Smallville: Bride

By TrinityVixen

I blame Cloverfield for this. While generally enjoyable (despite the appearance of Lana Lang no less!), “Bride” suffers from a glut of narrative trickery and camera gimmicks. The next TV show or movie I see shot in shaky cam as a stab at verisimilitude is getting switched off. And don’t even get me started on the “[insert number here] hours earlier…” device.

Season Eight, Episode Ten

It’s the big day at last! Jimmy and Chloe are T-minus eight hours from their magic moment. Because Chloe couldn’t possibly be the center of everyone’s love and affection (nor even their attention), the show condenses her big day into a series of clips. The footage was captured by an unnamed relative/Smallville resident willing to take orders from Defcon Lois, Wedding Planner. Lois royally flubs an attempt to be coy and funny in a wedding testimonial. (“Remember what the General always says: Marriage is the only war where you get to sleep with the enemy.”) Then it’s on to the highlight reel: the nervous groom at the altar; Chloe being escorted in on Clark’s arm; the officiant declaring “husband and wife;” and the cutting of the cake before the lights go out and Doomsday crashes the party, possibly kills Jimmy and abducts Chloe.

BUT EIGHT HOURS EARLIER…?

Eight hours earlier, Lois has assigned everyone involved in the wedding a fairy-tale nickname and is marching the hired help around the Kent Barn. Wedding and reception in a barn. Granted, the Kent farm doesn’t produce anything, and the last time anyone saw the cows, Jonathan Kent was still around, but still: really, show? A barn–an active barn for a wedding? The guests with hay allergies are going to sue. I suppose it’s a good way to be sure that the scenery does not eclipse the beauty of the lady of the hour.

Jimmy swans about, blindly in love and reasonably paranoid about the chances of something going catastrophically wrong. He unloads his niggling insecurities on Chloe, which leads to more anxiety as he’s not even supposed to see her before the wedding. Were I he, I would not have been able to focus on anything except the divine Miss Chloe in her negligee and artfully tousled hair. (Rrrowr, girl!) Instead, Chloe has to remind him of all the trials and tribulations they’ve miraculously weathered since becoming a couple before he’ll scamper off happy. Just in time for her to get a worrisome voice mail from Bloomesday, too. Clark also revisits the matter of unwelcome would-be lovers intruding at an inconvenient time when Oliver informs him that Lex is alive. Time to ditch the party and stop the bad guy, right? Chloe and Clark both respond in the negatory. Chloe deletes Davis Bloome’s messages; Clark will be the best man even if it gets him killed.

(I kind of love how stupid Clark is, really. It adds fuel for the Batman supporters in the age-old “Who would win a fight…” debate. This Clark Kent is so stupid that even in a physical fight with Batman, he’d lose because he ran into his own fist.)

Clark follows Oliver back to his private jet to yell at him some more about running off half-cocked. Back at Stately Kent Manor, Chloe’s dressed in white and confessing to Lois about her Bloomesday complications. Lois casually dismisses Chloe’s admission of making out with Davis in order to get the inside scoop on how Chloe landed “the one.” (Ethics–personal or professional–never were a burden Lois Lane had to bear.) Questions about fated romance aside, Chloe and Lois traverse through the last wedding cliché in pursuit of one part of the holy quadrangle of old/new, borrowed/blue. They need something borrowed. Without her memories of just how dangerous meteor rock is, Chloe opens a big chunk hidden away in a lead box for Clark to carry along with them. From fifteen feet away, Clark suggests something that won’t make him die: a pressed rose he kept from his and Chloe’s one-and-only romantic moment. (Season one shout-out!) Lois almost has Clark’s babies right there, he is so adorable. Chloe, genuinely touched, can’t fathom why Clark, who never betrayed any interest in her since she gave him that flower, held onto it.

“I never throw away good memories.”

::Insert loud record skipping and scratching to a screeching halt:: Excuse me, princess? What was that? Apparently, the reckoning for Clark’s incredibly douchey behavior is yet to come; the episode skirts the issue of his having erased Chloe’s memories. Chloe, none the wiser, remains half in love with Clark, and Lois is covering the remaining ground in a hurry. Clark basks in how wonderful he is in their eyes, his seekrit paaaaaain the only punishment for neutering his best friend. F***er. (Sorry folks. I do usually try to be good, but This. Is. Pushing. It.)

Hours away in Cuba, Green Arrow stalks the latest Lex Luthor trail only to run into one of Lex’s many ex-Mrs.es. Special guest star Kristin Kreuk returns as Lana Lang, super ninja. She has to be super because she has fabulous hair. It should then come as no surprise that by episode’s end she will be revealed to be in cahoots with evil. (Thus adhering to the First Law of Villainy: Evil is Better Than a Makeover.) Oliver all but strips and gives Lana his Social Security number within seconds of meeting her. This seems like a bad decision on his part. (So was dating Tess Mercer. Zing!) Lana moralizes at him for shooting to kill the dummy he thought was Lex. Used to this abuse from Clark, Oliver spits right back at her for abandoning Chloe—ostensibly her best friend—on her wedding day. (Murder being only as evil as betraying a friendship on this show.) They both agree that they suck compared to Clark because it wouldn’t be Smallville unless at least one person said as much each week. From such inferiority complexes are alliances born!

At the wedding, Lois is swooning over Clark in his fancy pants. Point conceded: Tom Welling rocks the suit. I can almost overlook the fact that he is wearing a gray tie to a wedding whose colors are solidly in the autumn range—almost, but not quite. Chloe’s questionable taste where it comes to location has not faltered when it comes to color scheme. Lois is in a smashing yet hard-to-pull-off orange satin tea-length dress with a tight burgundy wrap around the waist, a modern, western take on an obi. (Chloe’s otherwise unremarkable wedding dress repeats the theme in all white.) The least Clark could have done was find a tie to match. He wouldn’t even have to do orange! The burgundy would have been fine, and we all know how good he thinks he looks in red!

While I’ve been ranting about coordinating colors, Lois has slid into inappropriate closeness territory helping Clark with his cufflinks. (He can’t work cufflinks. Yeah, Batman would totally kick his ass.) She swoons and sighs when, as her back is turned, she mistakes Clark’s reading of Jimmy’s vows as a declaration of love. The awkward moment comes to a close as the camera nerd comes in to bring us back to the opening with the testimonials Lois and Clark made earlier.

Elsewhere, Bloomesday is murdering the ever-living life out of people and very badly covering it up while crying to Chloe on the phone.

Jimmy and Chloe are married by narrative fiat, with only the one clip from the opener to stand as proof that the ceremony happened. We rejoin them as Clark fills in for the mandatory Daddy-Daughter dance and has to suffer (poor thing) Chloe declaring him unforgettable (in every way). To further bury the unrealized fallout from having been mind-raped, Chloe assures him that until some event she can’t remember happened, her life was weighted down. Now she’s floating on air. Responsibility? Heroism? Icky! They give you wrinkles! She twirls away with Mr. Chloe Sullivan, leaving Clark to dance with Lois. The wedding atmosphere having sucked out their playful banter, Lois and Clark are alarmingly intimate in close, silent proximity. The attraction is sudden and underdeveloped, but people get desperate for love when they’re single at a wedding, so I’ll allow it.

Lana Lang struts in like the bitch goddess she is at the exact moment Clark and Lois come too close together for either of them to be able to deny later (as they surely will) that they were going to kiss. Chloe lost her ability to be bitter in addition to her memories because she greets her old friend–who has missed the ceremony and is only now showing up for the free food and booze–like she, not Chloe, is the belle of the ball. Needless to say, Clark is all “Lois who?” even as Lois’ lips are half an inch from his face.

Lois, awesomely, retreats to the Kent front porch with a champagne bottle, running from one inconvenient, embarrassing, aborted love affair only to run into another. Oliver Queen graces the party with his presence. (He is wearing a goddamned burgundy tie. Either Clark and he got theirs mixed up at the dry cleaner’s or Clark is a color-blind moron.) Supreme awkwardness reigns as she unburdens herself about a new, all-encompassing love to her previous objet d’affection. Oliver gamely plays at being a friendly ear, but some part of encouraging his ex-lover to go after Clark, who is thicker than the barn door currently enclosing a wedding, must be…weird. And that’s even before getting into the JLA, leather-on-the-off-hours thing. Since when did Oliver, with his head up his ass about his dead parents and the Luthors who need to pay for that, notice or care that Lois was falling for someone else?

From one unsettled reunion to another: Clark timidly chastises Lana for showing up, unannounced, after taking his heart and giving him a pen last season. Lana stands by her decision, putting another stiletto-sized hole in his otherwise impenetrable heart, and changes the subject to how the Kent barn was always her first choice for a wedding. (The mystery of the Kent Farm’s source of income is now explained. For what they could have charged to host weddings these days, the Kents probably never so much as raised dirt.) Apropos of nothing, Clark tells Lana that he mind-wiped Chloe. Lana becomes the only person on the show to confirm that this is dickish behavior, and I am stuck in the unenviable position of agreeing with Lana Lang.

Thanks be to the Almighty, Bloomesday shows up to murderate some guests so I don’t have to dwell on that unpleasantness. Lana trips and falls over in the first wave of terror. Clark confronts the monster only to be tossed up onto the second level of the barn and into the box with the kryptonite. Naturally, it pops open and incapacitates Clark long enough for Bloomesday to mutilate Jimmy and abscond with the bleeding bride.

So that’s Chloe gone, Jimmy critical, and Lana with a sprain. Clark, naturally, focuses his efforts on Lana first, everyone else second. (The shining star, guiding light, and guardian angel of the show repays by apparently conspiring with Lex Luthor to deceive Oliver and Clark.) Lois shakes a broken heart better than Clark and walks away from him so she can be Jimmy’s hand to hold in Chloe’s absence. Bloomesday tenderly transports Chloe to the blackened Fortress. When her head hits the rock, she opens glassy black eyes and smiles on the monster as she would a lover. In another cave, Lex, hooked up to innumerable tubes and wires, watches Chloe cut the cake at her wedding. Everybody’s changing.

Next episode: The JLA is so 2008. 2009 is all about the Legionnaires!

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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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