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Smallville
Drone
airdate 04-30-02
First off, I'd like to say that I feel I've been pretty easy on this show so far. It's not high art, and not even at the level of many of the Superman books, but as television goes, it's good. That said, this episode of Smallville pretty much just sucked.
Pete signs Clark up to run for class president, which serves two purposes: giving the Freak of the Week an opening, and giving the writers the excuse to call Clark the "man of tomorrow." Ha.
As the voting public is often accused of having a hive-mind, what better metaphor to torture this week than a candidate who's also in command of a swarm of killer krypto-bees?
Sasha, one of those mousy-pretty girls deemed unattractive by television standards on account of her glasses and messy hair, was in the deepest glowy-green meteor crater in Smallville when she was stung over a thousand times by bees. Now she seems to be the Queen of all of the computer-generated bees in the state, and sends them after her opponents, taking two down before Clark and Chloe get wise to her ways.
The revamped Talon is having trouble competing with the Beanery as the cool coffeehouse, proving that Lana should have kept it a movie theater. She claims it's her "dream" to renovate it (again) back to its cinematic glory, but for now, she's floundering. Lex is no help, either, as he's distracted by a persistent, leggy journalist intent on profiling him for the Metropolis Journal.
Marguerite Moreau (last seen stinking up the joint in Queen of the Damned) plays Carrie Castle with all the charm and charisma she can muster, which is to say, not much. She's Lex's pawn from the get-go, and caves quite neatly to his bribery in the end.
Give Lex credit for this much, though, he sure can read people. She was never interested in hard-hitting journalism, just in making a name for herself and translating that into a healthy salary. It's interesting to see him tangle with Clark, Chloe, and Lana, all of whom are made of sterner stuff. He seems to respect it, however foreign it might be to him, and even tries to make sure Clark is blazing his own trail, rather than following Lex like a puppy dog.
Speaking of hard-hitting journalism, it surfaces in two other subplots this week, probably just to infuriate me as a former reporter. Ever the impartial, conscientious fourth-estate type, Chloe endorses Clark's opponent for president, which causes a bit of a rift between them. Lana tips the Smallville Ledger off to the Beanery's health code violations in order to drive business to the Talon. She's treading a fine line between doing what's right and doing what needs to be done to succeed; Clark treads the same in his race for office, but he's not cut out for politics.
Ultimately, it's Lex who's destined for the presidency. Clark is glad to lose, as he doesn't like the idea of having "two personalities." Ha, again. No matter how much the producers mess with the continuity, no matter how ridiculously close Metropolis creeps towards Kansas, one thing that doesn't change is that Clark Kent is a reporter. His interest in the newspaper so far has been cursory at best, as has his interest in anything that isn't serving coffee at a bastardized moviehouse. There's a reason Superman has always been a reporter in his other life, and it's time to give that some thought.
Student journalism is a better horse to beat dead than student government, anyway. The pen is much mightier than the politician … or at least I'd like to think so.
Why do WB shows always have to have a storm episode? That's in three weeks; next week, stranger rhymes with danger!
