We'll have to agree to disagree about Chloe. Personally, the only thing Lois Lane-like that I ever saw about her was the occupation of reporting and even that disappeared three years ago. In the "Superboy" verse she actually reminded me more of Lana Lang and I often thought that the mistake the show runners made was in making Lana and Chloe two different people as well as not focusing on Clark's own journalistic interest. Indeed, "Smallville" has almost seemed to make Clark a reporter for no good reason at all because you never really saw him develop the interest.
I always thought that the show could have done better being bookended by voice overs of Clark reading his journal (even keeping a journal would have at least shown us an interest in writing on his part). As I understand it Chloe was created to be the "outsider" and "normal" person who could look at the goings on in Smallville from that perspective. I think the voice over would have accomplished the same plus more as we would have gotten insights from Clark and even patched plot holes by giving us information about little plot points they didn't have time to actually film.
Lana and Chloe could have been combined as a character (thus linking Lana back more to her original backstory) and Clark's introduction into journalism could have been his joining the school newspaper because he had a crush on her and developing a real interest from there. This would have given us the opportunity to see the two together more as well as a romantic pairing with some tension, but without as much angst. We could also have been shown why the pairing ultimately wouldn't have worked in a much better fashion than they ended up showing us.
Also, once Pete left and Chloe was shoe horned into the role of confidant her role changed even more to the point that she was the all-purpose Mary Sue-ish deus ex machina. Clark needed information and *boom* Chloe pulled out her magic computer and it was there. Clark needs to break into a place and *boom* there goes the magic laptop beating a billion dollar security system. I think that's what really started to wear out her welcome to me personally. And then her last season antics with the serial killer pretty much nailed the coffin shut as far as I was concerned. Sadly, I would have been much happier to see her killed off than the one they actually did. Especially the cheesy cop-out way it was done.
We'll throw mythos to the wind as needed and create all kinds of inconsistencies, but good golly we have to have the ages right. Yeah, right, TPTB, I'm buying that one the moment I pay off this bridge I just purchased in Brooklyn.
