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Smallville 7.1: "Bizarro" |
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Saturday, 29 September 2007 |
By John Keegan
Visit Critical Myth for an archive of John's TV Review archives, with more than 1100 entries.
According to several sources, this is the final season for “Smallville”. While other season arcs have hinted at incremental growth for Clark Kent, this is the season that must inevitably set the stage for Superman. Clark must complete the development of his moral code, recognize his unhappy pseudo-messianic role as someone within but apart from the world, and accept the personal price of power. Lex must end his dance with potential redemption and develop a strong justification for his future evil ways.
This season premiere provides more direction for Clark than Lex, bringing the long character arc of the sixth season to a relative close. In the sixth season, Oliver Queen was attempting to teach Clark about the balance between personal and global concerns. Clark noted that he had to clean up his mess from his time in the Phantom Zone, and now he has. No one expects him to run off and join the Justice League anytime soon, but with that crisis over, it’s time to deal with the personal issues once and for all.
Of course, that means reconciling the two sides of his nature: the Kryptonian legacy and the human upbringing. That’s always been a concern for the character, and probably always will be, but the writers will be trying to find some sense of resolution, however temporary. Bringing in Supergirl is apparently the means of addressing the Kryptonian aspect; one can only assume Chloe, Lana, and Lois will represent the human influence.
Supergirl (or Kara, as she will ultimately be named) was nicely introduced, in terms of the underwater imagery. I found the effects at the end to be atrocious, but that has nothing to do with the character. Until we’re given more to evaluate, it’s hard to tell if this is a good move. She doesn’t quite look the part of a serious contender, so it comes down to communicating depth.
It’s nice to see the writers kill off Chloe at least once (if not twice) just to get it out of their system. Hopefully she’ll be around for the rest of the season so she can discover the truth about her ability and have a strong character arc of her own. Chloe is still one of the best elements of the series, and she deserves more of a role than Ms. Exposition.
Lex seemed to be all over the map in terms of motivation and characterization, which is something that must be addressed quickly. Lex has always been the strongest character on the show, despite how poorly the writers have treated his motivations, so it’s disappointing to see such lack of direction. The writers served Lex best when they focused on giving him a reasonable rationale for Project 33.1; getting back to that would be a good thing.
Of course, it’s far more likely that the writers will continue to keep Lana as the prime motivator for both Clark and Lex. Lana’s survival was a given (even if her death would have been more useful as a plot device), so now it’s a matter of making her character more proactive. The sixth season saw Lana treated like an object to be possessed. Giving her a strong motivation of her own would do much to correct that oversight. |
