Noir

DVD, Smallville S6 (Noir)

I like old films, so it was good fun to have a bit of Humphrey Bogart and even more fun to have a shift in style and go black and white, but, but, but… the noir story was so incredibly contrived, self-indulgent and completely pointless. You can cite the fact that it gave Jimmy the clue he needed to work out the crime in the real world, but why waste the majority of an episode with an unrelated fantasy simply to indulge the writers, actors and director? Because they had their fun the real story was crammed into the last few minutes with Lana admitting to Chloe that she's been working for Lionel against Lex, that she's been protecting Clark from Lionel, and then Chloe intimating the vague details to Clark himself when he pries into her lack of determination into getting to the bottom of who shot Lana. The story hasn't been moved along and in a series which is pretty much a serialised narrative it feels like a waste of time. If the noir thriller of Jimmy's dream had meant something, if there had been some clever explanation tying into the real world, if it wasn't all so aimless, I could have forgiven this.

At least Jimmy gets his episode. He may not be the most compelling character, and doesn't really work without Chloe around for us to care about, but it was a change. The episode seemed to be a tribute to the noir genre, but I wondered if it was also a nod to the original Superman TV series. I don't know enough about it to spot the clever references or know when bits were taken from films, but I did spot a few shots that looked a little too authentic in that they must have been actual clips from old films. It was great seeing Clark Kent as he used to be portrayed, and Welling seemed to be doing an impression of Christopher Reeve, even down to the jiggling of the glasses, which almost made up for the lack of direction, if only he'd been playing that character more. Once each of the characters had been introduced and some of them had no purpose in the story at all, the story became boring, a waiting game for a reason to care. At least make a tribute to the old classics in a good way, don't perpetuate the myth that they're all dull and interminable without any interest. The black and white stuff looked beautiful, but that wasn't enough to give this story reason to exist.

I imagine the writers came up with this as a fun late-season story to relax a bit before the big, important (and generally disappointing), build up to the finale. Instead the fun wasn't sustained and when it became clear there was going to be no rationale for having Jimmy knocked on the head and dream all this stuff, and he wakes up and we're back in the real story, it became a joke, the punchline being Jimmy pointing out how crazy the mind is to make up all that stuff about Lana working against her husband and Clark having a secret, crime-fighting identity, then Chloe just laughing along with him. I will say I enjoyed the moment Chloe falls over backwards and plummets down the stairwell at the Daily Planet only for Clark to catch her at the bottom, she having phoned him up shortly before, but it wasn't enough to make the episode worthwhile. It was a party the makers and artists were invited to, but sadly not the viewer.

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