Clockwork Planet Smallville S7 EP13 ‘Hero’ Review

ONE REPUBLIC!!

Sorry, but having just watched “Hero”, one of the most absurd examples of glaringly pretentious teeth-grinding ‘hidden’ advertising within a television program ever filmed, that’s all I can think about. Or rather, how much I wish I could personally take each and every member of One Republic back in time to a medieval castle siege, strap them to the diseased and bloated body of a dead cow and fire them, by means of a large trebuchet, over the castle walls and into the arms of the starving peasants waiting behind said wall for a chance to vent their frustrations.

Stupid, smug, self-satisfied, emo, pop-cocks aside, the other big news this week is that the almost terminally boring and uselessly acted ‘token character turned into a black dude for the TV show to stave off the frenzied hooting from the politically correct’, Pete Ross turns up again in Smallville. Hooray?

Quite why Pete needed to turn up again having added nothing to the first three series’, aside from the obligatory black face, I really don’t know, but never the less, it’s what we get.

Things begin at the first of many One Republic concerts shoehorned into the episode, with Kara and Jimmy standing in a pleasingly sparse crowd (the less support for Rne Oepublic the better frankly) chatting about how gosh darn irritating it is that she can’t remember anything. Presumably it’s irritating for Jimmy more than Kara because she’s less likely to allow him to fill her with his toothpaste of love if she can’t remember who the fuck he is or why she fancies a scrawny little man-rat like him in the first place.

Either way, Olsen saunters off to buy drinks with which to accelerate the panty removal process and Kara, after having swayed like a glass eyed six year old in the midst of a slow-motion epileptic seizure for about five minutes (whilst Ron Opubelic murder their instruments and the camera caresses them like a well paid six-armed hooker), gets saved from a falling speaker by elastic Pete, the super stretch hero.

Pete it would seem, has managed to get himself the hilariously rubbish ability to elongate his own limbs by means of some Kryptonite laced chewing gum (Whatever did happen to, ‘kills Superman, no effect on humans’?). Upon discovering this ability, and having been snapped by Jimmy saving Kara with it, he unwisely decides to forgo turning his arms into a series of nooses with which to throttle Noe reublicp or enlarging his own cock to epic proportions and charges off to tell the world about his heroic awesomeness.

Before he can manage to tell everyone however, he is waylaid by a series of scenes in which he has to ‘catch up’ with all his old Smallville friends and tries to make Clark feel shitty for having the nerve to be born on another planet and place his trust in his very best friend in all the world by telling him his secret. He does this by making stupid comments like ‘Lionel Luthor is in your house? That’s just wrong’ and ‘oh my gosh, I tortured myself for years over the burden of having to keep Clark’s secret and now Chloe, Lana, Lionel, Kara, Green Arrow, Cyborg, Aquaman, The Flash, The Martian Manhunter, Brainiac, Black Canary, The mind reading kid from the ‘Warrior Angel’ episodes and that little kid he saved from a flood in the opening episode all know about his powers and haven’t resorted to merciless self flagellation and Clark bashing. Boy do I feel silly!’.

…

Alright so he doesn’t say that, but he should.

I don’t really understand why Pete needed to be quite so petulant and stupid towards Clark in this episode. Hell, he’s so ridiculously over the top he makes droopy-draws Clark look like a happy little sunbeam by comparison. He blames Clark for stirring up the Luthor Hornet’s nest and losing his parents their jobs, and for ‘ruining peoples lives by keeping his powers a secret’, which is a selfish and totally ridiculous argument. If Clark did go public with his powers, his chances of a normal life would be non-existent, as he and all of his friends and family would be taken away from their homes and dissected in some government lab to find out how he can do what he can do. It can be argued that Clark would be placing his loved ones in more danger by going public than he is by keeping his secret, so Pete’s actions hold no weight. Until the ‘Superman’ idea of leading a double life crops up, it’s impossible for Clark to use his abilities without reserve in public. But good old Pete decides to threaten his former best friend with exposing the very secret he has fought so hard (with marginal success it must be conceded) to protect without batting an eyelid.

On the plus side, watching Sam Jones III (seriously, who the fuck has roman numerals after their name in this day and age?!) trying not to look annoyed when confronted with his vastly more successful and doubtless much better paid former cast mates is hilarious. Since leaving the show he has managed a career spanning the dizzy heights of fuck all, so it must have been really rather irritating to see how nicely everyone else has done without him (the uselessness of the show notwithstanding).

Having wasted a lot of time, the episode finally lurches into life when Pete decides to do Chloe a favour by infecting Lex’s computers at the Daily Planet with a sweet little virus that makes pictures of scorpions appear all over people’s computer screens. Lord knows why, real viruses don’t do that at all, but there you go.

Anyway, this leads to Lex blackmailing Pete into stealing Kara’s bracelet from Lionel Luthor’s vault. Jimmy happens to be hiding in the room at the time, and blabs about the whole thing to Clark and Chloe, setting up a confrontation between Clark and Pete. Anyone else spot a teeny plot hole here? I thought so. How exactly is a man who can stretch supposed to break into a gigantic safe, held on the top floor of one of the most advanced buildings in Metropolis without a) getting spotted by the millions of cameras and guards b) getting shot, or c) without any way whatsoever of breaking into the safe itself. Why he strolls right in past all that security nonsense and shoves his bendy hand into the huge gap between the door and its frame of course! Because recessed foot-thick several-tonne safe doors have gaps that anyone with a coat-hanger and a jot of ingenuity (or a bendy hand) can exploit whilst smirking like an idiot…

Clark can run almost as fast as light, so ninja-ing past a few guards and cameras is fine for him. Hell, he could jump in through the window if he felt like it. But Pete? Jesus guys, you could at least try to think these things through. However, despite everything, this pales in comparison to what follows.

In what is undoubtedly the standout stupid moment of the week, Pete decides that the only way he can save Clark “and everybody else from Lex once and for all” is to attack the future Superman with a bloody great big lump of Kryptonite and leave him laying on the floor with it situated on his chest, directly over his heart.

Take a second to read that again and think about it. Clark’s best friend decides to SAVE him, by placing a lump of the only substance on earth that can KILL him, directly in contact with his chest, with no way for him to remove it. He then plans to take a trip all the way back from Metropolis to Smallville, a journey of several hundred miles (as indicated in an earlier season), dispose of Lex, and then travel several hundred miles back again to remove the Kryptonite.

What kind of colossal twatface thought that was a good idea for a plot element? I can scarcely comprehend the sheer stupidity of it. Alright, so Pete’s mind was a little fuddled by the Krypto-gum, but he would have to be utterly fucking bat-shit crazy to think his plan was a good one. Leaving Clark with a lump of death rock on his chest is the sort of boo-hissable behaviour I expect to see from Lex, not from one of his best friends?!

The whole thing reeks of lazy, stupid, contrived writing from a bunch of total cretins who can’t even think up a single decent challenge for Clark, and therefore have to resort to having him writhe in untold agony on the floor at least once an episode so that he can’t possibly save the day in an instant, which is precisely what Superman is supposed to do!

The fact that Superman gets saved by Lex Luthor’s fucking dad AGAIN is yet more proof positive of exactly how far from the point Smallville has managed to drift in recent months.

To cap it all, the writers then decide to have Pete play nice again with Clark at the end of the episode. In my last review I referred to the ‘I never realised how hard it is to be you’ cliché that reared its ugly head. Well paint me yellow and call me bongo the banana boy, Pete actually bloody says it out loud in this episode’s closing stages. It was all the fault of the Kryptonite you see, he’s not actually a nutter who nearly murdered the world’s future greatest hero by exploiting the carefully bestowed knowledge of his one weakness. He’s had a tough old time, poor Pete, but he’s one of the good guys dammit and that’s what matters. Big hugs all around.

If I were Clark, I would have screamed at Pete until his ears fell off then banished him from the farm forever. The whole thing is totally ridiculous.

Speaking of ridiculous, Jimmy and Chloe are getting back together. Yeah, despite the fact that nobody gave a flying fuck about their relationship last time around and the way he treated her like total shit, Chloe says yes to a date as soon as he comes creeping around again. I’m really not sure who wrote this episode, but I really rather hope they fall out of a helicopter and land eyeball first upon the point of the Chrysler building. Either Jimmy Olsen is a meteor freak with the power to bat spectacularly above his weight at will, or he’s hung like a fucking rhinoceros.

Finally, Kara moves in with Lex. Yeah, that plot line is still limping along but I’m not even going to bother giving it review space. Lex clearly isn’t going to find out Clark and Kara’s secret from her, so for god’s sake can we please just give the girl her memory back and be done with it?

Overall, ‘Hero’ was a total waste of time (unless you happen to be an appalling soft-rock band trying to get some free publicity). It didn’t move Clark any closer to becoming Superman, it didn’t develop any existing plot lines to any great degree and it certainly didn’t merit bringing Pete back to the show. Smallville has been routinely chucking out stupid, contrived episodes season after season, but it usually manages to balance things out with the odd gem. So far, Season 7 has been at best average and at worst terrible and plots like ‘Kara’s lost memory’ don’t offer any hope of excitement or interest in the near future.

And if I ever hear another One-fucking-Republic song on the show again I’m going to hunt down and murder the entire production team…

4.6/10