Committed

DVD, Smallville S8 (Committed)

Oh dear, another premise that's been done too many times before. They may have ditched Lana, but they can't seem to shake the romantic problems driving the storylines. We have Chloe and Jimmy's engagement party, at which his parents didn't attend, though their presence was apparently expected (an American custom?), but that was only a small problem which was later fixed by Jimmy coming completely clean with Chloe and admitting that he doesn't know his Mum, and his Dad, rather than being a high-flying executive is just a mechanic, all of which he'd been too ashamed to tell anyone, instead creating a false persona to live by in the city. He didn't tell her any other of his secrets of which a few have built up over the seasons, I'm sure, and I noticed Chloe kept quiet about all her mutant history, too, so there's still plenty of teeth to pull in future if a demented psycho wishes to torture them into telling the truth. How many times have we seen a madman kidnap a person or persons and force them to tell the truth? I don't know, but kidnapping has been a regular occurrence since the first season, it's just ridiculous the number of kidnappers out there that target this specific group of characters. Sometimes it made a semblance of sense, since the Luthors were high profile targets, but couples…?

They didn't even keep the suspense up for too long, because who else was it going to be but the only new character to be introduced: the jeweller. Either that or the cake shop owner! No, the story was completely secondary, and wholly contrived so that Lois could admit that she secretly loves Clark, to his face. That's it, that's what the episode boils down to, and if that's all that's going on, I worry about what they can actually accomplish on this series. I know it ended a couple of years ago now, but I have to watch through all these episodes still to come, and I do at least have hopes for the occasional story to excite or impress. Hopes that are fast fading. So not much anticipation regarding the villain, though for a few precious minutes I did entertain the thought it could be a character from the past, returned to stop Chloe from marrying Jimmy. No, just another deranged man that somehow is sane enough to run a jeweller's business successfully, only in his off hours does he go out kidnapping and torturing.

Admittedly there wasn't quite so much emphasis on the torture, and in his mind the villain was doing this not for the sick pleasure of watching others suffer under his power, but because he wanted to help couples be true to each other - he even goes as far as transporting his early victims, Chloe and Jimmy, home to their boudoir, and not only that, but lights all those candles for them, too! What a guy. He wasn't that creepy, just another weirdo there to facilitate a ridiculous sequence of events that led Lois to her admittance. I was surprised that they went there and actually did it, though of course we don't get to hear the reply from Clark as he escapes before having to answer the question, and actually the moment was dramatic, but then they press the reset button by the end with her coming up with the reason that she actually slipped the sensor off her finger so the machine wasn't working properly. But if that was the case, why tell a 'lie' when she could have got off free by telling the 'truth'? It's a little confused, and it doesn't matter because, as I pointed out, she covers herself and it's veering dangerously into the Lana/Clark days of secretly held inner loves and that who un-merry-go-round.

This time Oliver Queen's at it too, trying to make up with Tess, who has apparently grown hard from the time when he used to know her. She still harbours hopes that Lex will be found alive after a recent clue, but I don't get why Oliver would be pursuing this leader of the LutherCorp empire when it's such an evil organisation, unless he wants to prevent it from carrying out any more wrongs. Tess thinks Lex did more for the world by striving to keep it safe than Queen ever did, but then she doesn't know his secret identity. I can't believe he could be beaten in a stick fight either (sort of a fun callback to those impromptu fencing matches Lex used to have at the Mansion), except if he was going easy on her. He is a good guy after all, even if his character has done nothing of merit this season to justify becoming a member of the cast, a far cry from the glory days of Season 6 when he was such a compelling addition. At least Smallville was a bit more a part of it again, with the Talon the place Chloe and Jimmy seem to live, and the Sheriff being called in, though he's not made an actual character in this one, and could have been any of the officers in the background. A shame, because the position of Sheriff used to be important to the series.

And so passes another episode full of lovelorn chat, secrets being spilled without any real consequence, and the storylines continuing to go nowhere. This time Davis is the chosen one not to appear, but it makes no difference either way, there's very little variance in the characters, they're all too similar, and nothing really new and interesting happens - Lois loves Clark, Chloe's honestly over him, and that's about the level of depth. They may not be teenagers any more, but teen soap is all this is. I keep saying it, but I wish it were different. I could point to the scene in the jewellers as being quite good, when Oliver comes in and Lois and Clark pretend they're getting married, as that was funny, but even then you start to wonder how they narrowed it down to this jeweller and it's so incredibly contrived - another example being that the villain just so happens to wear a Kryptonite bracelet, otherwise Clark would have had no trouble. Lazy, lazy writing.

**