Clockwork Planet Smallville Ep 7 ‘Wrath’ Review

Opportunity is much like the British public transport system. It’s often never around when you want it, you frequently have to do things you really wish you hadn’t to make the most of it, and it’s incredibly easy to miss. Over the years, Smallville has made an art form of blatantly ignoring golden opportunities and plunging to new lows, in spite of a truly fantastic licence. Sadly, Wrath is a case in point. We get some development and some really neat moments, but they are mired in a bloated mess of a plot, some terrible performances and a barn load of atrocious clichés. And no, I’m not talking about the shag.

Yes there is a scene revolving entirely around sex in this episode that will doubtless have spotty pubescent muppets who can’t hear the word ‘sex’ without collapsing into fits of giggles tittering the world over. For those of us who don’t give a shit about sex in filmed media and actually have an understanding of the mechanics of ‘sending in the colonel’ it’s frankly mind boggling.

The basic premise is this: Lana gets Clarks powers by means of a lightning bolt and in a twist to the usual theme, Clark also retains his. This means that she can do everything Clark can do, aside from balancing a tractor on her cock . They spend a little while running about, and then Lana, the soulless little minx, quite accurately proves that despite womankind’s many protests, they are in fact more obsessed with sex than men 90% of the time (admit it ladies, its clearly true, you just hide it better than us). She throws herself at him and orders him to fish out his one-eyed trouser snake and occupy her like the Israeli army in the Gaza strip. Clark, who let’s face it, needs to get laid more than almost anyone else on earth, initially protests. But quickly (and sensibly it must be said) caves in and decides to spread Lana like fine butter and introduce her nether regions to his Kryptonian super-sausage.

What follows is a bizarre scene in which we are made to understand that the two of them are banging like a barn door in a storm by means of an earthquake (makes sense) and confusingly, several sonic booms. To be honest, I have no idea what we are supposed to imagine Clark is actually doing to Lana in there, but if sonic booms are involved I think he may be in need of a few pointers. Or possibly a pamphlet on ‘How to avoid premature ejaculation’.

This leads me neatly on to the standout stupid moment of the week, where we get a shot of Chloe sitting in the talon (despite the fact that she works in Metropolis), wondering why there appears to be a localized earth quake hitting Smallville (and if you can see where this is going, then rest assured you aren’t the only one). Never in human history has there been a more laborious set up for a punch line and I found myself genuinely disgusted that when Chloe rushed to the farm to find out if Clark had any idea what caused the tremors, nobody had the decency to quip ‘Wow, guess the earth really moved huh?’ For Christ’s sake Writers, if you are going to waste ten minutes of an episode setting up a bloody joke, at least have the decency to see it through.

There is also another rather worrying dimension to this little interlude: Lana might be pregnant. Again.

Without wanting to get too technical, I am acquainted with the behavioural mechanics of the male sexual organs, and I can assure you than given the performance an average man can turn in if sufficiently ‘provoked’, Clark Kent must shoot his wad with the force of an Artillery cannon, which rules out condoms (plus most people don’t keep them lying around in a barn). I also somehow doubt that Kryptonian sperm are going to say anything other than “Fuck right off” to ‘birth control’ or a ‘morning after pill’, or any other mode of contraception for that matter. All of which means, that since Clark most likely filled Lana with his salty man custard, she may very soon be experiencing the unwanted after effects of his supercharged gentlemen’s gel. (Yes I am trying to shoehorn every sexual reference under the sun into this review and no, I’m not going to stop).

This is an indescribably terrible idea for a story arc, so let’s hope the Smallville writers haven’t thought of it.

With this out of the way, Lana decides to use her newfound powers to get her revenge on Lex. This in essence is fine, if a little predictable. However, the way she goes about doing it isn’t.

For starters, let’s talk wardrobe shall we? If I was a newly created super being, my first instinct would not be to dress myself up like an idiot, but you can bet your bottom dollar it’s Lana’s. Clad in a black leather jacket and with her hair scraped back so hard it looks genuinely painful, she is clearly supposed to look ‘badass’ and ‘cool’, but actually ends up looking like a cross between the fonz and Morticia Adams. She is also caked in enough make up to protect her from re-entry into the earth’s atmosphere regardless of superpowers, which make’s her look less ‘threatening’ and more ‘genuinely frightening’. A bit like an air stewardess with a bad attitude.

She doesn’t act particularly sensibly either, brazenly ripping doors off safes and dumping a load of top secret data she steals from Lex on the desk of the Daily Planet’s excruciating editor, instead of jamming it up the government’s nose like anyone with a grain of common sense would. In fact, the only sensible thing Lana actually does with her powers is smack Lois in the face, for which I applaud her.

We also have the ‘fight’ scene between Lana and Clark, which was utter rubbish and a huge missed opportunity. It was rubbish because it lasted about six seconds and everyone knows that there is no way in a million years Clark would ever hit Lana. It sucked all the tension out of the scene and yet again the writers had to resort to Kryptonite to avoid spending money on effects. However, what really annoys me is that Lana shouldn’t have been fighting Clark in the first place. She should have been fighting Kara.

Think about it; Kara finds Lana knocking Clark about and charges in to protect him, setting up a brilliant excuse for a super powered bitch slappy cat-fight. It could have been campy fun and ended with the two of them ripping all their clothes off and having lesbian sex…alright perhaps that’s just me fantasising, but the point still stands.

On top of all of this, we get the terrible Daily Planet editor and the horrendous, two-dimensional whorebag the writers keep trying to pass off as Lois Lane.

Lois is one of the comic industry’s most iconic characters, and not just because she marries Superman. She has a cult status all of her own because she does a lot more than simply wash the titular hero’s underwear. She is a smart, funny, engaging woman, who is capable of taking Clark on with a decent chance of beating him in every regard other than superpowers. She is portrayed as fiercely intelligent and temperamental, but loving and kind at the same time. In short, she’s a perfect match for Clark and a thoroughly modern woman who has got to the top of her trade through sheer guts and ability. I like her.

Compare that to the Lois we get in Smallville. She’s a walking cliché, the rubbish ‘spunky gal’ archetype personified, and a slut. In this episode she finally gets together with her editor and I found myself sitting there with a horrid taste in my mouth as I watched the scene. It’s just so….wrong. Lois is meant to become an award winning journalist by being good at it, not because she happens to be shagging Perry White or his immediate twatbag of a predecessor. It’s an affront to the fans of the character and worse, it’s turning her into a totally unworthy match for Clark. Plus she has terrifying eyebrows. The damn things just look unholy.

So then, is there anything good about Wrath?

Yup, the Luthors.

Lionel does a decent job but Lex was simply excellent at a couple of points.

The best moments of the episode come near the end, when Lex and Clark have yet another conversation in the mansion. However, this one is dripping with ominous atmosphere and for once, didn’t simply consist of Clark wrapping Lex across the knuckles for yet another bonkers secret project. Lex actually has the upper hand here, as Clark desperately tries to convince himself that Lana is still his little angel and it’s great to see. The whole thing was helped along by an able script, great direction (the monotonous ticking of that clock as the only backing noise is genius) and a fantastic performance by Michael Rosenbaum. His frankly excellent delivery of lines such as: “What do you think is stronger Clark? Her hatred for me or her…affection for you?” and “Funny thing about obsession is, it outlives everything, even love” was on a different level to the usual. Tom Welling didn’t do a bad job either.

Chloe is finally allowed to do something other than mope about being picked on and her shared screen time with Clark serves as a bleak reminder of how awesome some of their exchanges have been in the past. Alison Mack is the only member of the cast who can match Rosenbaum and she manages it here when warning Lana that she had better think twice about hurting Clark.

In summery, Wrath was an episode of contrasts. It had some excruciatingly terrible moments, and a few that stood out as simply fantastic. I only hope that we get more of evil Lex and a lot less of Lois in future.

6.7/10

Clockwork Planet Smallville Ep 6 ‘Lara’ Review

This season of Smallville has so far been something of a mixed bag. Compared to the utter dross that Smallville has subjected us to in the past, season 7 is actually doing quite well. There are a few strong plot elements keeping things ticking along nicely. It’s a shame then that other aspects of the show so often let it down. For every decent bad guy or evil act by Lex, we get another appearance by Lois or the new Daily Planet editor, or even worse, both, to drag things back down into the mud. One of the few real plus points about season 7 so far, aside from the rubbish, disjointed ‘weather girls’ episode, has been the more long running ‘Kara and her crystal’ plotline, that has so far spanned several episodes and dominates ‘Lara’. It’s good to see the writers continuing to focus on it here.

Since time immemorial (hyperbole) I have been banging on about the almost total lack of Superman related content in Smallville, and last week I awarded ‘Action’ a decent score, mostly because it went some way towards addressing this issue. Imagine my surprise when ‘Lara’ began not with the usual ‘let’s set up this week’s meteor freak’, but instead with a scene set on Krypton. Yes, this episode opens with a plot element revolving solely around Superman’s home world, and if at this point you feel the need to drop spontaneously dead of a shock induced coronary, then please feel free because I almost did.

We see Krypton in a state of war as Kara is bundled into her spaceship by her father, protesting all the way, and then cut to a little scene of Kara almost getting run over by a 747. She zips out of the way at the last minute and we all spit blood because they blew yet another flight scene on her and not Clark. It is however, a neat little opening. If Smallville needs anything, its a firmer connection to the superb Superman license and it’s good to see that the writers may finally be cottoning on to this.

The main thread of the episode revolves around Kara and her hunt for her crystal. It’s a decent enough storyline to be following, but it’s not handled as well as it could be. For starters, in a ridiculously unbelievable scene, Kara stalks into a bar in a revealing red dress and proceeds to ‘seduce’ a rubbish nerd (who works at a top secret government lab where her crystal is being analyzed) and pump him for information. The problem is that it’s basically the equivalent of the Smallville writers shoving a drainpipe down your throat and pouring down it every tired, useless, shitty Hollywood ‘seduction’ cliché they can drum up, in the vain hope that you will digest the lot without complaining because you don’t have time to react. From the moment the scene begins, you know exactly how it’s going, so why even bother? It’s also incredibly unfair to men. Lets clear something up shall we, Ladies and Smallville writers?

Men often behave stupidly. It’s in our genes and there’s nothing we can do about it. However, we are NOT, no matter how useless with women, a bunch of simpering, sex crazed retards who, at the first sight of a pretty girl displaying a bit of cleavage and taking an interest in us, would be more than happy to divulge any and every secret held within our testosterone fuddled little minds. Despite being a nerd, this man is clearly clever enough to be working on the most top secret national security projects in existence, so why on earth he would fall for Kara’s amateurish attempts at seduction I simply cannot fathom. Anyone that clever and clearly desperate would spot her purpose a mile off, promise to tell her all if she slept with him, do the deed and then tell her to ‘fuck off’ for treating him like a retard when she demanded the information.

Despite all the silliness, Kara learns the location of her crystal and charges off to find it, breaking into a government lab in the process. However, someone has beaten her to it, so she storms back to the bar in a huff to question her idiot informant some more. Cue Clark turning up to stop her and a heated exchange of words between the two, which leads to the future Superman getting decked by Kara AGAIN and her blasting off into the sky, whilst Tom Welling does his best not to look disappointed that he doesn’t get the chance to do the same. A flying ‘chase’ sequence would have been cool, but ho hum, another opportunity slides past without so much as a whisper.

Kara then decides to go and hack into one of the highest security networks in the USA on Jimmy Olsen’s computer. Jimmy turns up, talks flirty shit at Kara and asks that she stop because he will rot in jail for her misuse of his equipment. She then reveals that she’s a computer genius so everything will be fine. Jimmy accepts this with a smile and a silly comment and we all die a little inside. I’m sorry, but if Kara had some kind of Krypto-device embedded in her brain that helped her learn things or something I could accept it, but the fact that the writers simply don’t bother to tell us how she is able to learn things so fast drives me mad. Smallville has enough unexplained crap in it already, the last thing we need is more.

Anyway, Kara soon gets arrested by pantomime baddie ‘Agent Carter’, who uses some nifty Kryptonite handcuffs on her, and is promptly strapped into a machine that allows the evil agent to extract information directly from his subject’s head, possibly killing him/her in the process.

Kara then relives a time when she came to earth several years before (along with Clark’s biological mother Lara and her own father Zor-El) looking exactly the same age and yet trying to convince everyone she was twelve by speaking like an idiot, wearing a terrible tee-shirt, and tying her hair back. She also explains her presence on earth by saying that she snuck through the same ‘portal’ that Lara used to get to earth, which prompted me to think: “If Kryptonians could fold time and space well enough to create a stable and apparently instantaneous portal to another world, why the hell did they spend so much time shooting their offspring off wildly about the galaxy in bloody space ships?!”

The rest of the scene plays out like some sort of interstellar episode of Neighbours, with melodramatic scene after melodramatic scene making the Kryptonian race seem less like a bunch of intergalactic super beings, and more like the cast of ‘The OC’. The contrived ‘Zor-El fancies Clark’s mum and will do anything to get her story’ seemed like a needless attempt to make the character seem more ‘evil’.

As for Lara sticking a photo of herself inside a picture frame in the Kent house, I can see where the writers were going with this one, but find it spectacularly unlikely that the photo would have remained undiscovered for all these years in a household containing a teenager with fucking X-Ray vision. Note to writers: think these things through.

Clark sees this little scene because he comes into contact with Kara and some Kryptonite whilst trying to rescue her, which provides a neat excuse for Clark to start taking more of an interest in his heritage again. Agent Carter, who has managed to uncover the identity of both Clark and Kara, is then promptly shot by Lionel Luthor, who yet again proves that every shady character in Smallville is perfectly content to hurl themselves into mortal danger on a weekly basis.

The episode ends with Kara returning to live at the Kent farm, after sharing a cringe worthy kiss with Jimmy, and a genuine surprise in the form of Clark revealing to Lana that he was the one who stole his cousin’s crystal from the government lab. It’s really not very often that Smallville manages to do anything you can’t see coming several country miles before it arrives, so it’s a real shame that this particular surprise manages to make precisely no sense whatsoever. Clark nicking the crystal I can deal with, even him not telling Kara is just about plausible, but implying that he is considering cloning his dead mother? Wrong wrong wrong.

Finally, we have the standout stupid moment of the week, which involves Chloe and Lana.

Now you may recall that when Lana first met up with Clark again, she told him not to tell Chloe and he reluctantly agreed. A few episodes later, Chloe and Lana are chattering away as if nothing has happened without so much as a peep of an explanation for why Lana has had such a massive change of heart or even bothered to make Clark agree to not telling Chloe in the first place. For everything Smallville does right, it has another of these massive fuckwitted inconsistencies rearing its ugly head and tearing down what little credibility the show manages to cling too. I don’t give a toss if it’s ‘implied’ that they must have met up again for the first time off screen. We should have seen it happen and it’s nigh unforgivable that we aren’t even given an explanation as to when and why it did.

Overall, ‘Lara’ was a solid, if barmy episode which was more connected with the Superman mythos then entire seasons of the show have been in the past. Lex and Lionel continue to be evil, which is nice, and Chloe continues to be tortured for no reason, which isn’t. I only hope that having delivered us two episodes in a row that have added small steps to Kal-El’s journey to hero status, I wont be ranting and raving about another useless ‘meteor freak’ episode next week.

6.9/10

Clockwork Planet Smallville Ep 5 ‘Action’ review

It’s often been a complaint of mine when knocking together a Smallville review that the show doesn’t feature enough ‘Superman’ related content. Let’s be honest, Clark is no closer these days to becoming the most iconic superhero ever created than he was a couple of seasons ago, and it’s really beginning to hurt the show. A good thing then, that although far from sufficient recompense for season after season of pointlessness, ‘Action’ gives us a tantalizing, if still rather rubbish glimpse at the boy Kent’s path to near godhood.

The episode opens with a nifty scene that neatly illustrates exactly why Clark Kent can be such a compelling character if handled correctly. Yes, he may be a floppy haired, flannel shirted arse most of the time, but by god he can do some cool stuff….apart from flying, but I’ve beaten that particular horse to death in my previous reviews, so I promise not to mention it again (for at least a paragraph or two).

The scene in which he catches the flailing body of guest star Christina Milian before being walloped between the shoulder blades by a flying car door, is a genuinely cool and super heroic moment. More of these please.

Milian is remarkably pointless in ‘Action’ and proceeds to prance about the screen wearing some of the most unlikely outfits in history for the duration of the episode. It’s one thing to awkwardly shoehorn yet another ‘guest star’ into an episode, but when they don’t even have the decency to do as good a job as Dean Cain did last week, you have to wonder why they bothered.

She does get a couple of fantastically awful lines though, which brightened up my day a little. When she says “there is something special about this one Lana” at the end of the episode I couldn’t help but think “yeah love, he’s the most unlikely ‘teenager’ in history”.

Anyway, the episode centers around a bunch of psychos, including several Luthors, a nutty stage hand and a certain former Luthor.

Firstly, lets deal with the main ‘villain’ of the piece. You will notice that I don’t use his name hear and there is a reason for this: I can’t for the life of me remember what it is. I’m serious. After last week’s memorable ‘Dr Knox’, this week’s bad guy is so unbelievably wet and useless that I can’t even be bothered to go and find out what he’s called. So for the purpose of this review, he shall be called: Dave.

See Dave is a big fan of comic books, and is working on a movie adaptation of ‘Warrior Angel’, a comic that features a somewhat Superman-like hero. This is where it all got a bit ironic because the Smallville writer’s rather unwisely decided to make a significant plot point out of many fans’ unhappiness with the quality of the fictional adaptation. Considering the alarming regularity with which Smallville doesn’t so much ‘tread on fans toes’ as ‘set fire to 60 years of mythos and piss all over it in an attempt to put it out’, I found myself surprised that they had the audacity to actually make it into a story. Still, you have to admire their balls for doing it.

Dave toddles off, having failed in his first attempt to kill Christina Milian (boo!) and proceeds to load a prop movie gun with a real bullet rather than a blank. We can tell that it’s a real bullet because he takes it out of a big box with ‘bullets’ written on it, instead of the big box right next to it sporting the word ‘blanks’. Half the time Smallville appears to be written by a bunch of utter bloody simpletons, so I found my intelligence genuinely insulted by this scene and very nearly stopped watching out of spite. For Christ’s sake guys, as tricks go, that’s pretty much up there with ‘claiming a middle eastern country is harboring weapons of mass destruction just so you can steal all their oil’ in terms of obviousness. Just because you wear your undergarments on your head doesn’t mean we do, so for fuck’s sake, stop treating us like a bunch of halfwits.

Christina nearly gets shot, Clark catches the bullet and Dave notices, so decides to make Lana into a pavement pancake by shoving her off a skyscraper in order to convince Clark to face up to his destiny and become a hero. In this case, I’m on Dave’s side.

This sets up our second nifty special effects sequence of the episode, in which Clark dives off said building, catching Lana in mid air and then stares lovingly into her eyes, totally unconcerned by the fact that he’s about to hit the ground at a great rate of knots. When he does, he totally flattens a car and then toddles off as if nothing has happened. It was nicely done, but by GOD what a missed opportunity.

Imagine for a second if Clark had dived off the building, caught Lana and stared into her eyes exactly as happens in the episode. Then gradually, the rushing blur of the skyscraper behind him had slowly come into focus. Why? Because he was flying without even realizing it, Lana looks down, notices, and grins at Clark. Clark frowns at her confused, also looks down, then realizes what he’s doing and with a startled “Woah!” plunges out of the sky, nearly dropping Lana before smashing into the car. That my friends, would have been a neat introduction to Clark’s ability to fly.

The other main plot thread of the episode revolves around Lionel Luthor, who you may recall was snatched away in the season premiere by possibly the most conspicuously ‘disguised’ bad guy ever. Lionel, it would seem, has been in something of a catatonic state these past few weeks, and is being held prisoner by some nutty bint who lives in a log cabin out in the local woods. Said nutter has decided that the best way to keep Lionel where he is, is to jam his hand in a bear trap rather than doing something sensible like tying him to the bed instead.

In a bizarre turn, Smallville then subjects us to a totally pointless and horrifically grizzly scene where Lionel rips his hand out of the trap, tearing massive gashes into his hand in the process. Nothing is left to the imagination and to be honest, I can’t see what the writers were trying to achieve by showing us the gory detail. If I was interested in seeing people getting tortured, I’d go and watch some god-awful piece of giblet strewn Hollywood dross like ‘Saw IV’. Smallville has never been afraid of a bit of gore, but for heaven’s sake people, if you are going to use special effects of any kind, make sure there is actually a point beyond senseless gratuity.

Having freed himself, Lionel legs it out of the cabin and promptly gets a shovel to the face courtesy of Lana, who presumably is out for a stroll. At night. In a forest. Alone. Carrying a shovel.

You see Lana was behind it all, or rather the increasingly likely ‘oh god its not really Lana, she’s a crazy clone lady’ storyline was. Just to add to the theory that all ruthless, obscenely rich people in Smallville haven’t heard of hired help and instead prefer to put themselves in mortal danger every week, Lex turns up to rescue his dad in person a short time later. Lionel then brutally beats the nutty women keeping him prisoner to death, which was far more in keeping with the Luthor family overall than that rubbish bear trap scene. The fact that Lex hardly even reacts to the horrific spectacle of his father venting his rage only serves to heighten the sense that both the Luthor men are getting perilously close to losing their humanity.

Lionel confronts Lana in the Kent barn, informing her that he knows all about her involvement in his kidnapping, but stubbornly refusing, as all the characters do, to actually tell us why she was bothering to keep him prisoner in the first place.

Aside from an incredibly staged little moment where Clark is given a cape, which he seems to like the look of, and a totally forgettable one involving Lois and that useless Daily Planet editor, that about wraps it up for ‘Action’. Apart, of course, from: The standout stupid moment of the week.

Yup, as usual, this week has several barmy moments, but one above all takes the cake. It even manages to trump Lana taking her shovel for a walk. Late in the episode, Lex goes to Bel-Reave to see Dave the psychotic floor manager and offers him some of the world’s rarest comic books in exchange for information about Clark Kent’s abilities.

Lets look at this again shall we? You are stuck in a notorious mental institution, never to see the light of day again. Then a baldy billionaire walks in through the door, offers to give you the equivalent of a small fortune, possibly enough to buy your freedom, and all he wants in return is for you to tell him about the secret of some guy you have never even met before? What the HELL would you do?! You would have to be genuinely deranged not to take the money and run, but that’s precisely the opposite of what Dave does. “It was all in my head” he claims, but we are never even given the slightest hint as to why he refuses to tell Lex everything. I was left gasping in blind frustration at the stupidity of the man.

Overall, ‘Action’ was less of a triumphant first step on Clark’s revived journey towards becoming Superman, and more a faltering stumble. However, that’s not to say it wasn’t without its merits. It didn’t resort to meteor freakery or lots of Lois, which is good, and at least it had the decency to contain some Superman related content. However, yet again, I can’t help but feel a sense of sadness at the show’s waste of such phenomenal potential. As is all too often the case, ‘Action’ was a distinctly average episode.

5.6/10