Smallville 7×06: Lara

Original Air Date: November 1, 2007

This will be the last episode reaction I do for Smallville, I think. I don’t see myself keeping this up for another 16 episodes (I did NOT think that through when I started this!). I don’t know if my continued pointing out of the gender issues on this show accomplishes anything, and I really hate having to be negative all the time. I want this site to be a positive face for Supergirl, but this show does not want to co-operate with me. Then there’s this paranoid fear I have that someone (i.e. an actor) from the show will discover this site (hey, it could happen =) and feel bad, when I really do wish them well and want to see them being given great material.

Spoilers follow. If you haven’t seen the episode, Television Without Pity has a one page recap.

Official CW episode description:

Clark learns Kara is in Washington searching for the crystal. Kara is captured after she breaks into the lab and sedated with a kryptonite-infused truth serum. The serum causes her to relive a prior trip to Earth when she followed Clark’s biological mother, Lara (gust star Helen Slater), to the Kent farm. Clark arrives in time to save her but, after searing the machine with heat vision, he also falls victim to the serum and sees what Kara sees: his mother.

I was really excited to hear that Helen Slater would be on Smallville this year (she’s going to be on a second episode in a few weeks). As soon as I heard her voice again, I just melted. She’s still got it. Seeing her in this episode makes me want to run out and rent one of her movies (I’m thinking 12:01).

So yay! to two Supergirls on screen together.

Now the complaints (you knew this was coming).

I was a little annoyed that the reaction everyone had to seeing her picture was to remark how “beautiful” or “stunning” she was. Yeah yeah, everyone on this show is beautiful. Can they think of nothing better to say because she’s a woman? ‘Oh Clark, your mom’s hot! How wonderful for you!’ I’d love to see the same reaction to a picture of Clark’s or Kara’s dad *evil grin* Zor-El is definitely not hot, and I don’t believe we’ve ever actually seen Jor-El [correction: Season 3 Episode 06 "Relic" - Jor-El looked just like Clark when he was young]. Nobody ever talks about what they look like.

As much as I enjoyed the scenes between old!Supergirl and new!Supergirl ( “This is only one of many structures Kara, it’s not the main residence!” Heehee, Clark lives in a barn. I’m with Kara: the Kent farm is way overrated), I was disappointed at how spectacularly they failed the Bechdel test. It’s like the writers were trying to fail it by taking a scene with two important women and making it all about The Menz. The entire interaction between them was really about the various men in their lives: Kara’s father, Lara’s future son, Lara’s husband. These women’s lives seem to be entirely centered around their husbands and fathers, and they don’t seem to be in control of anything. At first I was excited by the idea that Lara had come to Earth to scope out the place as a potential refuge for her future child – why not herself too? – but it turned out that Jor-El had visited many years earlier and picked the Kents as foster parents…for their child who hadn’t even been conceived yet. Whatever. Doesn’t sound like Lara had much say in it.

Then there’s Kara, whose mother Allura is never once mentioned. Is she even alive in this canon? All we hear about is how her father never lets her out of Kandor alone, that it was easy to sneak away while he was in his lab, and that she once thought of him as “a god” (yeah right). So I don’t think she has a mother. Zor-El certainly acts like he doesn’t have a wife when he tries to force Lara to become his wife (more on that in a bit).

And of course, the “miracle baby” that is Kal-El. Not sure what’s so miraculous about him, but Kara immediately starts planning her entire life around babysitting him. Lara is noticeably not pregnant-looking, much like Lana never once appeared remotely pregnant. So she can’t be more than a couple months pregnant, but they’re talking about the fetus like it’s already a sure thing. Do these women have anything else in their lives? Also, more blathering about destiny (Clark’s, that is) that kind of contradicts itself. What’s Kara’s destiny, I wonder?

To prove that Zor-El really isn’t the great guy Kara thinks he is, he shows up suddenly and inexplicably tries to rape Lara (with the added threat of forced marriage). Uh. Huh. The really scary part is that Zor-El wipes Kara’s mind when she interrupts him, so we’re left wondering if he continued afterward, or if Lara escaped back to Krypton unharmed. I so did not need that to be part of my heroes’ backstory. As my boyfriend said about a scene in Bionic Woman recently, “the message is that all men are creeps and all women are beautiful victimized people”. So true here. I hate that they did that to Supergirl Lara.

The parallels between Lara and Mary, the mother on Supernatural, are striking. Dressed in white, literally aglow like an angel, all sweet and self-sacrificing for her son/s. Idealized but not seen as a real person with a life beyond motherhood. Existing solely to further her son/s stories and not her own (not even Kara’s, really). So I felt like I’d seen much of this episode before, and it brought up the same problematic issues as Supernatural with Lara as the doomed angelic mother. I’m kind of worried that Lara’s going to die a fiery, angelic death in the next episode O_O Please Smallville: can we have an episode where Lara and Kara have an entire conversation that’s about their lives and decisions, and not about devoting their efforts to taking care of Clark?

Other things I could have done without in this episode:

- Kara flirting with the dork from Homeland Security, er, “Domestic Security” to get information. (Why the name change anyway?) So far, every time Kara’s needed to get a guy to help her with her goal, the show’s had her flirt with him in a blatently pandering way. Yeah right! Like that’s the only (or best) way a woman can get anyone to work for her. So doesn’t work that way in the real world. It’s really getting annoying. Makes me feel dirty just watching. She’s a superhero forgodssake. Stop putting her in tight, boob-squeezing red dresses and high heels. Supergirl doesn’t need that shit, she’s Supergirl. I demand three episodes in a row with Clark in tight leather pants and lots of helpless!sexy!victimization as penance!

- Kara being subdued and tortured by the evil gov’t agent. The rogue gov’t agent thing has been done before (Lois & Clark had it in the very second episode), and it doesn’t have to be done like this. That entire scene was so gendered it’s not even worth analyzing. Suffice it to say, it would never play out that way if Clark were the one captured. It really lessened my enjoyment of the flashback scenes having them take place in the context of Kara being tortured in such a porny way.

On the continuing saga of the Corruption of Lana Lang: Ooh, the ISIS support network is actually a front! I did not see that coming. Also, I now realize that Lana’s Secret HQ is in Metropolis, not the Talon. I do not know how she keeps commuting back and forth between Metropolis and Smallville so quickly. It’s kind of sad that those people are being exploited yet again. They just can’t catch a break, can they? Poor Chloe, every time she tries to take control of her life and deal with her new state, she’s left even more isolated. She’s been given a new power, which you’d think would be a good thing, but instead it’s being treated like a disease she needs to “recover” from (Lana even calls IRIS a “free clinic” which sounds really icky). Lame.

(When I first saw the website for ISIS, I thought it said IRIS, as in the underground resistence in Beyond Good & Evil and the feminist IRIS Gaming Network named after it. I R Big Geek :-)

Was anyone else creeped out by Clark telling Lana at the end that he had his mother’s DNA in that crystal (which apparently he’s keeping from Kara, selfish boy), and that he hopes to see her again. Yikes! Is he asking Lana to co-opt Lex’s resources to clone his mother?! Why would you even tell someone that? They’re probably setting up, in Smallville’s usual clunky fashion, how Lana will get superpowers next week and/or how Lara comes back, but it just served to make Clark look very creepy. It puts him in the same league as Zor-El and Lex. Those crazy men and their unnatural science.

So next week Lana gets Clark’s superpowers (I mean, “abilities”) and, naturally, goes crazy from the power. ‘Cause that’s what women do. Look at Kara: she was so busy daydreaming that she almost took out an airplane! Women can’t be trusted with power, no siree. God I hope she kills Lionel.

[Every week I put off writing these reactions because I think it'll be so hard, then I take a moment to actually do it and it just flows out. It's actually getting easier, although I don't know about better. Maybe I should keep writing them. Yes/No?]

Related posts:

• Smallville 7×08: Blue
• “Lara” Second Viewing