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Smallville: Icarus

Carter: "This is what we do."

They started with an engagement and ended with a funeral. Do you think they were hinting that there are no happy endings for superheroes?

We all knew Carter was going to die, because he told us it was coming. But it was a terrific exit none the less, with a flaming fall from above and gorgeous CGI wings. (Much better than the ones he had last time.) Points for an appropriate episode title that actually meant something for a change.


I was less enamored, so to speak, with Clark's awkward rose petal proposal. I'm pleased that Lois and Clark are seriously involved, yes; it was so overdue that it had nearly expired, and this is the final season, after all. But I don't think Tom Welling was able to pull off super-romantic proposal guy Clark as well as he pulled off evil Clark last week. Lois's lines came off as awkward, too. Maybe it would have worked better if it had been a little less gooey.

The VRA subplot has become totally Nazi, complete with SS uniforms. It did not make me happy to see Tess, Emil and Lois arrested and interrogated. But Tess versus Trotter, the very Nazi interrogator, made me smile. "You couldn't stare at me in my office?" Carter was theorizing that Darkseid was responsible for the Spanish Inquisition and the Third Reich. How bad is this going to get?

I was disappointed that Slade got taken out already; seems like a waste of a really good actor as a villain. Although I liked Clark sending Slade to the Phantom Zone, where I'm sure he'll make friends and influence people. Do we know anyone in the Phantom Zone these days? I have completely lost track. Ten seasons, what can I say.

Cliffhanger. Surprise triangular light thingy, mass unconsciousness. And now we wait until January 28.

Bits and pieces:

— Clark proposed to Lois in front of a phone booth, a symbol of their Blur connection as well as the original comic book Superman. Nice touch.

— Future-knowledge Chloe sent Lois a congratulations card, and we got one brief Chloe/Lois scene. I really miss Chloe.

— The annoying Cat has changed sides. It makes her a bit less annoying.

— The video feed of Black Canary looked like Alaina Huffman was phoning it in from the Destiny. You don't suppose they really did that, do you? It's not out of the question, considering the cozy way that shows filming in Vancouver borrow actors from each other.

— I have so little comic book knowledge, and now I'm curious. How does the Hawkman reincarnation thing work?

Decent mid-season finale, and I'm going to miss Michael Shanks. Three out of four sets of glorious burning wings,

Billie
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Billie Doux had a love-hate relationship with Smallville, which is why some of her reviews are briefer than they should be.

2 comments:

  1. Having skipped all the middle seasons, I feel relatively lost sometimes, so I've been really enjoying reading your thoughts, Billie. It provides the perspective I feel I'm missing otherwise.

    I took the engagement-funeral thing more as a "circle of life" type comment. As for Hawkman, boy, that's a Pandora can of worms right there. DC Comics tends to reboot its garbled continuity every decade or so. While the iconic characters like Superman and Batman usually come out unchanged, the more peripheral heroes usually end up completely different characters with just the same name. And truth is, you don't get much more peripheral than Hawkman.

    Since this is the first time I see the character in Smallville, I can only guess as to which mythology they're using. I'm guessing it's a variation of the original from the 40s, which was a knockoff of Karl Freund's The Mummy (1932) (which is terrific by the way). Actually, I think that's pretty much the version going round in the comics today too, isn't it? Someone correct me.

    If that's the case, it's just simple reincarnation. Hawkman and Shayera were Egyptian royalty who found an alien metal that bound them eternally, but an evil sorcerer killed them. Now every time they reincarnate, they find each other again through their special loving bond and fight evil and such until the reincarnation of the evil sorcerer kills them again, and so it goes forever and ever. Whenever Hawkman finds the alien metal again, he remembers his original life, and he's always destined to find the metal again, so there you go.

    I've no idea how that bears on the TV version though. I'm a total newbie.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks, Dimitri. This sounds like it fits into the Smallville version of Hawkman. I was wondering if he and Shayera was going to pop up fully grown in a week or something -- guess not.

    ReplyDelete

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