Requiem

DVD, Smallville S8 (Requiem)

This felt like a mid-season cliffhanger, and was a slight improvement on the previous episode, though that wasn't hard to do. In fact, from the opening I was inwardly groaning at the appearance of a stereotypical mad toymaker who's a former employee of Queen Industries, and his evil plans as he cackles over his madcap creations. Likewise, the Clark/Lana soapiness was regrettable, but by the end, although I wasn't wholeheartedly enjoying the story, it had its few moments that weren't bad, and the groans at the start had been somewhat addressed. For instance, Winslow Schott, the crazy inventor who blows up the entire (I assume), board of LuthorCorp, wasn't in it that much after all, far from being the Freak-of-The-Week, not even demonstrating any 'powers' other than high IQ, and actually precipitating two of the more interesting little moments for Oliver: the explosion at the board meeting was preceded by his announcement (to Teryl Rothery of 'Stargate SG-1,' who was not playing the previous character she'd been on this series, this time an appearance so minor she only got named during the end credits!), that he, with Tess Mercer's help, now had a controlling stake in LuthorCorp. And the other time was when Schott traps him at the hospital (as usual he had only the TV version of trauma with a little facial scar to his forehead and some minor shoulder damage so as not to ruin the image!), and we see some proper ingenuity on his part to escape the situation.

Queen taking over his nemesis' company raises some questions - can he dismantle the organisation from the inside out? Will he? Or is he destined to become the next Lex Luthor with power corrupting, aided by the immoral and dangerous Mercer? He certainly doesn't pull his punches when it comes to his enemy's demise. Supposed demise, because it's not that clear if Lex was in the explosion, and since it's highly unlikely they'd kill off Superman's main villain like that, and usual caveat that he'd want to be thought 'dead,' this isn't the end of Lex, I'm sure. We didn't even know if it was the real Lex (it certainly wasn't in terms of actor - one guy played him, and someone else played the voice, in the Darth Vader vein), and even the way it's shot it's not clear if he was in the explosion or watching it on a screen. And what about cloning, Lex was into that? But it effectively resets the status quo for a bit with Lex 'dead' and Lana unable to stay around any more.

You have to give them credit for extracting her from the series with more precision than usual - she doesn't leave after a falling out, or get kidnapped or anything of that sort, it's purely a decision that has to be made for Clark's health. Ironically she seemed more of a superhero than him this time as she has his strength and speed, yet isn't affected by Kryptonite, although we see later that he still has the edge when it comes to his other abilities (x-ray vision and super-hearing being the useful tools this time). I'm not sure if I immediately twigged that Lana was going to become a Kryptonite hoover and suck up all the green stuff whenever she touched it, but I certainly saw it coming long before the bomb on the roof of the Daily Planet gag, and it makes sense that something Lex designed would feature such a capability, plus it gave him a cruel revenge on his two hated adversaries by driving a wedge between them. Handy that all this time Lois Lane, who was becoming Clark's very good buddy, (and Jimmy), have been out of it for almost all of Lana's arc, and I'm sure she'll be back to mop up Clark's tears. Plus there's bound to be some future reversal of the process one day as they'll probably bring Lana back around eventually.

I didn't expect to see as much of Lex as we did, an actual view from the front, with just the eye, and his Bane-like mask and voice (there's an idea, bring Bane in to fight Clark…), but although Clark says that he's not interested in living in the past any more, there are tons of references and conversations, whether it be more recent events such as Brainiac in Chloe's body killing Sebastian Kane (from 'Identity'), Lex himself (wonder what Michael Rosenbaum thought of it - I still don't know whether he left amicably because he wanted to do other things or whether there was a problem), the necklace and its history dating back to high school, it's like an old episode with Lana and Clark together - one thing that puzzles me, though, is when they super-speed in each other's presence: it should look like normal speed from each other's point of view, but when they each get dressed, the other one looks up from where they'd been stopped in 'normal' time, yet shouldn't they experience that as really long? I don't know, super-speed and its implications have never really been addressed to that level of detail.

There are some themes being played out, such as trust between Chloe and Clark, and Clark and Oliver, although some of that stuff wasn't quite right. I can sort of understand Chloe not wanting Clark to go after Lex for his own safety (amazing she can just cobble together a Lex-finder so easily - almost as if he wanted to be found), but not so much Oliver's disregard of his personal ethics to want to blow up Lex. Granted, he hates Lex and everything he stands for as a threat to the Earth, but he's supposed to be a hero, and above that kind of thing. Though I wasn't surprised by the breaking apart of Lana and Clark with the Kryptonite idea, I did like that she stands in his way as a barrier, so he can't kill Lex as he'd finally decided to do. When it came down to it could he have made the final, fatal move? I don't know, but Lana as a positive barrier was interesting. So while I remained mainly unimpressed, there were enough things in the mix to appreciate, and it was nice to have a musical montage at the end which they don't do nearly enough any more. I hope the next arc is more successful than the Lana one has been, though. At least I'm getting through the season, slowly (it's hard work a lot of the time!).

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