By John Keegan
Visit Critical Myth for an archive of John's TV Review archives, with more than 1100 entries.
The central plot of this episode is a nice if overly obvious statement on Clark’s future journey. Warrior Angel is meant to represent Superman, and the moral of the story underscores the lesson that Clark was beginning to learn in the sixth season, thanks to Green Arrow: Clark should be looking at saving people around the world, not just attending to his personal desires. If the story found a way to include a scantily-clad Christina Milian, all the better.
The writers seemed to take the topic in a slightly different direction, however, criticizing some of the online discussion groups, especially the posters who have been calling for Lana to be killed off so Clark can move on to greener pastures. As framed within the episode, any such fans were more concerned with adherence to continuity over reinterpretation, and were unreasonable to the extreme.
Of course, from the writers’ perspective, this has nothing to do with stale storytelling or growing discontent with the limitations of an actress. It’s all about bloodthirsty fans who want something that the writers aren’t ready or willing to deliver. Unfortunately, much of the recent material on the series, particularly since the fifth season, has pointed to a bad end for Lana. Even this episode could be seen as foreshadowing such a fate. Fans can hardly be blamed for embracing an underlying theme if the writers decided not to pull the trigger.
That said, this was a better effort than most of the season to date. Ironically, Lana’s character was one of the highlights. Lana is finally becoming more interesting, because her time with Lex taught her some disturbing lessons. Lionel may have been correct: it’s less about protecting Clark and more about revenge. If that’s the case, the current bliss between Clark and Lana could come to a bitter end, and this time, it would be Lana’s doing.
I liked the continuity regarding Lex and his comic book collection, and how he eventually attempted to get the psycho to reveal the truth about Clark using their shared obsession. It established the link between Lex and Devilicus, adding to the foreshadowing elements. Of course, Lex was foiled again, which was a bit hard to swallow under the circumstances, but that’s par for the course. It has long since become impossible to reconcile how Lex can be so sure about Clark yet never trust his own conclusions. |
