let people see "Clark" and "Superboy" simultaneously,
apparently proving that they had to be two different people.) I really
wish the writers had followed the Silver Age template rather than let
Jonathan, Martha and Clark become accomplished liars.
BucketButt
> Minor spoiler for "Unsafe."
>
>
>
> In article <35h5fpF...@individual.net>, BucketButt
> <bucke...@bellsouth.net> writes:
>
> : I was a straight-A student in high school. What's more, I did all my
> : homework assignments in study hall, so I never had to take a single
> : book home. I didn't enjoy being seen by some of my classmates as a
> : big-brain type who made them look bad by comparison, so occasionally I
> : deliberately blew an exam question and I started taking textbooks home
> : as mere props.
>
> Are you trying to tell me that your parents wanted you to "throw" tests
> to keep you from looking too smart?
No, not at all. They wanted me to get straight As, then go for extra
credit ... and I did sometimes. But as long as I brought home As and Bs
in academic courses (my only Cs were in shop and phys ed) they didn't push
too hard for me to do better. I did well in clase, got to be an AV Geek
(a good deal since it sometimes got me out of boring study halls), and
still had time for a garage-band and other interests. I'm sure my
teachers suspected I was slacking off a little, but my grades were good
enough that they couldn't say a lotr. I didn't get by with "easy" classes
either, because at a small-town school like the one I went to the choice
of electives is pretty short.
These days the county school system has one big centralized high school.
While it might offer classes I wished I could take when I was a
high-schooler, I think the little school I went to was better in other
ways. And I'm talking *little*; Smallville with its population of 45,001
is actually a fairly large city compared with my little town.
> And if so, you want me to believe
> that the Kent parents are like that too?
No, they'd have no way of knowing if Clark is trying hard or not. And
apparently he does struggle a bit with his studies, although perhaps he
could "cram" at superspeed if he ever tried.
> I meant a specific episode title or at least narrowing it down some
> more. I've learned that interpretation can be a tricky thing.
I found the episode where Clark showed his math skill: Season One, "Cold",
the scene immediately after the opener. Clark comes downstairs on his
way to school, overhears Martha discussing the books with Jonathan, gives
the total from across the room -- I was wrong about him glancing at the
books. This is also the scene where he jokes about making money as a
professional athlete. At the end of the scene he superspeeds back into
the farmhouse, grabs his pop-tart (from the toaster, he doesn't have heat
vision yet) and updates the total based on something his parents discussed
as he was leaving.
> Besides, instant arithmetic calculation isn't as helpful a skill these
> days in high-school academics as it would have been when we were in
> school since everyone has access to calculators now. Clark seemed to be
> genuinely plodding through mere trigonometry as a senior in "Unsafe."
I know what he was going through -- I did okay in trig, but it did take a
lot of study-hall time.
> If Clark's all that and them some upstairs, why not go for the academic
> scholarship? Academics are an "open" competition, not "weighted." (In
> fact, in high school, they don't usually grade on a curve unless most of
> the class blows it, so brainy-Clark wouldn't be competing against his
> classmates except maybe jostling for valedictorian with the other
> straight-A students.) Many colleges would welcome freakishly sharp
> geniuses, which aren't unheard of.
Super-brains are often considered geeks by their peers; and Clark
desperately wants to be accepted as an ordinary guy, not a geek. Okay,
I'll also admit that maybe he doesn't have a super-powerful brain ... or
at least, not yet. (I was never a super-brain, but for some reason I
learned most things easily and remembered what I learned.)
> Either Clark isn't academic scholarship material or else the football
> playing is not about saving his parents the tuition costs after all.
I think his desire to play football is only partly so he can get an
athletic scholarship. He also enjoys the camaraderie of being part of a
team, or being "one of the guys", of not having to hold back completely
when it comes to physical ability. He can't show that he's more than
human, but at least he can pretend to be as good as other humans -- that's
a big improvement over being the guy who becomes a klutz whenever he's
near Lana.
> I've seen no evidence that Clark is afraid of that label or thinks he
> has reason to fear that label. And if his parents are as impressed with
> his computational skills as you are, why aren't they as suspicious about
> his less than brilliant math performance as you are?
Addition, subtraction, multiplication and division are siimpler for me
than abstract math. I haven't done algebra, trig or plane geometry in a
long time, and probably couldn't today without relearning a lot.
> You still haven't told me Jonathan's excuse. Why isn't he bothered --
> why doesn't he blame *himself* for apparently driving his son to cheat
> because he couldn't pay for his son's college expenses?
Maybe Jonathan does blame himself. After all, he was the reason Clark
didn't go out for football until his senior year, and for the same reason
you gave: it would be impossible, or nearly so, for Clark to use only a
normal human amount of skill. Clark might be tempted to use just the
slightest bit of his superior ability, or he might hold back just a little
too much, but he couldn't simply give it everything he's got the way the
other players do. I'm sure he didn't want to deny Clark "the football
experience", but it must gnaw at him that he had to consider the rest of
the team (and their opponents) as well as his own son in making the
decision ... and he ended up looking out for the best interests of the
other players. That's one situation where I wouldn't want to be Pa Kent.
robg...@bestweb.net
> Maybe Jonathan does blame himself. After all, he was the reason
Clark
> didn't go out for football until his senior year,
No, Clark went out for football as a freshman and made the team at the
end of the season, but never got into the game, which apparently was
called on account of fire.
Robert