Redux

DVD, Smallville S2 (Redux)

Three family matters and a freak-of-the-week, all crammed into an episode tight enough to burst. In truth, the freak story is shoehorned in as if they didn't like to veer too far from the established format of some kind of meteor-infected villain for Clark to defeat, but Chrissy isn't meteor-infected and the theme of her wanting to relive her school days over and over didn't fit with the other plots playing out. It made no sense that things went back to normal so quickly after her boyfriend's death, there's barely any comment on a student's death from such a bizarre malady and everyone's happy about 'Spirit Week,' whatever that is. I gathered it was a celebration of competitive spirit (rather than about contact with dead people!), which loosely connects with Clark's seeming lack of ambition under the watchful eye of the new Principal Reynolds. He obviously couldn't explain that it's too difficult for him to do anything that would risk displaying his superhuman abilities so it would look like he's a slacker, and that was a good angle to explore, especially as it ties into Reynolds' bad blood with the Luthors. Bad blood then ties into Clark's family troubles with his Father and Grandfather not speaking for twenty years and eventually finding out it was in some way because of him.

If Clark's bombshell is hard for him to take, there's a potentially even bigger one for Lana as she finds some old pictures of her Mother picnicking with what appears to be a boyfriend, in a year when her parents were already married. I like that she eventually went to Lex to ask for his help in uncovering the man's identity because it is a natural fit for Lex to be able to have the resources to do that and he and Lana already have a business arrangement so she obviously trusts him, even though she was uncomfortable with him butting in on her and Clark's conversation and was reluctant to share out this strange development in her family history. All three of these plot-lines work, and work well, perhaps if they had avoided going down the freak road it would have been better for the episode as it would have given it more space to breathe, where it does feel a little rushed at the end. Pete's involvement was little more than rushing off to lock the doors at the Talon so no one could come in and find he and Chrissy fighting, so they didn't really exploit his presence as someone in on The Secret. That was another weird thing, Clark didn't need to throw her through a curtain to smash right through a keyboard, he could have just held her there and called for the authorities. Technically, I don't think Clark was responsible for her death (in all its bad CGI, sub-'Raiders of The Lost Ark' gory glory), she needed a third dose of someone's life force (why three people a year, who knows?), before ageing into death, but I'm sure being tossed around didn't help.

I did find it hard to buy that she had lived at least as far back as the 1920s in schools (although the class photos down the years were great attention to detail), because I can't imagine school life was the same as it was in the 2000s, and would likely have been a lot stricter (I had to chuckle when Lex or someone said what was Reynolds going to do next, introduce a uniform? - it's very strange for English viewers to see American teens wearing whatever they want to at school!). There's also no explanation for how she became like this, a vampire sucking the life out of people. It was a little derivative, reminding me of the fat vampire from Season 1's 'Craving,' and I feel like there have been others that didn't want school to end (unless I'm just thinking back to this one), and so, while I wouldn't call it a frustrating part of the episode, more like a thorn hovering at the back of everyone's side waiting to strike, a tension for the audience to worry about while the characters were involved in more interesting events, it didn't entirely work. But it also didn't matter - I found the new Principal to be a fascinating fellow, especially with his history of the Luthors. It was the slightest part of the episode, his dislike of Lex because of his Father, but again, Lex is shown in a good light because he harbours no ill will and in fact, in a way, actually respects what Reynolds did for him in his harshness at school.

It also makes sense that Reynolds would look into his students and want to have a positive influence on them. It might seem unfair to single Clark out for an essay, but his motive seemed to be to get the boy to think. And it worked, as Clark realises if he's going to do anything he'd like to be studying journalism in five years. It might have come out of left field a little bit as he's never really shown that much dedication to the Torch, but as he said, he likes to get to the truth behind things and he'd be doing that a lot in future. I bet Tom Welling never imagined he'd be playing the character in five years' time (that would be Season 7), let alone that the series would last almost twice that long, and probably the writers didn't either, so that was fun to go back and see. I don't remember what happened, if anything, with his Grandad, if he came into it again, or not, but I recognised the actor's face (he was in the 'TNG' episode 'First Contact,' not the film, and died in 2015), and though he wasn't very sympathetic here, I did like how Clark could see both sides, his Grandfather's anger at Jonathan, but also the good things about the Kent family that this man doesn't know about. It certainly left things with somewhere to go, so I hope it gets followed up and was far more engaging than the kind of world-threatening disasters later in the series, personal stakes always easier to relate to.

I know Lana's potential Father comes into it this season, though I don't think it turned out he was her Father after all, but it's good to add to the lives of these characters and shift the ground under them a little more. The same goes for Martha, whose salary from Lionel (who doesn't appear, though he is spoken about), we find out, still isn't enough to cover the farm's costs. At that point I thought they were going to turn to Clark and ask him to get a job of some kind, but I suppose that would be unfair in their eyes as he does so much for them on the farm and he has schoolwork to do, not to mention having friends. It was good to hear just how intelligent Martha is, and while her Father is hardly coming from an unbiased perspective he does throw out facts such as her being near the top of her class and how much potential she has. It shows her dedication to Jonathan that she was willing to give up so much to make a family with him, but also prefigures her later role in politics and having a greater impact on the world, and also emphasises the tragedy of Jonathan's coming death, too. At least at this time in the series we still had a family atmosphere that was so absent in subsequent seasons, and one reason I went off it. They were also still able to find occasional guest spots for recurring characters like Nell, which became sparser and sparser - I don't know if Reynolds had much exposure in the way his predecessor had (who was the interim between him and Kwan, I wonder?), but he also would be a good character to keep going back to, adding realism to the school.

***