Smallville "Wither" Review (Spoilers)

[matt_zimmer]

Smallville "Wither"

Decent episode with good points and bad points. Let's mix it up and start with the bad stuff first.

-I am sick of Lana and Lex.

-No John Glover.

-NO fallout whatsoever about Clark actually KILLING the sentient villain. Seriously, this should have messed him up. They glossed over it completely.

-Lex is a Man-Slut.


The Good:

-Clark and Lex confrontation. More of these please. Seriously we need to be building to something huge at this point in the series. Clark and Lex avoiding each other sucks.

-Lois mistaking Oliver Queen for a courier. Green Arrow's scenes with Lois (especially in his costume) were great. I especially loved the touch of him hitting the soda can's pull-tab but making Lois think he missed. And Erica Durance's costume is hot. More please. (Or should I say less?)

-Phantom Zone baddie fall-out. I'm glad they only took two episodes to finally get to this. The Poison Ivy lady was creepy.

The stuff I'm not so sure about:

-Jimmy Olsen. He IS adorable and I love how doofy he is but I think it's a SERIOUS mistake to put him between Clark and Chloe. Clark is SUPERMAN and should in NO way think of Jimmy as a romantic rival even at this stage in the game. Plus, I'm a huge Clark/ Chloe shipper and I'm pulling out my hair because of Clark finally realizing Chloe is hot comes RIGHT when he shows up. AAAARGH!

Do you know what Smallville should do? Take one of the characters from the Superman stable and KILL them off. How shocking would it be for Perry White or Jimmy Olsen to bite it before Clark even became Superman? That would TOTALLY shock the fanbase and raise the stakes considerably! Might I nominate LANA for this honor? ****.

Comments

[90scartoonman.livejournal.com]

Heh, killing off a character still alive? Well, to be fair, they did that to Johnathan. I know he was dead Pre-Crisis and in the movies, but he IS still alive in the comics. And it's not like Smallville would be the first to do this, just this year, in fact, we've seen JLU, Ultimate Avengers 2, and X-Men 3 all kill off characters very much alive in the comics. As for how I reacted to it...well, I had mixed reactions.

About Clark and Lex, see, isn't it SO much better when Lex has a scene with someone who isn't Lana?! Argh, I love Lex. Wait, why was he a man slut? My memory of that is a little fuzzy.

I like Jimmy, though. He and Ollie are both welcome additions to the show as far as I'm concerned. Wait, Clark's killed before, right? That's one aspect of the show I don't like because they do gloss over it. And it's rare in superhero fiction to see a character deal with the first time they see someone die while they're "on duty", so to speak.

[style92.livejournal.com]

Jonathan doesn't count, because as you point out, there's precedent both for and against him living to Clark's adulthood. And please don't tell me your an "pre-crisis doesn't count" guy.

[mattzimmer.livejournal.com]

I don't think Jonathan counts either. I think the only two people on this show besides Clark who SHOULD be off limits to kill are Lois and Lex. Everyone else should be fair game.

If they kill off Lana in a future ep I'd actually be impressed. And grateful. Unfortunately this seems like the kind of show that will off Chloe in the last episode because she has the nerve to actually be an original character not in the Superman mythos. They do that and I'll be pissed.

[style92.livejournal.com]

A *mostly* original character. When she was invented, she was meant to be a teen-age stand in for Lois Lane. But then the actual Lois Lane showed up and that got screwed up.

And yes, sadly, I've been figuring from the beginning that Chloe's lack of status in other Superman canon automatically puts a big "kill me off" sign on her back. (and the fact that she knows his secret means they've put neon on that sign.)

I still really, really hope that Lana will be justified by the end as being killed tragically in an early clash between Lex and Clark/Superman/boy, and be a major reason for their rivalry, if each blames the other for her death.

I'm really, really glad that they DIDN'T evolve Smallville into a Superman movie, now.

[mattzimmer.livejournal.com]

That would be nice as it WOULD SORT OF justify Lana. Still absolutely no reason for two guys to be fawning over this drip though.

[90scartoonman.livejournal.com]

Oh no, by all means, Pre-Crisis certainly counts. My point was that Johnathan Kent's still alive in current continuity, so when they killed him off, it was a bit of a shock (but not too much because of the movies).

[mattzimmer.livejournal.com]

I wasn't surprised at all. I WOULD have been surprised if they had actually killed off Lana as they were pretending to but Jonothan dying was a HUGE cop-out. SO saw it coming.

[mattzimmer.livejournal.com]

No, I mean kill off a character BEFORE he becomes Superman. Y'know one of the legendary members of the supporting cast just DISAPPEARING before he even became a reporter at the Daily Planet and started out as Supes. THAT would be great.

I love that JLU killed a bunch of important characters in it's last two episodes. Killer Frost DOES have a future.

[style92.livejournal.com]

Eh, those guys probably aren't dead either.

[mattzimmer.livejournal.com]

Grodd POSSIBLY escaped and MAYBE Shade but I can't see how Weather Wizard or Parasite could have possibly escaped that explosion. Tala is almost certainly dead too if she was willing to unleash Darkseid on the universe out of spite.

Darkseid and Lex of course, obviously survived.

[90scartoonman.livejournal.com]

Oh, right, that would be pretty cool.

I actually have sort of a crazy theory that this Jimmy Olsen is actually James Olsen Senior and that his son (with or without Chloe, either way) is actually the Jimmy Olsen Junior who is a photographer at the Planet after Clark and Lois are full fledged reporters. But if that Jimmy is yet to be born, the ages still wouldn't match up because then he'd be about 20 years younger than Clark.

[mattzimmer.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it wouldn't match at all. I still seriously want them to off a character they "aren't supposed to". That would be great.

Lana is still my pick. :P