sorry for posting spoilers but i have to get this out there.
i jsut cant believe that grant gabriel is julian luthor! i mean god, who saw that one comming. im still in shock
Well, it's not a spoiler if the ep has aired.
So, you're okay.
It was an.... okay episode, I guess. It wasn't anything special, IMHO. The only thing that kept it from being bottom of the barrel was the entertainment aspect. I didn't think the acting was very good. In fact, I thought it was pretty bad! And the story came off as a big "WTF?!" in places. But it had moments of park-your-brain-at-the-door action and pure fun, which I'm embarrassed to say, elevated the ep in a pleasing, eye candy sort of way. I say the same thing about episodes like Spell. Totally DUMB sheet, but entertaining nonetheless. I would make a poor critic, because sometimes I just want to have fun and don't care how bad the thing really is.
Clark meeting his mother "in the flesh" came off hollow and emotionless. I'm not sure if that was the writing, the acting, or the story itself. There simply was no there, there. And I don't say that about many things SV. Ironically, the most entertaining scenes (for me) were those with Zor-El ('cause he was such a great bad guy - much like Brainiac) and Grant (because it was interesting to see where they were going with his character, even if I thought it was ridiculous.)
On the flip side, Clark was blamed again for not thinking (what else is new?), made to look like an idiot (Kara was duped too - hello?) and apparently punished again for having human emotions. It was a frustrating episode, and that's *before* factoring in the Julian Luthor retcon, the Lana whitewash, and Jor-El's nonsense.
I DO look forward to reading Trip's review, 'cause I don't think she will be as distracted from the meat and potatoes of the episode as I was and she'll rate it based on what it deserves - not what the frilly facade oh so wonderfully camouflaged.
I hope I don't disappoint.
I think one of the reasons I rated it so low was because it made me angry. I am rarely that negatively affected by an episode. I can probably count them on one hand and the list would include Static, Ageless, Lucy, and this.
Nonsense makes me mad and the story was just nonsense. Didn't help that Clark wasn't in character either...
I didn't say it in my review, but it wasn't Tom's best outting ever. I think he wasn't totally into what they wanted him to sell and the scene where his mom shows in the fortress is a perfect example.
That scene was flat from both Helen and Tom. I didn't feel like there was any great emotional connection at all between them.
Maybe I would have bought the story more if that had been there and it just wasn't.
I've thought about this, and I've concluded that in the long run, for me, I get far more out of an episode that I've already discussed and read about in greater detail as opposed to if I see it completely unspoiled. That's just for me though, I can certainly understand why some people enjoy seeing the show without any knowledge of what's to come. Being spoiled just whets my appetite to see the episode, besides, I always remember that spoilers need to be taken with a generous portion of salt.
Well, in comparing what's it been like the last few seasons to this one, I think my reviews are more honest now.
Before, I woud know what was coming up and then couldn't mention it because Craig (rightly so) didn't want any commentary in a review to spoil future eps. I had to pretend to not know what I did for the sake of the review.
I didn't like doing that, now I'm more honest but it is hard to not look in the spoiler threads because that's where the action is online.
I miss that....
But I don't regret my decision.
Serene said:
Agreed. I'm not ready to jump on the retcon train yet either, and Memoria is one of my all-time favorite SV eps. Again, maybe I just look at these things differently, but even if they do retcon Memoria, it's not going to make me love Memoria any less. It's still the same quality episode to me.
Oh, I don't agree with that last line at all.
It totally invalidates the parts of Lex's back story that were introduced in Memoria. How Julian died, why Lionel treated him the way he has all his life.
It's an important key to him as a character.
The terrific acting in that episode was just icing. John and Michael were fantastic and that last scene between father and son was one of the single best of the series.
Making that a lie does change the episode for me in a very big way.
Serene said:
Agreed again, that's my main gripe about this episode - they really didn't capture the emotion that was needed in the Clark and Lara reunion. So much more should have been done and said, but there simply wasn't enough time I guess.
Agreed.
I loved Zor-El but they spent too much time with him and not with Lara and Clark. One of the best parts of Memoria was how Clark had reconnected with Martha at the end.
It was a tender moment and there was nothing tender here. No fond memories from Lara... No mention of the fear she'd felt sending him off into space alone.... No real joy at seeing how well he'd been brought up... No humor at how big he'd gotten...
It wasn't intimate or personal at all. Just a passing over the ring that turned out to be a trick.
I would have taken a page from Al & Miles book when writing the scenes between Lara and Clark and made them reflexive of Martha's and Clark's from Memoria...
Or hell, any other good mother/son scene they'd had throughout the series.
It was a missed opportunity to help him emotionally connect to his biological mother in a way he never could otherwise.
t:
And for me Lexmas is my favourite episode, visually, followed closely by Reckoning and Promise.
