So, I've been watching season 2 of Smallville this week and am finishing it up now.
Ever since I heard of Smallville, I've also been hearing about how much people hate Lana in Smallville. In season 1, I didn't get why at all. Yeah, she was a little too perfect and annoyed me a bit, but then, so did Chloe(in fact, initially, I like Lana considerably more than Chloe, who seemed to automatically dislike anyone who wasn't an outcast)
However, watching season 2, I get it to the point where right ow, the episode with the ghost of Lana's childhood friend is haunting her(or whatever) and after 10 minutes, I was in here typing and listening for Lex, Chloe or the Kent's voices.
The main thing, I think, is that Lana consists primarily of being beautiful, perfect, perpetually frustrated with Clark, and little else, and we're supposed to love her because she's had a "sad" life, and everyone loves her, but there's no real reason to love her, or personality to back her up. Now, this is not remotely a slam against Kristen Kreuk...I think she's a good actress who does the best she can with bad material.
Interesting things constantly happen to and around Lana, but they only seem to emphasize how uninteresting Lana really is. The problem, I think, stems from the fact that they're so busymaking sure she's the unattainable girl that they forget we need a reason to like her, so they just tell us to like her and feel sorry for her and her sad, sad life.
Then there's the sad, sad life in the first place. Lana lost her parents, yes, which is something that I not only can't begin to imagine, but don't want to. Lana, however, had a life that most orphan, and a lot of kids with parents would love to have had her life. She lost her parents, yes, but she had an aunt who adopted her and made her the center of her life. They occassionally tried to portray Nell as not considering Lana's feelings(including the horrid way they wrote her out to try to make us feel sorry for Lana being "abandoned") but Nell always made the decisions that were best for both her AND Lana, even if they weren't the ones Lana wanted. Addthat to basically having the dream life for a high school girl, and it's hard to feel sorry for her. So they write Nell out in a way that's Lana basically refusing to compromise and leaving Nell, and then telling us that Nell abandoned her, and having Nell make a financially sound decision that's best for both of them and then saying Nell is trying to destroy a part of Lana's childhood. Then they wrote out and then killed off Whitney, the one thing that made Lana work well in season one, to add to the "poor, poor Lana" factor, and so forth.
That, however, I could get past, if it actually added to Lana's character. However, the only thing about Lana that's different between the pilot episode of the series and now is her living arrangements and dating status.
Compare that to Chloe. In the pilot, Chloe came across as nothing more than an abrasive place-holder for Lois Lane. By mid-season, however, it became clear that she and Lois, while having a few similarities(aggressive go-getter reporter, and initially abbrasive personailty) they are very different characters, and what we saw in the pilot was just the surface. AFter the pilot, they showed us more and more of what was beneath the surface. Allison Mack still plays Chloe almost exactly the same now as she did in the pilot, there's just considerably more to Chloe now than we saw initially. With Lana, however, we still just have the surface, with no idea of what's beneath it, if there is anything else
****
And now that I've finished, the rest of the season:
Clark: There isn't a lot to say about Clark, really. Tom Welling, while nothing incredibly special, makes a good young Superman and does the "boy searching for the truth about his past" well enough.
Pete: Little more than a "best friend" in season 1, he's grown quite a bit this season. He makes a great sidekick and it's to the point where it's hard for me to picture the show without him.
Chloe: Probably pretty obvious from before, but Chlow has grown from my least favorite character in the pilot to rivalling Lex for my favorite character this season. She's grown a lot since being introduced as the Lois stand-in and is a completely independent character from Lois, imo. And, while it's not immediately apparent, she has a strength and maturity that, I think, is considerably better than that of the shows other teens. her handling of Lana/Clark, while not perfect, is proof of that. Were I not a fan of comics' First Couple, I'd be rooting for Clark to look away from the eye candy long enough to realize the greatness that is Chloe. Watching this season, I'm struck with the same feeling I got watching Veronica Mars...that those two would get along so well that being underhanded or secretive around them would be an incredibly stupid act of war.
Lionel/Lex/Helen: I'm glad they gave Lionel a larger role this season, he fills the traditoinal Lex Luthor role quite well, while Lex still tries to deny his destiny. I also rather liked Helen. For most of the season, you think her role is to be the one thing that could have changed Lex's life and kept him from becoming the Lex Luthor of infamy, and you're waiting for him to screw it all up. Then it happens, and it seems that maybe that wasn't her role after all, at least not in that context.
The Kents: Jonathan annoyed me with his near blind and often unreasoning hatred of all things Luthor in the first season, so toning that down made me like him a lot more. Martha's pregnancy was very sad...you knew it would end badly, you just had to wait to see how. A lot more poignant than the "doomed romance" bit.
Superman Mythos: some people, I'm sure, had issues with the near totsl reworking of Clark's presence on Earth and Jor El's motives. However, it works well for today's society, and the playing out of it helps make up for the fact that they can't really bring in a lot of the concepts of the comic book without pushing Clark ahead into being Superman already.
And finally...the cats are curled up on the couch with Patches half curled around Squeaker...too cute.
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