Smallville Tuesday

[fajrdrako]

Because it's rerun season, we decided to watch the Pilot of Smallville on the DVD, rather than the aired episode, which was "Visage". I remembered disliking "Visage", more in retrospect than the first time through, but I'd forgotten exactly why. I was reminded because we actually did watch it again, on the 9 p.m. showing on the WB channel.

Keep in mind that I can usually find something to love in all Smallville episodes. I think "Visage" and "Dichotic" are the only exceptions.

I had said to Angela on the phone that "Visage" was gross and disgusting. "And it has too much Lana," said Angela. "Exactly - gross and disgusting," said I.

But it isn't Lana that's my problem with it.

Problem #1: The Evil Lesbian thing. I don't want to see another nasty sadistic Lesbian killer in TV or movies. I just don't. I don't care if it's Tina or Sharon Stone or whoever. I just don't want to see it.

Problem #2: The scene where Tina, pretending to be Chloe, comes on to Lana and Lana is horrified and disgusted. Intellectually I can handle it. Emotionally, my heart bleeds for Chloe (even if she isn't Chloe, she looks like Chloe) and Lana, not knowing what is going on, is so cruel. This is a totally irrational reaction, but it's a reaction I can't help having. My heart bleeds, and not in a good way.

I remembered both of those points. What I had forgotten was problem #3: The "wall around my heart" speech Lex delivers to Helen. Perhaps this was the moment I was absolutely sure that Helen was evil - actually, I was sure from the beginning of the episode, but this is where I wanted it to be true. Anyone who can make Michael Rosenbaum act so badly and deliver such lacklustre lines has to be a supervillain in disguise.

In this episode, Tom Welling actually acts better than Michael Rosenbaum does, and I never thought I'd see that.

Ah well. It was... interesting... to see it again. In many ways, I think it is a very good episode: but it makes my skin crawl.

Before that, and in contrast, we watched the Pilot and Metamorphosis, two of my favourite episodes. Angela had never heard the director's commentary so we warned her to be prepared for the many remarks about Lana Lang and the 'magical' Kristen Kreuk, not to mention Tom Welling's hair, and listened to the commentary right through.

Then we played with languages. We checked out the Inu subtitles, trying to figure out why there don't seem to be spaces between the words in Inu.

Then we listened to the Portuguese version. None of us speak any Portuguese; we all thought Lex had a really nice, sexy voice in Portuguese.

Then we decided to check out the dubbed French version. We loved it. We howled with laughter every time Clark or Lex opened their mouths and came out with Canadian French with a decidedly Canadian accent. Okay, why not? It's a Canadian DVD. "C'est une jolie boite," says Clark, in the Trojan scene, and we couldn't contain ourselves.

Occasionally we couldn't catch a word clearly so we turned on the French subtitles. That was even worse: we could understand every word, yes, but the subtitles and the actual French translation were totally different. Different words, different phrasing - presumably two different translators did the work from the English and used distincly different approaches. I even wondered if the subtitles were European French while the dubbing was Canadian French, but we didn't read enough for me to be sure. (Subtitles don't show regional accents, however attractive.)

Damn, I wish there was an Esperanto version, either dubbed or with subtitles. Or that I knew how to make subtitles myself. I know fans do it for anime. But how?

It was particularly fun watching "Metamorphosis" again. I realized again how much I love that episode. It usually, in my memory, suffers from being on the same DVD as the Pilot, which is probably my favourite Smallville, ever. But Metamorphosis is full of joys:

(1) The apple scene in the farmer's market;

(2) Most appearances of Greg Arkin (Chad E. Donella), who is my favourite Smallville meteor-mutant monster;

(3) The "Clark as unappreciated hero" theme;

(4) The Trojan war scene;

(5) The congratulatory dialogue between Whitney and Jonathan, and between Whitney and Clark, and Whitney's feeble attempts to apologize for the cornfield incident;

(6) The scene in the stables between Lex and Lana, which is, in my opinion, Lana's best scene ever;

(7) Lex's plotting in various directions.

That episode put me in a great Clexy mood.

~ ~ ~

I thought the trailer for "Fearless" looked interesting. Does anyone know anything about this show?