Smallville 7×13: Hero (Part 2)

I think by now everyone’s sick to death of the standard Smallville freak-of-the-week plot, so I won’t bother criticizing that here. But I was pretty pissed off they did it to Pete again. I still remember “Velocity” from Season 3 and its character assassination of the normally stand-up Pete. That was one of the few (only?) Pete-centric episodes, and for them to bring him back only to do it to him again is infuriating.

But even for that tired old plot, Pete’s torture at Lex’s hands is shockingly brutal. The violence he suffers at the hands of Lex and then Lex’s proxy is way over the top. The fact that it’s out of character (not that there’s such a thing as consistent character on this show) makes it more suspect. I’m not sure what it means that Lex uses a silent black man to punish Pete for refusing to run his errands in his war with two other powerful white men. Here my white privilege ignorance really shows thru, because I can’t explain why this inexplicable, extra nasty violence heaped on the show’s only (former) regular black cast member feels so wrong. But I did notice it. Pete suffers serious, lasting injury (not as much as you’d think) while Lex *flips in air and lands on his FACE* and walks away without a scratch! Visually speaking, that stunt was amazing. But really stupid, along with Clark tossing the other guy across the room. Doesn’t he even care about injuring or possibly *killing* people? (In the first season of Lois & Clark there’s an episode in which Lex Luthor creates a Superman clone who lacks Clark’s morals. Lois knows something’s off with “Superman” when he bodily tosses some criminals into the police van. On Smallville, such amoral behavior is routine.) I’m disturbed that Clark and Lex get away with these kinds of actions so often without even the mention of pressing charges. That’s an astounding amount of privilege they wield, and the show doesn’t even attempt to problematize it. To add insult to injury, Pete’s suffering is made to seem like his own fault for refusing to heed the advice of his white buddies who want him keep his head down, don’t stand out, don’t try to make a difference and don’t think for one second you can be a hero. I felt sick when Pete groveled said gratefully to Clark “[I] guess the best part about knowing your secret is being able to say…thank you.”

I did find something to like in this episode! Kara’s and Pete’s clothes are nice, if a bit boring for Pete. (What does the costume designer have against Jimmy?) I really dug Pete’s hoodie and t-shirt with the stencil-y design. My boyfriend has some t-shirts like that and I really like them, probably because they remind me of web graphics =) Also…I never realized before how cute Pete is *grin* I really wanted him to shake up the status quo and knock some sense into the idiots that his friends have become (Lex wasn’t actually his enemy when he left, that’s a bit of retconning). His guest appearance could have been a wonderful opportunity for the writers to get back on track, maybe use Pete as an audience-viewpoint character to address how messed up the show’s become. But that would require the writers to actually realize how godawful the show is. I’m pretty sure they think they’re spinning gold and that ending every episode unhappily makes the show “deep”.

Kara’s also wearing a really cute hoodie in the opening first scene. Hurray for sensible clothing! I was so happy to see her fully clothed for a change. Kara wears white in every scene, in stark contrast to the usual red and blue. The white hearkens back to her first “angelic” appearance and also signals her depowered state. The colour is symbolic of innocence, that is, her ignorance and vulnerability. Kara is without protection here: Lana and Lionel decide together to lie to her about her true identity in order to “protect” her, and Clark protests only weakly. That didn’t make *any* sense: Lana of all people should empathize with Kara’s position and understand how hiding crucial information leaves Kara vulnerable. At least she would if the writers had any understanding of character or, you know, gendered power differences. Knowledge is power, and it’s the only thing that can protect Kara. But Lana and Lionel seem incapable of thinking about anything besides protecting Clark’s precious secret, which should be a clear sign to Clark that these are not the type of people you want for friends.

Their idea of protection is infantilizing: they don’t realize that she needs the tools to protect herself. They treat her like a child who can’t make the best decisions for herself, but it’s bound to fail. Not because Lex was the “first one to find her”, but because there’s no way she’s ever going to recognize the fake life they’ve created for her. She’s not from Earth, nothing about it would be familiar to her, and the idea that she’s an alien from another planet wouldn’t be strange at all: she grew up on a planet with portals to other planets. Her present lack of powers is actually a plus because she didn’t grow up with powers. If anything, she should have begun speaking Kryptonese the moment she lost her memory. The plot holes in this amnesia gimmick are so big you could drive an exploding planet through them.

And then there’s the replay of Lana/Lex, or for the Supergirl fans, Matrix/Lex Luthor II from the comics. Ew. EW. EWWWW. So sick of the tired, sexist plot of pushing the naive young woman into the arms of the scheming devil (all for the benefit of the male hero’s storyline of course). The slo-mo musical montage presents us with two very disturbing scenes: Clark hiding Kara’s bracelet in his barn, repeating his earlier betrayal of Kara with the crystal. And Lex closing the doors of his den in the audience’s face, with its implied threat of sexual assault. That isn’t what’s going to happen, but using the imagery is a cheap and easy way to wring maximum dread out of the audience. Tapping into the memes of a rape culture without acknowledging that they’re contributing to it is pretty damn low.

I’m just crossing my fingers that Lionel and Clark’s unholy alliance is coming to an end. In an episode filled to the bring with stupid people doing stupid things, it filled me with glee when Clark discovered that Lionel had been hiding Kara’s bracelet and threateningly told him “You and I need to talk”. FINALLY!!