So, it's nearly been two months since I have had much to say about Smallville. To say the writing has been up and down this year would be an understatement. I could barely stomach the Kryptonite dog episode, and the episode about Lois' sister Lucy, was also so very unenjoyable. Then again, we have also had over a month go by without any new episodes on the Tivo. With only eight episodes left, the writers were going to have to tighten up their writing if they were going to create the same great end of the season suspense that we have enjoyed the first three seasons.
Is Lex Luthor ever going to learn? What is this obsession that he has with the meteor rock? No matter how many times he experiments with the stuff, bad shit always happens. The world is littered with failed Luthorcorp experiments that tried to find a way to harness the power of the stuff. Sure, there is always a chance that you are going to do something really good, but when things go bad, things *really* go bad. It's the same conundrum that has plagued silicone breast implants. When they work, they feel great, when they leak, not so much. So when we learned that Lex was doing some experiments with the meteor rock, you just know bad shit is going to happen.
Yet, in the interest of science, let's say that there is a legitimate use to researching this dangerous substance. For example, if you can find a way to cure cancer or repair spinal injuries, all of the messed up experiments will seem like nothing at all. With this in mind, Lex continues his work on the meteor rock. He and a Luthorcorp researcher, Dr. Sinclair, were fine-tuning one of the experiments.
Now, I am not sure about all the readers out there, but if you never got past 7th grade science class, you probably learned how to have a safer lab than what they run in Luthorcorp. When you were heating things up on the Bunsen burner, you didn't stare at it from a few inches away to look at the pretty colors, did you? It doesn't matter if you were just cooking up some top ramen in a beaker, your teacher(who probably was crazy, perhaps took some shrapnel in the head or leg during the second world war, and almost certainly drove a late 70s Ford Country Squire) wouldn't let you put yourself in danger. So why does Lex Luthor, and all of the billions he is worth, put himself right in front of the meteor rock as they are using laser to superheat it? We will never know, but predictably, the experiment can't be controlled, the meteor rock gets too hot, some shit explodes, and Lex and Dr. Sinclair head to the hospital.
But this being Smallville and a bunch of meteor rock is involved, that can't be the end of things. After we see Lex take the injured doctor out of the lab, we see another Lex appear from the rubble. It seems that the side effect of the kryptonite explosion is a little more than we were expecting. At the hospital, Chloe and Clark (honestly, isn't it nice to see them fighting crime together again) come to see Lex. They had heard there was an explosion at Luthorcorp. After Lex is patched up, he leaves with Clark to inspect the lab. If they look at the lab notes, they might get a clue as to what went wrong.
Chloe stays behind to ask Dr. Sinclair a few questions of her own. But before she gets there, it is Lex that is paying Dr. Sinclair a visit. Lex said that he saw a second Lex Luthor after the accident, and he wanted to know if there is some way to reverse it. When the scientists says he would have to look at his research notes, Lex kills him. Apparently, the nurses at the Smallville medical center have no problems leaving medication out so anybody could pump somebody's IV full of enough chemicals to cause a heart attack. Lex leaves, and bumps into Chloe, who finds it strange that he is at the hospital and not with Clark, right before a code blue goes off and a bunch of nurses rush in to help Dr. Sinclair.
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Comments (6)
(as if living in Smallville over the years had diminished their ability to imagine crazy shit happening).
Seems like they have the same convenient amnesia that the people in Sunnydale had despite all the Hellmouth activities.
1 of 6 | Posted by TinkerbellAPixie | Posted on April 17, 2005 4:25 PM
OK, I know the split personality bit is old hat on Smallville, but did anyone else think this was eerily close to "The Enemy Within" from Star Trek: TOS. I even expected Lana to scratch Bizarro Lex's face just like Yeoman Rand did to Bizarro Kirk.
2 of 6 | Posted by Oberon | Posted on April 17, 2005 4:27 PM
How old are you J-Unit? My crazy science teacher was in Vietnam.
I can't stand this thing the WB is doing where they play six weeks of new episodes, six weeks of repeats, six weeks of new episodes, six weeks of repeats, and so on. By the time six weeks of repeats I am not watching has passed, I've forgotten what happened six weeks ago. It's a bad way to do things, and Smallville isn't the only show they do it on (Charmed).
I don't think the "good" lex was the OG Lex as he is referred to here. It seems like the explosion just split him into the good part of himself and the bad. We know that the OG Lex would never tell Clark "this is the top-secret experiment we were working on let's go look at the notes." He would have been edgy and secretive and made something up to cover up what they were really doing pre-explosion. Now we know there is a good person inside Lex somewhere. And isn't it convenient he didn't remember anything that happened during the split?
3 of 6 | Posted by Victoria | Posted on April 17, 2005 10:09 PM
Victoria,
I graduated college in 2001. Now, was I a 5th, 6th, or 7th year senior at the time? Who knows?
4 of 6 | Posted by J-Unit | Posted on April 17, 2005 11:13 PM
Victoria,
They do that on "Gilmore Girls" too, and it makes me wanna sneak into The WB offices and plant a bomb under David Janollari's desk.
5 of 6 | Posted by Nate | Posted on April 18, 2005 9:46 AM
Your fears about this show are right
on the money. I too used to watch
this show, it was really pretty good.
Then somehow it got uninteresting...
and I think you are correct in stating
that the writing went way south and WB
sort of lost its thread on the show... Warner
Brothers needs to fire a lot of "execs" on
it's lot... I never know when something is
going to be on over there...
6 of 6 | Posted by visibleh20 | Posted on April 18, 2005 5:52 PM