Smallville season 5 disc 4
5.13 Vengeance
Surprisingly good (better than the last four episodes I reviewed and the other two on this disc, which by other than Smallville season 5 standards means ‘not bad’). A mysterious young lady with powers rescued Martha from a mugging in Metropolis. She also made me wish that more of the other half of metahumans would turn up on this show. Chloe tries dubbing her the ‘Angel of Vengeance’. Was that a name from comics? She reminded me a bit of Zorro with her cool outfit. As Clark gets to know Andrea, her alter ego, she drops a million anvils and he has to face some moral choices about what someone with a superpower does when they lose a parent.
Andrea is a kryptofreak, essentially, and I liked that it is due to a heart transplant from someone who died in the latest meteor shower, given that it was Jonathan’s dickey heart that had killed him. Anyway, she’s trying to avenge her dead mother, which leads her to Lionel, who has a bigger role this episode in a series of ironies.
O’Toole is magnificent in her own way, and Martha learns that Chloe could be a part of her support system, too (although like earlier Lois-Martha bonding, it doesn’t lead much of anywhere in future episodes.)
Lana is busy being an understanding fellow orphan of a girlfriend. Schneider gets a nice goodbye in a family video, there’s lots of nice visuals, and I thought the show stepped up to express Clark’s grief at this point in time.
5.14 Tomb
This also continues with the theme of vengeance in ghostly Gretchen. The most important and best thing about this episode is that it depends a lot on Alison Mack as Chloe sees a krypto-assisted ghost and then gets possessed by her, which leads to questions about Chloe’s sanity. Clark gets to save the day, which makes the girls (especially Lois) make some pretty bad moves, as if they didn’t realise it was a horror-tinged ep.
Obviously the handling of mental ill-health is terrible, with Chloe speaking as the frit little girl whose mother left her. She wants to keep the fact that her mother was mentally ill yet another secret, and she doesn’t want to look into exactly what went wrong (but newly bereaved Clark guilts her into it.) Belle Reve is waved around as a threat. Although the serial killer turns out to be the orderly, it could well have been the almost equally creepy psychiatrist.
I got to be properly outraged at Lana, not discussing Chloe’s treatment with Chloe or Lois (CHLOE’S COUSIN) (or Gabe for that matter). Oh no, she totally acts like she has the unilateral right to turn to Lex and ask him to send Chloe to Belle Reve. YOU DON’T GET TO DECIDE THAT, LANA.
Did I enjoy being outraged at Lana? Yes, I did.
Anyway, Mack is wonderful playing a terrorised Chloe and then an entirely different persona. I was miffed that we didn’t have Chloe and Lois talk about the truth about Chloe’s mother, and, in fact, they could have kept the reunion with Chloe’s mother for a separate episode, but she’s only a second-tier supporting character.
Meanwhile Lionel encroaches on grieving widow and future state senator Martha Kent and genuinely tries to help her!?!?
5.15 Cyborg
How I hope that whatever they do with this character in Justice League is more exciting. Victor Stone escapes from a lab to meet Lana’s truck. (How many vehicles have been wrecked on this show over the years?) He isn’t dead because he did that already. Clark and Lana take opposing views on how much Lex had to do with that (Lex lies like a liar and Rosenbaum plays him slightly frenzied at times.) The plot was a bit stupid, but there was fun to be had snarking at Clark’s bright ideas.
Victor has angst over his girlfriend, highlighting the Clana issues even further. But they were the least interesting dysfunctional ship as the new Senator got blackmailed, but Lionel tried to be her white knight. Glover played the sincerity of an untrustworthy man beautifully.
This disc also featured The Vengeance Chronicles, five webisodes, I presume. Andea Rojas reaches out to Chloe with a possible story about supers and Lex. An old face and a new superpowered turn up, it’s of the same quality almost as actual episodes in terms of visuals and FX, and sadly the dialogue too.
This entry was originally posted at https://shallowness.dreamwidth.org/305855.html.