Smallville "Masquerade" - not-review/rambly thoughts
So you should all know that I’ve tried. I’ve tried so very hard to write a not-review of this episode. I sat down on my bed with my laptop in my lap and my feet in the air (second favorite writing position, also really bad for the back). I let myself have apple strudel and vanilla ice cream. I even cracked my knuckles like a boxer sweating impatiently in the corner for a bout. But all that seems to come out of my mouth are loud, high-pitched seal noises and I end up wriggling on my bed like a deranged elf and laughing gleefully.
Because this episode, guys. THIS EPISODE. It got so much right. So much. And yes there are nitpicks. There will always be nitpicks (and I actually have a rather large bone regarding Lois that I've held for most of this season but I'll pick it later, maybe, if I can survive the seal-clapping) I almost had to pinch myself to wonder if I was watching Smallville season 10 or if it was a pleasant dream.
So this is really not a review. If you seek intelligent commentary, I'd probably hang around on Eat Crow or on my f-list because I bet you all had smart things to say. I - however - do not. Strictly kiddie pool over here with a large dose of shipper insanity, it's how I roll with SV nowadays.
I do have some spams though - I got super-lazy sadly and also no time, bah.
+ BQM, you have redeemed yourself in my eyes. Time was I thought I'd never forgive you for the fuckery that was "Luthor" (oh smh) but you have shown yourself capable of doing something not many writers are able to do on this show simultaneously - write a good Clark Kent AND a good Chloe Sullivan. These two mystical, magical feats are generally mutually exclusive on Smallville and you've had your hits and misses but this episode? Lovely.
Clark
+ First of all. BOOM. I'm pregnant. Second of all, Clark Kent, is that you? I mean, of course, I know it's you because I've loved your character for years but just - he's all grown up now. And going international, posing in Big Ben (I'll be there in a few hours funnily enough) and making a name for himself across the world. And, I won't lie, I was ready to start weeping at the sight. Because he's there, so close, I can taste it and I can't believe it's been ten years and this is the same boy we met way back when. And he's not a boy any longer, he's a man, I can't. Okay, I'm sorry, can you hear the high-pitched squealing?
I just loved everything about him in this episode. I loved seeing him at work - I was beginning to think that desk was the official residence of dust bunnies and feral nighttime creatures since we never saw him there. But we saw him at his desk, not the Watchtower desk, HIS desk multiple times in this episode. We saw him actively work on a case; we saw the standing (however ludicrous it is for a journalist to waltz into a crime scene like he owns the place, I'll put it down to his charming smile or Lois' swift left foot) he has with Met P.D., and the facility with which he navigated that crime scene. We saw him come to conclusions and not have to be beaten black and blue by everyone to get there. It was Clark Kent, Investigative Reporter-cum-Superhero and it was brilliant. Thank you, BQM. Those endless tweets did not go to waste. My only downer here was Lois and how she was possibly misused but it's all right. I like that he is a talented reporter in his own right. Lois may be in the forefront in that arena but Clark Kent's no slouch. He's seemed like a slouch the past three years because we hardly see him in action but this episode gave us this and I bought it and will gladly eat it all up. Also hoping that many people will fill us in with some glorious Offscreenville moments to show what we missed in this gradual transition.
And, microvision, so cool. LOL at Bert and Clark's utter uselessness at quick excuses. Oh, and Welling was in top form.
ETAAAAA: forgot to talk about how Clark eventually defined who he is, the glasses, the mask etc. I thought it was a bit too simplistically done or just the turn of phrase turns me off, to be honest. I get what they were trying to do and I even somewhat agree because Clark in real life often feels a lot closer to his 'Blur' personality than anything else. His parents raised him to prize certain values and it's those things that make him the hero he is - that's the man he is. But the way it was phrased and the way he spoke about Clark Kent the disguise - it felt off. And if I examine it too closely, my head hurts. I don't know, someone please interpret it coherently.
Clark and Lois
+ *seal noises*
Look at them. So much to love about this episode for Clois, so many great lines. The snark and the banter is back you guys. It's like season 4 Clois but better because now I know they're having excellent super-sex every day of the week and twice on Sundays. Now I know that all that sexual tension isn't going to waste on lame baseball bouncing angst and jogs around the farm. And now I know that they love each other and even if they do have shitty moments and take it out on each other or whoosh out in avoidance, they'll make it up by talking it out like adults, having the heart and balls to apologize and clear the air (Because you can do that when you love someone and you're secure in that love and in their love for you. You can have crap days, you can snap, you can cry, you can hide and they won't walk away, they'll be there for you, and it's hard and sometimes it sucks but it's also awesome), AND THEN having hot sex on the kitchen counter or something. Do you see a running theme here?
No, on a serious note, I loved every single Clois scene and I honestly can't even stop my mind from whizzing enough to analyze anything in a useful manner. (Aside: but I would like some Clois kissage, groping, touching, anything - it's been too long.) Besides that, and that's not even a nitpick or anything, I love that this was a Clark decisionmaking process done right. No being yanked about kicking and screaming; no deep, dark descents into endless despair only to be yanked kicking and screaming by the ever-present cheerleader Lois has become for some of the writers this year or by a spirit from the future or past or whatever. None of that.
Lois didn't seem like she'd downed a Jumbo pack of Prozac in this episode, her concerns were legitimate, and she lost her patience with Clark and his avoidance issues, and she was the wonderfully cheeky Lois we know and love. Clark also had legitimate troubles, and we've already seen the roots of this trouble for a couple of seasons, and articulated to Martha last week quite explicitly and he also had his shirty moment, and I love when Clark is shirty.
Basically, I loved everything we got. I need them to have more ST but I understand why they aren't, and if you know me, you know I'm cool with that. But just a touch more would be nice. My one nitpick about Lois - it appears that Lois actually doesn't have a story arc completely her own this season. Almost everything she's doing is rather closely-tied to Clark. Now, this isn't necessarily a 'bad' thing since he is the star and all the characters should at least be somehow connected with him and their stories coherently integrated. Them having the larger part of her storyline this year be about their relationship, how she feels about that relationship, the anxieties it surfaces etc. etc. But they have lost the balance in a number of episodes this season and there's a danger sometimes of her coming off as a flat caricature instead of a person since everything she says and does is so wrapped around super-dude. I don't particularly like that. And I wish they'd found a way to give her something a little more... I don't know. I can't explain it, anyone could probably say it better since I'm useless today. But yeah.
P.S. I giggled so much in that loft scene. These two, you guys. *draws hearts around OTP*
Whoosh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Chloe and Oliver
+ *more seal noises*
So, I was actually kind of giddy about Chlollie this episode, in a different way to Clois but a) my personal canon is NOW OFFICIALLY CANON; b) I ship it, so very much, and it was nice to get such a hefty glimpse of the workings of their relationship and to see why they actually do work so well together despite what lots of folks tend to believe and some of the more tiresome mistakes of the writers force some to.
The humor. Chloe positioned as the more practical one in the relationship - I mean, we've seen this as far back as "Escape" - Oliver is the more expressive one, the one who's kind of coded 'female' with his spoons and his satellites and his grand gestures whereas Chloe has been holding herself back for a huge part of this relationship for reasons that this episode articulated so perfectly. And this mini-arc has done a decent job of showing her working with that. The sexiness I find myself raving about to anyone who will listen was there but I love the humanizing moments of awkwardness and Oliver is so dramatic. Justin and Allison really play well off each other.
I really enjoyed the fight scene almost as much as the boot scene. I kept seeing people complaining about Chloe having enhanced fight skills but if you watch the scene closely, she only throws, at the most, four punches/hits/elbows then she runs to the bookcase and grabs a book (I thought that was pretty funny and almost a meta joke on the character or something) and uses that as a weapon. That doesn't work and she gets cornered, Oliver drags the guy away, she runs forward and gets shoved on the ground, stands up and kicks the gun, kicks the guy on the ground and hits the other guy with some sort of oblong-shaped object. This isn't like Tess who would dispose of those folks efficiently with all her training; this isn't like Lois who would get down-and-dirty and knock the lights out of them; it's certainly not Lana who would pull a Chun-Li on all of us and straight up hover in the air for twenty seconds. She's scrappy, she uses what she's got, and while she does have some basic skills, she actually needs Ollie to help her out of some sticky situations. Yes, I watched it too many times, mainly so I could see the kiss. Sue me.
The last scene was so good for Chloe esp. But more of that below.
Chloe
First of all, BQM handled Chloe perfectly. Better than any other writer on this show has done in a long, long time. Last year, I found myself oddly compelled by this character, it started around "Savior" and really got going after "Pandora" with the glimpse of the AU Chloe. There a number of reasons but I think one of them is that I find Chloe's flaws, primarily her envy (and this poor girl has been guilty of this one since season 1, and the insecurity that brings of always being second best or not even a choice for the object of her desires and when you have someone like Lois who is often so sure of herself, where she's going, who she is - we saw that play out in Hex, and a lot more) and her pride (this one is such a complicated one to unpack, one that in my personal canon begins with her childhood drama and trauma, the whole absentee mother and the kind of hyper-self-sufficiency that would generate and only becomes more malignant as she grows up) and her struggles with identity (I've discussed this in great detail before, particularly in my Chlollie posts on LJ and Tumblr, but we all know Chloe's got this whole self-erasure, self-negation thing when it comes particularly to the men in her life, she places their needs, their wants, their desires before her own; she sacrifices her very self in order to become the kind of person she 'thinks' they need and that - that need to be that for another person, I think it stems from this complicated mix of insecurity and pride. I could go all day tbh) really relatable or understandable.
These flaws, the show has rarely ever articulated them so insightfully. But the patterns of behavior have been built into this character from the very beginning (intentionally and mostly unintentionally - especially with the constant change in ID). Whether by chance or what, Chloe's always had a level of consistency as a character. Not always the kind people like but it's there. And this episode made huge strides to working through all of that. So I kind of loved it.
It was great that they confronted the pride and the identity issues. Chloe verbalized them clearly with her old yearbook. She barely recognized who the girl in the photo had become, I think some viewers have felt the same. It's a pretty relatable moment tbh, I'm sure many of us have had this kind of identity crisis at least once in our lives, I liked hearing her say it. When I got over the awkward Clark vision, I actually fist-pumped because I've been waiting for this to be something more than what I read in some of the really good Chloe fanfic I've read or the mad ramblings in that manifesto I tormented Paloma with a couple of months ago. And here it is. Just great continuity and so much better done than some of the other tripe they've pulled with women characters on this show.
Random Notes:
+ Desaad was a really good villain, I thought. The actor surprised me, since I thought he was lame in "Abandoned" but he was so sinister, especially when he was posing as Blaine with all the double entendres in his statements. I like this Darkseid arc quite a bit now.
+ Oh dear, Oliver infected by the darkness. Not surprised but intrigued by where that's going to go.
+ Creepy, show can be creepy. I hate blood tears. I like that they tempered it with enough humor so I didn't want to hug myself in the dark afterward.
+ Clark and Lois, investigate!
+ Jeff is the cutest! He makes me so happy whenever he's onscreen, more please.
+ Clark best be wearing those glasses next week.
+ Please can next week's episode not drive me to drink. K. Thanks.