A Smallville Essay: Friendship of Legend?
This is a Smallville essay I wrote called "Friendship of Legend". It was posted at Smallville News, but I thought I'd post it here, too. So, for any SV fans who might be reading this, enjoy!
Friendship of Legend?
By DannyBlue
I grew up knowing Superman was the hero, and Lex Luthor was the villain. Lex Luthor (because he was too evil to call him by just his first name) tried to do bad things, and Superman stopped him. They were enemies, and…No, that was pretty much it.
When I first heard Lex Luthor was going to be on Smallville, I wasn’t thrilled. I had an idea in my mind of how it would play out. Lex would be the charming, cunning villain, engaged in all kinds of evil schemes, putting on an act of being kind and benevolent in public. Clark Kent would get his number, of course. But, in order for Lex to be a regular character, CK would never be able to prove anything. Every week or so, he’d stop one of Lex’s evil plots, but never manage to implicate Lex. This would go on and on, week after week. And the prospect just wasn’t all that interesting to me.
Then, I heard a little more about the show’s premise. Ya see, Smallville was promising something different. Rather than being rivals, Clark and Lex would be friends. And, if you’re like me, your reaction was, “Clark Kent and Lex Luthor, friends rather than foes? You’ve got to be kidding me!”
But it worked. It worked so well, I started hoping the friendship didn’t have to end. But, thanks to decades of comic books, movies, and TV shows, fans had the gift of foresight when it came to Clark and Lex. We knew that, one day, they would be enemies. And it made watching the two become friends-with no idea what the future had in store for them-sort of bittersweet.
And, hey, I sometimes like my sweet bitter. That’s why I watch TV. To have my emotions plucked, and pulled, and tugged on. And the friendship between Lex and Clark promised to do plenty of that before the series was done.
So, we knew that a moment would come when the friendship we were watching develop came to a bitter, tragic end. We even gave that moment a name. The Rift.
The rift was going to be two best friends being painfully torn apart, brotherly love turning to hate and distrust. It was going to make the fans feel like we’d been kicked in the stomach…but in a good way. Like our hearts had been ripped out, thrown on the ground, and stomped on real good. It was going to be the kind of moment most TV shows can only dream of producing. And the makers of Smallville had it, right there in the palms of their hands.
Now, I wasn’t exactly looking forward to the rift. I like Clark and Lex as friends. But, if it had to happen, at least it was going to be big. Right?
Then, the third season finale, “Covenant”, gave us a preview of that rift. In that episode, Clark tells Lex their friendship is over. And that should have been a big moment, one that left me stunned, shocked, heart-broken.
But it didn’t. Oh, I felt bad for Lex. I felt bad for Clark. But I didn’t feel what I should have felt watching a close friendship crumble before my eyes. I expect the eventual rift to hit me with a bang. But the preview of that rift was more like a whimper. And, well, that’s not good.
So, why didn’t the “mini-rift” have the impact it deserved?
In order for viewers to care about the break-up of a fictional friendship, you first have to make us care about the friendship, period. And, sadly, I just didn’t feel like Clark and Lex were very good friends by the end of season three. In fact, they’ve never been as close as many of us were expecting them to be…or as they need to be in order for the rift to have real impact. Oh, they got off to a good start, seeming to grow closer as season one progressed. But, somewhere around season two, the friendship between Lex and Clark stalled. It stopped developing, stopped growing.
Don’t get me wrong. We’ve had some wonderful friendship moments, like in “Shattered” and “Asylum”. But it wasn’t consistent enough for it to really stick with us, you know?
Plus, those were all big moments. Clark defying his parents in order to help Lex. Lex refusing to betray Clark, and giving up on his chance at freedom. Not that big moments are bad. Big moments make fans stand up and cheer. But friendships are built on little moments, too. Duncan MacLeod and Methos hanging around Mac’s loft, or going to Joe’s to listen to a hot new band. Angel, Cordy, Gunn and Fred going over to Wes’s for dinner…and to play video games. Buffy, Willow and Xander watching bad movies on TV, because they don’t have the money to actually go anywhere. Jim and Blair going to a basketball game, or going camping together.
That’s what makes viewers invest in a TV friendship. Seeing the characters engage in the casual, every-day interactions, the kind we experience in our own friendships.
Well, by the time “Covenant” aired, we hadn’t gotten much chance to watch Clark and Lex being a couple of guys just hanging out. In fact, they weren’t really on friendly terms at all, were they? And, since there wasn’t much of a friendship left anyway, Clark officially ending it didn’t seem like a big deal. When Clark said, “This friendship is over!” I should've felt…something. My heart should’ve sunk. My stomach should’ve dropped. A gentle tear should’ve trickled down my cheek. Well, um, maybe not the last one. But I should’ve felt something.
What’s interesting is that Highlander had a moment that was almost exactly the same. Duncan found out some things about Methos’ past. Methos confirmed the ugly truth in all its brutal glory. And, jaw clenched, Duncan tells him, “We’re through,” before walking away.
In that scene, Duncan choked up. I choked up. Just about every Highlander fan I know of choked up. Why? Because, just a few weeks earlier, they were buds, pals. Earlier in that very episode, they were joking around, laughing, hanging out the way friends do. Seeing all that ripped apart was painful to watch, but strangely beautiful at the same time. I was as devastated as it’s possible to be over a work of fiction, and that’s exactly how we should feel when something happens to drive Clark and Lex apart.
But, by the time Clark tells Lex, “This friendship is over” in “Covenant”, all I could work up was a kind of lukewarm, “Aww, that’s too bad,” feeling.
And that’s just wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong! When Clark’s and Lex’s friendship comes to that final end, it shouldn’t just be a big deal. It should be one of the biggest deals Smallville (the show and the town) has ever seen. But I don’t think I’ll feel that way if the rift occurs between two characters who barely seem like acquaintances, let alone close friends. When Clark tells Lex, “This friendship is over,” the last thing I should be thinking at such a pivotal, dramatic moment is, “What friendship?”
This is a case where we need to see the “dawn”, and a lot of it, before the “darkest”. It’s a little late in the game, but I think it’s still possible, and even necessary. Before the rift, we need for Clark and Lex to be closer than ever, even as close as brothers. To have that “Friendship of Legend” the producers promised back when the show began. That’s the only way we, the viewers, can be wonderfully devastated right along with the characters when the real rift occurs. Otherwise, the rift will end up being the biggest anti-climax in the history of the show. And that would just be too bad.