Smallville: Fierce

By TrinityVixen
The following things are forbidden to you forever when you fake your own death:

-Going back to your hometown
-Expecting loved ones to forgive you
-Loved ones actually forgiving you

I know that this is Smallville. I know that. I still expect there to be some consideration of the fact that faking your death is about as considerate to your friends as committing suicide and making them watch. The emotional baggage, man! You don’t off yourself (or pretend to be offed) and then show up after they’ve torn themselves apart (hey, maybe it happened off-camera, okay?) grieving and put their lives back together. But, of course, it’s Lana Lang so no one is going to be at all pissed that she completely manipulated them and caused them to suffer. Not when her return is as the rising of the sun on the dark nights of their souls! Besides, none of them really believed she was forever gone. She lived on in their hearts. They just think that they got to skip the bit where they all had to clap until the little pixie came back to life.

So yes, Lana is back. Already, this episode is the hangover to the steady alcoholic buzz I had going from the season premiere. I couldn’t have enjoyed this inevitability less if I actually were hungover. My new inanimate friend, the Kryptonian 8-Ball heartily agrees. Should we have been drunk for this, Kryptonian 8-Ball? 8-Ball: “What’s this should, human worm? Wheeeeee!!” Damn thing must be broken. And if it’s not, it’s about to be…

While I’ve been preemptively retching, Lana Lang has moved right on into the Kent Home. She uses it as her base when she calls to extort the restitution of her living status from Lex. And there’s something about some money she stole and that I’m not clear on whether or not she’s keeping. She doesn’t want any more money from Lex, so I suppose that’s something. The entire thing is even more awkwardly written than it is staged. I mean, breaking it off with the ex you framed for your murder in the home of your one true love? Lana’s got issues.

But none that would deny her a chance to laugh with Clark over lemonade and the antics of a Kryptonian teenager. She also, ever so kindly, admonishes him for not getting women. Lady, I don’t know if you’ve smelled what you’re slinging, but it sure stinks. Clark, naturally, is bashfully charmed by her accurate assessment of the major personality defect that causes him to accept a wildly unstable woman like Lana as the love of his life. Added to the list of things you don’t get to when you fake your own death and let loved ones mourn you: ever tell them—ever—how to do anything. If Clark had chosen to argue the point, Lana would have lost in two seconds. “Sure, I could let Kara express herself and have fun and try to fit in her way. But I don’t think I need to take orders from someone whose problem resolution handbook includes a how-to chapter on starting a new life by exploding the old.”

This does not happen, alas. Instead, Lana peaces out so that Clark and Kara can conflict-resolve on their own. Dude, if you show up not-dead when you’re supposed to be, YOU DO NOT FLOUNCE OFF. NOT FOR ANY REASON. You stay until the person gets the sense that, yes, you are really alive and they are not just hallucinating (wouldn’t be the first or even seventh time for any of the principles concerned here). Preferably, you induce pain and a scar of some sort so they really can’t Tyler Durden you out of existence. Because if you’ve already put them through the weeping and gnashing of teeth over the extinction of your existence, Lana, you might as well scratch your name into your doormats when you get back. So what if listening to Clark complain about Kara’s behavior bores you to tears (actual tears: I cried and died a little)? YOU DO NOT LEAVE. That goes on the list, too. It’s a long list when you have to consider that the most f’ed up thing you can ever do to people is let them think you’re dead and then come back and go, “Psych!”

All is forgiven, though. It has to be so: she is Lana, we cannot resist her (if the Borg ever assimilate her, we are all doomed). There’s no time (and not nearly enough talent) to explore the myriad emotions Lana’s return brings up for Clark. Plus, there’s T&A to be had, which is weird because Lois is on vacation, and misses what has long been established as her contractual obligation to provide cleavage shots to boost ratings. Maybe she and Super Girl share the show’s one Wonderbra and they couldn’t both be flaunting their goodies at the same time. I guess they’re letting the new girl have her turn this week. Lois has already been stripped (at least she managed to do that herself), dipped (by Aquaman, no less), and zipped (into a cherry-red PVC suit); Kara has much to do if she wants to uphold this proud tradition.

She knocks a few of the token female pins down in this one episode, so at least we know she’s game for trying. We’ve got the gratuitous bikini shot—two of ‘em, actually—a little simpering in a tiny silk robe and even a turn in a silk dress. Kara Kent (which grates about as much on the ears as the words next to each other on the page do on the eyes) has decided she will be Miss Sweet Corn. I’m guessing the pageant crowd hasn’t cottoned onto this annual ritual in Smallville because there’s absolutely no security on this gig. It’s ridiculous. People can just fly in (on a plane, in most cases) and sign up the day before and be entered. There’s no proof of residency (or humanity) required. All you need is one hungry diva out to be Miss Kansas to drive up and embarrass a bunch of home-bread heartland girls out of an otherwise insignificant title.

Hell, you could have three of them. Looking like the grown-up, sluttier sisters of the PowerPuff Girls, three color-coordinated bombshells (hey, I’m being fair: they are all pretty) do a power walk in heels (high enough to make the Sex in the City girls blush) to sign up for some sweet corn walk-off action. Despite the fact that, later, we will be told that there were only two last-minute sign ups, Purple Popsicle, Pink-is-the-new-Red-Shirt, Greedy Green and Kara all plunk down their names and puff their lips at an understandably enthusiastic Jimmy Olsen. Kara’s not the object of his lens’ affection for long, but this is for the best; she’s got the hots for him and her hots burn holes through time, space, and inconvenient wardrobe choices (she’ll get there, too, trust me).

As if it needed reiteration: anyone showing up with a fashion sense more cosmopolitan than even Topeka can handle (and a runway walk to make Tyra cry) is bad news. The Color Guard want money—Smallville’s money. Specifically, gold bars and treasure that, although buried in the “Meteor rocks? What’s a meteor?” age, have some kind of Kryptonian connection. Pink-is-the-new-Red-Shirt tries to bounce with the goods and blow of the other girls only to be taken out by the Purple Popsicle. We never learn what Pink could do that made her one of Color Guard (they all are supposed to have meteor-induced abilities). Kara makes the discovery of the petrified Pink, but Jimmy is the one to bring up the Purple Popsicle onto Chloe’s Wall-of-Weird-o-scope. Chloe, with an intellect and hacking skills to sink the Red October in dry dock before the Russians even knew what it did, figures out the contestant-and-criminal dealings of the Color Guard. But not before Jimmy ends up a packaged pop-tart in his own car after a run-in with the Purple Popsicle. Kara to the rescue again! She’s able to fly but not to hear the Purple Popsicle’s heart beat, and before she knows it, she’s in with their gang and after the Kryptonian trinket that’s really the only buried treasure. The Color Guard is dishonorably discharged after pursuing a bogus treasure with really bad special effects.

In there somewhere, Kara rebelled and made Clark Really Think About How Unfair He Was Being. Then Kara Realized That She Should Listen To The Voice Of (not too much) Experience. Lessons duly learned, Kara abandons her dream of beauty pageant glory (which lasts a staggeringly long time in small towns, you’ve no idea) and takes a job as a mocha jockey at the Talon. While it is actually a step up from the whole pageant thing, I bristle at Kara being shoved into the life that Clark deems appropriate for his women. His fetish for the aprons they wear and a woman who knows her way around a mean foam machine knows no bounds!

In fact, I believe the only woman in whom he hasn’t expressed any normal or red-kryptonite-induced sexual interest–Chloe–is also the only woman on this show not to have had a job at the Talon (yes, I am including Martha Kent…ew). Poor Chloe. Jesus, last episode she had her professional future bequeathed to Lois—that worthy candidate who, somehow, working the crap leftover article circuit in the basement of The Daily Planet nonetheless got to expense a trip to New York to see Judas Priest. Now, Kara’s after her boyfriend and her boyfriend’s after meteor freaks, whose ranks she has joined. I bet Chloe doesn’t even bat an eye when she finds out Lana left her out of the “I’m back!” victory loop. It’s just one more way to dump on the only female character left on this show of any interest.

And Lex is totally onto yet another kid who ripped open his car to save his life. I can’t tell how evil he’s going to be about it, but then again how evil he is about anything changes from week to week as suits a show that can’t quite ever commit to his being as evil as, say, Lex Luthor. Major points for finally hooking him up with the government, though. Lex needs his “in” to the presidency somehow. Protecting the country—nay, the world—from aliens is as good a platform as any. It worked for another son of America’s heartland with a billion dollar bank account.

Previews for next week: There were some. Yes. I’m still too depressed about the Lana stuff that I endured to care. And I broke my 8-Ball. Dang it all. On an unrelated note: does anyone else think that the episode title has anything to do with America’s Next Top Model, or is that just crazy association from the Model-esque Color Guard?

About TrinityVixen: There’s an asterisk on TrinityVixen’scollege transcript that assures anyone who reads it that, though there is no specific major, degree, or certificate for it, she did, in fact, complete some kind of creative writing program as an undergrad. Armed with that symbol of irrelevant experience, she has polluted the internet with her opinions and horrible fanworks ever since (and for quite a long while before). Living poor in New York until she finds a means to become independently wealthy, she must subsist on the juicy meat of fandom. Fandom and noodles. And instant soup.

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