#8.13 “Power” Review

NOTE: This review contains huge spoilers, read no further if you don’t want to see them before you view the episode. However, if you read this before viewing the episode despite my warnings, you may actually thank me later. It will help you save 42 minutes of your valuable time if you decide to give this episode a pass.

Just when Smallville was doing so well, they inflict this episode on unsuspecting viewers.

As I start to write this I am unsure where to even begin. There are so many wrong things that happened…

Please, note my word choice. The things that happened in this episode weren’t bad, they were wrong.

Did two of the Executive Producers really write this, Darren Swimmer and Todd Slavkin? Yikes.

Although I suppose Darren and Todd haven’t exactly the best track record as a writing team, in my opinion. Yeah, they wrote Transference and Identity, but they also wrote Blue and Velocity. It seems like for every good episode like Solitude, they’d produced two episodes on par with Hypnotic or Duplicity.

This apparently is part of the group of episodes they’ve written where I’ve actually gotten angry at this show. I love this show, I don’t like getting angry at it, or them, but what on earth were they thinking?

Who on the entire planet would think that it’s a good idea to make perennial victim, Lana Lang, push her quest to becoming stronger and more self-sufficient to such an extent she turns herself into Clark’s Super-Girlfriend? Has Lana nothing at all to offer Clark unless she changes so much she’s not even really human anymore?

Worse, is this a message we want to send to the impressionable young minds watching the show? I have teenagers. I don’t know what other parents might think about this, but I don’t want to show them that changing themselves in profound ways simply to please others is something they should think about doing.

I felt strongly enough about it, I talked to my 13 year old about what Lana’s actions meant and why they were wrong. She just thought they were just weird, but she luckily saw my point: You should never change yourself just to make someone else happy.

Like ever.

I’m glad she realized I had a valid argument because I don’t want either her or my son to take any of this episode’s plot points as tips of how to handle a relationship. I mean, isn’t our image conscious society tough enough to navigate for kids with poor self-esteem? Does a show that’s geared toward teens and young adults really want to send the message that the only way to date the person of your dreams is to change yourself so much you’re not you anymore?

Is this the message that Kristin wanted to send about Lana’s role in Clark’s life? She reportedly had input of some kind into the story. Is the woman who founded Girls by Design, an organization designed to help empower girls, really trying to tell young women that the only way to earn the love from another is to change who you are?

I’m hardly a feminist, but the implications of this storyline are troubling even to me. I can see the appeal Lana not wanting to be a victim anymore, not wanting to always feel sorry for herself, but to take it to this degree, to become something she’s not? That is not cool.

Not only is it wrong in a broader sense, but it’s also wrong in a more narrow sense too. Lana shouldn’t need to become ‘super’ in order to appeal to Clark. Although this wasn’t her only problem, one of the problems with Lana as a character in this show has been she’s largely been defined by whom she was dating (or married to). Maybe that sorta works when you’re young, inexperienced and trying to figure out who you are, but when you’re a twenty-something divorcee, that probably shouldn’t be your primary issue in life.

Her life experiences should have made her empowered without the need to come close to self immolating herself through a risky procedure. It seems just a little crazy, to be honest.

In a way I can kinda see why they retconned Lana’s Dear Clark video from last year’s Arctic. That was sorta lame and obviously a stretch, but it worked mostly. I mean, in the comics Clark leaves Lana behind in Smallville. His relationship with Lana is more symbolic in the comics. It’s tied to his childhood and his life before he pulls on the tights. He had to leave her behind to become Superman. To move on, he had to leave her behind and he did.

So, Smallville being different, she instead left him. Not really the same, but it worked pretty well for this Clark and this version of Superman. Her leaving made him confront his ‘destiny’ in a way he hadn’t really done before. It was because of her leaving that Clark decided to tackle more broad ranging problems, just like he said in his opening scene with Chloe.

The argument is probably a pretty good one since it was because of Lana leaving him that Smallville had probably the strongest first half of a season probably ever. The show used her (and Lex) leaving to good effect. The new Executive Producers took the show into a new direction and Clark’s journey has been more satisfying this year up until now than it’s probably ever been.

However, taking him back into the Lana-is-the-center-of-my-life Clark I’m not sure is a good thing for him as a character. I can see how he might take the lessons he’d learned last week to mean he could finally make it work with Lana, but he hadn’t really factored in her new enhanced super-power self-improvement program. Also, he’s a different person now. Is covering this old ground again good for him as a character?

So, what are they going to do next after all of this?

I’m not sure. I don’t do spoilers, but then again neither do most of the viewers of this show. I don’t have good feelings for where this is storyline could possibly be going.

But why spend so much time exploring her journey to becoming a Super-human saint? This essentially was an origin story for Lana’s new superhuman-hood. It was all so over the top and self-aware of trying to show us that, but I’m not sure this worked any better than did Oliver’s back in Toxic.

To have a convincing origin story, if that is what this episode was supposed to be, you have to see a progression of the character more than view the trials of his or her journey. Yeah, Lana had it tough and was all whiny when she first started and Carter certainly lectured her about it. However, was she demonstrably a different person in those first flashbacks with him than she was when she sped out of that Luthorcorp lab at the end of the fourth act? I don’t think so.

In any case, does that really matter? Isn’t this show mostly about Clark becoming Superman?

So why isn’t his need for closure of their soon-to-be-failed relationship being at all addressed at the same time?
They’re bending over backwards to give Lana a ‘good send off’ and redeem her, but where will this leave Clark in the end? We’ve only got one more episode to deal with the ramifications of all of this, so why even bother in the first place? Lana’s gone after Requiem, likely never to be seen in the show again. Whatever lessons Clark has to learn I think he’s already learned so I’m afraid the best thing that will be said about Lana in the end is that she’s gone and Clark can now move on without all the needless plot contrivances she somehow always seemed to wring out of the writers.

That’s a shame. I liked Lana a lot, even when she was ‘evil’ and married to Lex. No matter what their original intent was, they’re not doing her (or us) any favors by turning her into someone that hates herself so completely that she feels she has to become something completely different to be worthy of Clark’s love.

All that said, I admired a few things about this episode. The story Todd and Darren decided to tell (irrespective of their reasoning behind telling it) had a sort of elegance to it.

It had set competing goals for all the characters in the episode, the location of Lana Lang and the Prometheus Project. Everyone, Clark, Chloe, Tess, and Regan all had different reasons for trying to find her and the secrets of Prometheus. It’s the best way to construct conflict, multiple characters going after the same goal (this time to get control of the Prometheus Project), when only one person could succeed.

The Power Suit was actually kind of cool, in a way. It’s reminiscent of a similar suit that Lex had constructed in the comics to help him compete with Superman. I think something like that also made a bow in the animated series. Smallville’s Lex would probably think that was a pretty good idea, no matter what he had to do to achieve it, so it fit in with his obsessions about power and beating Clark at life.

I liked the continuity of the episode. It brought up past storylines and offered some answers even while posing new questions. I guess the guy Lana had been texting and emailing and phoning since she came back had been Carter.

I also liked the Phoenix and fire imagery that was woven into the story throughout the episode. Lana almost literally rising through the ashes of her life to become this new do-gooder was sorta cool. Again, I don’t think she should have gone through the trouble, Clark loves her whether or not she’s invincible, but that part of the story was nice.

But I’m curious why the program to create this super-suit with nanotechnology, enhanced through alien DNA, would be called Prometheus in the first place. If you didn’t know, he was a minor Greek god who stole fire from Zeus in order to give it to mankind. For his trouble, Zeus kept him captive and chained him to a rock. Prometheus was doomed to live out all eternity in torture as an eagle would eat his liver each day only for it to regenerate overnight so the eagle could do it again the next day. He was condemned to living in torment for all eternity for defying Zeus. Hercules later freed him, but how does that myth translate to this ‘super-suit’? Will there be some torture for Lana in wearing the suit? I guess we’ll find out in Requiem, but generally I don’t think the Prometheus mythology fits how the suit was designed or how it affects Lana.

So, although there were a few things that I liked about this story, I guess in the end I can’t really say this one of Todd’s and Darren’s better efforts.

I’m not sure I have much to say about the acting in general, but everyone did well.

I loved Tom Welling in this episode, not only did he look great, he acted very Supermanly. Probably his best scene was the one with Chloe in the Isis Foundation as he tried to piece together the puzzling information that Lana had left behind. It was good to see him putting the pieces together and I loved how Tom played Clark as confused at times, yet resolved to work things out so he could save Lana.

Although I had some issues with the final scene between him and Kristin, more about that when I talk about the directing, I did love watching Tom in that scene. His face is so expressive.
Allison had done a remarkable job, considering she had directed this episode. Her best scene acting-wise was probably the scene with Clark. She was very natural and played Chloe as frustrated that things weren’t as easy for her now that she’s Brainiac-free.

Cassidy Freeman as Tess did another wonderful job. I am amazed by her sometimes… Her scenes with Lana were terrific and I loved it when she was getting her Luthor-inspired evil-doing on with Regan in the back of that limo.

Oh, and I LOVED Ted Whittall, the guy who played Carter Bowfry (Lana’s mentor and Tess’s minion). He was completely awesome. Like the guy who played Simmons in Bulletproof, Jim Thorburn, his part was small but important. He had a sense of gravitas that the part needed too. He had a nice speaking voice and looked and sounded authoritative. I hope he comes back, even after Lana is gone.

Ari Cohen as Regan was terrific. I was wondering if he’d ever come back after his disappearance by the end of Odyssey, so I’m sorry he got killed off and will probably never come back.

Now it’s time to talk about the director. This episode was Allison Mack’s directorial debut. That’s a pity, actually. She should have had a more solid story to tell her first time out.

The story, however, played into some self-indulgence on her part. I’m sorry to say, although I thought her directing shows promise, I wasn’t that wild about a lot of the choices she’d made.

The acting in the episode was mostly pretty good, it was probably the best aspect of her directing, although there were some moments where she let moments go on too long, or scenes overstayed their welcomes. Does that sound weird? Probably, so let me explain.

In the previous ice age when I had taken one of numerous screenwriting classes or seminars (I don’t remember which one talked about this) one of the teachers said this about crafting a good scene: Get in as late as possible and leave as soon as you can.

He was right. For example, you don’t show the hero pulling up to the curb of the house he’s going to go to in order to talk to the bad guy about his evil plans. You don’t show him parking the car or walking up the sidewalk to the front door or ringing the bell. Although I hate this term, it maybe dates me, he was right in saying that you have to ‘cut to the chase.’

He didn’t mean that literally, of course, you don’t always have to have a chase to cut to, but you have to get to the point of the scene pretty darn quick. You don’t beat around the bush. You have to tell only the meat of the story so the unimportant stuff can happen in off-screenville.

In Smallville, getting to the point sometimes means getting weird segues because they cut out something which would have made a later line make more sense. (Like that bullet conversation between Clark and Chloe I talked about in my Bulletproof review.)

So, what Allison did (at least I think it was Allison, like I said last week I’m pretty sure the director has a big impact on the editing of the show) was linger too long on sometimes tedious conversations. I found myself getting bored during several points, and I was at least interested at what was going on (if only to write my review). I can tell you right now that the kids were bored silly for most of the episode. My son actually had wandered off about half way through, he was so bored by it.

In looking at the episode again, I’m not sure what boring bits should have been cut, nor do I have any suggestions for specific changes. All I know was that at times the show just seemed to get too talky and that’s rarely a problem with this show. Maybe she didn’t create that problem, part of the fault for that probably lies with the writers, but I don’t think she helped it either. Wouldn’t the director guide any cuts to help streamline dialogue?

I think some of her staging choices were too over the top, too. The scene when Lana was cutting her hair was an example of that. Was using a straight razor really necessary? I don’t know if it was Allison’s idea, or Kristin’s, or the writers’, but was it even realistic?

I didn’t think so. Where would you even get a straight razor anyway? Did it come from the van she’d taken from Lex’s thugs? Maybe they should have shown where she got it from, it’s not like they’re common or anything, but in the end it doesn’t really matter where she got it from. It just looked wrong. I mean, if Lana could get a straight razor, couldn’t she also get a pair of scissors?

I also really hated the blocking in the final rooftop scene between Clark and Lana. I don’t know, it worked okay at first, but by the end the whole scene had seemed forced. It seemed like Clark wanted to go up and hug Lana, he’d been so relieved to see her healthy, but he didn’t. That was weird because Clark’s a hugger. He tends to hug people when he’s happy to see them. Yet, he just stood on that lower level of the roof, looking up at her as Lana kept on talking. Maybe I wanted them to have the chick-flick moment sooner, I am a hopeless romantic, but I just didn’t think was necessary to hear her explain herself yet again before they finally touched each other.

I did like the acting, so I think Allison’s familiarity with the rest of the cast helped her out. Even the supporting cast was good. Although Bill Mondy (Dr. Grohl) came off a bit stiff, as did a few of the other bit players. While not quite as strong a debut as Tom’s, I think in general she shows some promise. I love women directors, there are so few (I read that only 7% of the Director’s Guild of America membership is female), so I hope the show gets another year so she gets another chance.

I usually love Glen Winter’s photography. He is a reliable DP and although I loved the look of this episode, the lighting, color and contrast used, I wasn’t sure I like some of the shot choices. Was that because of Allison? There were too many low angle hand-held shots and the camera movement (wipes) going into almost every flashback sequence got repetitive.

Although I didn’t like the ending scene much for other reasons, I did love how it was shot. It was beautifully done.

I also love James’ Philpott’s Production Design. Thanks to reading that article on him from the last Smallville magazine, I now know he has input into the look of more than just the scenery, so I’m guessing he had a hand how the Visual Effects folks worked the colors of the effects, so I’m going to mention that here. I loved that Lana’s super-sped halo (or aura or whatever you call it) was a warm yellowish orange as opposed to Clark’s colder blue and white aura. It’s a good touch, if fits the visual theme of the episode (fire). It also fits her character and the reasons she changed herself, so good job on that. It’s a subtle touch, but a smart one too.

Kristin said in a recent interview that she’d cut her hair following the filming of her movie, Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li, and that it was one particular executive’s idea she wore extensions instead of her new hair cut. Uhm, wrong choice. She looks awesome with the new hair cut and the extensions are looking a bit tired. My 13 year old also said when Lana’s hair was pulled back in this episode, it looked too Sarah Palin-ish… I agree.

Entity F/X did a good job for most of the episode, I liked the color of Lana’s superspeed aura, but there was one moment that looked weird. In the tease when Dr. Grohl was looking at Lana through the glass as she lay in the tank, the camera went up a little. The reflection of Lana in the glass moved at the same time in a way that looked weird. It stayed the same distance from the bottom of the frame when that isn’t what I would have expected, I would have thought it would have moved down the glass as the camera moved up. It pulled me out of the scene a bit.

Usually, I like their music choices, but I really hated the song at the end of this episode, Natalie Walker’s “Empty Road”. The lyrics worked okay, but the music itself I didn’t think fit that scene.

Not much of this episode was enjoyable, but maybe that’s fitting since so much of this episode itself was just so wrong. This is the lowest grade I’ve ever given any episode since I started reviewing at KryptonSite 4 years ago. It probably would have gotten a lower grade if there hadn’t been at least a few things I liked, so I give this 1.5 Ridiculously Overwrought Origin stories out of a possible 5.

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