TDVDLevision: Ten Thoughts On Smallville Season 7
1) I hate when TV shows “kill characters off” at the end of a season and then they’re in the credits the following year. Chloe’s and Lana’s appearance in both the DVD preview screens and the credits kind of ruined the surprise. Also being introduced this season — Jimmy Olsen and Supergirl. Annette O’Toole is gone as Martha Kent’s senate seat will keep her occupied. By the end of the first episode, everyone’s alive and Bizarro is, for now, handled. Weirdly, Bizarro can fly. I’m very curious as to the writers’ purposes for keeping Clark grounded for so long. I don’t know if it’s ultimately a handy plot point for them that he can’t fly or if it’s actually an homage to the pre-flight Superman’s comic book existence. Every other Kryptonian who has come to Earth can immediately fly. All the bad guys, Clark’s father, even Supergirl emerges from her ship with the ability. It’s a weird, as yet unexplained plot device.
2) I got a cool appearance by Dean Cain as they nearly complete the history of living Supermen. Cain plays a professor (Curtis Knox… CK… cute) who is immortal and is attempting to harvest Kryptonite saturated organs to make his wife immortal. This was kind of a bizarre little episode. Knox is introduced as an immortal something who’s been alive for at least 1500ish years (he claimed to have fought Mayans, might have been Napoleon, claimed to be Jack The Ripper, was in the Nazi party) and he’s just weirdly and inexplicably disposed of by the Martian Manhunter with: “Your father and I had a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy when it came to crime and punishment. I suggest we abide by the same rules.” I understand they wanted to give Cain some kind of Superman-esque character with powers and abilities and he probably only wanted to do one episode. But it made the whole thing feel weirdly disjointed, poorly explained, and bad.
3) Season 7 is pretty much the transitional season between the high school relationships and the way we know the characters later in Metropolis. Lois Lane transitions from army brat to tabloid reporter to Daily Planet star reporter. Lex transitions to all-out evil. Lana transitions to the left behind, kinda-evil high school sweetheart. Lana gets a taste of Clark’s powers via the green kryptonite + electricity power transfer callback to season one. Although, in this case, the contact doesn’t occur for long enough to sap Clark’s powers. In this case, Lana simply gains Clark’s powers without it affecting him. Admittedly, this does lead to a funny sequence in which Smallville is rocked by an earthquake when Clark and Lana do the superpowered nasty. Then it, predictably, veers off to the human gets superpowers and goes on a vengeance-fueled revenge trip storyline. This forces Clark to take his powers back from Lana via another dose of green kryptonite and electricity. One wonders how that worked since the green meteor rock and electricity has only transferred powers in the past and, since they both have powers, it shouldn’t actually steal or grant powers from either but details, details. This led to the best example of one of the season’s themes — that being Clark’s indignation about how his friends deal with bad guys differently. His friends are more willing to work outside justice (Lana would have killed Lex) while Clark wouldn’t. Summed up by a speech from Lana filled with enough passive-aggressive guilt to make a Jewish-mom proud: “Every transgression that I have made, you have answered with a hypocritical judgment. No one can live up to your self-righteous standards. Do you know what it’s like to wake up every morning knowing that you’re going to be a failure in the eyes of the only person you’ve ever loved.” Clark, to his credit, had no time for her shenanigans. “And you’re the one who fell in love with [Lex Luthor]. And then [Bizarro Clark].” Own it, Superman!
4) Speaking of evil people with powers, it was nice that the show got back to some bad guys and meteor freaks and away from the heavy Lex/Lana craziness plot from last season. I liked that Chloe changed her tune about a marginalized minority after she became one and wouldn’t allow people to call them “meteor freaks” anymore. At least the characters are consistent, even Pete’s return (who hasn’t been seen since leaving for Topeka in season three) and semi-heel turn. My complaint here, though, is Chloe’s oddly unexplained and poorly fleshed out meteor ability. In last season’s finale, Chloe’s tears brought Lois back to life. Chloe died after the healing, but her body eventually absorbed the injury. She wakes up, back to life, laying in a morgue drawer. Later, she demonstrates the ability to Jimmy and it seems to hurt her a little but she doesn’t take on the cut. Later, she brings Lex back to life and stays dead for a little bit longer. Then, before this ability is ever really fully explored or tested, she loses it when Brainiac does… something to her… and it’s never mentioned again. More like: “oh well, it’s gone. Yay, I can’t heal massive injuries to my Superhero friends anymore.” A victim of the writer’s strike?
5) We get introduced to a new Kryptonite color. This season gives us blue kryptonite which has the same power-stripping abilities of the green kryptonite rock without the unfortunate side effects of sickness and death. Clark finds a Kryptonian, Dax-Ur, who has been living in secret on Earth with a family for years. He uses a blue kryptonite bracelet to suppress his powers so he can have a normal life. This is an important plot point as Supergirl has a crystal which, when brought to the fortress, generated a clone of Supergirl’s evil father Zor-El and Clark’s mother Lara-El. Lara has a “family ring” which contains a piece of blue Kryptonite which Clark couldn’t remove. Since the blue rock was in the irremovable ring, Clark was effectively powerless while Zor-El decided to take over the world. This, of course, begs the question of why Clark wouldn’t just cut his ring finger off to save the world from Zor-El. First, the cost of a finger is not too much for Superman to save the world and second, wouldn’t Superman’s regenerative abilities just restore the missing finger once he was away from the kryptonite? This also opens up a whole additional pile of questions as Dax-Ur, with his suppressed abilities, fathered a child with a human woman. His son, Max, is never on screen but I would imagine that the blue kryptonite bracelet does not turn his, um, genetic material human. Which means Kryptonian DNA is compatible with humans. Unless Max is adopted, Clark might want to, I don’t know, keep an eye out for the Superhero little kid since he’s directly responsible for his father’s death?
6) One of the crazier plot points this season, Julian Luthor isn’t dead. Lex and his mother faked Julian’s death so Lionel Luthor wouldn’t be able to ruin him, too. Or not… as we later found out, Lex was able to clone him in a lab and, surprise, Julian wants a relationship with his father. Julian turns on Lex to try and build a relationship with Lionel and Lex’s first overtly evil act on the show is to arrange Julian’s murder. A good chunk of this season is Lex’s final (and great) transition to the dark side. The first warning shot being last season’s arrangement of Lana’s fake pregnancy, the war starting with Julian’s death, continuing with arranging the murder of Dr. Virgil Swann’s daughter, and the final being throwing his father from the top of Luthorcorp, completing the circle of patricide. In case the viewer didn’t fully get the point, Lex has a vision of throwing Alexander (the little, red-haired child who’s appeared a few times as what remains of Lex’s goodness) in to the Luthor Mansion fireplace and lighting him on fire. The Lex/Clark friendship gasps its last breath as the two of them exchange a cold look over Lionel Luthor’s grave.
7) It also appears that Smallville isn’t quite done with Spike. James Marsters returns again as Brainiac, continuing to get more evil and hatching a plot that won’t fully come to fruition until next season. This was probably the best season for villains. Bizarro, fully evil Lex, and Brainiac all appear as super bad guys for some amount of time. Dean Cain’s appearance as Knox was pretty good and that’s before we even consider Lionel’s final plotting. Great stuff.
8) I had two huge issues with this season, plot-wise. The first one is the complete and total retconning of parts of three seasons by introducing the Veritas project. The Veritas group was a collection of the Luthors, the Swanns (played by Christopher Reeve), the Teagues (played by Jensen Ackles and Jane Seymour in season 4), and the Queens (Green Arrow’s parents) who were preparing the Earth for the arrival of a Traveler from space. That’s why Lionel Luthor was in Smallville on the day of the meteor shower. Dr. Swann figured out all this was coming and received an orb from Jor-El (I think) to “control” the Traveler. The nature of this “control” is unclear, but it seems that if Dr. Swann knew of this artifact that could control a superpowered being and render him dangerous to the world, he might have, I dunno, told Clark about it before he died. Especially since it might fall in to the wrong hands? Swann has been cast as a pretty bright guy who wanted to help Clark and, before now, it seems like he’s smart enough that he wouldn’t be OK with Lionel Luthor getting his hands on something that would weaponize Clark.
9) The second huge problem that I had with the season was there was an AWFUL lot of government intrigue going on around Luthorcorp and Clark. Like, the murder of a US Senator, research in to an alien craft by Luthorcorp, the study of the Brainiac project within the federal government. Project Scion at Luthorcorp. All of this goes on while MARTHA CLARK IS A US SENATOR!! I understand they needed a way to write her off the show, but they might have restrained themselves from putting her in to one of the 100 most powerful seats in the country and then have federal government intrigue going on all over Kansas. Like, Martha is really going to be clueless to all of the Luthorcorp shenanigans going on in her state’s biggest city? Really? She is, apparently, either the worst senator ever or extremely crooked.
10) I also was somewhat confused with Clark’s traveling back in time to save Kara from Brainiac on Krypton. Then, somehow, Brainiac ends up in Kara’s body with Kara seemingly dead? It seemed impossible all that could happen in the three seconds Clark’s back was turned while under a red sun. But the season finally ended with Lex finding the Kryptonian artifact that could control Clark and using it to bring the Fortress down around the both of them, ending the season with both of them presumed dead. Again, it’s really unclear what the orb is supposed to do. Jor-El sent it to Dr. Swann, who hid it with a long list of clues, even though two people had keys to a safe-deposit box where it was hidden. It all seemed somewhat, I don’t know, contrived.
Final Thought: Save for a bunch of weird plot holes and things that were just abjectly dropped, this season was 100x better then last year. By Writer’s Strike Year standards, this was as award-winning season of scripted television. It seemed like there were a bunch of plot-holes and retcons introduced, though. I guess I still have to see how they eventually work out.
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