Kathy, hate to tell you but I think you're going to have to watch this one. I have a feeling it's going to be fodder for a whole lot of future episodes.
Oh, CC, my wonderful, delusional friend. I, too, experienced the bliss that is total Smallville-emersion, forgoing 8 o'clock bedtime while I warped my small children, allowing them glimpses of the horror playing out on the screen. But beyond that, I think you and I had completely polar experiences.
Now, not to say you are completely on crack <g>. There are some things on which I have to begrudgingly agree with you.
I do have to agree with the most critical point that you made:
But I dare you to examine TW's jawline and not...sigh...nevermind.
Don't get me started on the absolute perfection in a male specimen that can be found there...
And I also agree with you on this...
And our savy Lex...And then seeing that our smart anti-hero is still inside, as he spat them into the paint. He is so aware. So sharp. I love how MR conveys this with just that glance at the camera.
both on the point that Lex is pure future-evil genius and MR plays him to perfection.
And true, they did set up a whole lot of repressed Lex-rage and a giant passle of reasons why these two friends will become the bitterest of enemies. Of course, how they will have all of that bubble back to the surface is yet to be seen. Sadly, this positive does hold some backlash because it chucked another log onto my gigantic bon fire of "any one who knows Clark now and can't figure out that he's Superman in the future is either stupid or living in a sensory deprivation tank." I can now add "or had eloctro-shock therapy that wiped out their memory" to that list.
As for the rest, well, yes, the stylized version of Hell known as Belle Reve might indeed
feel to its inmates like the place portrayed in Smallville, but it was so over the top as to be unbelievable. The one thing I've always like about this show, as well as Lois and Clark for that matter, is the creators' ability to take a totally fictitious and sci-fi premise - an alien arrives on earth with superpowers to become the champion of all men - and actually put it in the "real" world. When they use cartoon-ish sets, as they did in
Asylum, I'm snapped out of my fantasy that Tom Welling and/or Dean Clark is actually out there somewhere, flying around in tight spandex, saving the world.
And their nod to continuity - a good effort, but they could have simply stopped after the pass through the asylum and acknowledgment that these Freaks do still exist somewhere after their episode credits had rolled. They didn't need to have the three concoct some whacky scheme to get even with Clark. I mean, the orderly delivers the chunk of Kryptonite? Come on, CC. You have to admit that was just...come on!
And you know, in my previous post, I didn't even go into the whole "I think maybe Jonathan Kent is actually evil" thing that I was thinking all the while he was platituding to Clark. He is supposed to be this morally upstanding man, but wow, when push comes to shove, it's all about him and his. And what was with Mamma Kent? Trying to pimp Clark back into his dysfunctional...thing...with Lana. She should be setting him up with a nice girl. I know one who lives in the suburbs of Chicago, for that matter.
If they would have cut out the Freaks, put Lex in an asylum with pristine white walls and actual cloth bedsheets, and completely eradicated any images of Lana, I would have been raving about this episode. The acting was top notch. The set up for future angst was all that. And, well, damn, Tom just looked great. I don't ask for much more than that.
So, CC, while you and I will continue to fight over which one of us gets to be Tom's date for the Prom, you can keep the tape of this episode <g>.
Lynn
PS - Don't worry about rambling in here. It's just us Smallville Freaks that wander round these parts anyway, and we all love to just go on and on and on...
