Smallville: Abyss

By TrinityVixen

Question: if you’re losing your memories, how can you remember that you’re losing them?

Season Eight, Episode Nine

Chloe is remarkably aware of the steady decay of her memories this week, as Brainiac’s infection finally starts to format and re-install her hardware with his preferred OS. First directory to be rewritten: Jimmy Olsen. (Figures. Poor Jimmy.) Jimmy panics and once again swallows his pride as he turns to Clark for help; he assumes that her meteor power, which has lead to impermanent lapses into death, is to blame. Clark, aware that this is a Trojan Horse problem and not a meteor-power-related one, goes to rebuild the Fortress and his relationship with the disembodied force of his jerkwad father in order to help Chloe.

While both are absent, Bloomesday is in like Flynn. Chloe has to make eccentric and complex diagrams to trace friends she’s known for most of her life, but when all is lost to her, Bloomesday appears in the darkness, filling the void. In a series of increasingly embarrassing run-ins with a steadily diminishing Chloe, Bloomesday keeps making it clear that he’s in love with her. Because her memories have vanished, she thinks she has no one else, and Chloe clings to him, which only aggravates the problem. The problem being that Bloomesday thinks they’re soul mates. He just found out last week that he’s a soulless creation of two impotent psychopaths; my sense is that this is a reaction to that information. Note to Zod Jr: you don’t get a soul by being creepy and insisting that a protesting woman must be in love with you.

In the arctic, Clark revives the Fortress so that he might preachify unto Jor-El. Terrence Stamp sounds exceedingly bored. I would have paid good money to have Jor-El version 2.0 snap and go, “Listen to me, you little tosser: I made my career off of magnificent speechifying. You shut your trap.” Alas, not. Jor-El is duly cowed by Clark’s declaration that he is a new and improved Clark—he’s not just about the saving of friends and hiding from the world any more. Except for the part where he’s thousands of miles from anywhere begging his dead father to help his best friend, that is. Jor-El apologizes to Clark (another meme for this season) for trying to teach him anything. Clark is always right, in case anyone had forgotten. It’s time to heal Chloe and the breach between father and son. So long as father capitulates to son, no worries.

Bloomesday delivers Chloe to Jimmy in a last-ditch attempt to marshal his humanity, drugging her for good measure when he doesn’t trust himself not to steal her away. As he will unload onto Chloe later, she trusts him in her memory-free panic, which means ZOMG STAR-CROSSED. For now, he leaves her in Jimmy and Clark’s care. Clark spirits her to the Fortress when Jimmy’s back is turned.

And here’s where it gets ugly. Clark has been insistent about his secret being too dangerous for anyone to handle. His fear has stood in the way of his rise to being a hero, but he seemed to have, kind of, gotten over that. (A little.) He managed to keep it from Jimmy, but now temptation has presented him with an opportunity to erase four seasons’ worth of intimate, trusting friendship with Chloe: Jor-El can, while he quarantines Brainiac out of Chloe’s cranium, get rid of her memories of Clark being super. Clark requests that he do this, forgetting that while four years of peril did result from Chloe knowing his secret, she wasn’t exactly living in the Green Zone for the ten or so years before that when she didn’t know he was an alien.

This is a problematic trope in science fiction. I wasn’t able to entirely enjoy Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind because of the (realized) potential for forced mind-wiping. I’m not going to be hyperbolic or scream that this is like rape, but there is a bit of violation involved and the betrayal of someone you trust tampering with your memory is traumatic. It is an incredibly paternalistic, chauvinistic impulse most of the time, too—usually with a man deciding it is “better” that the woman not remember his being a complete douchebag. Never trust anyone who countenances their behavior in the language of “for your own good.” That is code for “I screwed up, but if you pay for it, I don’t have to feel guilty.” Guilt is instructive and necessary. People who avoid guilt lack a conscience.

Or they’re the inexplicably never-contradicted hero of a CW television show. Clark gets away with his sketchy mind-wiping of Chloe, which leads to yet another cliché that ignores the real problem entirely: Clark regrets his actions only because they have a negative effect on him. This trope (last seen being skated over on Supernatural) denies that Chloe is in any way a victim; it makes the case that only Clark has lost something, that the only reason he should repent his behavior is because he suffers for not having anyone with whom to share his secret. (Irony says what?) This is hogwash. Chloe, if she goes back to think hard on her memories, will find them either as patchy or insubstantial as when Brainiac was rewriting them. How is that supposed to make her feel safe or secure? She has a crazy mother, so the last thing she needs is a freak out that she might be losing it. (Especially since she’s already lost it.) Brainiac was clearly house to install himself in Chloe’s shoes (literally), so he was only trying to kill her; Clark is recreating Chloe to suit what he needs of her, so he’s destroying parts of her beyond all recognition that she might not ever get back—a fate worse than death. Who’s the villain here, really?

The answer: it’s Brainiac. Because, ahem, CLARK IS ALWAYS RIGHT. Except when he’s stupid: Brainiac juice drips out Chloe’s ear and infects the Fortress. James Marsters’ sultry tones replace Terrence Stamp’s gruff snitting as the entire crystal palace turns black. A mark that Chloe had been seeing in her head appears on the ground; it means “Doom,” and, before Brainiac took him over, Jor-El warned Clark that the creature who is Doom is on Earth. (The sheer number of “Oh, by the way, I forgot to mention this threat to your planet” gaffes on Jor-El’s part really undermine his role as the respectable repository of cosmic knowledge.) Doom is, of course, Doomsday, aka Bloomesday. Brainiac, having failed to get Zod or Lex or anyone else to turn Hell upon the Earth, has decided to go after a new generation of monster. He was riding Chloe to make contact. And now that Bloomesday has decided to pine away for Chloe until she realizes she loooooooves him, Brainiac should be all set.

Next Week: Bloomesday is here! The full monster looks like he’s making a mess of Jimmy and Chloe’s wedding. (Hell hath no fury like a monster scorned!) He’ll be sorely disappointed that he’s not the least welcome party-crashed when newly becoifed Lana Lang drops in. Judging from the relative level of fabulosity of her hair, Lana must be being possessed by something evil. I’m not making this up! It’s a rule! I might be able to forgive Kristin Kreuk for existing if she’s half as evil as Faora. Speaking of the former Mrs. Zod, is that Lois Lane moving in for some farmboy loving? Shock!

Never miss an update. Subscribe to Pink Raygun by Email or subscribe via RSS

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.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Are the producers planning a season nine of Smallville?
• Shaking things up in Smallville
• Grace Park’s done being a dirty girl

SG6906/47 (Black) Clark Kent Nerd Glasses Clear Lens

Chinese Checkers (White Horse)

Secret Files Series 2 Unmasked: Clark Kent/Superman Action Figure

Brainiac

Smallville - The Complete First Season