Smallville Rewatch

[lynzie914]

So I finally got the last season of SV I didn't own for my birthday (S7 just in case you were wondering), and I decided to do a re-watch of the whole series from start to finish. Which is over 200 episodes, so I'm thinking it will take a while. But in an effort to do more with my LJ (because I should) and to encourage myself to keep going (I often get distracted when rewatching things), I thought I would post my thoughts on the episodes as I go.

Some of it will be legitament thinky-thoughts, others will just be random thoughts and observations, and sometimes it might just be me saying "this episode needs more Chloe". I'm curious though about how different my opinions will be having seen the whole series and knowing how it ends and my views on some characters changing. I've grown to like Lana a lot more since the show originally aired, as I've matured and learned to understand her character better, so I'm curious about how I'll like her different storylines now. And who knows, maybe I'll start to like Chimmy. LOL, kidding. I don't think that will ever happen.

Please feel free to comment on the episodes or my thoughts on the episodes. I always love talking about my shows. (Fair warning for spoilers beyond the episodes talked about though.)

My thoughts on the first four episodes under the cut



1x01: Pilot

• You know I always picture Smallville as having a lot fewer people in it than the welcome sign says. I mean 25,001, that doesn’t seem as little as people always make it out to be. And this is in 1989; I assume it only grew by the time the rest of the pilot takes place. Of course, it also probably goes down in population sometimes too because of all the horrible things that happen there and the people smart enough to, you know, move.
• The foreshadowing of the Lionel reading the newspaper suddenly becomes so much more meaningful once you find out that it was him who killed Oliver’s parents.
• Little fairy princess Lana is so adorable.
• “Hey looks like Smallville won again.” -Jonathan, right before everything goes to hell and the town gets destroyed by meteors the first time. Oh Jonathan, you fail as a psychic.
• Little Lana couldn’t have been cast more perfectly. Watching her see her parents die, her face as Nell tries to shield her. I don’t think she even notices all the destruction going on around her, she’s still crying out for her mommy. And it’s such a traumatic experience, I wonder how much of that day Lana remembers and carries around with her on a daily basis.
• I like that we see so early on that Lionel does care about Lex, as he goes chasing after him into the corn field and looks so desperate to find him. But that we also see that Lionel had all these expectations of Lex, of having the perfect son, in the way he backs away from him when he sees the damage the meteors have caused. His first instincts are not to comfort or help or see if Lex is hurt anywhere he can’t see. But to back away in horror from what’s happened and how it changes everything. (“You have a destiny son.”)
• Little Clark and his adorable smile as he finds the Kents, like “Hi, I think I’m supposed to find you. Would you like to become a family?”
• Martha is so wonderfully calm about the alien thing. She doesn’t care about that or anything else, she just wants to keep this beautiful little boy with his beautiful smile forever. “We didn’t find him, he found us.”
• Clark looking for other people like him on the computer. I know this is a thread that does continue, Clark constantly reaching out to people who are different like him. But I really wish we could have seen more of this, of him actively seeking, instead of stumbling upon. I think it would have made an interesting storyline.
• I love that the first time we meet Chloe and Pete, their betting on Clark and whether or not he’ll fail at something. It sets up their dynamic perfectly and I love imagining what other things they bet on once upon a time. Oh, they are all so innocent in the pilot; they don’t know all the terrible things to come, starting this episode.
• And now its 45,000 population. Told ya. Smallville’s own name is a lie.
• “Pete, do you want to take a commercial break from the soap opera in your head? I’ve told you a hundred times, I’m not interested in Clark.” -Chloe in denial.
• “Your vehement denial has been noted.” -Pete, blissfully happy at the idea it might be true.
• I love that Chloe is so amused by the idea of Pete and Clark on the football team. She literally can’t stop from laughing. And then Pete just grabs her (gently) by the head pulling her away. I love the early dynamic these three had and how easily they set it up. Why couldn’t it stay like this? This, this was awesome and I had kind of forgotten about it.
• “What are you talking about AND WHY ARE WE WHISPERING?” -Chloe, who should never change.
• Oh, Clark so easily distracted by Lana. Eight years later and that still won’t change.
• And Lana and Clark’s first meeting on the show so parallels with their last that it hurts, despite not really shipping it. They were never meant to be, from beginning to end, but they loved each other anyways, still reached for each other anyways. And in the process, they kept falling down and getting hurt.
• Enter bad guy/meteor freak of the week. He’s not subtle in the slightest, like well, almost all of them.
• Enter Lex, he’s not all that subtle either, but that’s more about his resentment about being there and wanting to make an entrance. Luthors are big about entrances.
• Oh, Clark. You and your daydreams of being normal and loved but not really normal at all, because it’s not normal to throw four guys at all; I had forgotten about them. Not exactly sad they got cut though.
• Again with heartbreaking parallels. When they first met, Clark is hovering over Lex having just saved his life, begging him not to die. When they last meet, its Lex hovering over Clark, telling him he loved him like a brother but he had to do this (to save the world), and basically begging for his forgiveness for killing him. I got to hand it to the show, they did good there.
• “If you did…I’d be-I’d be dead.” -Clark, struck with a realization he really doesn’t want.
• Whitney did a lot of crappy things and made a lot of bad decisions in the first half of S1 (maybe longer), but I like that they set up early on his reasons for who he is. He wants to be somebody, he doesn’t want to be forgotten, he doesn’t want to be stuck in Smallville forever. All of those reasons resonate with so many of the different characters, including Lana and it gives insight into maybe why their together, what she sees in him and why they connect. Even if that connection doesn’t last.
• “So much bad luck came out of it, there can only be bad luck left.” -Lana, on her necklace and the meteor that killed her parents. Literally carrying around that weight with her though, I can’t imagine how Nell thought that was a good idea.
• I love that to make his point Clark sticks his hand in wood chipper. He does it so casually, but it’s not, not to his parents who don’t know it won’t hurt him, not to him really. Because Clark wishes it hurt, Clark wishes he was normal, and none of this was true. And then it gets worse, because his parents have been lying to him for years, because he’s anything but normal, because there’s a spaceship in the storm cellar and that’s why they would never let him go down there. And he doesn’t want any of that.
• “I’m hanging out in a graveyard, does that strike you as okay behavior?” -Clark, who’s sometimes a lot funnier than intended.
• Clark and Lana’s “conversation” with her parents is kind of adorable. His little wave to them, as if they could see him, and her asking for her father if he was upset because of a guy and him saying no to both her and the gravestone. I also like that Clark just rolls with it, the idea of talking to parents that are no longer there, of talking to the dead; he’s obviously not comfortable with it at first, but then he wants to make her feel better and starts doing the talking himself.
• Oh, Whitney. See this is where you bad decision making first appears. Don’t lurk in the dark and don’t make assumptions, dude.
• Clark and Lex’s second meeting and Lex throws a sword at his head. Lex is not at all phased; Clark is so overwhelmed he doesn’t know what to do. And I love it. This is like their whole relationship in the beginning.
• I like how early on Pete was Chloe’s sidekick. He was important and did all of her investigating with her. She didn’t even notice Jeremy, Pete did. And that Pete knew all about the Wall of Weird, way before Clark did, because it was easier to tell him, for him to believe her. (“My money was on the evil twin theory.” Pete said because spending that much time with Chloe makes you believe that stuff is possible.) Also, I love how she maneuvers between them and around them, again it sets up the relationship the three of them have so well.
• “It started out as a scrapbook and just sort of mutated.” -Chloe on the Wall of Weird. I love her choice of words.
• I like Clark’s indignation about not knowing about the Wall of Weird, that Chloe never told him. Obviously it makes sense as a viewer, from Clark’s perspective, because the Wall of Weird is in some ways about him, about what the meteor shower caused (which in his mind is what he caused), but no one else knows that. And it’s actually something that continues throughout the show, a character flaw/trait, where Clark has problems realizing that he’s not the only one with secrets, big or small, and once he finds out he sometimes pushes too hard about it. It’s an interesting thing, because someone like Lex or Chloe, would automatically assume that everyone has secrets that their hiding (whether they’re noteworthy is what’s up for debate) but someone like Clark, who’s hiding this huge secret of his own, never seems prepared for the fact or possibility that other people aren’t telling him things. It’s an interesting difference.
• I love the stacked trucks. I love that Clark isn’t above being kind of petty and doing that.
• And Clark’s smile when his father tells him that “we didn’t find you, you found us”, it’s so reminiscent of little Clark who discovered them in that overturned truck. Really, Clark’s smiles do something to your insides, it’s just a fact.
• In conclusion, I’m not sure if I saw the pilot when it originally aired if I would have watched the show (back then I didn’t have my watch beyond the pilot to be sure policy), but it’s actually a lot better than what I remember it being.

1x02: Metamorphosis

• I like that Lana has this drawer of awards were she just throws her new tiara in, because this version of Lana is still who she thinks she should be, not who she really wants to be or even really is. It’s who Nell told her she should be, it’s who she thinks she should be for her parents, who the town tells her to be. But the crown, homecoming queen, it doesn’t really mean that much to Lana herself. Not outside of that.
• Greg Arkin and his stalker ways are creepy, but the visual of Lana with the butterflies is still really pretty.
• It’s amazing that even after three years off the air, the theme song still does something to me. Gets me all excited for the show.
• “You realize last night was just a joke right?” -Whitney to Clark about the traumatizing and humiliating experience of being that year’s scarecrow. Only for Clark to tell him in his own Clark way, to go screw himself, when he sends him off to find the necklace himself. Clark’s really not the type of person to actually tell someone that.
• “Can’t knock your taste in women.” -Lex to Clark about Lana. Oh, the foreshadowing. Foreshadowing my Chlex loving heart definitely didn’t notice the first time around.
• I love that after the truck explodes, the show lets Martha and Jonathan be typical parents only worrying about their own son, despite the fact that he’s invulnerable. At that point, they could care less about Whitney, all that matters is Clark. All that matters is their son.
• “Sneaking up like that, you’re lucky you didn’t get kicked.” -Lana to Lex. I love her sass and how much she doesn’t care that he’s a Luthor or rich or about her aunt's relationship with his family or anything else.
• I wish they had expanded more on the relationship between the Luthors and Lana’s family. When I hear that Nell is a friend of Lionel’s, I think friend, so where was all the exploration of that? It would have been an interesting storyline.
• When the writers decided on doing the Greg Arkin storyline, I wonder if they were thinking evil!spiderman basically.
• “That necklace gives you the power, Clark. All you have to do is use it.” -Lex, showcasing the differences between the two of them. Because Lex would have done it, he would have used everything in his arsenal to get her (he does eventually go to far more extremes to help win her over), but Clark doesn’t even consider it until Lex suggests it and in the end, can’t even go through with it.
• “Life is about change, sometimes it’s beautiful, sometimes it’s painful; most of the time it’s both.” -Lana saying one of my actual favorite lines from the series. It’s very poignant.
• They didn’t skimp out on the gross factor when it came to Greg. The shedding of the skin, yeah, I had conveniently forgotten about that until it happened.
• Jonathan’s reluctance to believe that it could be Greg or that a boy could jump off the ceiling is kind of amusing, because his son is Clark. Clark who is an alien. How can he have such a problem wrapping his head around it? Martha on the other hand, totally rolls with it. She just shrugs it off, her son’s an alien, and anything’s possible in her books really. Has been since her wish got granted by Lana’s fairy wand and Clark found them.
• Clark’s quiet little smile as Chloe explains her theory about Greg and how he became a bug boy, makes me happy.
• I love Clark, Chloe and Pete scoobying it up. When all three of them look through the window together, and then Chloe so casually opens it up like breaking and entering isn’t anything to worry about, and Clark and Pete following her lead. And then Clark and Pete both being grossed out by the skin in the shower. I just forgot how much I liked this team up.
• I like that Clark literally wins his fight by accident, but the whole Greg turning into bugs thing kind of confuses me. Was he stuck that way forever? Did he reform himself and just get out of dodge? I mean, what happened?
• Lana’s really adorable when she sees her necklace on the doorknob, her nose scrunches up and she’s so happy. Kristen Kreuk should not be allowed to be that adorable.

1x03: Hothead

• I had forgotten how early this episode came, but it makes me happy that a semi Chloe-centric episode happened so early on. One that focused and showcased her love of reporting and getting to the bottom of things. Though admittedly, me being me, I could have done with less football.
• LOL, does the coach just not notice the green smoke coming off those rocks? Or does he just not care? I mean if I saw that, I’d be freaked out.
• rinciple Kwan’s first appearance! Many terrible things will happen to him, and I get mad at him when he takes the Torch away from Chloe, but I love that his first scene was a smack down of one of the other faculty members.
• “I already started getting hate mail.” -Chloe, far too excited about the fact.
• “Call me when the hurtings done” -Pete to Clark, being a loving a supportive friend. Or you know, being a normal friend, laughing at his friend’s pain.
• The beginning of Lana’s arc of trying to find herself, it doesn’t last for long, at least not so overtly, but I enjoy it while it lasts. Lana is constantly trying to find out who she is, trying to find that thing she loves, but the problem is, she can’t.
• And the introduction of Dominick. I love all of his scenes with Lex, they showcase Lex’s intelligence, his business savy, and his ability to play the people around him so easily. (“By the way, Dominick, tell your sister I say hi.”) Lex wants nothing more than to distinguish himself from his father, to be a better man, to be seen as a better man; but there’s no denying he is his father’s son and he soaked up all those lessons and is on his way to becoming the teacher himself.
• Nell’s disappointment in Lana over quitting cheerleading and not wanting to work with her at the flower shop, is so palpable, you can’t help but feel bad for Lana. She just wants to do something for herself, wants to branch out, wants to find herself and be happy, and here’s the person who’s supposed to support her, and she’s not.
• Jonathan’s also not doing so good in this arena. Telling Clark that the only reason he’s there watching him play was to make sure that no one got hurt; that was more of a distraction and likely to cause Clark to slip up than anything else. Frankly, Jonathan’s kind of a jackass in this episode. He has very real concerns and they shouldn’t be ignored, but it’s the way he expresses them and the way he treats Clark that’s wrong. He doesn’t listen to anything Clark is saying, can’t seem to hear it over his own voice declaring he’s right, and forgets completely about what the situation means to Clark and what his open hostility and disapproval might do to his teenage son.
• The start of a very bad year for Principle Kwan, his car on fire with him in it. Also, in three episodes, there have been a lot of exploding cars. At the very least one per episode, if not more.
• “My mom was a cheerleader, so was my aunt, I thought it was time to break the vicious cycle.” -Lana, giving insight into why she became a cheerleader in the first place; pressure from her aunt to continue the family tradition and a want to have a little piece of her mother even if it was just in the form of following her mother’s footsteps.
• Chloe abandoning her friends and recklessly following leads that will only get her in trouble. One of many reasons I love her. Also her reaction to the Coach’s powers, terror and fascination mixed together. It’s so often her reaction to the things happening around her.
• And Lionel Luthor’s first appearance in Smallville’s present day, though his shadow has loomed large. I love Luthor dynamics, that he’s upset with Lex for doing something right that he didn’t want him to do, that he knew he was going to do it, but only came to punish him and put him down about it after he made the papers. I love that he compares himself to an emperor, because the Luthors so have delusions of grandeur. And that he finally baits Lex into a fencing match he knows he’ll win to get what he wants. All the power play that is going on, that Lex knows is going on, and yet Lionel still ends up on top. (“You’re ruled by your emotions, you always have been, and that can be a fatal flaw.) It’s what makes Lionel such an interesting villain the first few seasons, and also what makes him such a terrible father always.
• And here we have the first meteor freak related attack on Chloe and the first of a few times that The Torch is destroyed. So pretty much a lot of traumatizing happening for Chloe all at once, because of what the paper means to her. But it does come with a nice Chloe/Clark hug, the first one shown actually, so that’s something.
• “The Torched torched, how’s that for dramatic irony?” -Clark before receiving a withering glare from Chloe that stops him dead. I love how the glares of so many women scare Clark, despite him being indestructible.
• Reporter Chloe makes me happy and I love her frustration that even Clark has trouble seeing past the Coach’s title and position at the school, when the evidence is so clear to her. It makes sense, from the cheating scandal to the fires, to why the fire reacted the way it did around her (and died down once Clark got there), but it still takes some convincing, still takes his faith in her instead of his faith in what she’s saying in general to convince him to help.
• You know, I don’t know if I ever really thought about this before, but why is there a steam room in the high school? That doesn’t seem normal. Especially considering how much the Coach himself seems to use it. I guess, it could be one of the many favors/advantages the Coach gets because of who he is, but still. Weird.
• “Careful, dad, you’re getting emotional.” -Lex, to his father after winning this round and them both knowing it. I love lines that throw things back in someone else’s face that they used to taunt them before.

1x04: X-Ray

• “I’d like it all in cash.” -Tina as Lex, wanting millions of dollars. This line and how Michael delivers it just makes me giggle.
• -Tina does a great deal of bad things throughout the episode, but the beginning when she’s begging for their mother to let them be happy and in the struggle with her mother, accidently is the cause of her mother dying, it is rather heartbreaking. But then she slips back into the cold girl we saw just seconds ago, hanging up on the 911 operator. Because she wants her life to be perfect and her mother was an obstacle in the way.
• “I promise I’m not a criminal mastermind.” -Lex
• “I know a criminal mastermind would have worn a mask.” -Clark, in a far too adorable manner.
• And the discovery of a new power; one that most boys Clark’s age would definitely take advantage of and he kind of does, though accidently. But once the reality sets in, he freaks out. Because this is not normal and he doesn’t want it.
• “You want it, you can have it.” -Lana, after Tina says she has the perfect life. I love the two sides; of Tina wanting that perfect life, of wanting the perfect life she thinks Lana has and Lana herself not wanting it always, recognizing it for all its flaws and pitfalls and feeling just like any other teenager who isn’t happy.
• Poor Mrs. Kent. The emotional scars of pretty much every character has to have from having someone that looks like someone they love, or is controlling someone they love, attacking them or trying to kill them, have to be very prominent by the end of the series.
• “You can see through my hand?” -Jonathan
• “No, you always carry your knife in that pocket.” -Clark, who then proceeds to deliver the most adorable smile. He’s really bringing that Kent Charm in this episode full force.
• Lana going through the box of her mother’s old things is really moving despite their being no dialogue. The moment she finds the old journal and just puts her hand on it, likes she’s reaching out for her mother, because she’s finally found something that will tell her for sure who her mother was, that has her own words written down that she can read and know. And it just, it works so well. Especially in an episode where the bad guy of the week is obsessed with the misconception of what having a perfect life means, and what it means to be happy. Lana’s been trying to fill the shoes of someone that never even existed and now she finds it all crumbling around her, realizing that the woman Nell described and the woman her mother were two different people. And I really wish they had gone farther with this storyline the first season.
• And the introduction of Roger Nixon. I do love the set up of Lex’s dark/wild past and who he was before he came to Smallville. Another thing I wish they had dived into more.
• “You told me a fairytale about a woman who lived the perfect life, but that life was a lie. You said she loved cheerleading; she hated it but was afraid to quit. She didn’t even want to stay in Smallville; she wanted to see the world.” -Lana, connecting to her mother’s memory. I love that she struggled to connect to the woman Nell and everyone else had presented her mother as, the image she herself had created of her in her own mind, but could so easily connect with the truth. With the seventeen girl who wanted to escape it all, who felt suffocated by Smallville and the people within it. This is a storyline that continues, this is who Lana is; someone who wants to escape the hold Smallville has on her, wants to become something more, wants to be someone more, and struggles to figure out how. Struggles to not be pulled back in. And it’s actually really interesting that that struggle started so early on in the show, that it’s something that’s forgotten by most of the viewers (myself included) once we get to the later seasons. But then, I think season one was actually one of the best seasons that gave us Lana’s POV instead of just other’s POVs about her. It allowed focus on her and who she wanted to be, not just focus on her and how she affected Clark or Lex and the men they wanted to be.
• Poor Lana, it was probably a hint to all of us of things to come, that in the first four episodes she had two different people whose infatuations lead to unhealthy obsessions that didn’t end well for her.
• “That’s why I came here; I think you’re the only person who sees me for who I really am. I want to thank you for that.” -Tina as Lana fulfilling all of Clark’s wishes, before shattering them and pushing him out the loft in a fall that should have killed him.
• And the beginnings of the Chloe and Lana relationship, so full of ups and downs but with such a wonderful beginning. Lana had Chloe the moment she told her she liked what she did with the paper and then complimenting her take no prisoners’ attitude, something that Chloe usually gets put down for. And Chloe takes an interest in helping her, both intrigued by what she wants and wanting to help her in general. I also really love that the origins of their friendship are firmly about the two of them and has nothing to do with Clark, considering how big of a role he will play in both their lives and how it will affect their relationship, even when they try not to let it. The beginnings though, they were all about the two of them.
• Lex dealing with the Roger Nixon situation, so morally dubious, so wonderful. Never try to blackmail a Luthor, it doesn’t end well. And Lex showcases this so well, he doesn’t just promise to destroy Nixon’s life, he promises to make it as though he never existed in the first place. (“Trust me when I make things disappear, they stay buried.”) All that anger buried underneath, all the people that tried to do exactly what he did and thought Lex would just take it, thought that he was weak. But he was a Luthor and Luthors aren’t weak. And then he turns the tables completely, until he has Nixon working for him, has him under his complete control. And we get are first glimpse at his obsession with what happened that day on the bridge and the lengths he’s willing to go to, to get answers, to get revenge, to get what he wants.
• I love that Pete doesn’t really believe Clark, and thinks that if Chloe isn’t going for his story, there’s no reason he should be; he still goes with Clark. Because that’s what friends do.
• I know it’s not what these types of shows do really; all the trauma the characters go through gets swept under the rug so they can live semi-functioning lives. But being trapped in a tomb by someone you considered your friend, who had previously just been wearing your boyfriends face, has to mess you up in the head a little. Sometimes (and by that I mean a lot of times in a lot of different shows not just SV) wish they had more follow through. Even just a couple of episodes worth. Because seriously four episodes in and I’m pretty sure Lana, Chloe, Whitney and probably Pete (for witnessing things not personal attacks) should all need some therapy. Clark too, but he at least can talk full out with his parents about these things and that’s also the closest they’d probably let him get to a therapist.
• “Actually as concerned as I always am about your personal well being, Clark, I’m not actually here to see you.” -Chloe, with a smug smile and the beginnings of her friendship with Lana, having begun to make more of an effort of understanding the other girl.
• And ending on Lana listening to her mother’s speech, at getting to hear her talk again, getting to hear her opinions, of being that much closer to her again. It kind of made me tear up.