Smallville: Arctic Review

[TheCC Staff]

Smallville’s Seventh Season Goes Out With A Whimper
by Alan Noah (http://alannoah.com)

May 20th, 2008 - For seven years, Lex Luthor has been seeking the truth about aliens, the meteor shower, and Clark Kent. For the latter part of this season, he has been dangerously close to the secret of Veritas, a secret society created by Lionel Luthor, Virgil Swann, the Queens, and the Teagues. Through this recent search, Lex has been edging closer and closer to the identity of the Traveler, whom the audience knows to be Clark. The revelation of this fact to Lex seemed like it would be a climactic moment, not just for this season but for the entire series (overlooking the time a few seasons ago when Lex found out but then had his memory erased). Instead, Brainiac posing as Kara tells Lex that he knew all along that Clark was the Traveler. Then the show cuts away from the scene.

And that’s it. Lex has been extremely suspicious of Clark, but has also believed that he is just an ordinary farmboy at times. Clark hiding his true secret from Lex has been a constant of the show since it first began, and Lex’s ultimate discovery in this episode felt extremely anti-climactic. In fact, the entire scene at the Fortress, while tense and well-acted, was a letdown. If for no other reason than, despite the fact that the episode title is “Arctic,” we don’t get to the Fortress until 54 minutes in. Lex’s confessions that he loved Clark like a brother, and that it is his birthright to control the Traveler due to all he has suffered were heartfelt, and made you sympathize for the villain of the story, but this scene would have benefited by being longer and more fleshed out. And why couldn’t Clark super-speed at Lex and knock the device away? Did it make him weak like Kryptonite? Considering the magnitude of this device, we were given very little information about its nature. Nor did we find out why Lex’s planes were disappearing in the Arctic Circle, or how he was able to survive the trip.


Click Here to Read the Whole Review (http://thecomiccollective.com/Movies-TV/Reviews/2008/May/Smallville_Arctic/)

[Zombiezeus]

I don't watch Smallville, and still see no reason to. Isn't it an awful lot like Dawson's Creek, but sometimes people run real fast and stuff?

Also maybe I'm too much of a die-hard comics geek to like it. Isn't it better to have DC's continuity? With 70 years of ret-conning and multiple universes and stuff?

But seriously I feel like this show could have been called anything and based on a generic superhero instead of Superman and still function pretty much the same way.

Also also, it aped a concept my friend and I had for a comic way back when and I'm still pissed off.

[alan_noah]

Well, I've never actually watched an episode of Dawson's Creek, so I'm not totally sure how to answer that question. There are love triangles, octagons, and the occasional rhombus, but it's not like that's a theme that's never been used in comic books.

And I understand the lack of continuity being a sticking point, it just doesn't bother me that much. You know that Clark becomes Superman, Lex becomes an evil villain, and Clark and Lana don't end up together. If they stuck strictly to what's come before, it would be a pretty dull series, no?

And while they didn't have to mine the Superman mythos, it would have likely had a harder time finding a fan base if it created a new hero from the ground up, though you could make the argument that the additional weight of knowing how things turn out would be lost in doing so.

The reasons I first tuned in? I love Superman, and Kristin Kreuk is beautiful.