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Jul. 18th, 2003 07:55 pm
SV musings
I rewatched Exodus the other day and I'm finally ready to post my semi-coherent thoughts about the finale and next season.
Helen:
Helen is obviously involved in the plane crash. The only question is when did she decide to do it? Unless they are going to pull some long term motivation out of a hat, I think she only came to that decision after Lex confessed to breaking into her office.
Although we haven't actually seen her get violent, even in self defense (Precipice), Helen was sent to the same anger management class that Lex had to go to, so she must have issues. Could she be angry enough to want to kill Lex? It is a stretch, but she may feel it is also necessary in order to protect her patients (Clark, Martha) and her research. She has also been approached by Lionel several times for unspecified reasons, which could provide additional motivation.
Lionel:
I think, ultimately, Lionel is behind the crash. We've seen nothing to indicate that Helen has the resources to arrange the crash on her own and it is a Luthor Corp plane provided by Lionel, so he has to be under suspicion.
During this second viewing of Exodus I noticed something interesting. Lionel tells Pete that people are weakest when they are angry. Granted, this is in a scene that has nothing to do with Helen or Lex, but it underscored that he had just had his best opportunity so far to get to Helen.
The real question is, why would he want to kill Lex? We've seen, in Prodigal, that he does care for his son's life, not just in preference to Lucas's but at some risk to his own. What would make him willing to get rid of Lex?
Here, alas, is where I think a Lex clone comes in. Lionel loves the idea of Lex, as his heir, and possibly as Lillian's son, but not so much Lex as Lex himself. He is warped enough that I could easily imagine him transferring that feeling to a duplicate that was closer to his idea of how Lex should be. Given that they have already introduced the idea of cloning in Smallville and cloning has been in Superman canon for a while now, I think this is the direction they may go.
Is it necessarily a disaster? Not if they do it right. They can't truly kill off our Lex and replace him with a conscience-less close without invalidating all the character growth they have had so far to show why Lex goes bad. But what if we had clone!Lex for a little while until real!Lex gets off the island? Again, they would have to be careful how they handled clone!Lex. Giving us a preview of evil!Lex could be fun, but I would like it even more if they could suggest how the evilclone!Lex was not even as bad as future evilmastermind!Lex will be. If the clone were bad, but somewhat stupid, sort of a bizarro!Lex or if Lionel got a chance to see how that wasn't really how he wanted Lex to be, then it could be really interesting.
Sadly, I don't have much faith that M&G will do a good job of implementing this even if this the direction they take. They and I clearly have different ideas about which are the compelling themes to explore on the show. My somewhat pessimistic hope is that SV remains interesting enough to keep the fanfic writers interested.
Helen:
Helen is obviously involved in the plane crash. The only question is when did she decide to do it? Unless they are going to pull some long term motivation out of a hat, I think she only came to that decision after Lex confessed to breaking into her office.
Although we haven't actually seen her get violent, even in self defense (Precipice), Helen was sent to the same anger management class that Lex had to go to, so she must have issues. Could she be angry enough to want to kill Lex? It is a stretch, but she may feel it is also necessary in order to protect her patients (Clark, Martha) and her research. She has also been approached by Lionel several times for unspecified reasons, which could provide additional motivation.
Lionel:
I think, ultimately, Lionel is behind the crash. We've seen nothing to indicate that Helen has the resources to arrange the crash on her own and it is a Luthor Corp plane provided by Lionel, so he has to be under suspicion.
During this second viewing of Exodus I noticed something interesting. Lionel tells Pete that people are weakest when they are angry. Granted, this is in a scene that has nothing to do with Helen or Lex, but it underscored that he had just had his best opportunity so far to get to Helen.
The real question is, why would he want to kill Lex? We've seen, in Prodigal, that he does care for his son's life, not just in preference to Lucas's but at some risk to his own. What would make him willing to get rid of Lex?
Here, alas, is where I think a Lex clone comes in. Lionel loves the idea of Lex, as his heir, and possibly as Lillian's son, but not so much Lex as Lex himself. He is warped enough that I could easily imagine him transferring that feeling to a duplicate that was closer to his idea of how Lex should be. Given that they have already introduced the idea of cloning in Smallville and cloning has been in Superman canon for a while now, I think this is the direction they may go.
Is it necessarily a disaster? Not if they do it right. They can't truly kill off our Lex and replace him with a conscience-less close without invalidating all the character growth they have had so far to show why Lex goes bad. But what if we had clone!Lex for a little while until real!Lex gets off the island? Again, they would have to be careful how they handled clone!Lex. Giving us a preview of evil!Lex could be fun, but I would like it even more if they could suggest how the evilclone!Lex was not even as bad as future evilmastermind!Lex will be. If the clone were bad, but somewhat stupid, sort of a bizarro!Lex or if Lionel got a chance to see how that wasn't really how he wanted Lex to be, then it could be really interesting.
Sadly, I don't have much faith that M&G will do a good job of implementing this even if this the direction they take. They and I clearly have different ideas about which are the compelling themes to explore on the show. My somewhat pessimistic hope is that SV remains interesting enough to keep the fanfic writers interested.