Smallville 7×05: “Action”

Original Air Date: October 25, 2007. Official CW episode description:

“The residents of Smallville are thrilled when “Warrior Angel,” a movie based on a comic book, begins shooting in town. However, after the lead actress, Rachel Davenport (guest star Christina Milian) takes off in stunt car with cut brakes, Clark must step in to stop the runaway car. Unfortunately, an obsessed fan witnesses this heroic event and decides Clark is a real life superhero, whose girlfriend Lana must be eliminated so Clark can fulfill his destiny. Meanwhile, Lex discovers Lionel at the cabin.”

No Kara in this episode. Spoilers follow.

Show-within-a-show stories always make me cringe a little. I feel embarassed for the actors for some reason. Too much meta is not a good thing. Also, why do TV/film writers think that we viewers find the film industry so terribly interesting that we’d want to see a TV episode/feature film that’s about…making a TV show/feature film? It’s kind of sad really. So I didn’t care much about this episode’s plot set-up. I shall try very hard to ignore the glaring plot holes, Hollywood hokem, and silliness about those evil “Internet Blogs” and “messages boards” filled with misogynist purist fanboys because I’m trying to keep this shorter than Television Without Pity.

Cool superheroics moment #1: Clark rushing out and catching the actress after she flies out of her car. He should have stopped her before her car crashed and she flew out of it (I was shocked when she hit the windshield), but it was a really nice effect.

Cool casting decision: Warrior Angel is black! Does this mean that in the Smallville universe the formative comicbook superhero is a person of colour?! OMG. Maybe next time he could get some lines. Please? Apparently I wasn’t paying much attention, and just wished a black Warrior Angel into existence. Damn.

Cool or cheesy, I can’t decide: the red “cape”.

Funny character moment: Lex’s method of storing his comic collection. Of course Lex would be obsessive about his comics to the point of storing them upright between plastic planes in a storage cabinet. He’s like that about everything!

Wow, Martha’s barely out of the house and Clark’s got three girls living with him. I can see Lana and Kara (although they managed to make that very awkward with the gratuitous red bikini scene), but inviting a stranger to stay at your house is a leetle weird. Doesn’t he have some kind of secret to protect? Heck, doesn’t he want some time alone with Lana while both Kara and his mom are away? I would =)

Cool superheroics moment #2: Clark diving down to catch Lana. I really thought he was going to fly for the first time! That would have been a cool F-You to the fanboy character who believed that women stand in the way of men being heroes.

Speaking of fanboys who hate female characters: the show didn’t make a clear enough statement on the issue of Fridging of Girlfriends For the Greater Good (of everyone else). Lana made a very good point when Fanboy said she had to be killed for Clark to save the world, that thousands of lives are at stake. “And mine doesn’t matter?” she asked. Unfortunately it came out sounding selfish, although I can’t figure out why (maybe because it’s a futile question to ask of a psychopath, you have to appeal to something greater because he obviously doesn’t take you seriously). By focusing on one individual girlfriend, the show dodged the question that’s really at stake here: are women not considered part of the world? Do we exist only to be fridged to provide the (ubiquitously male) hero his impetus to be a Great Man? And did Lex actually suggest that it was a daring and innovative choice to have the comic supervillain killed Warrior Angel’s girlfriend? Lex, my boy, have you not read any other superhero comics? There’s this site I think you should visit…

Speaking of (nearly) WiR: Chloe seems to have completely blocked out her unpleasant ordeal from the previous episode, but she remembers her break-up with Jimmy. That PTSD is going to hit her like a ton of bricks at some point. (Conveniently off-screen, of course, so we don’t actually have to see a woman dealing with having been severely victimized by a serial killer. Women can be so whiny about that sort of thing.)

Annoying moment: Tasers don’t work that way. In reality, Lana and Rachel Davenport would screamed in pain, they would not have fainted so quietly and, well, femininely. Not that we need to see Lana tortured yet again. There should have been no tasers involved, period. Haven’t these people been watching the news?

Gruesome horror moment I could have lived without: Lionel’s hand in a bear trap. Yuck. That was really, really unnecessary. They could have done something far more interesting with Lionel’s capture by having Marilyn mentally torment Lionel a bit, remind him of all the terrible things he’s done to others, actually build up a little suspense instead of using the easy out of ohmygod I can’t watch that EWWW. (Question: are we supposed to know who Marilyn is?) Skipping the TOTALLY UNNECESSARY part where Lionel pulls his hand out of the trap, we cut to Lionel freaking out after he escapes with Lex’s help (yay, Lex rescued Daddy! and Daddy thinks Lex is responsible, oh the angst!) and savagely beating the woman to death in an orgy of blood splattering. That was pretty shocking. It wasn’t that he just hit her once to escape, he revelled in beating her to a bloody death: and so did the camera. Yay, more gratuitous brutality against women >_< Then Lionel has the audacity to lecture Lana about going down a "dark path" she may never return from. Look who's talking! Lana didn't beat anyone to death with sadistic glee; it's doubtful she even knew exactly how Marilyn had him restrained. If I were Lana and knew what he had just done, I would have been peeing myself standing in that loft with him. There's no way he wouldn't have killed her if this weren't a soap.

I'm not pleased with this "descent into evil" character arc they're pushing Lana into. It's not so much the capturing of Lionel that bothers me - I quite liked that, apart from the bear trap bit - it's the constant lying to Clark that she's "at Aunt Nell's" or whatever. What is she, 13? It was fun watching Lionel get whacked by a shovel, and that it was Lana doing the whacking. I don’t like Lionel much =) But on the whole, I’d like to see Lana get back at Lex and Lionel without the show having to villify her in the process.