Now that Smallville’s 6th season is over and filming has begun on the new season, it’s clear that somewhere midpoint last year the show made a deadly shift in direction.
The first half of the season averaged nearly 5 million viewers, while the “back 9,” as the remaining episodes are referred to in TV lingo, could barely come close to 4 million. What happened?
Right and Wrong
The show did get some things right at the beginning. First, they introduced Jimmy Olsen.
The famous cub reporter provided a love interest for Chloe Sullivan and also lightened the mood of the often grimly dark series.
However, no matter how engaging a supporting cast character is, he is not designed to carry an episode even with the help of other supporting cast members. This can fall flat, as happened with Static. The lead character has to play a prominent role in the story line even if the focus is on a secondary character.
Another plus on the right side was making Lois Lane, at long last, a reporter. Where they failed was in how they handled her sudden interest in journalism in the episode Sneeze.
While it’s easy to see why anyone would be curious about how a barn door flew 7 miles across the county on a clear day, that shouldn’t be the story that makes Lois proclaim journalism as her calling.
Starting her out at a tabloid, on the other hand, was rather brilliant. Without the scholastic background and thus no shiny journalism degree, a tabloid was the perfect solution. It taught her the ropes in a more practical hands-on environment and more importantly, by the end of the season, it taught her about the need for credibility, something she would never have at a tabloid.
They also added a fledgling hero with a costumed secret identity to go with the fledgling reporter. This gave Smallville at least a mythic verisimilitude. The only real error they made was similar to the supporting cast error in that a guest star shouldn’t eclipse the lead character.
Even so, the addition of billionaire playboy Oliver Queen, AKA Green Arrow, was an inspired choice because he was the closest Smallville could come to introducing Batman, who the producers were not permitted to use, and yet he was a lot more charming and approachable than the Dark Knight.
This led to the inevitable relationship with Lois Lane. A relationship, according to one critic, “that didn’t make you retch or desire to strangle anyone.”
Such sentiment isn’t surprising considering how most viewers must feel after enduring years of obsessive angst, or worse, cutesie-poo togetherness fluff. Oliver and Lois offered a good-natured grownup alternative.
Wrong is Right
There is probably nothing more wrong than the pairing of Lex Luthor and Lana Lang, but this diabolical romantic match-up was an inspired direction. It illustrated how emotionally and even psychologically damaged the two of them were. Lana, who rebounded to Lex from Clark after rebounding from Jason to Clark, was accustomed to getting her way, but she finally landed in a relationship with a man who likewise was accustomed to getting his way.
While that kind of relationship can lead to an amusing clash of wills, with Lex and Lana it skirted the edges of insanity. Lex, like Jason and Clark before him, was obsessed with Lana, not truly in love with her.
Lana, of course, has had only one obsession, aside from her dead parents that is — the need for complete disclosure from prospective mates, or there’ll be hell to pay.
Because of this self-defeating flaw in Lana, she will always be doomed to be disappointed because no one will ever be one hundred percent honest one hundred percent of the time.
As each man failed her impossible standards, Lana became a little bit darker and harder. Incapable of unconditional love, Lana began to self destruct.
At first Lana played the part of the sorrowful bird in the gilded cage when she discovered she was pregnant and Lex proposed marriage.
She defaulted to her old tactic of running back to Clark. She could always count on his obsession with her to pull her through, but not this time.
Clark, after discovering she was pregnant, a factoid she did not volunteer, told her he hoped she’d be happy with Lex and sent her on her way.
This was surprising since Clark in the past would have taken her back under any circumstances, no matter how much she had stomped on his heart prior to her rebound. Could it be that Clark had finally grown up and found a moral boundary he wouldn’t cross even for Lana? No, not really.
Right is Right
However he might have been temporarily buoyed up by kissing Lois while disguised as Green Arrow in the episode Hydro. It was at the end of that episode that Lana paid Clark her rebound visit, but he sent her packing.
A couple of episodes later in Crimson a love potion mixed with red kryptonite caused Clark and Lois to fall for each other. It was a lighthearted episode filled with iconography like Clark “leaping tall buildings” with Lois in his arms. Unfortunately it ended with Clark kidnapping Lana, so his obsession continued.
Nonetheless, early in the season Clark had been on the right track hunting down the criminals from the Phantom Zone and wanting to resume his training at the Fortress of Solitude when he had disposed of the Zoners. Not that slogging off to the Fortress of Solitude and emerging a dozen years later without explanation as Superman has ever been an interesting dramatic maneuver, but at least Clark had constructive goals for once.
Capping off his progress, Clark joined forces with the nascent Justice League. He was reluctant at first and clearly not the leader, but this qualified as amazing progress for Clark considering just the year before he hated his powers and heritage.
With things moving so smoothly and inexorably toward the future, what could go wrong?
Wrong is Just Plain Wrong
When Clark makes this face it’s a sure bet that the actor is trying a little too hard to look overjoyed at the prospect of getting Lana back.
Lana’s greatest power is to give Clark hope of a reconciliation after he’s made an effort to move on from her.
As mentioned she did exactly that in Hydro by showing up at his loft making rebound sounds, but also as mentioned, Clark still had some boundaries left at that point and so did not take her back.
Unfortunately his resolve began to unravel in Labyrinth, an episode where an alien took over Clark’s mind and used his memories as weapons. It was revealing that only the pink innocent Lana dwelt there. A Lana who never dated Whitney, Jason, or Lex Luthor. A Lana who never really existed except in Clark’s mind, but apparently that was enough.
Fantasy Lana was able to talk Clark into putting his head in the villain’s noose, even though that meant he’d lose his free will and be the villain’s puppet forever. You’d think if anything could convince Clark that his feelings for Lana were not only obsessive, but were delusional and destructive as well, it would have been that episode. Alas, you’d be wrong.
Clark leaped to the nonsensical conclusion that it meant he still loved Lana. That bit of faulty deductive reasoning was costly enough, as was Clark kidnapping Lana at the end of the following episode, but nothing was as costly as Clark wanting to propose to Lana on her wedding day to Lex Luthor.
After the wedding episode the show lost 600 or so thousand of the remaining viewers. It could be argued they left because Lana was forced to marry Lex, but that’s highly unlikely considering Lex and Lana’s sexual consummation didn’t hurt the ratings back when episodes were hitting nearly 5 million, nor were the ratings hurt when Lana accepted Lex’s proposal.
Even her pregnancy didn’t hurt the ratings. On the contrary, the revelation that the pregnancy was fake brought on by injections of hormones was merely an anticlimactic footnote that occurred when the ratings were already hitting under 4 million.
But the blame doesn’t rest solely with Lana. In fact Lana was actually interesting this year, at least up to a given point.
Her emotional meltdowns, her chronic rebound tendencies, her Diogenes complex to find an honest man all collided with each other this season.
She emerged as a woman who very much earned the name Luthor, even more so than Lex. In many ways she possessed the necessary sociopathic coldness that has yet to completely overtake Lex.
She tortured Lionel while he was hospitalized due to injuries sustained during an explosion that trapped Lex underground in a maze of tunnels rigged with explosives. Lana felt entitled to torture her father-in-law because Lionel had discovered her plan to bolt from the altar with a dear John, Whitney, Jason, Lex letter and forced her to marry Lex.
During the torture, which included pinching off Lionel’s oxygen supply, he confessed that he had forced her to marry Lex because he needed someone to get close enough to his son to spy on his activities to protect Clark.
In the final episode of the season Lana ran out on her marriage and straight to Clark and told him everything about the shotgun wedding. Well almost everything. She conveniently left out the part about Lionel wanting to protect Clark. This launched Clark into a blindly stupid rage and caused him to nearly kill Lionel. Had Martian Manhunter not stopped him, that sadly would’ve been the outcome.
“Two wrongs don’t make a right”
While Lana is an easy target due to her extremely fickle nature and erratic choices as she rebounds back and forth between men, the truth is she has no power of her own.
That’s why the real downfall of the season lands more squarely on Clark Kent’s broad shoulders because he, like Lex and others, empowers Lana by granting her dominion over their actions.
If Clark weren’t destined to become Superman, then none of this would matter. If Clark was still 15 years old, a lot of it could be forgiven, but he is destined to be Superman and now he’s 21 years old and he’s run out of excuses.
When Lex was trapped in the tunnels and his death was imminent, Lana had the means to save him after finding the blueprints, but she sat on the information.
Again, stunningly cold-blooded, she only released the information when she learned Clark was trapped in the tunnels with Lex.
It can’t even be argued that Lex deserved a death sentence for making Lana believe she was pregnant. It was a cruel plot, but not a deadly one and he is the villain. We expect more from heroes, or just plain good people.
Yet, ironically, it was Lex who went back to rescue Clark after he became trapped in a pile of rubble laced with kryptonite.
Later, when Clark found out that Lana had given the blueprints to the rescuers, he concluded it meant that Lana must really love Lex, rather than seeing it as Lana doing the right and decent thing that any good person should do. That made it seem as if Clark, the alleged hero of the story, would have expected Lana to let Lex die if she were not in love with him, and worse, he would’ve been fine with that.
When a hero’s compass fails so miserably to find ethical north, then the hero is lost. When the villain is occasionally more heroic than the hero, the villain becomes the sympathetic character. When their mutual ambiguity can be traced back to the same character, Lana Lang in this case, then they’ve surrendered their power and story to her and she becomes the important character and the entire focus of the series shifts accordingly.
For years there was a standing joke among Smallville fans that the show was more about Lana and her negligible place in the myth than it was about the hero and villain and their epic journey. However, this past season seemed to prove them right.
Again, this isn’t about blaming Lana because without Clark and Lex tripping over themselves to possess her and doing things they normally wouldn’t do towards that end, she’s a very powerless character. Unfortunately series co-creator Miles Millar recently stated that the upcoming season, apparently with the theme of “the season of reversals,” will explore, yet again, the Clark and Lana relationship “as they try and make it work and can a superhero really have a girlfriend, which is the classic superhero dilemma.”
If this sounds redundant, it is. Whether or not a superhero can have a relationship and make it work was explored thoroughly on Lois & Clark The New Adventures of Superman a decade ago. Of course by using Lana the answer ironically becomes no, because the audience already knows that his relationship with Lana flops.
It’s strange that Millar and his partner Al Gough chose to build the show around Clark’s doomed relationship with Lana, though they weren’t terribly forthcoming with that plan early in the buzz phase.
That’s not really surprising because it’s doubtful many viewers would tune in for a show called Lana and Clark.
Instead most viewers thought they would be seeing a detailed evolution of Clark Kent’s journey from farm boy to the world’s greatest hero and likewise the journey of Lex Luthor from being Clark Kent’s best friend to Superman’s worst enemy.
The show has at most, contractually speaking, two seasons left and so all points may simply be moot anyway as to whether the show goes out with a whimper or a bang. However, I fear that the Lana/Clark relationship will be drawn out to the bitter end and so I’m leaning towards whimper.
Tags: evaluation, sixth season, Smallville