Evil is just so much fun...

[thehefner]

Smallville is a pretty uneven show. I mean, right now it's much, much better than the tepid first season, with each episode as formulaic as a Popeye cartoon: "Disgruntled teen gets superpowers from kryptonite, Clark loves Lana, Lana loves Whitney, Lex is suspicious of Clark, Clark has crisis of faith, Clark gets weak from kryptonite, bad guy learns Clark's secret, Clark beats bad guy, bad guy dies or goes into a coma, Clark still loves Lana." Every. Single. Fucking. Episode. And right now, it's gettin' pretty damn good, but it took a whole mediocre first season to get there. So why did I stick with it?

Three reasons: 1, I'm a geek and I totally get off on all the comic references (like, I still kinda suspect that it's not Jor-El that Jonathan Kent's talking to... it's Zod). 2, Lex is an absolutely fascinating character, and watching his slow, terrible decent into evil is rather Shakespearian. Everyone else has kind of cardboard roles (Clarks the wide-eyed innocent good guy, Lana's the dreamy love interest, Pete's the buddy comic relief, Chloe's the Willow character), but it's hard to so define Lex.

And the third reason? John Glover as Lionel Luthor. Good God, this man is evil. So deliciously, wonderfully evil. He has proven himself a villain worthy to be held by me in the same regards as Scorpius and Bill the Butcher. I mean, Glover played the Devil, for God's sake (in the lost, lamented "Brimstone, and he was also the voice of the Riddler on the Batman animated series), but he's never been so wonderfully evil as he is on Smallville.

"There are no restrictions about where he can go or what he can do," Glover said, in a recent interview. "I just saw the ad for 'Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King' today, and it had Viggo Mortenson in a crown. I was thinking, Lionel should have a crown. He should also have a screening room and close himself in to watch 'The Lord of the Rings' trilogy -- maybe have Lex come to talk to him once, kind of disturb him in the middle. There he'd be, sitting with a cape and a crown, just watching."

When the quality of certain characters completely override the weaknesses in the actual show's plot and/or storylines, you know they're doing something right (*coughcoughPiratescough*).

Comments

[dame-ratcliffe.livejournal.com]

I too am addicted to this show. I have a small list of shows that I watch weekly (most of which are embarassing and shall remain nameless), but Smallville is in fact on the list. I forgot to tape the episode during the line run though, that made me sad:-(

[surrealname.livejournal.com]

i watch that show every once in awhile in hope that a young bruce wayne might make an appearance. If it's happened, i haven't seen it.

[surrealname.livejournal.com]

i did so love brimstone.

[jcsbimp.livejournal.com]

Never watched the show. (The all too familiar cries of "Heathen!", yes, they are reverberating, I hear them, mneahhhhhh . . . )

But when it first came out, I remember hearing folks, or maybe it was just TV Guide, talking about the fact that the show unashamedly established some sexual chemistry between Clark and Lex. Is this true, or has Eris been pointing her Discordian Mix-Up Ray Gun at my poor brain again?