Sunday 16 October 2005

Pic of the day: The box is the European version, imported from UK. It is subtitled in several languages, including Norwegian, although I haven't enabled this so far. Perhaps I'll watch it again with Norwegian text, though I doubt it.

Smallville season 4

Yeah, I am a bit behind the times. The reason is that I don't have a TV, and I refuse to download native English-language pirate movies. I only download fan-translated Japanese cartoons, which are (at the time I download them at least) not available commercially in English. I do have a code of justice. But it means most of the world is in the process of forgetting the things I just begin to watch. In this case, Smallville season 4, complete on DVDs. So bear with me if this is old news. To make things worse, I got it yesterday so have only seen half of them at the time of writing. I do have other hobbies too, you know!

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Anyway! Hooray for introducing Lois Lane. Her cats-and-dogs friendship with Clark provides a welcome mood-lightener for this show, which frankly has too much tragedy and not enough comedy for my taste. There is so much potential for humor in the surreal superpowers and continual secrecy. Sometimes it is realized, and I enjoy this greatly. Like at the end of the witches episode when Jonathan Kent comes in with a bra. "I found this in the barn. In the hay." Clark: "It was magic!" "I am sure it was." (It literally was, of course... the witches from 1604 had clouded the minds of the nearby teenagers.)

Lois is not the only DC character that gets a spin this season. Bart Allen makes an appearance as the fastest boy on earth, only in this case he is a juvenile delinquent. Evidently he is even more IMPULSIVE in this series than in canon. Even Krypto the superdog makes an appearance, although he is not from Krypton but just a result of Kryptonite experiments.

The plot is as bad as ever. The premise is still that the Kryptonians have thoughtfully hidden a lot of easter eggs on Earth in preparation for Kal-El's arrival and destined world conquest, which seems awfully thoughtful of them considering that they are clearly able to get here and back themselves for centuries without trying to conquer a much less developed planet at the time. This is second only to the crazy episode in an earlier season where Jor-El travels to Earth, falls in love with a human woman, and leaves his memories for his son ... the same son which he is later willing to brainwash and torture to make him an unfeeling world conqueror. Sorry, people, but when it comes to anything involving Kryptonians, you mess up with the regularity of a pacemaker. The less you mention them, the better.

The actors are as good as ever, if not better. The outstanding performance from season 3 is pretty much the same here. Much of the little humor there is comes from the awesome acting talent of Tom, the guy who plays Clark. He is awesome at playing the awkward innocent boy. No matter what girls do to try to seduce him, he is as oblivious as a kid, unless there is red Kryptonite involved. The way he changes personality in that case is also awesome. The guy is good. The girls have less challenging roles, but they still do well. I can't help but think that the girl playing Lois must have had a good time, throwing attitude at every opportunity.

Season 4 introduces and explores Clark's weakness to magic, which takes away some of the pressure of coming up with ever new meteor-mutated freaks. But overall it is darker and more dramatic season than I had hoped for. I have found that watching these right before bedtime was not the wisest decision I have ever made.

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On the bright side: Clark does fly! Only a little in episode 1, so far, and he flies far too fast. I wish we could see him fumble his way from leaping over tall buildings to actually flying. In City of Heroes, you can get "hover" at level 6 and not full-fledged "fly" before level 14, and even then it grows gradually faster over the following weeks. I would like to see something like that in Clark, rather than just taking off like a cannonball. Oh well. Perhaps in one of the last episodes? Here's hoping.

Still, I don't really regret buying it. It is an interesting take on one of the most famous and inspiring mythologies of our age, the idea that one and the same person can be both man and superman at the same time. In a manner of speaking, in our age, we all are.