#6.14 “Trespass” Review

NOTE: Note: If you don’t want to learn pivotal plot points before you view this episode, go watch it and come back because you know the drill: this review will spoil you big time otherwise.

Hmm… Well, I guess the winning streak had to end sometime.

While not a terrible episode, Trespass wasn’t exactly the best one ever either. Following after some of the best of the series, it had some hard acts to follow so maybe I can cut it a little slack.

The stalker storyline had been done, to some extent, several times before. Lana, it seems, has a stalker story almost every season. So maybe it was only a matter of time before they had another one, but at least this one brought up slightly different aspects of stalking, getting more into stalking celebrities, than before so maybe it’s not so bad. That carries forward some of the story ideas from “Hydro” and the gossip mongering going on around Lana and Lex and is good in terms of the show’s continuity.

Also the story gave Lana a good opportunity to be strong and decisive without a man telling her what to do. I’m no feminist but it’s frustrating to see how she’s often been written as being very dependent on the men around her. She doesn’t do the independent girl thing very often, so it was terrific to see her stand up for what she believed was best, despite the fact that other people disagreed with her decisions.

Probably the weakest part of the story was the fact that the guard was the bad guy. Although I suppose that’s a bit better than the “butler done it,” I’d still figured out the guard was looking good to be the bad guy about an act before the reveal. However, I still didn’t mind it too much but mostly because the actor who played Mack, the guard, was a better actor than your average Smallville villain gets. He helped make it work.

There were some terrific scenes between the main cast. Seeing Clark openly acknowledge to Jimmy how futile it would be trying to beat him up was funny, but touching. “It’s nice to see that you’d risk being ending up in traction to protect Chloe’s honor…” That moment didn’t last long and had little really to do with the main story, but the exchange was terrifically character revealing for both men.

Lex wasn’t in this much. Michael was probably busy doing preproduction work for his directorial debut for next week’s “Freak,” but when he was in it he was terrifically written. It’s like the writers distilled down the essence of Lex and made his scenes, as few and as short as they were, the best Lex they could.

And the barn scene was probably one of the best angry scenes between Lex and Clark in a long time. Lex’s attacks on Clark and the reason he wanted his old friend to go to the wedding were fantastic. Lex may have been visiting Clark at his place, but it was Lex who had the upper hand throughout the whole scene and it put Clark on the defensive. It was a nice turnaround from the more usual scene with Clark busting through the doors of the library and making accusations.

The episode was thrilling and had some good twists and turns and kept me interested up until the terrific final barn scene between Lex and Clark. It was some solid writing by scribe Tracy A. Bellomo.

The actors were all terrific. Tom Welling had some great moments. In both saves he did for Lana, Clark was being very heroic and almost matter of fact about it. He was direct and amusingly to the point when the guard asked what Clark was doing when he knocked the photographer into the wall: “Your job.” He also did really well in the barn scene between Clark and Lex. Clark was off-balance most of the scene and Tom played Clark’s discomfiture well.

Kristin Kreuk was wonderful as Lana, even though she was apparently nursing a cold during filming. Probably her best scene was the one with the guard in the library after he’d supposedly saved her. After the reveal of him being the bad guy, Lana had a vulnerability to her that was touching as she tried to handle the situation. She played it cool and very smart, while apparently giving him the kind of validation that he wanted: she needed saving and he was just the person to do it. Yet, the way that Kristin played it made seem that maybe there was a grain of truth in her desperation. It was a remarkably subtle reading of the scene up until she whacked in the head with the decanter. That was an awesome scene for Kristin… Also, in her ending scene with Lex I loved it when Lana’s faced changed when she knew Lex couldn’t see it as he kissed her cheek. Maybe Lana was telling the truth when she said she was looking for a way out. That was a very nice touch by Kristin.

The actor who’d played the guard, Mack (guest star Jordan Belfi), was terrific and made more out of the role than was probably there on the page. The scene with Lana in the library was amazing. Him removing the IFB (that ear piece thingy for those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about) was a subtle touch. It was like he was removing a reminder of his real place in Lana’s life, he’s her body guard, and hid the evidence under the collar of his jacket. That was a very subtle thing. Later in the scene, tears actually welled up in his eyes when he saw how vulnerable his princess, Lana, was and that he could in fact save her. He was so earnest and emotionally open to her, up until she hit him over the head and tried to escape, when he became furious and ready to kill her. Jordan made it seem like Mack hated that he HAD to kill Lana since he couldn’t save her and didn’t take any joy in it. He totally sold the extreme change without going over the top with it, which would have been easy to do. Jordan did an outstanding job even with such a small, yet vital, part.

Michael Rosenbaum wasn’t in this episode much but what little screen time he had was pure gold. The best scene for him, as I mentioned for the writing, was the barn scene with Clark. Lex had a lot of different intents to play in the scene, sometimes changing intent within the same sentence, and Michael played it perfectly. I especially loved how he turned the invitation to a chance to make sure Clark would suffer as he witnesses Lex’s triumph in marrying Lana. I loved how Michael made the last line, Lex telling Clark to RSVP, an order and not a request. The schadenfreude Lex felt was perfectly portrayed by Michael.

Allison Mack and Aaron Ashmore were both terrific in this episode. Chloe was her usual perky self but was troubled by the recent change in the relationship with Jimmy. Allison perfectly played the fact that keeping Clark’s secret was in part responsible for the break-up. Aaron was again terrific, especially when Jimmy told Clark that he was willing to risk getting injured to protect Chloe. His resolve to protect her no matter the consequences was touching. I just love how Allison seems to light up when Chloe sees Jimmy. They’re a great couple so I’m glad they patched things up in the show.

David Moxness photographed this episode, and he really does darker scenes very well. Most of this episode was filmed at night and it was gorgeous. Throughout the episode, he had a very mobile camera and made good use of hand held shots to suggest the creepy point-of-view of the stalker. When the photographer was chasing Lana through the abandoned parts of the hospital, David’s photography was especially effective. He had very dark shadows, bright down light, sharp side light, an over-exposing strobe going off from time to time all combined with shaky (and sometimes blurred) hand held shots. Put together, they just made the scene all the more tension filled as the action built to Clark’s rescue of Lana.

Probably one of the best moments David had filmed was Clark’s catch and the way he photographed the reveal. He just made a slow tracking, floor level shot from Mack’s dead, staring eyes to Clark’s feet. That was awesome.

And I must give serious to kudos to Production Designer James Philpott’s props department. It was hilarious seeing “Lexana” mentioned in that newspaper headline! I actually laughed out loud when I saw that. Also, it was a nice touch to have Lana’s old changed necklace in the cigar box. Despite the pain the necklace had caused him before it’d been neutralized back in Season two’s “Visage,” I still don’t think Clark would have thrown it away. However, he couldn’t very well explain how it got changed without explaining a lot of other things to Lana therefore he couldn’t really have given it back to her either. So I can see him hiding it away inside his dresser instead. Also, the drawer in his desk was wonderfully, and believably, cluttered. It didn’t look like it’d been staged, like those things so often do. The props people took great care to try and make it look realistic and it showed.

Usually, I love Mark Snow’s atmospheric music but I hated it in this episode. It was too over the top and intruded too much into the show, pulling me out of several scenes.

Also, another problem I had was the fall Lana and Mack took down into the library. For some reason I couldn’t pin down, the fall didn’t visually make sense to me when I watched the first time so I went back and watched it again. It was only after viewing it several times that I figured out why it looked wrong.

It started when Mack and Lana broke through the glass. Viewed from the top as they went through the skylight, Lana was to Mack’s left in what looked to be an actual filmed stunt. However as the camera switched to watching them from below as they fell, which looked to me like a composited green screen visual effect, Lana was suddenly on his right. Then, after Clark had “caught” Lana in an onset filmed shot, she and her rescuer were on Mack’s left as he lay dead on the floor. That doesn’t make sense since the implication was that Clark got there just in the nick of time to catch her…

That’s a pretty big oops from the usually spot on Visual Effects people.

Although this is probably the weakest episode since the end of the winter hiatus, that still is saying a lot since the other episodes have all been stellar.

I give this episode 4 neutralized kryptonite necklaces out of a possible 5.

A couple of side notes:

Now, just how far is Smallville from Metropolis? I think in one episode way back when, I believe it was in “Truth,” Chloe put it at a three hour drive from Smallville. However, the commute seems shorter than that nowadays with how easily people move back and forth between Metropolis and Smallville. I think someone needs to bring it up on the show so we can know just how far it is now…

[sarcasm] Maybe they could explain it by the earthquakes on Dark Thursday having moved Metropolis closer to Smallville… [/sarcasm]

Also, just when does the spring semester for Metropolis U start? It’s now February in the show so I would have thought that someone, Chloe especially, might have started taking classes again. If school is still closed, as Lana mentioned in “Sneeze,” I would have thought someone might have mentioned that the university didn’t reopen when they’d expected it to. Either way, we haven’t heard one word about it. As nice as the continuity has been lately, not talking about that is a fairly big faux pas.

Note: The views of Triplet don’t necessarily represent the thoughts and feelings of everyone at KryptonSite. Send her feedback.