Bloodline

DVD, Smallville S8 (Bloodline)

Back to the quarry again. The catch this time is that Lois comes along for the ride to the Phantom Zone, much to Clark's concern (it all comes from simply touching the blue crystal which has mysteriously been sent to him in the post - who by, that's what I want to know?), but it's all okay because Lois gets knocked out by Kara (yes, she's there too), and so doesn't hear any of the Kryptonian chat that passes between them. Not that it would have really mattered anyway as by the end of the episode she thinks it was all a hallucination (blood sugar levels, Clark suggests cunningly), and the mechanism which gets her to this position happened when she was back on Earth anyway, so why did she even need to tag along? Why go to the Phantom Zone anyway except as a way to bring back Kara… so she can be sent away again, making her choice for 'another journey' just as Clark's is on Earth. Somehow I doubt we've seen the last of her, since her quest to find some lost city of Krypton which may still exist, could easily pop up again if necessary (in other words, if the writers are short of ideas that week - first paragraph and I'm already swiping at them!). Funnily enough, for once I felt her character actually had some interest - this version of Kara is one that had been abandoned to the hellish Phantom Zone by Brainiac, and she's become a wild survivalist, used to battling away with the Zoners, though they'll never kill her because she can open the portal home, and she won't do it, knowing they'll try to escape. There's a nobility in her actions, and a serious psychological burden behind her eyes.

All this is undermined by Clark and Lois showing up and having to get back - Clark would stay, but Lois, as he says, doesn't belong there, so he'll hang around and stop any Zoners that try and get through while Kara and Lois escape. Except he can't stop one getting through, and nor can Kara. Then it becomes another in a long line of possession stories (I can't even remember how many times this has happened to Lois, any more than I can recall how often she's been knocked unconscious!). I will give Erica Durance credit for creating a completely different feel to her role as Faora, wife of Zod, even down to the voice, though it was helped by Faora taking such trouble over a different hairstyle for her new vessel. We didn't see the scene where she was using curlers, but that might have made her character less threatening. Nor was there time, as so much is packed in. I only wish I could say much of it was good, but as often is the case with this series it's a series of set-pieces or moments, conversations or activities that merge together like a badly cut jigsaw, chip-chopping between stories and characters to veil the fact that this isn't a well told, or structured, story.

There were a couple of scenes I thought good, though they came right near the end with Clark talking to Tess Mercer, and then Oliver Queen (who gets to be the Green Arrow for a brief moment, using a cool paralysis dart to incapacitate Tess when she discovers him stealing a device that can 'read' the blue crystal, because somehow Chloe has narrowed down all the possibilities of where Clark might have gone and how to save him, to hacking into said crystal - but I'm meant to be presenting the good stuff). In those conversations there's a little of the old tension of what and how much does Tess know, saying that Clark was the last person to see Lex alive, since she's still obsessed with finding him, and why didn't Lex trust him? Then with Oliver it's the old argument chipping away at Clark living his mundane life (relatively speaking), when Chloe's constantly getting caught up in dangerous Kryptonian stuff. It's nice to see Queen at the Kent Farm (not so nice to see Tess there, earlier, and quite why she was there, except because they needed to make Chloe have to lie to her, I don't know).

The premise might be, as Chloe neatly summed up, 'Lois with Clark's abilities, but without his inhibitions,' which could sound intriguing if we hadn't already seen it done time and time before, where a character gets Clark's powers or equivalent, and he has to fight them or clean up after them. Not that he fought Lois, he just let her chuck him out of a hospital window onto a parked vehicle (and no one came to see if they were alright! Not that the staff are up to much at that place - when Lois as Faora goes to see her 'child,' Davis, in a ward, a doctor tells her the area is restricted, but she tells him it's her child, the doc presumably thinking she's talking about the little boy Davis is patching up, but rather than wave her through compassionately he disdainfully ignores her and walks off!). That was a surprise, I'll give them that: that Davis Bloome, ambulance attendant, is actually the offspring of Zod and his wife. Not a good surprise; I was sort of hoping for something clever, vainly perhaps, but I still hoped. It looks to be that Davis is going to be the annual 'fall guy' who comes in with a mysterious past and secret life and is killed/leaves by the end of the season. It's a pattern that's been followed quite regularly over the series, and having a one-season wonder main character isn't a bad idea if not for the fact that they usually die or have to have a dark secret, the attitude being 'otherwise what's the point?'

And then Lois/Faora kills Davis so he can come back with what appear to be Kryptonian powers. I missed the part where killing one of Clark's people actually makes them stronger, or is it just in this particular case? Rather than make me wonder at the revelations following these events, it just makes me unimpressed, because up till now Davis the mystery was relatively interesting. As has become too common it's not just poor plotting, but poor writing that permeates the fast-moving train of happenings, with such moments as Davis not being surprised to see Lois, even after Chloe's been worried about her, just talking to her normally. Admittedly, this could be my fault for not paying close enough attention, and it may be that she never told Davis that Clark and Lois were missing as she did Oliver, but it rips along so fast and so many different things happen that it's little wonder if you can't follow everything that you should - maybe they like it like that as there's less time to think and realise how this is all flung at you to deceive you into thinking it's actually been pretty good. It does succeed in that way a lot of the time as you get carried along, and only when you think about how people behave or what they say, or the many, regular coincidences (not to mention an unending queue of Kryptonian visitors to Earth), do you feel like the joining of the dots doesn't make much of a picture. Like Chloe tasking Queen with stealing the device: she doesn't have time to explain what's happened to Clark, but she has time to wait for Oliver to bring her the machine. In other words, she didn't want to explain herself, just do what she says and get on with it as the plot demands!

Perhaps I'm being too harsh? I've already pointed to things about the episode that were comparatively accomplished, such as Durance's performance as Faora and Kara being a bit more interesting, but we're ping-ponging back and forth between events, locations and stories so that what could have stood as an episode alone (Lois and Clark lost in the Phantom Zone, for example), is rushed through, and you get the feeling that it's just a facade, an empty wall that if they throw enough at it won't show the cracks or transparency that standing still would reveal. Too much is kind of pointless, only there to get you from A to B so that there is an episode - Lois decides to move back in at the Kent Farm, but it's only so she can be sucked into the Phantom Zone. One or two instances like this in the course of an episode wouldn't be a crime, but too many and it becomes a flimsy thing to behold. Yet questions remain to keep you interested: what did Mercer make of a super-speeding Lois? How is Chloe after plugging into the blue crystal? What has Davis become?

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