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Reviews
4:19 Blank Review
By Zoomway
This review/recap will be a little different because I'll just do a quick thumbnail synopsis of the plot and then I want to do a little character analysis and cover a dramatic pitfall known as character injustice. But first, the recap.
This episode owed a lot to an old Adventures of Superman episode titled The Big Forget. On the left, doing a David Copperfield pose, is our freak of the week. He has the power to erase a few minutes of a person's most recent memories. On the right is Professor Pepperwinkle, an eccentric inventor from the old Superman show. In his hand is a can of anti-memory vapor which can erase 15 minutes of someone's most recent memories.
The episode opened with Lois working hard at the Talon. The freak of the week waited for her back to be turned so he could empty the cash drawer. Lois caught him, but then he raised his hand, green lightning flashed out of it and touched Lois's head. When the effect stopped, Lois remembered nothing of the robbery.
However, a few moments later Lois noticed the empty drawer again and Clark heard the sound of someone running away. He whooshed to the parking lot and tried to prevent the guy from escaping, but again the mutant raised his hand and the green lightning hit Clark in the head. Chloe ran out looking for Clark and found him crumpled next to a fence. When she asked if he was okay, he didn't know who she was, or even his own name for that matter.
Chloe took him home to the Kents, but Clark, not remembering his super strength, pulled the door off its hinges. Lois arrived home shortly afterward and wanted to know what happened to the door. Clark began to respond, but Chloe stopped him and invented a cover story about a strong gust of wind tearing the door off. Chloe asked Lois where the Kents were and she said they were in Metropolis where Jonathan was getting a heart exam. So they were conveniently missing from the episode.
Chloe explained to Lois that Clark had amnesia and that she suspected the guy who robbed the Talon had some kind of memory erasing power. Lois told Chloe she could leave Clark with her since she had experience dealing with his memory loss before. Chloe, however, fearing a repeat of the door breaking incident, said she'd show Clark around the barn first to see if anything there jogged his memory.
Once she got Clark alone, Chloe explained to him about the meteor shower and how it gave some people special powers. Chloe truly believes Clark is a meteor freak because that is what Alicia believed and she was the one who ratted out Clark to Chloe. Later that evening Clark and Chloe returned to the Talon to look for any clues the thief may have left behind. As Clark concentrated, he saw through the counter and through a mat on the floor which concealed a day pass.
Chloe, who only knew that Clark had super strength and super speed, was amazed to discover he also had x-ray vision. She told Clark that was another power he had to keep a lid on, but Clark wanted to know why he had to keep his powers a secret. Chloe told him that there might be people who would try and exploit his powers if they knew.
Then Clark saw Lana walking down the stairs, and I'm not making this up, there was a wind chime sound effect, the music turned to cellos, Japanese flute and some ethereal singing voice going "Oooo oooo oooooo." Then Clark had to shoot out some heat vision ejaculation, which Chloe called "premature combustion."
This scene pretty much confirms that whatever it is Clark sees in Lana is all physical and emotionally shallow. Then again we already knew that
"Who is that?" Clark asked, trying to sound breathless or excited, but not quite pulling it off.
Chloe set her jaw. "That is Lana Lang. The love of your life," she said in a defeated tone.
Speaking of the wonderful Lana, she had an earlier scene with Jason. He had been smiling because Central Kansas, the college they wanted to attend together, had accepted Lana. Then Lana showed one of her defining characteristics, she changed her mind about what she wanted. She said she wasn't sure about going to Central Kansas, or going to college at all. The wishy-washy girl of Clark's dreams.
Jason was shocked. He said it was what they'd planned for all year. Lana fell back on another of her defining characteristics, she whined about secrets and lies. She informed Jason, "This has turned into the same relationship I tried to leave behind when I went to Paris." Of course she was talking about Clark and that's important to remember later. Lana told Jason they couldn't wipe their slate clean and start over. That's also important to remember later.
Jason spun her around to face him. "Just don't give up on me. You have no idea how much I've been protecting you, do you?" he asked angrily and walked out.
Clark then tracked Lana down and found out that he and Lana had once had a relationship. Clark wanted to know why it ended and then Lana implied that Clark had ended it. Clark was surprised and said they should try it again and it would be "different this time," which means little coming from a guy with no memory of what happened the first time in order to promise it wouldn't happen again.
Thankfully Chloe and Lois arrived to tell Clark they had traced the day pass to someone named Kevin Grady and decided to pay him a visit.
When they arrived at his home, his father answered the door and said that Kevin had accidentally shot his brother during a hunting trip last year. He said that Kevin couldn't get over the guilt of what he'd done and so he took Kevin to Summerholt in hopes of having his memory erased.
Lois said she didn't completely buy the story and so decided to take a look around. This scene was a bit odd because Chloe and Clark turned simultaneously to stare at Lois as if she'd said something prior to that, but she hadn't.
Anyway, after Lois left, Clark told Chloe he was hearing someone running behind the house and so Chloe learned that Clark also had super hearing. I believe that brought her up to speed on all of Clark's powers. He told Chloe he could hear a motorcycle and Chloe told him to run and Clark's super speed kicked in as he chased the motorcycle. Unfortunately he overshot the motorcycle and ended up in a field and part of the Superman theme played.
Knowing that Lex once had dealings with Summerholt, Chloe and Clark paid a visit to the bald billionaire in hopes Lex had any contacts there who might be of help. Lex said he would look into it and asked Clark to stay a while. As Chloe exited the room, she whispered, "Clark, be careful," knowing his super hearing would pick up the message. Despite the warning, however, Clark turned into Super Dope when Lex took Clark to the caves. Lex lied to Clark and told him they'd been trying to decipher the symbols together.
Clark said he recognized the symbols on the walls from sketches in his loft and that one wall shouldn't be there because a room is behind it. Lex suggested they go to the loft and that he could explain the pictures to Captain Stupid. But suddenly, and way too late, Clark became suspicious and declined the offer and said he had to be going.
Then we cut to Summerholt where Chloe was suddenly inside and snooping around. She found a disk and put it in a computer and e-mailed the file to Lois, who was standing by at Chloe's computer at the Torch. Then Chloe got grabbed.
Clark came dashing into the Torch looking for Chloe and Lois called him over to take a look at the file, which showed Kevin begging to be released and promising that he would never tell anyone. "It was an accident. I know you didn't mean to." Lois and Clark realized that not only had Kevin not killed his brother, someone was planting memories in his mind to make him believe he did.
Clark decided to look for Kevin at the place where the hunting accident happened. As the plot would have it, that's exactly where Kevin was. This was actually a good scene. Kevin is one of the rare sympathetic "freaks" on the series. When Kevin discovered he had completely wiped out Clark's memory, he actually apologized and explained that when he used the power on everyone else, it just erased a few minutes of recent memory.
Clark explained he wasn't like everyone else and asked Kevin to try and really picture the hunting accident and what happened. As Kevin concentrated, he began to regain his real memory. He finally remembered that it was his father who was responsible. "I didn't do it. It was my dad. How could he do that to me?" Kevin thanked Clark for helping him and suggested if they found a way to break into Summerholt, there might be a way to retrieve Clark's memory.
Ironically Lois was already storming Summerholt, but with the aid of the sheriff, who usually is no help to anyone, but Lois at least had the Summerholt file of Kevin's abuse as evidence. Since the receptionist wasn't being helpful answering Lois's questions, the sheriff stepped forward. "Maybe they pay you enough to be rude, but I doubt they pay you enough to do time in county jail."
Meanwhile, Clark and Kevin were breaking in through the roof. It's interesting that only Lois contacted the police and entered the building legally. Oh, well, as Clark and Kevin were running through a room, Clark doubled over. There were jars and jars of liquid kryptonite on a cart. Kevin ran back to him to ask what was wrong, but Clark told him to run ahead and he'd catch up to him.
The action cut to Chloe strapped to one of the many sci-fi looking tables on the show. She had something similar to a halo brace around her head and a wrestler's chin strap. Working the controls from a distant podium was Kevin's father, who explained to Chloe that he was going to have to erase her memories farther back than the last few days.
He started up the machinery and, like last week, a Mystery Science Theater line popped into my head, "Increase the Flash Gordon noise and spread more science stuff around!" Just as the Flash Gordon noise increased and light panels began to activate randomly, Kevin ran in. "Dad! Were you going to lie to me my whole life?"
They got into a scuffle and Kevin was knocked unconscious and his father went back to brain wiping Chloe. However, Clark had pulled the rope holding a block and tackle which knocked the cart of kryptonite out of the way. Just as the beam was about to hit Chloe, Clark covered her. The beam hit Clark instead and for whatever reason restored his memory.
However, the feedback bouncing off Clark caused two large pylons to collapse and Clark caught them just as Lois and the sheriff entered. Lois said, "Wow" and the sheriff said, "Great God in Heaven."
Kevin regained consciousness the moment Clark pushed the pylons away and then zapped the sheriff, Chloe and Lois with his amnesia ray. Clark later thanked him for whatever it was he had done to help him.
Going back to The Big Forget, Clark was in a similar situation. He was tied up with Lois and Jimmy in a locked basement where poison gas was filling the air. Clark had no choice but to turn into Superman in front of them. However, as with Blank, the memory erasing plot device saved the day.
Anyway, back at the farm, Clark saw Lex exiting the barn, where he was stealing the cave sketches, of course. Lex congratulated Clark on getting his memory back. All but the last 24 hours, that is. Clark mentioned that Chloe had said Lex had wanted him to stay at the mansion to tell him something. Lex lied and said that he'd only told Clark about his own memory loss, hoping it would comfort him. So Lex is 'evil lite' right now. A liar and opportunist, but not really in monster territory yet.
Later, Lana showed up all excited about Amnesia Boy's chat about the two of them starting up their relationship again and seemed disappointed that Clark had gotten his memory back. Clark told her not to go and that things would be different this time ... again. So I assume we'll have lovesick scenes from now till whenever. Though the only thing that could possibly make things different from the last time would be letting her in on the secret.
The episode ended with Clark thanking Chloe for helping him, though he didn't have any idea how much she helped him because he couldn't remember anything other than his parents telling him that she had taken care of him until they got back home.
"So, it must have been strange having a zombie best friend walking around." Have you ever been anything else, Clark?
"Yeah, you know I never realized how complicated that zombie's life was."
"Complicated? Did I do something unusual?" he asked, trying not to sound nervous.
"You had a clean slate (the repetitive theme word) to start all over with and you made all the same choices, except for one."
"Chloe, I need you to be completely honest with me."
Chloe stepped forward. "Honest, huh?"
"What'd I do?"
"You trusted me."
Phew, even with a minimum of quotes and few snarky comments, a full synopsis makes for a long thumbnail
Okay, I wanted to do a little character analysis on the girls in Clark's teen life. At least the ones who still survive.
Chloe Sullivan
I agree with others in that Chloe often mothers Clark. When Clark bent the crowbar, she beamed at him as a doting mother would beam at a baby taking its first steps. Though Chloe is also something of an underdog, which can be appealing to an audience. She wears her heart on her sleeve and therein lies the source of her greatest unhappiness. Chloe's ongoing unrequited crush on Clark Kent makes her seem like a masochist.
Chloe is also the type of character who is defined by what she does. Because she considers herself to be a reporter, questions she asks sometimes are misconstrued as interviews. She frequently blurs boundaries. Since her mood can change from happy and enthusiastic to unhappy and tearful depending on circumstances, she almost comes across at times as bipolar.
There are some who find her endearing and others who find her grating. That assessment is probably true of all three of the girls depending on which fan is analyzing them, but Chloe is a random element. She has no actual place in the Superman myth and that makes her very unpredictable. The fact that she knows Clark's secret, or at least knows of his special powers, might also make her an expendable character.
However, none of that negates the fact that Chloe actually did help and protect Clark when he lost his memory. Yet it also leads to a type of dramatic injustice.
This might seem an odd picture, a title card from a Warner bros. cartoon, but it was the first thing that popped into my head when I thought of character injustice. In the cartoon, Fresh Airedale, the title dog was called "good old Shep" by his master, but the dog was actually a conniving louse. When a burglar broke into his master's home, the dog was bought off by a bone from the burglar. The pet cat actually had to chase the burglar out. Yet Shep got the credit.
When Shep found out there was a more famous dog, one actually known as "Number One Dog," Shep became jealous and wanted to kill off the competition. The cat spent most of the cartoon trying to prevent that from happening. The cat had to save both dogs from drowning, but the cat was so exhausted from the rescues, that he passed out. Shep took advantage of the situation to make it look as though he'd made the rescues.
Shep became the Number One Dog, but the cat, frustrated by the turn of events, pounded on the statue of Blind Justice wailing about how unfair everything was. To add insult to injury, the scales from the statue fell down on the cat's head clobbering him and that was the end of the cartoon.
Chloe has become that cat. In the prom episode she became prom queen, but the opportunity to give her acceptance speech was taken away from her and her 'best friend' didn't ask her to dance. In Blank, Chloe came to Clark's aid when he lost his memory and she taught him about his powers and protected his secret from others. However, when Clark regained his memories, he was conveniently bereft of any knowledge of what happened during that 24 hour period and so he only thanked Chloe for "Clark sitting" till his parents got home. This episode is eerily similar to Fever from a couple of seasons ago.
In Fever, Clark was sick with a mysterious ailment and Chloe went to visit him. Since he was unconscious, she read him a note that said, in part, "My father told me there are two types of girls: the ones you grow out of and the ones you grow into. I hope I'm the latter." What did Chloe get? Well, Smallville's equivalent of scales falling down on her head. Clark moaned out Lana's name and Chloe ran out in tears.
All that said, though, I'm not implying Chloe's injustice is about Clark rejecting her in favor of Lana. A character is free to love or reject whomever he/she chooses, rather this is about unnecessary roughness. That is, Chloe could have read her note to Clark and been on her way. It was wholly unnecessary for him to moan out Lana's name during Chloe's heartfelt moment. In the prom episode Clark could have asked Chloe to dance, or even asked to hear the real speech she had planned to give. Alas, Chloe was given no consolation prize.
Lana Lang
As mentioned in the synopsis, Lana and Jason had a fight because she changed her mind, as usual, and didn't want to go to college with him, or perhaps not go to college at all. She also didn't feel they could start over with a clean slate because of his secrets and lies. Yet Lana went running to Clark because he suggested they start up their relationship again and promised her that things would be different this time.
In other words, Lana seemed willing to not only start with a clean state with Clark, something she refused to grant a guy she was dating all year, but she went back to a guy whose secrets and lies caused her to run away to Paris in the first place. Lana's fickle behavior makes her seem very flaky and a poor choice for a girlfriend, or a poor choice for a friend of any kind. Don't forget that she never got around to visiting Clark when he had amnesia, nor did she visit him during Fever.
Since Lana often comes across as the poster child for codependency, the word "enabler" is the best definition of her character. An enabler is defined as one who enables another to persist in self-destructive behavior by providing excuses or by helping that individual avoid the consequences of such behavior.
Lana doesn't just enable Clark's bad behavior, she has justified the absolute worst behavior in anyone if she feels love or honesty was somehow a part of their story line. When Lana found out that her Aunt Louise cheated on her husband with a stranger who came to town and her aunt's husband ended up going to prison for 40 years for her murder, which he didn't commit, Lana said, "I know what Louise did was wrong, but I can't help thinking she was lucky, even if it was just for a few days, she knew what it felt like to really be in love."
Even ignoring how asinine Lana sounded confusing true love with being horny and getting lucky, a man spent over half his life behind bars because of his unfaithful wife having a roll in the hay with a stranger, who was actually the killer's target.
Another example was in the episode Magnetic. Seth told Lana that he had magnetic powers and even though he forced her to commit a crime and she ended up in jail and almost shot Clark, she said, "Even though my compass was way off with Seth, he still had the courage to be honest with me."
This has become so ludicrous that I can almost picture her saying, "I know what Hitler did was wrong, but at least he knew what it was like to be loved before he and Eva Braun ate cyanide."
It is all but impossible to see what there is about Lana aside from her looks that would attract any man much less every man in Smallville. She has the most skewed view of love and honesty of anyone in the history of television.
On the bright side, Lana Lang, even in a universal sense of the character, is of little importance to the Superman myth and even four years of Smallville hasn't changed that. In fact, Smallville clearly illustrates why the character never really rises above her vague footnote status.
Lois Lane
This version of Lois Lane is Chloe Sullivan's older cousin. She has no direction in her life at this point and many things she does are in direct defiance of her overbearing father General Lane. In terms of personality, Lois is a tomboy who grew up on military bases all her life. She views tender emotions as a sign of weakness, yet clearly has them. She loves her cousin, but is frustrated by Chloe's obsession with Clark and often tries to dissuade her from a path that will only continue to break her heart.
Despite being introduced as a skater, a person who skates through life taking the easy shortcuts, she has begun to take charge of her life and now works hard to repay the Kents for taking her into their home. She has formed a friendship with Clark after a lot of adversarial teasing and she seems pleased he can give as good as he gets.
Lois went up to see how Clark was doing when he was moping in the loft. She saw him throw down sketches of the cave symbols in frustration.
"I guess that's something else you don't remember," Lois said. "You usually hide those emotions."
"My life is a complete void, how would you feel?" Clark whined.
Instead of trying to mother Clark by putting a positive spin on it as Chloe might, or instead of reinforcing his self-pity as Lana might, Lois refused to reward Clark's woe-is-me behavior. "Oh, a pity party, these are fun."
"Look, Chloe's very protective of me. I guess there's a lot of people I can't trust."
Even Clark seemed to recognize Chloe's tendency to mother him.
"Look," Lois said. "You may not know all the players on the board, but you can still play the game."
"Are you going to tell me how I'm supposed to do that?"
"Trust your gut. Like what's it say about me?"
Clark smiled. "That we don't like each other very much?"
"You're on the right track, Smallville. Keep it up," she said and exited.
It's clear by Clark's smile that he suddenly understood their odd brand of adversarial affection, but more important, Clark realized Lois was helping him by simply expecting him to be a man about it.
Getting Superman off the bench and back in the game with a "by the bootstraps approach" is one of Lois Lane's many functions in the future. In the L&C episode Lethal Weapon when Clark's powers were out of control due to red kryptonite, he unintentionally trashed their home. Lois found Clark sitting on the floor fearful that if he did anything else, it would lead to more destruction.
Clark became agitated as he explained how his strength had become his greatest weakness.
"Okay, calm down," Lois said softly and pulled over a chair. "Have a seat."
Lois couldn't play into his fear and she couldn't pull a "poor baby" attitude. Neither approach would have been much good for a man who also had to be Superman. Even though at this point Lois was married to Clark and helping her husband might have been expected, Lois also helped Clark years earlier when they were just friends and she knew nothing about his powers.
In All Shook Up, the L&C episode where Clark lost his memory, Lois was pretty much in the same situation as Lois on Smallville. They had a teasing adversarial friendship, but she wasn't in love with him yet. Nonetheless, Lois tried to help her friend get his memory back. Though it was a bit more tricky on L&C because that Lois was dealing with a Clark who had a much more complicated life.
On Smallville, Clark is still a teenager living with his parents. He doesn't have the responsibility of a job, marriage or maintaining a dual identity. Though supposedly drawn as a darker, more edgy version of Clark Kent, it's that very combination of elements that make him less compelling and almost simplistic.
Since it's hard to feel sorry for a tall, attractive zit-free teen who also comes equipped with super powers, Clark is often subjected to a forced type of angst. Clark has lost not one, but two girlfriends to untimely deaths. Thankfully the addition of Lois Lane helps pull Clark out of the dark and into the light.
When Clark's second ill-fated girlfriend was murdered, he flew into a rage and was determined to kill her murderer. When Lois saw Clark throttling the killer, she shouted for him to stop. Then she tried to pull Clark away. "You're killing him," she said. "Stop," she repeated, but in a whisper. Clark stopped.
There are two things Lois Lane has to know when dealing with Clark/Superman -- when to step in and when to step back. When Clark can't pull himself back, sometimes Lois can. On the other hand, if Clark has to do battle at full power, as was the case when he dueled Lord Nor, Lois has to step back.
Perhaps the best thing that can be said of Lois on Smallville is that she's not obsessed with Clark like her cousin Chloe and she isn't a flake like Lana. While Lois has quirks and sometimes the writers have gone overboard with them like flunking high school and getting booted out of college for underaged drinking, she's there for Clark when the chips are really down and is on his side.
Maybe I should do character analysis of Clark, but I think I'll wait until I review the incredibly horrible episode Ageless
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