My thoughts on the first half of Fringe, NCIS and Smallville's current seasons

[kc_2009]

Now that the first half of the season has finished for most of the series, I have mixed feelings. With some shows Im terribly dissapointed, with others Im happy.

Fringe
My God, the first half was so freakin good. Everything, the story, the pace and how the characters were developed. The plot about two alternate universes, exploring each one in

Comments

[lurkingchicken]

Hold onto your butt, Smallville is next.

TESS. You could not be more right in that her "arc" is one the only watchable parts of S10 and that my friend is a HUGE problem for me. I shall rant on my own journal soon enough and rest assured, there will be some serious swearing. It is the LAST damn season, last shot at making Clark super, wrapping up characters we CARE about and it's the Last Redemption of Tess LUTHOR?! WTH?

Tess gets the LANA treatment? Everything she does is MAGIC and wonderful, she gets a pass on 2 seasons of pure villainy IMO, and HER story is somehow more important than the tale of the *makemelaugh* Future SUPERMAN???!!!

Yes CF is doing the best with it, but Tess so-called redemption feels unearned, she has not really admitted to NEEDING to WORK for it.. it's all been given her while OTHER characters have to beg, plead, crawl on their knees for a scrap of gratitude or forgiveness. The Tess as WT is laughable in that she always had to outsource tech support, ANYONE could spot that skin tattoo reaction, blah blah.. GRRRRRRR.

Hope my rants don't offend ;-)

[kc_2009]

About Tess sudden redeption, you know, I wasn't waiting any better development, because it's pretty much exactly what TPTB has done with every character that has been in that situation. They mess up things, they say sorry, and everybody moves on. Im talking about Clark, Chloe, Tess, Lana. Lois hasn't had to struggle with the need of redemption, so I don't include her. I would say the character that I feel has been the best developed in that sense is Oliver (and I promise here is not talking my biased love), because we could see an entire arc about Oliver dealing with his mistakes and bad choices. For me every other "redemption" has been unearned.

[lurkingchicken]

Clark, Lana, Tess have not struggled but now I have to disagree with you, as boy have Oliver and Chloe. IIRC Chloe spent most of S3 and S4 groveling and begging for forgiveness, struggled and fought through every Jimmy breakup, always caught in the middle, etc. Only time she didn't was the beginning of S9 when TPTB wanted to wash all of that OOC contrived b.s. under the bridge and just forget it. Even then they acted like everything Chloe did in S9 was "wrong" until .. oops it was sorta right, but then they didn't admit it (if that makes sense). It's like every time they showed WT/Chloe as going too far.. it actually helped. And she struggled and sacrificed and worked to earn it, IMO.

IDK.. I argue strength of character when it comes to my Chloe and Oliver bias, which is how they -- with a lot of fanwanking and OffScreensville on my part -- survive S8 which I still hate with a blinding passion.

Oliver has been best redeemed except it too is B.S. b/c it's kinda for the wrong things. They made it about killing Lex when really he was right (I argue self-defense vs. their character assassinating revenge-murder garbage) and he did a bad, terrible thing for the right reason (IMO he was protecting himself, Clark, everyone, the world from dangerous above-the-law villain no one else could stop, YMMV); he lost something taking another life. But IMO that was only part of the problem; the rest was the FAILSDAY fiascos dealing with Jimmy and Clark, stabbing his so-called BFF in the back for his own good. (I say so-called because I feel that friendship to be lopsided in Clark's favor; ditto Chloe and Clark.) Anyway, I'm with you in that 1) it was clear that HE sunk, that HE realized his wrongs and 2) HE started to make things right, etc. Oliver definitely earned his redemption (so it pains me to see it being stripped away).

Like I said, Tess has been given the Lana .. "oh you want to go all Misery on another human being b/c you're bored and pissed.. here, have a cookie" free pass. Zero struggle is bad, but what's worse is she was flat-out villain for 2 years and just.. ugh. EVEN WORSE is that her redemption is BETTER than Clark's story; like LANA LANG, the Untold Tales of Tess Luthor are more important than Superman. I didn't sign up for a lot of crap on this show, but I REALLY didn't want half of the finale season devoted to a character that still feels like an interloper to me (no matter how well CF plays her). Does that make sense?