Clark leaves, indefinitely, for another Planet and we get a TO BE CONTINUED. As the season finale. For four and a half months. Four and half months we had to sit and wonder if and when Clark would make it back.
Which leads me to one of the major downsides of this one for me. Clark was brought back waaaaaaaaaay too quickly. We had this whole angsty setup and then we come back after the hiatus and boom - oh, look, despite the huge setup about how much danger he was going to be in on NK, how the planet and Lois was going to cope without him, what would be the effect on Clark of having to fight a war without any powers, how was Lois going to get away with Clark being absent at the same time... you know, all the really
interesting questions that had been setup by the previous episodes...
...Clark does an immediate one eighty in the first five minutes and returns to Earth. Huge cop out. HUGE! <g>
That's why I love fanfic. So many authors took my frustration with this lost opportunity and answered those questions much better than the show did.
Also agree with Carol about how the New Kryptonians and their society were portrayed. They were such a miserable lot I have no idea why Clark agreed to help them at all. They certainly didn't deserve it.
The shapeshifter thing, too. I think that's the real problem I have with this arc entirely. Too many interesting ideas that were sadly lost in the execution. (Although as I understand it they did have budget problems which massively curtailed what they'd had planned for the S4 premiere. But that still doesn't excuse poor execution of writing ideas.)
LabRat
