Justice

DVD, Smallville S6 (Justice)

I didn't like this story as much as I hoped to, it just wasn't very well written with some bad lines and a bundle of stuff happening without the brains to back it all up, but this was disguised by some great images. We've seen it all before, but it's still great to see Clark and his mates in the Justice [name not completed] walking away from the explosion of a LutherCorp facility like The Magnificent Seven (or five, to be precise). I'd long been waiting for the reappearance of Aquaman, The Flash (or the more modern, audience-friendly 'Impulse' as he's nicknamed here), and Cyborg to bring to life the picture on the back cover of the Season 6 DVD box set, so it was far from a disappointment to see them. I just felt it was all too rushed. Like the introduction of the Green Arrow, which occurred slowly over the course of several episodes, I expected to see each of these returning characters given at least one episode of their own to make their comeback, and I imagined we'd see them all come together over the course of the season. Instead it happens in the space of one episode and we learn that Queen's been working with them for around six months without telling anyone, not even Clark.

Then again I should think he's glad he didn't tell 'Boy Scout' as they nickname him in the 'heist' rescue mission, as Chloe worked out who Green Arrow was, and though it wasn't CK's fault, he no doubt contributed thanks to his constant dealings with Queen. Oliver doesn't seem that upset that Chloe learned his secret, yet he can't bring himself to let Lois in on it, so maybe there's something about Chloe that people just feel comfortable confiding in her, or not worrying what she'll do with the knowledge. Lois, on the other hand, doesn't come across well in this story. There's always going to be smooching and pouting to please the teen audience, but Lois really seemed like a spoilt brat! All she's concerned with is having Oliver's full attention, and okay, so she doesn't know he's doing good works when he's off leaving her in the lurch, but even so, she seems so uncharacteristically needy and possessive. That Queen/Arrow seems to be written out at the end of this story also means the previous episode which was written so well and moved a lot of pieces around, was a bit pointless - they went to all that trouble to hide Green Arrow's true ID from her and now he's off anyway.

I can't say I really liked Bart, but it's always good to have a character return, although at first I thought it was a different actor - the great thing about it was that all three of the Justice League, as it will one day be called, were played by the same actors as before. Does that mean they couldn't get a starring role on some other TV series in the meantime, or were their other commitments the reason why they were written in and out in the space of one episode? It worries me that the most interesting elements of the season may have been ditched in favour of the Phantom Zone arc - Clark's hunt for the Zoners would seem to be more serious than Lex' strange plan to build up an army of meteor freaks or 'gifted' people all over the planet, so he could have used his friends with that. Either way, when they try and do these global stories it doesn't work nearly as well as the tighter, community-focused ideas, such as Green Arrow and Clark's growing friendship. The series doesn't have the budget to do amazing and believable world-spanning stories, they should stick to what worked.

An example of something that I wasn't impressed with was near the beginning when Clark chases Bart around. Who wants to see a helicopter shot of the city with little red and blue blurs dashing around like pinballs, it's extremely pointless. Even when they got to ground level the 'clever' shot centred on a street basketball match wasn't very inventive: it's just Clark running through the match at super-speed before it carries on. We've seen much better on the series before so it stood out as weak. It's also a disappointment that there was no confrontation with some of Lex' minions so the team would have someone worthy to battle instead of the usual oafish guards. The sequence where they go off and do their stuff as a team was good, even though it was all staged and not very believably set up. It shows that Lex really has crossed the boundary, if we didn't know it already. He professes to be doing it for the sake of democracy to his Father, but Dad doesn't buy it and neither does the audience. At least Lana was written out of this one so she wasn't around to add further turmoil (she'd gone off to buy a wedding dress with Nell, an extremely rare mention of her Aunt who hasn't been seen since Season 2, I believe).

Lionel continues to confuse me. In earlier episodes he's seen poring over Kryptonian symbols, and sometimes he seems like he's got his ulterior motives, even that he's going along with Lex, not to mention that he used to be into experimenting with meteor rocks and people, so his cries of foul on Lex seem to be double standards. Yet, although he's sometimes appeared to be all for Lex' experiments and plans, this time he's against them and once again he covers for Clark. But he's not as convincing a character, and hasn't been for much of this season at least. He seems weak compared with Lex' definite strides into evil and I so miss the subtext they used to play. It's become fairly basic so Lex just talks like a big, bad villain and Lionel sort of wanders in and admonishes him, but there's no depth to them any more.

Ultimately the unsatisfying parts are mostly forgotten thanks to the sight of Clark working with these others, but they really shouldn't have gone off to take out other LutherCorp facilities. Clark should have asked for help with defeating the Zoners, then they could have sorted out Lex, but at least there's hope they'll hook up again in the future. I just hope the loss of the Green Arrow doesn't weaken the season, which has been a pleasant surprise and a bit better in general than the series had been last season.

***