Two genre series had their season enders this week. One did it right. One did it…not so much. Some spoilers follow:
“LOST”–With the announced end of the series in 2010, “Lost” has been driving with greater energy and focus this season. The season ender was no exception as the mysterious Jacob is finally revealed, the Egyptian iconography that’s been part of the series for so long becomes even more explicit, and “Lost” starts to be seen as a vast chess game as Jacob is depicted choosing his “pieces” through various points in the characters’ lives.
At this point I’m becoming convinced that this isn’t just any Jacob: It’s the Biblical Jacob, and the unnamed individual who hates his guts is his brother, Esau, whom Jacob robbed of his birthright. The island could conceivably be the Biblical Goshen, the Egyptian city where Jacob eventually settled, metaphysically transplanted in much the same way that Bete Noire is the city of Enoch.
What’s interesting is that not a lot actually happened over the two hours. At the beginning of the episode, Jack intends to set off a bomb; then he does. At the beginning of the episode Locke intends to kill Jacob; at the end, well, maybe he does. Hard to say. Although I pretty much predicted the final image of the episode about ten minutes in, I have to admit I’m kicking myself that I did not see the revelation with Locke coming even though it was right freaking in front of me. I can only attribute that to watching it via DVR and speeding past the commercials; if I’d had time to think about it, I can’t believe I wouldn’t have put two and two together.
We are left with the prospect of just about anything being possible when the series starts next season. Our heroes could wind up landing safely in Los Angeles and then we see what their lives would have been like if the island had never existed. Or it could be that the plan didn’t work. Or it could be that, as was suggested, it actually wound up causing the very chain of events that Jack was trying to avoid. I totally understand that some people got fed up with the series, and new comers might be off put by a continuity so involved that it required follow-up repeats with information pop-ups or entire episodes devoted purely to recaps just to get up to speed. But for those who have stuck with this amazingly complex series, it has definitely been worth the ride.
“SMALLVILLE”–To quote Xander Harris: “Big overture. Little show.”
I totally understand that “Smallville” has never been about the fights. It’s been about the angst of growing up feeling alienated in society, made even more pronounced by the fact that you’re an actual alien. It’s about the hero’s journey. It’s about Clark Kent learning the life lessons that will lead him to become Superman.
Even so…
Come on.
Look, I know they’re limited by the fact that they’re on a TV budget, not a feature film budget. But they knew that, too. And if you know your constrictions going in, then you plan for it. And you don’t spend twenty one dámņëd episodes building up to a climactic, all the chips, major showdown/smackdown between Clark and Doomsday–a battle royal that fans are going to have expectations of due to its comic book precedents–and when the confrontation finally comes, it lasts about a minute and a half. At which point you then take your protagonist off screen for most of the remaining hour, have him some shuffling in at the end, tell (rather than show) what happened, have him announce that humanity sucks, and he leaves. Have it wrap with a bewildering tag that makes it seem as if Rod Serling just opened up a door to the “Twilight Zone” in the Luthor mansion with visuals of what I *think* is supposed to be Lex Luthor trapped somewhere, and you’re left with a head-scratching downer of a season ender that leaves you wondering who pìššëd in the producers’ cornflakes right before they wrote the episode.
I get that they were trying to finesse the famed “Doomsday kills Superman” outcome by having Kal-El announce grimly, “Clark Kent is dead.” Except…no, he’s not. He’s standing right there, and we’re supposed to believe that…what? He’s going to stop caring about humanity? That next season’s story arc is going to involve Clark’s rediscovering that humans are also capable of great kindness and depth and not intrinsically evil? All his interactions with his parents, Chloe, Pete Ross, the various heroes he’s encountered…those haven’t been enough for him to clue to this already? This is a journey that he needs to embark upon and, more to the point, that we need to take with him?
Yes, granted, the death of a major character was a shocker. Color me shocked. On the other hand, color me even more shocked that Lois is MIA and Clark’s major reaction seems to be, “I suck, humanity sucks, I’m going away now.” Huh?
This is, without question, the single most disappointing season ender of “Smallville.” Whatever they were trying to achieve, it didn’t work for me. Perhaps they overreached. Perhaps they just slapped it together. Whatever it was, it fell way short, and since the whole season was building up to it, that’s really unfortunate.
PAD
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Love the fact that Hurly is the only one Jacob had any real length of conversation with – Hugo’s final destiny is going to be huge!
From your review of the Smallville climax, my biggest question is . . .
. . . why do you still watch this show?
I gave up on Smallville four years ago. The increasingly absurd storylines and the “soapopera-bad” character interactions just strained my patience to the breaking point. That show is wasting a lot of good actors on third rate melodrama and has for years now.
From your review of the Smallville climax, my biggest question is . . . why do you still watch this show?
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Because there have been episodes that were worthwhile. And because I’m a comic book writer so people are going to ask me about it, so I feel I should be informed.
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PAD
Indeed. I watch Smallville because it’s Superman, but it’s unquestionably the worst TV show I follow and it boggles my mind that it’s heading into it’s 9th season (with a very possible 10th) while other, better shows can get canceled after just two weeks.
This crazy industry…
Re: Smallville
Without trying to intentially trip any spoiler warnings, based upon the pattern of previous seasons, I am wondering about the new set: The (ex?)Olsen(s’) place.
With them having reused sets before (Chloe taking over the Talon and the Isis Foundation, Tess living in the Luthor Mansion,the Metropolis night club’s different appearances)I cannot help wonder if the character who was using it as his apartment will be back.
Of course, before Smallville, it was home to Barbara (Batgirl/Oracle) Gordon in the short lived ( ;( ) Birds of Prey series.
But does this season’s ending mean that the producers have come to their senses, are writing Kansas completely out of the show, and reformatting it as Metropolis?
THAT they should have at least considered doing at least 2 seasons ago!
I wish your new site still had the “Preview Comment” feature Peter.
Besides a couple of spacing issues, ( ;( ) was supposed to be (:( ).
What, we can’t do smileys any more? 🙁
Regarding the death of the major character in Smallville, not naming names to avoid spoilers: Interesting that A) it turns out the name said character has been going by was the middle name; and B) that said character has a younger sibling, whom we meet at the funeral, and to whom _____ gives a certain item belonging to the dead character. Perhaps the sibling’s first name is the same as dead character’s middle name, and that said sibling will go on to play the familiar role in the mythos.
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It’s also possible that there’ll be a rewind, and that the death in question will subsequently never have happened. Not that Smallville has ever done anything involving major life-changing (or ending) events, only to turn back the clock so they never happened. Right, Mr. Clark “I’ve revealed my identity publicly.” Kent?
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Regarding Lost, assuming the plan works and Oceanic 815 now safely lands in Los Angeles, I have a feeling that even though the characters would now be strangers to each other (having never experienced the events on the island), they’ll somehow be drawn together. Possibly due to echoes, if you will, from the previous timeline.
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On the other hand, if the plan doesn’t work and the circumstances that cause the plane to crash in 2004 are still in place, things could change with regard to who is already on the island at that time. Wouldn’t look too good for Jack, et al. back in 1977, however.
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Interesting theory about Jacob. Hadn’t considered that.
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Rick
It could be like George Foreman’s kids, where every one of the _____ family is called _____.
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Final Destination, anybody?
I was able to guess the ending to, but there’s no way anyone could have predicted that before tonight without seeing the first five minutes of the episode.
I don’t think we’ve seen the last of what’s in the crate.
And after that episode, I really want to see the Sawyer/Juliet relationship continue.
I think the crate contents will be important, too. I hope Bat Manuel is a full cast member next season, too.
I was very pleased with the Sawyer-Juliet moments, too. I’m glad that Sawyer finally knows what he wants.
Heh, Batmanuel. That really was good stuff and he was great as that character. The Tick had a bunch of actors I really liked. Too bad it only lasted 9 episodes.
didnt watch smallivlle
regrading lost: I just assumed that the bomb was part of the incident and will also cause the losties to be transported through time to the present (causing Richard to believe they died)
PAD, if you still have Smallville on the DVR go back and listen to what is being chanted in the background of that last scene. Granted, I might have missed something, but I didn’t get a Lex connection at all.
That’s an interesting theory about Jacob and what the Island actually is. Several years ago, I came up with a similar idea. In an intuitive flash, I decided that the Island (or maybe just a piece of it) was the Garden of Eden and that Monster was the angel that God had set to guard its entrance. I’m afraid I can’t remember the story of Jacob well enough to even guess at the city of Goshen, as it’s been so long since I read his story that I’ve forgotten all but its barest bones. I will say that I’m sure that you’re right about Jacob being the biblical Jacob. I had reached the conclusion that he was the figure that was written about in the Bible/Torah. The other figure being his brother Esau is more prickly to me. As I admitted before my recollection of the story is sketchy, but I had the impression that Esau was kind of slow. Great hunter, good looks, wonderful with the ladies, but slow. The plan that fellow came up with intricate, cagey and took me by surprise as well even though I should have seen it coming before that final reveal as well.
Perhaps I was too distracted by the certainty that Richard Alpert arrived on the Island on the Black Rock. Perhaps all of the original Others came on it as well, but that’s how Richard came to the Island. In some ways I’m disappointed with that. I had envisioned Richard having been on the Island guiding the Others since prehistory.
LOST
I really hope it doesnt have them all landing in LA and then spending a portion of the series “felling as though something is wrong and showing how their lives suck”.
We have already seen that this season with the characters and just would hate to see it repeated.
I think that the season should be Rose and her husband remembering all that happened on the island and deciding to hunt down James, Jack and Freckles and kill them for ruining everyones lives.
I never considered the possibility that it would actually reset time. That seems really unlikely to me. They wouldn’t just have to start over from scratch, but everything that just happened with Locke and Jakob would not have happened, also. Since that was pretty much a cliff hanger, that would be very unsatisfying at the beginning of the next season. I really don’t think it’ll do anything except put the main characters back in their proper time.
Except for Rose and Bernard. They’re going to find a couple of shiny rocks (one black and one white) and go into a cave for their final resting place.
I can’t say that I’ve watched much Smallville this season, but I have gone out of my way to watch certain episodes like Legion and the one Zatanna. It seems that the show has been able to pull off amazing episodes and then at other times completely fail. It’s like they talk big and then don’t have the heart in the project. Based on what Peter described about the finale it’s a real shame because they could have made an awesome two hour series finale (even though it was picked up for another season) and did it right. I’ve thought they should have changed the shows title to something like Metropolis at this point.
Since Lost has had an end point annouced with season 6, the gloves have come off and I’ve enjoyed every moment of it. I was completely surprised that we saw jacob from scene 1. It was amazing. I suppose it was the Black Rock in the background. The crocodile egyptian god Sobek. I really think we are seeing the biblical Jacob/Esau relationship unfold in one hëll of a chessmatch. My opinion is that Jacob set everything up including his supposed final confrontation with Locke. I wouldn’t be surprised that the 815 will still crash on the island, but will have their memories intact. Everything setting up for the final showdown of good vs evil, something right from King’s The Stand. I hope we can get all of our questions answered by the time the series ends. Because it’ll be fun as hëll re-watching the series and looking for the little clues here and there.
Biblical parallels become even more prominent if you start working in the famed numbers. 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42. Genesis 4:8 is the slaying of Abel by Cain. Genesis 15-16 involves Abraham asking for a son (eventually Isaac, the father of Jacob) and the birth of Ishmael, Isaac’s half brother who was disenfranchised by the birth of Isaac. Genesis 23 involves the burying of Sarah at Machpelah which would also be the resting place of Jacob, and Genesis 42 involves Jacob’s son, Joseph, confronting his brothers who all hated him. There’s definitely a brotherly hate thread going here.
PAD
nice!!! I suppose now there is a valid reason to start looking for religious connotations to things such as the numbers where before the Lost Experience mentions that the numbers were variable/parameters for an equation. Granted there have always been hints of religion in the show mixed with the supernatural and the scientific. I guess the only thing is that you have to be careful not to look too hard or you’ll start seeing the golden ratio everywhere.
The only thing odd about that is that there haven’t been a lot of brothers in the show. Charlie had a brother. Sayid had a brother, but we’ve barely seen him.
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I think that’s it. With all the hints and portents in the show, brothers haven’t gotten any more spotlight than sisters, daughters, or any other type of relationship.
@Jason: You’re forgetting that Jack and Aaron, Claire’s son, are half-brothers. Sawyer and Locke are linked through Locke’s birth father — being very much the children of that man’s influence — though honestly I don’t expect that to ever come up again. Also, Penny Widmore and Daniel Faraday are half-siblings.
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So there are more familial connections than you think.
Jack is Aaron’s half uncle. Locke and Sawyer aren’t even close to brothers and Penny isn’t anyone’s brother.
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Sure, there are connections. There are tons of connections in the show of all kinds. My point was that the connection of two brothers is not at all a strong theme in the show. For a show that has hidden meanings buried everywhere, I would expect an abundance of them if it was going to be significant.
@Jason: Ah, right, Claire was Jack’s sister. Sawyer absolutely is the bášŧárd “son” of Locke’s father, going by that man’s con name and doing the same schtick.
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As for Penny, they revealed like three episodes ago that Charles Widmore was Faraday’s father. That makes Penny a half-sister.
I didn’t say Penny wasn’t anyone’s sister. I said she wasn’t anyone’s brother. The Sawyer and Locke thing is a huge stretch. Sure, you could twist your mind into a way of justifying a brotherly connection, but the fact is those two character have about the weakest relationship of any two in the show, so. The more you have to stretch, the weaker the metaphor. I don’t think anyone out there is thinking that Hugo and Libby are like brothers because they were both the “children” of the same mental hospital.
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PAD’s premise was a theme of Brotherly Hate. Not sibling hate, not brotherly awareness. It’s a good premise, but I was pointing out that there aren’t a lot of brothers in the show.
Since we’re all going major-spoiler free for now, can I just say that with Smallville, shouldn’t the person who spoke to sibling have already known sibling?
David Serchay said, “can I just say that with Smallville, shouldn’t the person who spoke to sibling have already known sibling?”
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It’s possible said person never met the sibling before, but one would think said person might’ve at least seen photos of the sibling. Perhaps the “you’re the sibling” line could have been reworded a bit, but it’s not unheard of that they’d not actually met before the funeral.
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Rick
“but it’s not unheard of that they’d not actually met before the funeral”
Not “unheard of” but said deceased character had a fairly significant life event earlier in the season — one in which the sibling would more than likely have been present to witness.
One would hope the sibling was present, but apparently not. I know that we, the audience, have never seen the sibling before.
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Of course, if my speculation about the sibling being the one to play a certain familiar role is right, I won’t be too pleased. It would mean the producers of Smallville pulled a bait and switch on us.
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On the other hand, another rewind would also be annoying, but it’d at least be a cheat of the type we’re used to from the fine folks at Smallville.
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Rick
Wasn’t there some comment last fall about ‘s family not being able to attend ? I guess that would give them a bye.
I pretty much gave up on Smallville when I found myself asking why am I watching this crap?In particular when they brought back frakking Lana.
LOST…ok they are really going to make read the bible arent they?I love the show and the finale was very well done.By the way the egyptian statue was that a crocodile head?.That would make him Sobek.However when Ben was in the temple being judged didnt we see Anubis in that picture with the smoke monster?Also so people seem to think that our mystery man may be Smokey.Any thoughts?
Please let Juliet live..she has actually grown on me as a character and she and Sawyer are great.
The Cabin in the woods,that wasnt Jacob in there was it?If Jacob can leave and “touch” people can his nemesis do the same and more to the point has he??Whose side is Christian on really?
By the way anyone watch Fringe?Very good season and Finale ..now ifonly American Idol would stop running over and cutting the ending when I DVR it
Yeah I’m sure that the statue was Sobek and I think you’re right we saw Anubis. So we got fertility (life) and death going on here and at odds with each other. I think Christian/Locke are the same person though I’m not sure if it’s suppose to be Jacob’s brother or a servant. I say servant because I hesitate to say that ol’ smokey may be Jacob’s brother.
And Fringe was pretty good, especially the final shot of New York.
The statue looked far more like Taweret, Goddess of Childbirth, pregnant women and protector of the land of the dead (and consort to Sobek) to me. With the head of a Hippo. Sobek frequently doesn’t have ears in his depiction, and the headress was definately that of Tawerets (the small bowl)rather than Sobek’s. And the image on the cloth that Illana found in the cabin was very clearly Taweret’s as well.
Agree with above poster that it’s not Lex at the end due to what’s being chanted. Spoiler below…
Sure sounded at the end to me that zod was what was being chanted, which’d tie in with what appeared to be kryptonian symbols inscribed on the ground.
I didn’t know what the hëll was being changed. There seemed to be a naked bald guy, so I thought that was Lex.
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PAD
Zod! Zod! Zod! Zod!
What amused me was he appears to be holding The “Omegahedron” from the Supergirl movie.
Wasn’t Lex taken over by Zod?
By the way PAD, thanks for explaining the biblical references. I don’t really know the bible at all. When Ben said “Everybody answers to somebody, and the Leader answers to Jakob,” my immediate question was, “OK, so who does Jakob answer to?” Now that I see the biblical parallels, I feel more confident that Ben’s comment wasn’t just an omission, they will be addressing who Jakob answers to.
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For a while I was thinking that Jakob *was* the island, or at least the magical part of it. Now I’m thinking that he’s important, but there are two or three forces on his level at work with something else over them. That’s interesting. For a long time I didn’t expect them to ever address why these particular people were brought to the island. We saw them crossing paths in flashbacks, but I just thought that was random “meaningful” stuff that made things seem important, but wouldn’t lead to anything. Showing that Jakob was directly taking an interest in their lives long before they came to the island puts a face on the force that was guiding their lives, which is a lot more than I was expecting.
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Biblical stuff doesn’t always work in stories. I always thought the biblical references in Terminator: The Sarah Connors Chronicals just dragged the show down. The characters just sat around talking about morality in ways that didn’t have any impact for me. However, I have some confidence in Lost to handle it better. Where Terminator told us about the Bible, it seems like Lost is going to do some showing. Where Galactica had a long winded speech in the end saying, “God did it,” we’re already seeing biblical characters doing things and we’re getting hints that they have actual motivations for doing so. I’m pretty happy with the direction that Lost is going right now.
I sometimes catch the 2nd half of SMALLVILLE (between MY NAME IS EARL and 30 ROCK), and it generally seems pretty weak. The main characters seem so complacent with the weird goings on that, a few weeks ago, when Clark told CHloe that he used his Legion ring to reset time she didn’t bat an eye and just referred to it as another do-over. They replaced Lex Luthor with Lex Luthor light (with bøøbš), made Oliver/Green Arrow a murderer, made Chloe an accessory to a murderer (remember her bringing trash bags with human remains out to the curb?), and have a painfully obvious will-they-won’t-they with Clark and Lois.
As for the finale, was the culmination of the foreshadowed battle with Doomsday (who’s really been little more than a musclebound thug — one of the least complex villains out there) really showing them flying into an exploding building and hearing after that Clark escaped without knowing how? That’s the big finale?
And what happened to Chloe’s superhuman ability to heal others? It took a lot out of her, but I could easily see her risking her own death to save Jimmy. Did they ever explain that her ability was gone, or did they just forget about it (like Lex’s super healing and then needing his blood recycles every few hours)?
And what happened to Chloe’s superhuman ability to heal others?
That’s one of the few things that almost makes sense. It disappeared the same time she started getting super-smart, i.e. when she was possessed by Braniac. I had assumed that Braniac purged the Kryptonite contamination out of her and healed any “damage” that it had done to her system…making her essentially normal again. If she were exposed to enough Kryptonite to mutate again (I estimate the proper amount to be 2.0 plot units) she might develop that power again…or she might develop another power entirely.
Anyway that’s the answer that I rationalized for myself. Use it if you want. OTOH, if Chloe heals anyone after this without something to explicitly state that she didn’t have her ablility when Jimmy died, then the only possible remedy for that is for his zombified corpse to rise from its grave and kill her slowly while re: Your Brains plays loudly in the background
And Zod was standing on a giant purple “Z” burned into the lawn…
What bothered me the most…Lucy…I mean, Chloe…not CALLING an AMBULANCE!
Upon further review the statue on the island may be Tawaret.This would be of interest in Lost mythos since she was a protector of pregant women and childbirth.She was also believed to keep evil restrained.
Sobek was a creator god and believed to be repairer of evil that had been done.
I would agree with you 100% on Tawaret, except that the statue has a crocodile head which was more in line with Sobek. I want to say that since he is a creation god he could automatically be associated with fertility as well. I suppose in some sense Jacob’s boss would be Sobek and Esau’s would be Anubis.
The LOST opening:
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???- “You brought them here. Still trying to prove me wrong, aren’t you?”
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Jacob– “You are wrong.”
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“Am I? They come, fight, they destroy, they corrupt. It always ends the same.”
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“It only ends once. Anything that happens before that is just progress.”
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“Do you have any idea how badly I want to kill you?”
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“Yes.”
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“One of these days, sooner or later, I’m going to find a loophole, my friend.”
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“Well when you do, I’ll be right here.”
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Ok. As much as I love the idea of it being Jakob and Esau, The “my friend” bit kind of steers me away from them being siblings. Also, shouldn’t Esau be a lot hairier? (In cryptozoology circles there has been speculation that the story symbolizes the final conflict between neanderthals and our ancestors, tying into the European tradition of the man of the forest (Enkidu of the Gilgamesh epic falls into this tradition as well. But I digress.)
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Dave’s idea of the island as Eden seems to have some support here– “They come, fight, they destroy, they corrupt.”, yeah, that sounds like Eden. So…
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Jakob is God and ??? is Lucifer? Jakob doesn’t seem, I don’t know, Godlike enough. It’s cool how he gets around and all but…
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Jakob and ??? are angels tasked with caretaking of Eden? Kind of like Alan Moore’s Duma and Remiel from Sandman. One sees this job as protecting the only remaining place on earth where death is not inevitable from the corruption of Man, the other sees it as it’s original plan was–a place where man can reach perfection.
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Jakob is Life, ??? is Death.
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Jakob and ??? represent two of the aspects of God; Jakob, the concept of free will, that Man is free to choose his own fate,; ??? represents the ritual and obedience to God’s will which, he believes, is all that prevents man from falling into an animalistic state. (“Do what I asked you to do, Ben.” “Benjamin, whatever he’s told you , I want you to understand one thing; you have a choice.”
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Oh hey…maybe Jakob is DEATH and ??? is life…that’s why he can’t kill Jakob…
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Jakob is an immortal time traveler from the future. ??? is his greatest creation, a sentient nanobeing–the smoke monster. Like all such creations, he hates hates hates his creator but can’t do anything about it, what with the 3 laws and all.
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A question– Why was Locke, or whatever he is, upset at Jakob’s last words? Who is coming? I assumed it was Kate, Jack, Hurley and the rest, having hidden in a fridge right before the nuke went off. Why this would make Zombie-Locke McSmokemonster nervous is beyond me.
This is “Lost”, land of (Will Ferrel joke here) “everything you thought your knew before is wrong”.
Don’t go thinking that the handsome even-speaking blond hunk whom the darker guy wants to kill and who has gently touched the lives of our cast is the good guy.
(Then again, don’t go thinking he’s Satan, either.)
Now, if a backwards-speaking dancing dwarf shows up next season, all bets are off.
I thought in some ways this season of Smallville was interesting, but I quit watching part way through the season. So I didn’t see the finale, not did I care. I wanted to know who died so went elsewhere to find out. But with what PAD describes, I obviously didn’t miss much.
Side note: I know they want to avoid Clark becoming Superman, but at this point, things just don’t make sense. He can’t do his stuff in plain view since he doesn’t wear a mask or tights, so they have to use the lame blur thing. At this point I am tired of the tease. Become Superman already.
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I was not as big of a fan of the finale of LOST. But I will say this. They seem to be going somewhere. I did guess what was in the box, but didn’t think the other one was bad. So I didn’t put it all together. But it made sense.
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Was it just me, or did there seem to be almost a “Last Supper / Crucifixion” theme at the killing of Jacob? He clearly knew what was coming. Ben obviously was the Judas character. He obviously allowed it to happen. And he is obviously about the bigger picture. It still is confusing who is good and bad, so not sure that means he truly is on the side of good (if that even means anything in the series). But the imagery was striking to me (no pun intended).
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My guess for next season: They didn’t do what they hoped. They won’t land in LA like nothing happened. But my guess is something did change. Setting off the bomb may have actually done something. Not sure what. Perhaps it was part of Jacob’s plan creating his own loophole. If I had to guess, J______ down in the pit is really dead, but the rest jump back to their own time and rejoin the others in the shadow of the statue.
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Iowa Jim
I loved the Lost finale. It was SO great. And the Locke thing was such a shocker, but makes total sense if you go back and think about everything “Locke” has done since he “came back”. lol. Awesome reveal. Best Lost finale yet, imo, and also the best season finale this year so far!
As for Smallville, I gave up on it earlier this season. The show just sucks so much. IMO, Lois & Clark, at its worst, was still much better than this junk. I wish someone would just kill the show already and bring on a REAL Superman show. The guy in Smallvile is NOT Clark Kent. He is NOT Superman either. He’s the stupid whining “Red/blue blur.” UGH. (I think real newspaper reporters could probably come up with a better name than that for him…).
DF
Just saw the Lost finale.
Wow.
All I have to say is…
….and fade to white.
I missed nearly all of season 7 of Smallville but I’d figure I’d give this a shot. I really enjoyed this season for the most part, but the last 2-3 episodes were disappointing.
SPOILERS TO LAST WEEK’S EPISODE BELOW:
I was really disappointed last week when Mercer’s Injustice Gang didn’t fight Doomsday. I totally expected them to either fight the JL or Doomsy. Killing at least half the team offscreen was lame too. Why even bring them together? Tess teases of her plans way back and it all leads up to this? I also figured Chloe wasn’t the real deal. And no Doomsday at all. I thought they were saving it for the finale. I guess not.
Tom Welling is not that good of an actor, so going Vulcan might actually be good for him.
Peter: do you watch Supernatural? I was also disappointed in that finale but not nearly as much as Smallville. It also led up to a big fight that didn’t really happen. It was much better written than this, with a better cliffhanger. The Angels and Demons storyline didn’t turn out the way I thought. In its early seasons, it was very much a modern day Night Stalker, with writers and directors from X-Files involved in the production. One of those directors, Kim Manners, died recently and I think the show has suffered somewhat.
I too found the Smallville season-ender hugely unsatisfying. What is the point of spending most of the season leading up to an epic Superman/Doomsday battle and then having most of it take place off-camera, with the main character coming in and recapping what happened? What was the point of Cosmic Boy showing up to give Clark another Legion time-travel ring only to have him basically ignore it? Why was the cut-rate Justice League there at all? It just made no sense. To me it felt as though A) they didn’t have enough money to stage a good fight, or B) maybe additional scenes were shot and when the episode came in over-long, they had to be cut down to bring it in at the correct running time. But going back to the budget thing, it seem unlikely that you can over-shoot on a TV schedule.
Personally, I would have liked to see Clark and the junior JLA go up against Doomsday and finally get rid of him but at the seeming cost of Clark’s life. Ending the season with an iconic image of a bunch of the main characters surrounding his ‘dead’ body would have provided a great ending and started off next season with the other heroes trying to figure out how to fill in the gap left by Clark’s (temporary) absence.
Two other things that bothered me. Number one, where’s Lois? Oh, she’s missing. It felt like Erica Durance wasn’t available for a day’s filming. And number two, in this age of high-defintion digital photography, couldn’t somebody have figured out the Red-Blue Blur’s identity just by isolating a single frame?
For my money, the best season-ender so far was Prison Break. True, there was far too much running and chasing for my taste, but there is something satisfying about providing a bit of closure for the characters you’ve been following for four seasons.
Yeah Prison Break was an entertaining ride for its run.I was upset one of my three favorite characters died but you know at least they wrapped things up and the actor and characters can move on.
I will miss the twisted villainy of T-Bag more than I care to admit and the sinister but sooo sexy Gretchen.
Back to Lost is it me or are John Locke and Ben Linus a very entertaining duo??
The only other ones that come close are Miles and Hurley
Here’s a solution for the missing Doomsday fight:
At the last moment, Clark still couldn’t go through with killing even the separated beast, so he pulled out the Legion ring and sent Doomsday to the future, per Cosmic Boy’s recommendation. This solves (a) why the Legion mention, (b) gets rid of the ring McGuffin, (c) explains the lack of a final fight scene, and (d) with an easy handwave, solves why Clark can’t remember how he got out (maybe he isn’t telling, maybe the ring action wiped his memory, or maybe he went with it and helped the Legion defeat Doomsday only to have Imra give him a post-hypnotic suggestion on his way back).
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Of course, it would be nice to be told such stuff, even obliquely, but I can at least now imagine a good Superboy and the Legion story. behind the scenes.
I think that the nuclear explosion might become the smoke monster. Not “turn it loose” or “free” it or whatever, but the explosion itself will become the monster.
Or maybe not.
My batting average with predictions for the show is pretty woeful.
A quick SMALLVILLE follow-up.
Clark essentially abandons his Clark Kent identity to embrace his Kyyptonian heritage (yeah, that’ll last about as long as Superman Blue did) because he realized that true evil isn’t just monster and meteor freaks but regular humanity.
Didn’t Clark spend several seasons seeing the results of Lex Luthor’s evil and trying to bring that regular human to justice? Granted, Lex didn’t kill off Jimmy — but Clark certainly saw quite a few lives either ruined or ended because of Lex. And yet Clark “suddenly” realizes that people can be evil? Feh.
re: Clark’s abandonment of humanity: Seemed to me that it was the old “can’t put my loved ones in harms way” amped up to 11. He’s still plans to save people, but he’s not going to hang around with them anymore.
Peter, you really need to start watching SUPERNATURAL.
Regarding the final scene of the Smallville finale: My guess is that was Zod escaping from the Kandor orb, which had disappeared from Tess’s vault earlier in the episode; the security chief told Tess the vault had been breached from the inside. The symbol burned into the ground under the mysterious figure resembled a “Z”, which would suggest “Zod”. And it *sounded* like the figure was saying, “Zod has won”, though I can’t be positive (I even checked the closed captioning, but it didn’t provide any dialogue for the scene).
Oh, and Lois was transported to the future when she picked up Clark’s new Legion ring after her catfight with Tess. As she held the ring, it slipped partway onto her index finger, it started glowing, and poof! Gone.
– Frank
I think Lost’s Bad Robot cousin, Fringe alsao deserves a shout-out for a pretty dámņ compelling season finale. The final shot (a tad predictable but no less effective) was an interesting finish, but my favorite scene was a dialogue-free shot of Walter Bishop standing next to a grave stone that was even more stunning for John Noble’s wordless performance. I would admit that some episodes of Fringe have not felt like much more than recycled X-Files ideas, but when they’ve been good, they’ve been very good indeed. Makes you wonder how much better the series would be if Fox threw a bit of money at it, but the move to Vancouver doesn’t thrill me.
I finally watched the Lost finale, and I gotta say I’m surprised by the positive reactions on here. I thought it was just dreadful, from the silly Jacob flashbacks, to Jack wanting to kill everyone on the island (including himself) just so that he and Kate might have a (very slim) chance to start over in the future (which he won’t experience anyway because he’ll be, you know… dead), to Juliet agreeing with him so that she will never meet James… oh my dear god, it’s all so stupid! The bad acting and awful dialogue didn’t help either. Some of the dialogue actually made me physically cringe.
So if Smallville is about growing up and learning life lessons on the road to becoming Superman, how has it gone on for like ten years? Hasn’t he grown up yet? Isn’t he like 30 now? I’ve never seen the show, so I’m a little confused by its continued existence (that and the fact that all anybody talks about is how bad the show is).
lol, thanks you! I had that thought regarding Lost reading the comments on here. It just didn’t work for me. I guess with the Biblical parallels and the Egyptian motifs they’re steering us towards the end but a lot that two finale finale felt like filler. Surely there’s gotta be a better way of showing Jacob relating to each of the characters without spending half the episode on it.
Surely there’s gotta be a better way of showing Jacob relating to each of the characters without spending half the episode on it.
Half the episode would be an hour. They spent maybe five minutes showing him with the other characters.
The first scene with jacob weaving remainded me of the Fates (the Moirae) the greek mythology old hags who weave the thread of destiny that control people’s life. I though they were going to show that Jacob was manipulating and controling all the character’s destiny. Then they show he dwas just doing the cloth and showed Jacob talking about freewill and the idea evaporated in thin air.
Here’s a thought. At one point Daniel Faraday told Desmond he was special. The idea is that of all the people on Earth (or at least the Island), Desmond’s is somehow capable of changing the flow of time. He can change the past. Based on what we’ve seen the reason for this is obvious: he was right at the center of things when the Swan station imploded and miraculously survived certain death. Ever since then, he has gotten occasional glimpses of the future and has occasionally been able the change (or at least postpone) events that he sees. Daniel apparently managed to change the flow of time by giving him information in the past that he remembered in the future. It’s obvious that his experiences from when the Hatch imploded are what make him “special.” Which leads me to…
***Spoilers Regarding the last five minutes of the Season Finale Below***
All of the Lostaways in 1977 were at the Swan station when the original event happened. I don’t believe that they’re all dead now. So maybe the same thing has happened to them. They might all appear buck naked in the jungle in 2007 with the ability to change events in some odd fashion. If not all of them, then maybe Juliet, She was the closest, and she was still alive when everything faded to white. The Island has healed people from the damage of great falls before. It might do so again.
I think the same thing. And when Jacob said “they are coming” at the end he was talking about the Lostaways coming back from the past and not about the people draging the dead body of xx-spoiler-xx around.
I have two good reasons for thinking that Juliet won’t be back.
1) Story-wise, it makes sense. She should have died in the fall. She managed to hold on long enough to finish the job, but it makes sense for her to die. It was a heroic death, sacrificing herself to save others. Her emotional arc is at a good ending point, so it makes sense for her to die.
2) The actress has another job. She’s going to be in the new V series.
Speaking of Lost, in my mind, I think the Biblical Jacob and Easu are too small time. I think it’s literally God vs. The Devil at this point. Good vs. Evil, if you don’t want to go all too religious specific.
Also, I believe that everyone touched by Jacob will disappear and transport into the future, leaving Juliet dead and Miles back in the 70s with the dad he never knew.
And, this is the 3rd season finale in a row on Lost with Locke in a coffin. Neat!
Just got around to watching the last three episodes of “Smallville,” Most of what I thought has already been said. But, I got to thinking about Lois’ apparent time-hop. Would it necessarily take her to the future?
Better still. What if all of the Legion, waiting for Doomsday, blasts Lois instead?