aaaand done. :-)
Man, waiting for six hours to get it.
Now my own little premiere of Insurgence.
Things will never be the same after this.
What I really like about this show....
..progress!
Great episode.
Whoa.
AWESOME episode!
The revelations about Lionel’s vault, the "refined" kryptonite, the file on Clark, Clark’s first large-scale use of his powers in public, the evolving relationship between Lionel and Lex, Lionel and the Kents, etc.
Why does Lex trash his office by hand and by eye to look for bugs? That’s not a very efficient or thorough way to go about it. Both me and my friend immediately thought that he should’ve hired a professional team with devices designed to do this.
The patrolwoman who catches Clark trying to sneak into the building is later part of the vice team that bursts into the right after Lionel kills the lead thief. I don’t think so. There’s no reason for a beat cop to be a part of a vice assault team.
When Martha tells Clark to burn the files with his heat vision, my friend Chris and I wondered if Lionel, now blind, has sharper hearing, and was able to hear her. True, he doesn’t know about Clark’s heat vision, and for all he knew, maybe Martha meant for Clark to take out his cigarette lighter to do it, but still….
My friend Chris Lopez also added that eventually Lionel’s going to discover that hey, there’s a broken window in my building, a dent in the wall caused by what could’ve been a person crashing through, etc., hmm……
I don't think Lionel is blind.
Watch the episode again with the thought that Lionel is faking his blindness and the whole thing suddenly becomes a lot more interesting.
TUE
I've thought that myself. I think he is faking it.
I liked all the little things about this episode - our first look at the Daily Planet, Clark leaping a tall building in a single bound, but my jaw dropped when I saw the disk in Lionel's vault.
Smallville seems to take place in real time. The 2nd episode of the season started at the beginning of the school year, bypassing the summer like we viewers did. The month they took off over the holidays actually happened on the show too (at the end of Skinwalker, Lana announces that Whitney is missing. When the show came back a month later with "Visage," she mentioned he's been missing for a month). My point in bringing all this up is that there seems to be a huge discrepency in when the Kents anniversary is. In the first season, they had it in November. In the second season, it's now in January.
"Jitters" aired in December. Maybe this episode was supposed to air earlier (more than likely, given "Jitters" was the second filmed after the pilot episode) or "Jitters" was supposed to air later.
What becomes even more interesting if Lionel is faking his blindness is the thought that Clark's used his superpowers in Lionel's presence.
What do you want to bet there was nothing really confidential in those files, but Lionel's now see that Clark has fireball eyes?
In "Red", Lionel was present when Clark was pulling all kinds of stunts. He even kept the bullets that Clark stopped with his body.
Lionel knows something's up. The question is how much does he know...
TUE
Why does Lex trash his office by hand and by eye to look for bugs? That’s not a very efficient or thorough way to go about it. Both me and my friend immediately thought that he should’ve hired a professional team with devices designed to do this.
If I were Lex, I'd have figured that Lionel's made arrangements with anyone with the equipment to detect/remove/disable bugs like that. Arrangements that if Lex called anyone in, they'd intentionally miss a few bugs, or plant fresh ones.
In other words, Lex doesn't trust anyone but himself these days. And of course, as his lackeys' behavior in this episode proves, he has good reason not to.
And I'm personally intrigued at the thought of Lionel's faking his condition. I half-considered it myself, before, but it just keeps sounding better and better.
With ANYONE, Fox? What, Lionel contacted EVERY SINGLE company specializing in this, and managed to convince EVERY SINGLE ONE of them to bought off? Personally, I don't buy that. That's just me.
Luigi: That's probably cause Lionel bought you off.
Er, I, um............I have no comment.
From Lex's point of view, it's not necessary for Lionel to have bought off all possible experts. It's enough if he bought off most of them. There may be some honest ones still out there, but how can Lex be sure of anyone?
Most of them? C'mon, Tom, Lex can't find someone out of state, or out of the country to do the job? Maybe have a friend or contact in the FBI or something do it? Maybe just buy the equipment HIMSELF and scan the room? Tearing the room apart is the ONE and ONLY option left to him?
My thoughts were that it was part rage that LuthorCorp beat LexCorp to the contract, part murderous fury towards Lionel when he found out how it happened.
And after he had just yelled at his flunky, too!
Maybe Lex thought that destroying the room was a better option than finding the blind old man and beating him down with the cane.
Tearing the room apart is the ONE and ONLY option left to him? - Luigi
No, but in his anger and frustration (both at his father and at his own naivete), this was the option he chose... a very human reaction, if not the most productive.
Darth, you're talking to the only guy at NitCentral who considers normal human reactions to be nits. Luigi is notorious for this. You have no idea how amny times somebody on some board (usually Movies) has shouted, "HOW THE HELL IS THAT A NIT? IT'S PROBABLY WHAT I WOULD'VE DONE!" at the guy.
The idea of most of Lex's scenes this season has been to demonstrate just how deeply competetive he is with Lionel, and to show how paranoid Lex has become. So much so that he's abandoned his personal interest in the meteor rocks and in Clark's "eccentricities". And, since he is so paranoid, Lionel now has time to take up those interests, as he does not have to work half as hard to keep Lex off his game. Lex doesn't even notice that he's been tearing his office apart for a while, yet Clark walks in and finds the bug immediately.
I'd bet TUE and Brian Lombard are right, Lionel is not blind. If he was, though, there is no way he'd have advanced hearing this soon after losing his sight. It takes blind people years to train themselves to recognize activity by sound, and that's just mundane stuff. Lionel is coping with gunshots, fighting, and the unique sounds of Clark's abilities put to use.
If I was Martha, I'd quit the job, because Lionel shot the guy who was holding onto her son. The blind guy sure made a lucky guess, he could have shot Clark just as easily!
This brings up something that bugged me about this episode. Of all the changes that have been made to the Superman continuity (which I don't follow all that closely) for this show, the fact that Jonathan would urge Martha to continue working for the Luthors is the one that bugs me most. Most of the changes that have been made in the continuity have been cosmetic or superficial. But this change is a change in the very make-up of the main characters.
A lot of Superman's identity as a Boy Scout is due to his upbringing with the Kents. While I agree that their decision makes sense in the real world, to have the Kents suddenly playing the Luthors' game strikes me as robbing the characters of some of their goodness. I'm not sure I like this aspect.
But it shows the Kents as being human, something that seems to be forgotten on occassion. And in this case, they think it is okay for the means (working for Lionel) to justify the ends (finding out what Lionel knows about Clark and do something about it, if necessary).
It took them some soul searching, and it's not like this is anyone's first choice. Martha and Jonathan are people who are doing everything necessary to protect their child - in essence, they are acting like parents.
Like I said, I agree that their decision is more realistic, making them more realistic as people who exist in our world (as opposed to a fantasy world). I'm not faulting the Kents.
I'm just not entirely comfortable with the idea that the writers would add this aspect to characters that I have always interpreted as the ultimate "goody-goodies."
This isn't an aspect that would necessarily stay... it's not out of the question that Martha's new 'double-agent' status is going to bring some sort of tragedy in itself, bringing in a bunch of guilt as well.