Well Micheal, I guess there should be a disclaimer that this assumes Lois made a different choice in WWW? (But that Clark also didn't pull the melodramatic act of figuratively taking his toys and going home when Lois decided she didn't want to play either...)
**Little Ranty ahead**
This fic mostly came from all the things I dislike about how TV is written now a days... and most of these things were around in LnC at some point but are so much more melodramatic now...
I have a few pet peeves in TV... the pushy "you-know-you-want-me" guy who somehow comes off as attractive and not stalkerish, obsessive, creepy, annoying, chauvinistic, controlling... you get the idea... (do not *ever* get me started on Twilight... I'll call in my lawyer friend who can write a dissertation on her dislike of that one...) This seems to be some archetype of what alternate choice guy should be... It was Demming on Castle, Bryce and whatever SR Superman's character was named on Chuck, heck it was Wickham in Pride and Prejudice! And they are unoriginal by this point... As much as I dislike SR, at least the alternative guy seemed like just a genuinely nice human being who truly cared about the pivotal corner of the triangle (Lois).
Another is the 'whiplash' romantic turnaround... that includes *both* WWW and Lois saying 'I can't' instead of 'I do', House in Help Me and many other times, Bones and Castle with the 'lets do the final get together as melodramatically as possible' episodes as well as many other times...
And that circles back to the name of the fic... a majority of these characters which drive me crazy or plots that are weak or come out of the blue are done to set up season finale cliffhangers. And they are the reason I've pretty much given up watching any series as it's televised. HoL, while it still has elements of the finale annoyances, doesn't end with the over-dramatic hooks that ATAI, BGDF, and Family Hour all did... and boy did Family Hour backfire for them! HoL was great because it ends off with most of the loose ends for the season tied up nicely, but still with subtle things like Lois' final lines to say 'Hey, if you liked this, join us next season!' instead of beating us over the head with 'You know you *have* to know how this ends so you *have* to come back and count the days till the next season!' like most shows seam to do now...
I found this post to be very interesting, and insightful into the nature of modern television. Also, I hate Twilight too. If I were Sparkles The Cutesty-Wutesty Licckle Whampire, I'd have snapped Bland Whatshername's neck, like Killer Man Who Wear's Superman's Costume Missing The Outside Underwear in Man Of Steel did to Not-Mr Stamp-Zod. Wow, that was very rambly. Anyway, am I the only one who wants to read a story where Clark melts every copy of all the Twitlight books and movies into nothingness?
