Smallville: Power and Requiem

By TrinityVixen

Things were going so well this season, and then wham! It runs headlong into a narrative brick wall. What happened to this show? Lana Lang is what. We got off the Clark and Lana roller coaster and our stomachs finally settled. Clark stopped being dizzy long enough to want to save the world more than he wanted to whine (which is nothing short of a miracle). Chloe got to be happy with Jimmy for two seconds. Lois and Clark flirted all the goddamned time and it was almost like if you squinted, you could see Superman in the distance. All that progress interrupted so we could have one last go on the coaster before it was dismantled.

Season Eight, Episodes Thirteen and Fourteen

It’s not like Lana has done much, either. Her last two episodes for the foreseeable future barely contribute anything except another reason why she can never return. (No, seriously, they mean it this time.) At least the last time, regardless of how heartlessly Lana broke it off with Clark, the decision was hers. She set Clark free to be super in her absence, and he was actually doing it! Lest we get carried away with admiration for this show of willpower and self-sacrifice, “Power” reassures us that no woman is allowed to have that much agency on this show. As neither “Power” nor “Requiem” has enough nutritional value to merit its own review, I have lumped them together. The sooner we get through this ridiculousness, the better.

“Power” strips Lana’s tear-streaked goodbye DVD to Clark of all the courage of its convictions. Lana didn’t want Clark to be a stronger, better person: she was coerced into filming that video by Tess Mercer! Tess, working on Lex’s behalf before Lex and Clark had their showdown in the Fortress, had goons secure Lana’s performance. Seeing as, at that time, Lex didn’t officially know that Clark was the Traveler (the what?), I assume he arranged all this just to be a douchebag? Now that he’s gone, Lex eats all the sin the show requires in order to tell its improbable Lana-centric stories.

In the present time, Lana has gone missing again. Clark finds her apartment at the Talon torn apart. He corners Ms. Mercer, who declares she’s been Lana’s friend ever since she stopped being on Lex’s side two minutes ago. She begins to narrate the flashbacks that explain Lana’s kidnapping from the asylum. A trinket at Lana’s place that Clark doesn’t recognize points him to a security advisor at the Luthor mansion. Clark accosts him and he continues the meme from Ms. Mercer. It turns out that Lana escaped the goons and ran and found Yoda an ex-marine–the security advisor–to teach her to be a wascally wabbit. We watch the flashbacks of Lana enduring ice! And fire! Her Jedi Master finally lets her go after a few months of meaningless pain-training and not much else. Because she is Lana, she’s better than all the guys he has ever trained. Ever.

From there, Lana went to Chloe. Back in the present, Chloe apologizes for not telling Clark, then tells him everything since he already knows. (Still waiting on that apology from stealing her memories, Clark.) Way back when, Lana came to stash some stuff at the Isis Foundation; girled out over Chloe getting married; and used her friend as a sounding board about Project Ares (Lex’s plan to enhance soldiers with alien DNA). Lana extracted a promise of silence from Chloe, hence the secrecy. While Chloe is confessing, Tess wrangles for control over the information about the selfsame technology (combined with Project Prometheus) with Lex’s old lackey. He ends up dead; Tess chases after the missing tech.

Long story short, Lana was not abducted; she absconded to a secret lab where she is fried alive in order for a super suit to be grafted onto her skin. The suit was being designed to keep Lex, wherever he is, alive. (Destroying the Fortress and escaping into the arctic wilderness having decimated him physically.) So Lana gets to flip Lex the bird and have super powers.

Not surprisingly, “Requiem” picks up from that with Clark and Lana having super sex. There are jokes made about the bed they broke and the floor they could break. It is all as disgusting as it sounds. Now Lana, welcomed into the bad-ass society, has super powers and can bone Clark. What could possibly go wrong?

Short answer: everything. Lex decides to enact his revenge via a surrogate: the Toy Man. (Guess how he assassinates people? Go on, guess.) Everyone has to suffer for his company going to his enemy and his super-suit going to his ex. Lex starts with his board and Oliver Queen by having the Toy Man blow them up with a kryptonite-explosive-laced Newton’s cradle. Oliver is the only survivor, pissed as hell at Lex, and instantly aware of who planted the bomb on Lex’s behalf. He leaves Clark and Lana to work out what he already knows–that the bomber is a disgruntled ex-Queen Industries employee in Lex’s employ. When the Toy Man comes after him again, Oliver gets the upper hand and leaves the hospital with the Toy Man’s cymbal-monkey bomb, looking to burn what little remains of Lex Luthor down. So much for all that ‘greater good’ talk.

Five years later, as Clark and Lana are only just catching onto the plot, they discover that Lana’s super-suit can absorb kryptonite. This becomes important later when Lex sets up another kryptonite bomb that Lana can either absorb (thus defusing the rest of the bomb…how?) and forever be saturated with kryptonite such that she can’t touch Clark ever again; or she can let explode and kill everyone in The Daily Planet building.

Back up a tic. Lex’s great evil plan is to separate Clark and Lana forever? Where have I seen this suck as a narrative device before? Really? That’s the best that he, the guy who orchestrates abductions, clones, and murders with impunity can do? Strike at the heart of his enemy by breaking up his enemy from his girlfriend? Oh me, oh my, I am beside myself with his evil. Wow. Lex is even more impotent than I thought.

Heroism and melodrama demand that Lana throw herself on the meteor rock grenade. She does. Clark is enraged at Lex enough to track him (via the miracle of another Chloe-generated GPS) to a van parked somewhere in Metropolis. Clark means to kill. To preserve Clark in his never-removed-from-box, pure-as-the-driven-snow glory, Lana uses the kryptonite aura emanating from her body to stop him. Alas, she makes no plans to stop Oliver, who cheerfully explodes the truck. As ever, the show prevents Clark from carrying the weight of responsibility while still allowing him a measure of vengeance. Even though he enjoys thinking Lex is dead, he will undoubtedly be a pissy ass about it to Oliver later. Chloe warms Oliver up for upcoming Kent smackdown: she has the circumstantial evidence to prove Oliver did it. Oliver shrugs and says that she can blame Brainiac all she likes, but he knows that she had something to do with a certain memory-sucking scumbag ending up brain dead. That’s hitting below the belt, isn’t it, Ollie? Chloe is still sufficiently traumatized by what Brainiac did in her body that she agrees to keep what she knows from Clark. (She’s good at that.) Despite herself, Chloe can admit to being glad Lex is dead. I expect no such self-aware admissions from Clark.

Clark and Lana have the latest in their history of painful goodbyes. Normally, kryptonite saps Clark of his intelligence, his coordination, and his powers, but such is the pull of Lana Lang that he muddles through all that to get close enough so he can kiss her goodbye. I assume no one associated with this show recognizes the irony of having Lana depart with a poisoned kiss that nearly sucks the life out of Clark. If they did, they might have seriously reconsidered ever inviting her back in the first place.

It doesn’t matter. She had to come back, and even though Lana is, for all intents and purposes, a fleshy, annoying version of Metallo, she will be back again if this show gets another season. As will Lex. The man survived a crawl through the frozen tundra; a little bomb isn’t going to slow him down. Have fun surviving Lex and Clark turning on you at the same time, Ollie.

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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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