Clockwork Planet Smallville S7 EP11 ‘Siren’ Review

Once upon a time a man came up with an idea. He thought it was a pretty good idea and as it turned out, he was bang on the money. Quite a lot of it in fact because his idea went on to become one of the most enduring franchises of all time. He created an icon for a generation, or several, and more than forty years on, that icon is still going strong. The icon’s name became synonymous with heroism, patriotism, idealism and strength and it still is. It represents everything that is great and good about the world, and us, the small frail creatures who are doing our damnedest to destroy it. It also represents redemption, because when he was first conceived, the icon was a bad guy.

In short, the icon became not only a household name, but he captured the imaginations of the people and struck a chord with every person, young or old, who has ever dreamed of growing up to be a beefy heterosexual man in tights who wares his underpants on the outside. There are kids in India who don’t speak any English, but will respond with excited shouts of his name when shown a picture of his world famous ‘S’ symbol.

The icon’s name is Superman.

The greatest fictional hero the world has ever known. Superman. The Man of Steel. Our solar powered saviour from the stars. The “light to show the way”.

But every hero’s journey must have a beginning and it’s fair to say, Smallville has always had a mountain to climb. There have been many attempts to explain the origins of Kal-El of Krypton. Hell, he hasn’t even been Kal-El forever, at first his name was Kal-L. Things have been rebooted more than once.

However, the truth is that Superman isn’t really Superman at all. He’s a farmers son from Kansas and his name is Clark Kent. Bang on about his origins on a planet that’s been dead for thousands of years all you like, but Kal-El is his biological name, it’s not who he is. Similarly, Superman is just a mask, an untouchable paragon of virtue and light, a face to show a grateful and sometimes hostile world in order to protect the people he loves. The man behind the mask is Clark Kent and for all his power he is just that; a man.

Smallville, more than any other show, had the potential to tell the story of that man, and why he chose to become an icon in the first place. Nearly seven years later, I for one am no closer to knowing. The Clark Kent of Smallville is a whinging, mopey, angst ridden fool who simply refuses to grow up or take responsibility for his actions. He’s a shell, a hollow waste of space and about the furthest thing from a hero you can imagine. I’m sick to death of him.

Contrast him with Oliver Queen who returns briefly in ‘Siren’. Ollie is a dashing, unfeasibly good looking man in a stupid outfit. Within five minutes of the episode opening, we get to see him strutting his superhero stuff, twanging arrows at some daft looking cow in fishnets. He arrives, delivers his one liner (badly it must be said, and in a stupid voice) and saves a damsel in distress from the forces of evil eye makeup. No moody stares and petulant silences, no pointless bickering with his drippy girlfriend, just good clean superhero fun.

When was the last time Clark did anything like that?

‘Siren’ is a classic example of everything that is currently wrong with Smallville’s central character.

After Chloe uses some more of her stupidly implausible techno bollocks to hack into Lex Luthor’s files for Oliver on a regular basis, the younger Luthor decides enough is enough and hires himself some super powered help to put an end to her meddling. Enter the ludicrously dressed ‘Black Canary’. A woman with the ability to ‘scream’ at subsonic frequencies with enough resonance to shatter arrows in flight and who apparently designed her superhero costume with the sole purpose of falling out of it every ten seconds and looking like a hooker from a cheap bondage parlour. Canary is the love interest of Green Arrow in the comic books, a typical ‘spunky gal’ and apparently makes most other female superheroes look like plain Janes in the looks department. Smallville’s attempt at the character isn’t too bad, aside from one thing. Her hair.

Black Canary is meant to have luscious long blonde hair, but in Smallville, she doesn’t. That’s problem number one. Problem number two is that when toddling around as her alter ego, a gobby journalist, she wares possibly the stupidest wig ever created. It’s difficult to take a woman seriously when she appears to have a piece of coconut fibre matting strapped to the top of her head.

Anyway, she works for Lex and chucks knives at Chloe (boo!) so for most of the episode she serves as an antagonist. This of course puts her on a collision course with Mr Mopeypants (aka Clark) and it doesn’t end well for him.

Nothing about Clark is right in this episode. Black Canary is basically just a normal human woman (who seems to have shins of steel the way she keeps dropping down into view without snapping her spindly legs like twigs) who happens to be able to emit a subsonic barrage of sound. Clark is supposed to be invulnerable to everything but magic, Kryptonite and Doomsday. He’s almost as fast as light, strong enough to punch an intergalactic warlord into space or bench-press a mountain, can see in about a million spectrums, exhale a tornado, survive in space unaided, freeze a lake solid in a second and SHOOT BLOODY LAZERS FROM HIS EYES. This is less a contest and more a joke. Yet he loses. In less than twenty seconds.

Ok, so he has super hearing and he wasn’t expecting someone to scream at him until his ears bled, but so what?

Every fight Clark has had this season has seen him get tossed around like a rag doll, usually without throwing a single punch. This is meant to be Superman. Superman never loses. Ok he may not be able to fly yet, but he’s still the Man of Steel. It’s heartbreaking to see one of the most beloved heroes ever being used as a punching bag by people he should simply swat aside like flies. The scene where he confronts Black Canary would have been better if he had simply stood there grinning with his arms folded whilst she flailed away at him, then said something along the lines of ‘let’s talk’ when she gave up. The scene in Superman Returns where he takes a minigun to the chest and .45 to the eyeball before responding with a wry smile and a raised eyebrow, is the perfect example of how this kind of thing SHOULD be handled. The fact that it isn’t is simply a total waste of potential and an insult to the very nature of the character. Much of Superman’s charisma comes from his power. He doesn’t need to sweep about in a big black cape going ‘BOO!’ at people like Batman because he can, should he desire, EAT A VOLCANO. Clark seems to suck the life out of every scene he is in at the moment and despite him being the star of the show, I was actually praying for him to sod off whenever he appeared so we could get a bit more ‘Green Arrow’ screen time.

And please GOD don’t get me started on Clark and Lana (I’m still not calling them ‘Clana’, please go chew an electric fence whilst hitting yourself about the head with a brick if you think I should). A good quarter of the episode is wasted on them trading awkward glances, talking shit, crying and shouting at each other. ENOUGH!!

I simply cannot imagine anyone, not even the most ardent fan, caring one jot about Clark and Lana’s relationship anymore. It’s a total waste of time and it needs to end.

Talking of relationship woes we also get a story arc about Lois and Ollie revealing that they still have feelings for each other, which ends with Ollie’s secret being discovered by Lois and eventually with the two of them breaking up for good. At which point Lois turns to Clark of all people, someone she is supposed to dislike unless my memory totally fails me, for comfort. Whilst it’s pleasing to see the beginnings of something between the two of them, and Clark being involved in an emotional scene where he isn’t the one being emotional for fucking once, it doesn’t make a lot of sense when nobody has bothered to explain why the two of them are suddenly the best of friends.

Finally, after much laborious messing about and Black Canary deciding that she doesn’t like working for Lex and swapping sides, we get to the grand finale of the episode: the big fight.

Sadly however, this has got to be my standout stupid moment of the week. Now don’t get me wrong here, the idea of Lex Luthor wielding duel pistols against the superhero tag team of Green Arrow and Black Canary is a fun one, but the execution is terrible.

When things get violent, Lex, after showing no signs of it for six seasons, suddenly reveals himself to be what can only be described as a ‘Gun Wielding Super-Ninja’. He trades a lightning series of blows with Arrow, whilst trying to shoot him in the face and missing by a whisker each time (and if this sounds familiar that’s probably because you have seen the film Equilibrium, which features exactly the same fight scene, only without a man in green leather fetish gear). Smallville has never been big on plausibility or originality, but stealing an entire scene from a recent feature film is pure stupidity, especially when the man doing the shooting is a rich public school boy who thinks fencing is a manly thing to do with his time. Ollie should have wiped the floor with him.

The other stupid thing about the scene is that despite it being the most interesting fight in a long time featured on the show, Clark, our hero, isn’t even in most of it! When he eventually did show up and performed the old ‘swat bullets out of the air and save people in slow motion’ routine AGAIN, I actually felt my heart sink, because I knew the fun, stupid as it was, was over. Rather than a saviour or a hero, he felt like the drunk guy at a party who throws up all over a hot chick and ruins everyone’s evening.

Yet again, Clark is denied the ability to save the day with any kind of style or charisma. He even deliberately allows Lex to get stabbed in the shoulder, which is both petty and stupid since had the knife clipped an artery and ended the baldy bad guy, Clark would have been wracked with guilt. Like the entire episode, all the fight serves to show is just how boring and un-cool Clark has become in comparison to nearly every other character on the show. It’s not as if the Smallville team can’t do entertaining things with Clark. I recall him catching a flailing Christina Millian earlier this season as she was hurled from a speeding car with a fantastic flourish, but they simply refuse to craft more moments like this and it’s a real shame.

As the episode draws to a close, Green Arrow and Black Canary disappear off into the night together to go play at being heroes, and Clark refuses to join in. He then heads home to subject us to yet another attempt at breathing life into his doomed relationship with Lana. Great.

Overall, ‘Siren’ just irritated. Our hero has become lost, boring and contrived. Even acts of heroism on his part seem hollow these days and his personal life, sparky interactions with the awesome Chloe aside, is a total waste of space and screen time. It’s a great shame to see a true icon brought to his knees, but that’s exactly what has happened. The magic of Superman seems a long way off, and Clark’s journey to greatness seems to have stalled so badly it’s actually gone into reverse. The show is in desperate need of a total change in direction and tone and frankly, it can’t come soon enough. I actually preferred Bizzaro to the real Clark (Welling’s acting aside) and that’s simply not how it should be. Both Smallville and its central character have a long, long way to go…

5.5/10

Clockwork Planet Smallville S7 Episode 10 ‘Persona’ Review

A couple of episodes back, in my ‘Blue’ review, I tore into the Smallville writing team for taking a decent storyline and ruining it by rushing it to a messy and unsatisfying conclusion.  I was talking about the ‘Kara and her crystal’ plotline in that particular case and it frustrated me greatly to have to announce that one of the better aspects of this rather poor seventh season had gone down the pan.  A shame then, that when watching ‘Persona’, I was smacked between the eyes by a sense of déjà vu so overpowering it made me feel like I had been ‘Trotskyied’ with an ice axe. 

In ‘Persona’, both of the major plot lines that have dominated the last few episodes are resolved.  So say goodbye to the ‘Julian Luthor’ story, and the ‘Clark is actually Bizzaro’ twist, because both aren’t so much ‘concluded’ as bumped off hit-man style and left to rot amongst the hopes fans had for a satisfying exploration of either.  That said however, this is one of the stronger episodes of a distinctly lacklustre season. 

Bucking my usual bile filled trend for mercilessly leaping at an episode’s jugular from the off for a second, allow me to indulge myself by starting with a good point for once.  Chloe is back on form! Champagne!

 After being given a genuinely terrible script to try and pry a decent scene or two out of last episode, something even she couldn’t manage, Allison Mack is offered a chance to make amends and does so with an almost palpable sense of relief.  Her performance isn’t stunning, but it’s flavoured with the nuances and snappy delivery that have made her a fan favourite, and for once, she actually plays a key role in episodic events.  See, Chloe twigs that something appears to be wrong with Clark, (aside from him being ‘played’ by Tom Welling that is, who yet again manages to make a wooden hat stand look like Marlon Brando by comparison) and she decides to try and find out what.  ‘Clark’ is hunting for the little Kryptonian shield he yanked out of the town time capsule a few episodes back, because he needs it to track down the fleetingly mentioned ‘other Kryptonian’ who has been living on earth for over a century.  The fact that he can’t remember where it is, when as she puts it, his “mind’s like a titanium trap” seems distinctly odd to her.  It also seems distinctly odd to me, because in the opening episode of the season, Bizzaro tells Clark “I didn’t just borrow your DNA, I have all your memories, all your thoughts”, something the writers appear to have completely forgotten in another display of startling stupidity. 

Either way, this combined with ‘Clark’s’ bizarre behaviour and threatening demeanour make Chloe decide to make tracks for the Kent farm and pinch the little shield thing before Bizzaro finds it.  Smart move.

We then get a lot of filler, with Bizzaro running (or flying) about, having his merry way with Clark’s life.  He taunts Jor-El in the fortress, and persuades Lana to leave Smallville with him.  In fact, the episode opens with a very strange scene involving Clark and Lana (if you think I should refer to them as ‘Clana’ like so many of the fan-tards who watch this show, then please go stick a cheese grater up your back passage, then jump up and down on a trampoline) apparently naked, and in bed together.  Now correct me if I’m wrong, but despite sex being heavily implied in this scene, isn’t it physically impossible for old Krypto-pants, phantom or not, to fill Lana with his love-gunge without either sending her head flying across several states riding upon a jet of cruise missile ejaculate, or filleting her like a salmon with his big-veined love cane?  Yet again the writers seem to be conveniently forgetting about anything that has happened in previous episodes just for the hell of it and it reeks of sloppiness.

Anyway, after James Masters pops up briefly as Braniac, eats a rat with his finger and then has a quick chinwag with Bizzaro, which results in the two villains working together, the real Clark turns up again.  Having been released from his icy prison in the fortress without so much as a peep of explanation as to why Jor-El stuck him in the deep freeze in the first place, he sets about telling everyone the truth about who he is and tracks down the ‘other Kryptonian’ who is living on earth in order to get help killing Bizzaro.  Despite it being almost unforgivably obvious that Braniac is clearly playing everyone for the bunch of chumps they are, this does deliver on a couple of counts.  Firstly we get a nice little scene involving Chloe and Clark, where a clearly shell-shocked Chloe wisely refuses to believe that Clark is actually Clark and not Bizzaro.  Aside from the fact that Chloe had no idea about Bizzaro’s aversion to sunlight, and therefore her acceptance of his ‘proof’ of being the real steel deal making not a jot of sense, (he basically tells her, ‘if I do this thing I could have made up, it will prove I’m who I say I am’), her reaction is pitch perfect and shows exactly why Chloe and Clark work so well together.  If the man had one ounce of common sense, he would chuck the drippy Lana and be all over Chloe like a rash. 

Secondly, we get tension.  As soon as Braniac started pitting Clark and his phantom-clone against each other, I actually began to feel a sense of genuine excitement as the two hurtled toward an eventual epic confrontation. 

Clark uses the shield thing from back home to locate ‘Dax-Ur’, a Kryptonian scientist who has been living on earth as a human and was conveniently responsible for creating the brain interactive construct (Braniac).  Having strapped a lump of blue Kryptonite to his arm, in the form of a charming bracelet, in order to live a normal human life with his wife and daughter, the powerless boffin is living in the middle of a desert fixing cars.  Sadly his first meeting with Clark has got to be the standout stupid moment of the week.

Clark strolls in through the door of his garage, having never met him before, and despite him looking like any other human, simply assumes that he must be the Kryptonian just because the shield dropped him in close proximity to the man.  He then proceeds to blow his closely guarded secret identity, something that he has almost destroyed countless close personal relationships over, to a total stranger without so much as a momentary pause for contemplation.

Now don’t get me wrong, it makes a tiny amount of sense because the shield effectively led him to the man, but what if he had been the business partner of Dax-Ur, and the real Kryptonian chappy was in the crapper at the time?  I suppose you could argue that Clark was x-ray goggling the place, but still, marching up to some random and announcing a secret you have fought your entire life to guard as if it’s nothing? Jesus, why not just drop in for a chat with Jay Leno on national TV and be done with it?  If it hadn’t been Dax-Ur, Clark would have looked a tad stupid to put it far too politely.  And what about the man himself?  He’s apparently a ‘brilliant scientist’ (because every American film and TV export needs one of those fuckers, no matter how unlikely; ‘I Am Legend’ I’m looking at you, you massive pile of wank), yet he proceeds to demonstrate less intelligence than your average house fly by simply accepting that Clark is in fact Kryptonian, without demanding so much as a jot of proof.  “But Nihil” I hear you cry, “it’s all very well you sitting there with your perfectly formed buttocks and chiselled jaw-line telling us that he didn’t demand proof, but the fact is Clark gives him a piece of Kryptonian technology and a Kryptonian name, surely that’s enough proof to satisfy even you!”

To which I reply, “The shield was in human hands, Dax-Ur knew that, and an escaped phantom or dedicated human researchers could have found the name Kal-El from somewhere.  For an Alien who has been living with the constant fear of his true nature being revealed for over a century and believing his entire race to be extinct, he’s a pretty fucking stupid one.” 

This leads me on to yet ANOTHER stupid thing about the scene. Why doesn’t Clark even bat an eyelid at the fact that a Kryptonian man who lived on his home planet for long enough to become a shining beacon of its scientific community, and then decamped to Earth for over a century, doesn’t appear to be a day over 60?  It raises some interesting questions about exactly how long Clark himself will last, but this is totally ignored along with all the other neat possibilities having an older and far wiser Kryptonian on earth generated.  And I do mean ‘generated’ because at the end of the episode, yet another Kryptonian is bumped off about five minutes after appearing in Smallville, ending any interesting future plot arcs before then can even be imagined. 

It’s at this point that the episode falls apart.  Clark and Bizzaro have their final confrontation and it is without doubt one of the most unsatisfying in the history of the show.  Quite why the writers feel the need to set us up with some truly fantastic fights, and then have them collapse almost instantly into one-sided thirty second affairs before the bad guy goes pop, is beyond me.  If they had spent a little money, we could have enjoyed an earth shaking super powered tussle.  Instead Bizzaro is dispensed and that’s that… aside from Lana implying she doesn’t love the real Clark, but frankly, who gives a shit anyway. 

So, I’ve almost run out of review space and I haven’t even mentioned the other major plot line of the episode: Julian Luthor marching into Lionel Luthor’s office and effectively saying ‘Hi dad’, much to Lex’s annoyance. 

As plot’s go, this one also had fantastic potential, but just like the Bizzaro arc, and Kara’s crystal before that, this is dispensed with in the space of a single crowded episode, with events coming so thick and fast you can hardly even blink before it’s over.  It’s a terrible shame. 

Julian and Lionel decide to get to know one another, prompting Lex to fire his cloned brother from his position as editor of the Daily Planet out of spite.  Julian tells Lex, quite rightly, to go fuck himself, which is never a smart move, but is perfectly in keeping with the character of a Luthor. 

Sadly, as with the ‘Braniac playing everyone for a fool’ element also running through the episode, the fact that Lex is going to have Julian killed is as obvious as someone beating you about the head with a broken beer bottle, so when it happens, it’s not even slightly shocking.  Despite this, it sets up some really juicy plot lines for the Luthors in future episodes.  Lionel has lost his younger son twice now, something that’s bound to upset even the most black hearted human, and in the case of a Luthor, prompt an enraged and potentially murderous reaction.  Lex has nearly gone insane over Julian’s death once, in the excellent ‘Memoria’, and in a nice-if-overly-melodramatic nod to that extremely popular rain-soaked episode, Lex once again finds himself on the roof of the mansion in the middle of a downpour, blaming himself for Julian’s death (although this time of course, it’s unquestionably his fault). 

The possibility of the long overdue father/son battle between Lionel and Lex finally kicking off (a battle we know the insane younger Luthor will eventually win of course) is one that could finally propel Smallville to the heights it is irritatingly stubborn about reaching.  I can only hope that by the end of the next episode, I’m not spitting nails and madly hammering my keys as I rage about the useless, rushed and contrived destruction of potentially the best storyline Smallville has ever set us up with.  Sadly, ‘Persona’ was an entertaining yet crushing disappointment, and it’s easy to see ‘Lex vs Lionel’ going exactly the same way. 

6.7/10