"Reaper" Madness

"Come on, baby ... don't fear the reaper.
Baby, take my hand ..."

Ah, whatever happened to the Blue Oyster Cult? Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, since it's Tuesday, it's off to Smallville or bust.

There was an ad for Drowning Pool during The Osbournes tonight. The one lyric line I could make out was "I don't care about anyone but me" and how apropos for tonight's outing in Kanada's Kansas.

The episode started out with a woman we assume is terminally ill. She at least had the telltale aquarium aerator hose up her nose and convincing medical machinery sounds of hums and beeps in the background. Her son Tyler comes to visit and the woman not only asks him to kill her, but says, "If you love me, you'll do it." This was the first instance of self-absorption in an episode jam packed with it.

So, to prove his love for mumsie, he puts a pillow over her head. The convincing hum continues, but the convincing beep turns into the flat-line sound effect. That's basically a sustained beep. He's caught in the act, but being unaccustomed to murder, he makes a fumbling exit backward out the window and does one of the best charade clues for 'Sudden Impact' I've ever seen.

In the morgue we get treated to a coroner who likes to do comedic banter with corpse during autopsies. Talk about a captive audience. The sardonic coroner gouges a chunk of kryptonite out of Tyler's hand, which, for reasons unknown, brings Tyler back to life ... well, back to animation since he apparently remains dead. Tyler grabs the coroner's wrist and we're all spared further tacky humor when the coroner makes a total ash of himself. I do apology for the awful pun, but somehow I think the coroner would have said it himself if he hadn't ... well ... died and stuff.

We then whisk our way to Smallville where the very social conscious Kents donate their politically correct organically grown produce to Meals for the Icky Sickly. Okay, I don't remember the real name of the place, but from Clark's reaction, that might as well have been the name. Our future Superman whines, "I don't mind helping out for a good cause, it's just that these people are ..." Ma Kent fills in the blank, "Old and sick?" Clark manages to nod with a great deal of effort. "It's just hard to deal with. There's nothing we can really do to help them." There's actually a "shrug" in his tone as if to say, "why not just let them eat non-organically grown vegetables since they'll be kicking the oxygen habit soon anyway."

Martha, who can tell her son is suffering from severe effort syndrome decides to change the subject. "You excited about the big fishing trip with your dad next weekend?" When her question elicits a "Hmm" from Clark. which seemed to take his last ounce of strength, she asks, "You didn't forget, did you?" This question launches Clark into harangue mode. A harangue is like a sustained whine. You know, like the flat-line sound effect is a sustained beep. Clark takes a super breath and spews, "How could I? We've been going every year since I was seven. Ten hours in a rowboat. Swatting mosquitoes. Looking for ripples in the water." Martha looked stunned. She probably wondered, as I did, why the Boy of Steel would have to swat mosquitoes. This leads to a true temper tantrum from Clark.

When Pa Kent says he wants to protect Clark (from the Luthors), that opens the super brat flood gates, "Stop treating me like a kid! I'm not sever years old anymore! I'm not casting lines in the paddock! I don't even like fishing! The only reason I do it is because it makes you happy!" All of which proves that he is still, indeed, a kid.

Moving on, we know that since there's a Clark/father issue in the episode, there will be a Lex/father issue and a third party son/father issue (since mother/son issues don't exist in Smallville). In this case it's a Whitney/father issue. Whitney continues the "it's all about me" theme of the episode. He doesn't want to visit his dad in the hospital because that sick man in the hospital is not the strong dad he used to know. Fortunately, Clark, the guy at the beginning of the episode who saw no real good purpose in visiting the elderly and ailing, lays a guilt trip on Whitney about how important it is to do so.

The Lex father/son dynamic remains the same. Lionel needles his son by sending an accountant down to look into discrepancies on the books and Lex ties up the accountant and puts him in the trunk to give him back to dear old dad. Also, as expected, Lex expresses envy over the Clark/Jonathan relationship.

Let's gallop to the goal line and say that everything turns out swell. Lex arranges for Whitney to throw a pass with the Sharks for his dad to witness. The Sharks are the Metropolis football team Jonathan ran away from home to join years ago. I do wonder why a landlocked city nowhere near an ocean would have a "shark" as the mascot, but maybe Metropolis at one time was located on the East Coast, but instead of moving the football franchise, they moved the whole darn city to Kansas.

A few final observations. Lana didn't seem to lisp much, but her pronunciation of a few things was daunting. At one point I thought she said, "I don't know what you sad, but think you," which I assume was "I don't know what you said, but I thank you." Another line sounded like, "The time you have laughed," but I'm guessing she said "left." Also, Lana was called upon to cry. Since she said in her Rolling Stone interview that she didn't care about people, method acting won't work. May I suggest a shot of pepper spray next time?

Pete had a brief scene in this episode, but was soon forgotten in favor of more Lex scenes. In fact, a little dog that our altruistic villain killed had more screen time than Pete. Then there was Chloe. Her main function was to provide the harebrained explanation for our X-Filish mutant. Chloe surmised that it was a combination of pain killers and kryptonite that gave Tyler the ability to come back from the dead and kill people completely dead. Let's hope that doesn't inspire some wacko to go to Forest Lawn and throw kryptonite and Demerol on Rudolph Valentino's grave.

Lastly, the most disturbing thing in the whole episode for me was this ...



When I saw Clark's flannel shirt matching the kitchen curtains, I expected the house to be invaded by nazis while Clark sang My Favorite Things. Oh well, kids, let's sing our way out of this episode ...

Peeping on Lana and riding in limos
hiding my powers by putting on demos
pouting in rhythm to a song sung by Sting
these are a few of my favorite things ...

Zoom (next week: How Do You Solve a Problem Like Lex Luthor)

ROTFLOL!

This is so funny! That song... I read it this morning and I'm still humming it ... I made my mum look at it and even she thought it was funny (normally she thinks I'm not *completely* normal about L&C... )

Thank you!

Laswa

With this review, I send a big shout out to Anita and Amac for encouraging me.

You know, when this episode got over with, all I could think was that Sigmund Frued would have a field day with this. I've said it once and I'll say it again - subtelty is completely lost on the people who write this show. They find a theme, and they take every opportunity to beat you over the head with it until you get it. In this episode, it was the father thing.

First, we have Clark and Jonathan. Basically, Clark comes off as some sort of brat. I again marvel at the fact that we're supposed to believe that this person is going to grow up to be Superman. "I don't WANT to help old people. I don't WANT to go fishing with you." Jonathan, though, is at least written well...if you're supposed to believe that he's the father of this whiny kid we see. Apparently, the writers have learned nothing since the early days of the show, and Jonathan remains the overbearing boor that we saw early on. Of course, as was said at least twice, it's all made well because nobody wants "unresolved issues" between father and son, so they kinda sorta make up and all is right with the world.

Like Zoom mentioned, you also have Whitney and his dad (and papa Whitney earns the 'worst actor' trophy for this week, hands down), and Lex and his dad (hey look, they hate each other, just like in every other episode. WE GET IT). Lex said the phrase "my father" so many times during this episode, you'd think that the show was about him. If someone taped it and wants to go back and count, I'd be curious to see how many times it was, exactly.

I was laughing at the supposed reason for the bad guy to be among the walking dead. Painkillers and kryptonite?? Jeez I hope Lana never sprains her ankle, because then we'd be stuck with her in an undead fashion for a long time. Speaking of Lana, I really did wish that the guest bad guy would've heard the pleas of the watchers and put us out of our misery by reaching out to touch her. Instead, he killed the poor Meals on Wheels grocery store guy, who never hurt anyone. Yet more completely unnecessary violence in a show that already has too much of it. The grocer, the old lady, her dog (I thought the one rule in Hollywood was that the dog never died. I guess these rules don't apply in Canada), and the near death of the bad guy's mom. Was any of this really needed? Rogue, one of the X-men, just sucks out energy - they could've done that, but I guess we already had it, with the cold guy in an earlier episode.

Notice how the bad guy managed to "kill" himself yet again in this episode, after being tossed around by Clark. His undoing comes when he touched himself, which makes me wonder how he didn't manage to off himself earlier. Surely he didn't discover the necessity of gloves right away...he probably would've been gone before he even got the chance to get started if all it took was his own touch. You give up trying to rationalize things with this show, because it just doesn't work. *sigh* In a show that is otherwise waaaay too long and very pointless, this is just another thing that makes you want to beat your head against a brick wall.

Zoom - that pic had me ROTFLMAO. That has to be a new low.

-Cindy (who keeps thinking that it can't get any worse, but is proven wrong with each passing week)

ROTFLMAO!!!! I didn't even notice that while I was watching, but anything that inspires a song by Zoom is alright in my book. <eg>

Uh, first nitpick...that coroner deserved to die - he didn't know his anatomy! He got the muscles wrong during his 'autopsy' of Tyler. (sorry, i'm a med student and just spent 2 months learning those muscles - I'm allowed to be nitpicky.)

Clark's constant whining about the fishing trip just gave me an unbearable headache. And this show still makes me think that the writers just watch LnC episodes and say, "Okay, what we can we write about to try to negate what we saw in this show." I think they were watching Ordinary People while writing this episode...Our Clark telling Lois, "He's just an ordinary guy, my father. Who loves to this ordinary thing, fishing. I guess I love it because he does."
Switch to Smallville writers - "Clark must bond with Lex! Let's have him hate fishing and spending any time with his dad!" <insert maniacal laughter>

Metropolis Sharks? In Kansas? I dunno, maybe the Kryptonite mutated all the fish in one of the ponds and turned them into sharks...that can be an episode next season maybe. <eg>

As for the Kryptonite/pain killer induced freak of the week...Chloe said that it was the meteor rocks plus a "lethal dose" of pain killers combined that caused the mutation...Question? When and why did the kid take a lethal dose of pain killers? And if he had that many pain killers on him - why didn't he just give those to dear old mom instead of trying to smother her with a pillow? And how did she suddenly get well enough to go home? I thought she was terminally ill and just in the hospital waiting to die, and after that whole suffocating bit they'd keep her in the hospital longer in any case.
And how did Ash-boy turn himself to ashes? You are constantly in contact with yourself - the funny thing about having a body- if he hadn't already turned to ash why would putting his hands together finish him off? (Although I appreciate the fact that Clark didn't kill the bad guy this time.)

And why did he have to kill the poor dog? Kinda destroyed his 'mercy-killing' image. Just because the dog barked a bit...in case you hadn't noticed, dogs do that on occasion.

Ok, I think I'm done now,
Jill (who is very glad that our Lex didn't have any Kryptonite on him when he did the high-dive, imagine what season 2 would have been like)

Aha! I knew there was a reason for watching this show!! It's so I can ROTFLMAO reading these great reviews afterwards
Terry

Okay, I do believe I counted 13 "my father"s by Lex in the episode, not to count the number of "he"s that referred to his father, or other people mentioning Lex's father. And given that Lex wasn't in every scene...wow!

There are just too many cliches and contrivances to mention in Smallville, but in terms of Lex overusing dialogue, how about "I/You didn't come down here..." platitude he has employed in several episodes? Sheesh. To be fair, most of Lex's dialogue - and acting - makes watching Smallville a pleasure, but in many other aspects, this show has gone from mildly irritating to throbbingly painful (actually, less the show, and more watching it!).

This episode was also another take on the vampire myth, in a way. The difference was that Tyler drained lives, not blood. Personally, I'd take a "real" TV vampire like Nick Knight or Angel over Tyler any day.

It also reminded me of Rogue from the X-MEN, which was probably where they got the idea for the gloves. Her power doesn't turn people to ash, but it does drain energy from them, and could probably be lethal to others if she didn't wear gloves all the time. I've never heard of her injuring herself, though. Not exactly an original idea.

I can just picture Smallville's name on the end of the year list of shows that started out with a "promising" pilot and completely went downhill in subsequent episodes---Well, if AOL/Time Warner didn't own every form of media in this country, I would see Smallville's name on that list. The only commendable thing about Smallville is the show that precedes it (Gilmore Girls, which has everything Smallville lacks)and that's pretty pathetic.

peace out,
Sarah

To be honest, I don't see what was all that special about Smallville's pilot. Yes, it was an entertaining enough programme in its own right, but it did not serve as all that great an introduction to the series. Apart from the opening sequence in which Smallville is bombarded by meteor fragments amidst the landing of Clark's ship, the pilot didn't really draw enough attention to itself as being the starting point for the whole show (if that makes any sense). There was a much greater feeling of uniqueness in LnC's pilot (if, once again, that makes any sense).

Cryogenic, I didn't find the pilot very special, either. I watched the aired version, but I had to force myself to pay attention because I was bored and kept drifting off. And this from someone who has been a Superman fan for almost her whole life.

For me, if the pilot (which has a much slower shooting schedule than the series will, more time for writing revisions, and often a much larger budget) can't grab my attention, I don't waste my time on the show. I thought the problem was that I'm the wrong age to appreciate a show about teens, but I still enjoy Madelaine L'Engle's Time series, even though the characters aren't even in high school yet. So there's something else about Smallville that makes it a yawner for me.

The pilot did have nice SFX, though.