By TrinityVixen
Forgive me for this tangent into the serious. I pretty much loved this episode, even though it annoyed me and was basically a retread of the sixth season episode “Hydro” with Oliver and Clark switching places. Perhaps it’s election fever and hope sweeping me up, but I’m enjoying this season a lot. (Or, at least, it’s hurting me significantly less than the last few.)
Season Eight, Episode Seven
This season has moved at a better, faster clip than previous seasons, getting back to what was so enjoyable about the show when it first aired: showing how Clark Kent becomes Superman. So I blitzed out on philosophy this go-round. Indulge me, and we’ll get back to talking about how gay everyone is on this show for each other and my continuing issues with Ms. Mercer’s makeup artist.
Identity is a process, not a product. It starts when you are born, when others shape your identity for you and you shape it for yourself in response to them and their impression of you changes accordingly. It’s action-reaction from infancy to dotage, carried out in an imperfectly elastic system. That’s just science talk for the fact that not every action or reaction has its opposite and equal consequence. Small criticisms warp your identity when major events only solidify it. Action and reaction, but not necessarily in that order.
There is a man named Clark Kent, but that wasn’t his first identity. He was a baby called Kal-El first, which he only found out many years after he’d been Clark far too long to go back to the dead House of El with any allegiance. The Kent Farm was home; Dad was Jonathan; Mom was Martha; life was Smallville; friends were Chloe and Pete; love was Lana Lang; danger was Lex Luthor and green meteor rock (and the people transformed by both); super strength and speed were the norm. That was Clark Kent. Kal-El surfaced, ascendant upon the rising of the Fortress (now gone), emboldened by every visitor from his long-dead planet, every conversation with Jor-El’s disembodied voice, every single meteor rock (and there were so many). The man known as Clark Kent was Kal-El was (alias) Boy Scout was the Traveler.
None of them were his identity. He was still, and always, Clark, a Kansas farm boy—conservative, family-oriented, genial, helpful, hardworking. Only recently has he learned to act and react and become something else, something more. Because he has yet another name to take, a name that is the whole reason for all those others to exist. Someone he doesn’t even know yet is him in the not-too-distant future. Not a dream-future or an alternate reality, but the real and true future. The question of this episode, “Identity,” is whether he acts and becomes or reacts and remains. It’s a line the show has walked for eight years, but the balance has tipped in favor of action. So let’s get to it.
Jimmy Olsen (friend, fiancé, photographer) snaps a picture of Clark saving Lois from yet another instance of personal peril. Although the photo is shows only a blurred red streak, Jimmy is able to make the connection and fingers Clark as Metropolis’ superhero. (As I’ve said before, no one wears that red Members Only jacket except for Clark.) Jimmy takes pieces of Clark’s identity (super, secretive, sainted) and puts them together a different way and suddenly the puzzle forms a new picture. All of Jimmy’s fears about Clark and Chloe’s intimacy are banished because it all makes sense now; Chloe (special, solid, secret-keeper) has been in on the hero gig from the very start.
Clark reacts. Heroism is something he does, not something he acknowledges. Imagine ladies at a church picnic, saying loudly what they can gossip freely about, whispering what they cannot, and that is how Clark treats his call to duty. (“Did you hear about that Kent boy? Alien. Runs around saving people.”) Clark panics when Jimmy threatens to run a story on the Metropolis hero and dissembles ineffectually when Jimmy cottons onto the hero’s—his—alter ego. Jimmy is hurt that Clark won’t trust him and swears he can keep the hero thing under his hat. Clark panics some more and then starts making the rounds.
First stop, Chloe (dependable, defensive, determined). She has bad news for him: she doesn’t want him to react; she wants him to become. Nothing bad about being a hero, she says. Chloe’s identity has changed for the heroic—not in leaps and bounds like Clark’s, but in steps and hops towards a better world. Chloe, the girl who should have been a reporter, running a millions-of-dollars non-profit, hazarding meteor freak-outs and teenagers (which qualifies her for sainthood), tells him that sometimes people need a symbol. Let the picture stand. Let people know.
Clark won’t listen to what his paranoia can’t withstand. Change is dangerous. He finds Oliver Queen (billionaire, badass, bilious drunk) sousing it up on the Queen Industries party plane. Oliver’s identity has changed, too. He was an orphan with a thwarted sense of justice; a teen whose cruelty cost someone else his life; a castaway; a hero; an organizer; and a man with plans. Now, he drinks, reacting to the news (that Clark hid from him) that his parents were murdered and revenge is entirely out of his hands (Lionel is dead). Clark’s neediness overpowers all else; Oliver is drafted into a rope-a-dope. Only this time, Clark isn’t throwing off a snoopy reporter (Lois, who is only ever Lois, is Lois, is Lois) but disappointing and deceiving an adoring friend (who finally understood his world for the first time when he photographed a blur). This is still reacting. Kal-El has a birthright, but Clark is still Clark. There are still whispering church ladies to hide from. (“Clark Kent made the newspapers again. Wearing tights now.”)
What Clark understands is that much of one’s identity is, necessarily, hidden. Not all our secrets are kind enough to share. Not every weakness makes us stronger for sharing. But some times you absolutely need to know a person’s identity in the vacuum, and that’s where Sebastian Kane comes in. Tess Mercer (hard, haughty, human) wants to know where her crystal has gone, and she has a list of names for Mr. Kane, a boy from Black Creek, Montana, to look into. Sebastian had an identity before he went into Black Creek of which he is not proud. He can’t adapt it while under Ms. Mercer’s thumb, but if he uses his meteor ability—he can read and steal memories at a touch—to determine who might have her crystal, she’ll erase the identity he doesn’t want and let him be born again. His first assignment: Lois Lane.
Sebastian is not a bad person, but he has done bad things. When Lois spots him a mile off as a suspicious fish, she blows his cover. He succeeds as far as Ms. Mercer’s demands (Lois does not have the crystal), but Lois is a threat. She has information from Black Creek that she stole from the Luthor Mansion when she was a French maid for a day. (Lois plays dress up, but she is still always Lois.) Her intel on Sebastian keeps him reacting—kill and start over, kill and start over. Lois fends him off long enough to call Clark for help. Clark’s ruse with Jimmy—Clark himself will be “saved” by Jimmy’s hero–is thwarted when he has to speed to Lois’ rescue. Oliver, in a low-rent mock up of his Green Arrow costume and a red cape, adapts the existing plan around Clark’s absence in order to save Jimmy from Ms. Mercer’s goons. (No word on why someone as lowly as Jimmy would be second on her list of potential thieves, but perhaps she’s working backwards through it.)
Clark, in effecting his rescue of Lois, gets grabbed by Sebastian. Sebastian learns too much about Clark, but Clark is too preoccupied with getting Jimmy off his back to linger and face this new problem of identity breach. Clark returns to Metropolis in time to be where the hero is not and shatter Jimmy’s certainty. Still reacting, Clark. People gape at the proud hero who stands on a rooftop. Oliver preens, swelling with their admiration and also probably laughing a lot. This is entirely not his style. The people of Metropolis see more crime on an average day than Iraq sees in a month; someone who could stop that is a welcome person indeed. Clark watches them hope, laugh, marvel; he makes a decision to act.
So does Oliver. The past is past. Whether it began as a lie, the Green Arrow isn’t just an idea any more. It’s his true identity. He feels naked, weak, and petty without the security of justice. Time he got the rest of the crew together. Time to take Green Arrow out and put Oliver to rest. Clark congratulates him and promises that he is about ready to do the same. No more hiding. No more shadow-in-the-night stuff. (That’s Batman’s turf, though nobody knows it yet.) It is time he brought people hope. He doesn’t realize that he sounds as narcissistic as Lex Luthor. Luckily, since Clark is right, and he actually is the hero, he gets away with this. He will become a hero for the city, the country, and the world over. How he will become, Clark doesn’t know. He is still Clark Kent, after all. Clark Kent never had all the answers.
That’s why he is friends with the woman who does. Chloe Sullivan (beautiful, Brainiac-born; woman, Watchtower) visits Sebastian Kane in the hospital. She is going to marry Jimmy Olsen because she loves him. He’s taught her to act, too, and she’s caught his enthusiasm for having a public hero but has never lost her protectiveness of her best friend. Part of her understands Jimmy’s jealousy because part of Chloe is jealous. She didn’t know Clark’s secret first among his friends. Staring down at Sebastian Kane, she knows he is privy to more of Clark’s secrets than she is—he got farther into Clark’s head than she has, and she’s had more practice. It’s not fair. So, yes, Chloe is jealous. She is also very, very smart.
A human brain is a computer. We think of it as more or less sophisticated, depending on the day, but that is a philosophical debate. It holds our identity, it must be more precious than a series of synapses, a nexus of nerves. And it is. You can create art on a piece of paper, but that doesn’t make the paper any less the remnant of dead, pulped up trees. Sebastian’s brain is a remarkable computer; that doesn’t mean it isn’t still a computer. Chloe’s brain is a supercomputer, souped up with the fastest processor around (since Brainiac is dead—for now). No other computer can interface with hers and not overload, Sebastian’s included. She touches him as he tries to shy away, and all her memories flood into him, memories more voluminous than even a remarkable computer can handle. Sebastian flatlines, and a new Chloe walks out of his room, troubled by this new direction that her old identity (loving, loyal, lying) has taken her. Chloe is reacting—protect Clark, protect Clark, protect Clark—and acting—at any cost, at any cost at any cost. A major event like Clark’s coming out party solidified her love for him; a minor thing like his secret being spilled (minor because it’s happened over and over and over) has warped her beyond recognition. Where is Chloe Sullivan going, and who will she be when she gets there?
Next week: Things and stuff. Lois, Clark, Phantom Zone. Kara with her Angelina Jolie Gone in 60 Seconds hairstyle. See you in the great rhombus prison, y’all
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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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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. 
