Patriot

DVD, Smallville S10 (Patriot)

Beginning as a fascinating quandary for our super friends, it ends in soap territory with Lois' oversensitiveness to Clark not telling her what he was doing all the time, small fry in the face of the greater challenges being faced, but at least it leads to her admittance into the hallowed walls of Watchtower as member of the regular band, all four of the remaining main cast, Clark, Lois, Tess and Oliver, banding together against Clark's fears of an evil nature that has infected the world and is working on the people's fears and hatreds to bring out their dark side. The suggestion is that General Slade, the guy appointed to oversee the implementation of the Vigilante Registration Act, went so far off his 'marching orders' as to torture and imprison the only guy fool enough, or brave, to dob himself in and sign up as an experiment to see what would happen, so Clark didn't put himself at risk: Oliver Queen. It made sense of his recent exposure, already having revealed his name to the world, but his cooperation puts him, and Arthur Curry, aka Aquaman, in danger, and only Curry's wife Mera, and the intervention of Clark prevents Slade from continuing his tortures.

Directed by Tom Welling it's a big story, zipping here, there and everywhere in a global narrative, but consequently losing focus and being held up by a few inconsistencies and dumbings-down. Take Slade's underwater base (or was it the above ground one in Alaska, I wasn't keeping track) - he somehow has exactly each type of defence against the powered-up people that come, even including a Kryptonite cage for Clark, should he just happen to walk down a particular corridor at a particular time, which he did. Somehow he was too slow to act before the cage bars came down around him, when he's supposed to be faster than a speeding bullet! In that case I can grant that the sudden burst of Kryptonite radiation beaming down from above was enough to prevent him super-speeding (in which case, why didn't the blast injure him in his weakened state?), but what about when Curry sends a wave his way to blast him into the pool, he should have been able to dodge that, no sweat, and would water really have any effect on him, even the strongest current? It also irks me when a character is introduced and little to nothing is explained about her, beyond the fact she's the wife of Aquaman. Where did she come from, what's he been up to all this time when previously we had the impression he was acting as one of the Justice League of America and carrying out missions across the world that we weren't privy to? We get a load of dialogue about Mera supporting him, etc, but it's all rather general - are we supposed to read comics and know all about her backstory from that, because that's not fair, you need to give the TV audience all the knowledge.

The other thing is, I've never felt the actor who plays Aquaman was that good, always super serious and speaks out what he has to say like reading a script. Maybe some of the writing didn't help, but his style of delivery and the complete lack of irony or anything beyond the absolute basic was beyond him. Welling does a good job in a similarly serious role, often coming across as the overgrown boy scout, standing up for Truth, Justice and The American Way (which he wants to do again by supporting the government he believes in), but yet he manages to inject some charm and vulnerability, something into his character that made the series last this long. Something tells me that Aquaman's series wouldn't even get to series from a pilot. That something being actual fact that it didn't when they tried to do a spinoff! In Aquaman's favour he is at least the latest returnee to the series, continuing the season's tradition for reunions, which is what you want to see. He's just not that great of a character, and yet he should be. Maybe it's because he's too 'out there,' whereas the series has managed to keep most of its heroes grounded. Like Green Arrow, whom we know is merely human, just uses tech like Batman, and keeps himself in top shape to pull it off. That's why it's ironic that he's the first to brave the VRA, when he's not even one of the super-powered guys running around out there giving America pause for thought.

The idea of the VRA isn't such a bad one, were it attempted in an ideal world where the people's motives were good. But when motivated by fear of the other and the unknown, it only becomes a failure in double-quick time. Or is it? We only saw the Slade version, and we're told that maybe the government wasn't aware of the approach he was taking, not having any intention of working with, or training up, an elite force to deal with terrorism and such, only a ruse to lure in the unsuspecting to take them down, though not before getting them to spill the beans on their friends' identities and whereabouts. If the episode had been concerned only with the Act and its implications it might have made it into the upper tier of the season, but though it talks a good talk to begin with, throwing up all this stuff about the will of the people, and whether these self-made heroes have the right to do what they do simply because they can, or whether they're acting against the law of the land, it doesn't explore the idea fully, degenerating into treacherous General Slade's torture chamber, then seeing him somehow survive the explosion of his facility with nary a scratch on him, except for the replacement of his eye with some robotic thing. At least Michael Hogan has had experience acting with only one eye, as his character, Colonel Tigh in 'Battlestar Galactica,' would attest - shame he didn't get to share any scenes with Alessandro Juliani, another veteran of 'BSG.' I just hope he wasn't typecast into playing one-eyed angry guys for the rest of his career!

I've suspected the budget for this season had been reduced, and in some ways I do think it was for the best because it forced them into writing more dialogue-heavy scenes, and seeing the characters thrash things out verbally has generally improved the quality of the writing this season, especially when it's Lois and Clark. But it hasn't got rid of some of the stupidity and lack of logic - like Slade knowing about Lois' pro-Blur stories, but he doesn't know anything about her history with Queen. Or Tess is told about events, is surprised about Oliver being the one to tryout for the VRA, yet the press conference with Slade and Queen is happening a few seconds later in her own building, The Daily Planet! What, she didn't get the memo? It was an episode that showed promise, but didn't quite manage to live up to it, and became too much about Lois' feelings of being left out when in comparison she looks a bit petty when her boyfriend is dealing with such heavy stuff. And Clark's revelation about the darkness taking over the world appears to stem from Slade sporting an Omega symbol on his skull, from which he extrapolates an awful lot. The meat of the ideas was in the need to stand up and not stay on the sidelines in order to effect change for the better, the legality and morality of obeying the government, its own approach to finding a way to deal with vigilantes, and the tug of war between those viewpoints. 'Smallville' isn't here to give us philosophical commentary, but whenever it does peer down the rabbit hole I wish it had the courage to step down there a little more, and not just fall back on explosions and evil villains.

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