Bitterswete
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Posts posted by Bitterswete
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If it's unpopular to hate S5, then I am happily unpopular.
Whenever someone says they don't like season 5, and explains why, I find myself agreeing with most of their criticisms. And, yet, I still really liked season 5, despite the flaws.
Take Glory. Thinking about her character, and other characters like her, I really shouldn't have liked her as the Big Bad. Yet, for some reason, I did. Which is probably part of the reason I liked the season overall.
I hated Faith and Dushku's acting in a very similar way. I don't think the show was good with the "bad girl" stereotype.I thought Faith was a bad girl cliche her entire run on BtVS. I could see why she was popular, she just didn't interest me all that much. Or at all, really.
But her stints on AtS made me really like her. And, by the end of the BtVS finale, I liked Faith more than Buffy.
How's that for a UO?
Exactly. The general opinion seems to be that S6 is the 'dark' season, but I always felt like things were just as grim in S5 for all the reasons you mention.The difference is that season 6 felt like such a drag. Season 5 had its dark, sad elements. But it just didn't feel as grim and depressing. In fact, I found a lot of season 5 enjoyable and entertaining, even with the dark and angsty stuff going on.
Season 6 was depressing to the point of being mind-numbing. And there wasn't much fun in the season to balance things out.
Actually, I think the Trio was supposed to balance out the grimness and provide comic relief. But that didn't really work because a lot of viewers didn't like them or think they were funny.
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From seasons 1 through 4, I didn't like Chloe.
I couldn't stand Chloe in season 2, even before she seemed willing to sell out Clark. Then, through season 3, I liked her more and more. And, by season 4, she'd become one of my favorite characters on the show.
And nothing really justifies the fact that she was willing to sell out Clark to Lionel Luthor. Yes she came to her senses and backed out of it, but it was still a really shitty thing to do.I'm actually cool with a character doing a truly terrible thing if they learn from it and become better as a result. In fact, I've grown to love characters who've done far worse than anything Chloe ever did.
Also, it's hard for my brain to not to see that season as a huge aberration for Chloe's character given some of the stuff I know about why she was written the way she was in season two, and why they seemed to do such a 180 with her character in season 3.
While on the subject, am I the only one that understood why Clark kept it hidden for so long? Maybe it wasn't always a smart decision, but it was HIS decision to make.I never thought there was anything wrong with Clark keeping his secret. If he had something he didn't want to tell anyone, it was his business.
However, I didn't think it was wrong for the other characters to be upset because they knew he was hiding something from them, which caused him to lie to them on a regular basis. Because nobody really likes being lied to, or knowing someone they care about is hiding stuff from them.
So I guess I saw both sides.
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I couldn't deal with Clark lying to Lex either. I know Clark was a kid and they had a unique friendship, but it felt wrong that he kept lying to Lex.
I get why they had to do the lying and subterfuge with Lex--he was destined to become Clark's nemesis--I just think the turn from friend to foe would've been far more earned if I had been convinced Clark ever really saw Lex as a friend.The producers said two things that always stuck in my head. (Partly because we discussed them quite a bit on the other board.) The first was that they wanted to portray Lex as being a better friend to Clark than Clark was to Lex. And the second was that they wanted Clark to have a hand in creating his greatest enemy. So, a lot of the time, they had Clark act a certain way towards Lex on purpose as part of the theme they were going for.
I think they wanted Clark to have this powerful, heart breaking moment at the end of the show where he realizes Lex might not have become a villain (and they might still be friends) if Clark had done things differently.
The problem was that they weren't the best at executing on this idea. But even if they had done it really well, the way Clark treated Lex sometimes just made Clark look bad, and really affected how I felt about his character.
I actually think that's what Clark's "I'm sorry I couldn't save you Lex" line in the finale was all about. Clark taking some responsibility for how Lex turns out. Only, the way it's worded, it sounds like Clark did everything he could to try to "save" Lex, including being the most supportive friend he could possibly be. Which is a total crock.
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Yes, this was one of my favourite seasons as well because of Lex. This was the season where he had a turning point. He tried to be a "good" guy in the first three seasons, but he started to really change and become more jaded in S4-S5. I enjoyed that he finally fell out with Clark and even though Lex had issues, I agreed with him more than Clark in how it ended.
I agree with most of this except for the part about Lex trying to be a good guy. To me, that implies that Lex was never really good. It was just an act he was putting on for everybody (including himself), and him turning to the dark side was him finally dropping the act.
But I think that, in the early seasons, Lex had genuine goodness in him but he also had that dark side (he was raised by Lionel after all) that caused him to do something questionable every now and again. And those two sides were battling with each other. Through the early days of the show, his goodness was in charge. (That was kind of what "Onyx" was about.) But then things happened that pushed him further and further towards the dark side. If lots of positive things had happened to him instead, I think he would've gone in the opposite direction.
Really, if Lex had been innately evil, he would've eagerly followed in Lionel's footsteps from the beginning, and it wouldn't have taken so much badness to get him to finally turn to the dark side.
I mean, the premise was that he couldn't tell anyone his secret. I just wish his lies could be more believable-that is, not come off as him being a bad liar, and looking like he was lying-and BADLY, at that.What got me was when Clark would lie about things that he really didn't have to lie about. I think he just got used to lying about anything that had to do with his powers at all, even if it was in the most indirect way possible.
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She might have been similar to the Lana on the Superboy TV series, I don't know since I couldn't stand that show and for as many iterations of the comics there were, I can't say there weren't similarities, but Chloe did not fit at ALL with the Lana that I'd been introduced to in other mediums. (Plus the show runners said over and over from the beginning they were not doing Superboy so Chloe wouldn't have been based on that Lana version.)
The thing about comics is that there are different versions of just about everything, and trying to keep track can be a job in and of itself.
I think Chloe was more similar to some teen-aged versions of Lana from comics featuring a young Clark Kent where there was no Lois. That version of Lana often did the "looking into something and getting into trouble" thing. She was also a more assertive and proactive than SV!Lana (especially in early seasons) tended to be.
And while I take anything the PTB say with a huge grain of salt, I don't mean the showrunners specifically based Chloe on any version of Lana. Just that I always thought Chloe was more like that Lana than Lana was. And that, for whatever reason, I just never saw Chloe as a young Lois. Except for the fact that they both wanted to be reporters, my mind always saw Chloe as a separate character who was just different from my vision of Lois in dozens of other ways.
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I started to say I was sorry I didn't see the Chloe you guys did; you guys are obviously very passionate about that Chloe. But, TBH, I'm glad to not have seen that Chloe. It makes me incredibly sad to think of Chloe as nothing unless she gets to be a reporter.
That's definitely not what it's about for me. I found Chloe an enjoyable and valuable character no matter what she was doing. And I can think of many professions where she would've kicked ass.
But when I really like a character, I want them to be happy. And that includes wanting them to follow and attain their dreams.
If Chloe had woken up one morning and thought, "I don't want to be a reporter anymore. I want to do this other thing," and I truly thought she'd be more happy doing the other thing, I wouldn't have had a problem with it. But, the way things played out left a bitter taste in my mouth because it felt like a character I liked was robbed of something she'd dreamed of, worked hard at and clearly still loved because the writers thought another character (who I didn't like nearly as much) should get to realize that dream instead. That's what made me dislike that whole situation.
My own disappointment concerning Chloe lays in that I don' think the show's ever going to allow her to be anything else than the girl who once was meant to be Lois LaneYeah, I can see how folks not familiar with other versions of the characters saw Chloe as SV's version of Lois. But, actually, Chloe was much more like Lana from the comics. (And also the Lana from the Superboy TV series, who actually worked as an investigator.)
I always found it weird how they made another character on the show more like earlier versions of Lana Lang than SV!Lana was. It was like, when the show first started, they decided Lana should exist mostly to be a love interest, and couldn't do other, more interesting things. So they gave a lot of the more interesting parts of the Lana Lang character to Chloe.
As for me, I never wanted Chloe to be Lois. To me, any similarities had to do with them being related (because family members are often similar in some ways). But I never looked at Chloe and thought, "Wow, she's totally a young Lois Lane." To me, I always saw the pretty major difference between Chloe and the Lois Lane character.
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Chloe got a lot of grief for hiding Davis but honestly, what was the alternative? Nothing could kill him and Clark had badly lost every fight against him. I wish she would have confided in Clark about Davis but Clark was in his "I don't listen" stage at that point. He bull rushed head first in ever situation without listening to anyone or taking heed of his own safety. Something happens that Chloe gets even more flack for (you'll know it when you see it) but again, I couldn't blame her for stepping in since Clark was acting so incredibly reckless. People often overlook that she probably saved Clark from throwing away his life, but I'll save my full comment for after you have seen it.
Chloe definitely did some things in season 8 that some viewers gave her flack for. But when I think about Chloe doing the more "acceptable" thing in those situations, it always ended with Davis Dooming out and slaughtering somebody (Clark, a bunch of cops, random innocents) in a bloody massacre. So, under the circumstances, I was totally fine with her choosing to do "gray" things in the name of saving lives.
Then again, I love "gray" characters. (They are good guys/gals, but not afraid to do iffy things for good reasons.)
Well, I'm just not one who ascribes to the theory of a job defining who you are. Plus, she was 14 when the show started, who says she can't want something different at 22?
I think I'm with the others here. It's one thing for a character's dreams to change, and for them to want something different. But, in Chloe's case, it really did feel like, rather than deciding she wanted something new, the dream was taken away from her because the writers decided Lois should have it instead. The show even makes it clear that Chloe still wanted to be a reporter but couldn't, so was trying to find other ways to do what she was trying to do through reporting.
For fans of Chloe's, all of this made it hard not to resent the crap out of Lois on Chloe's behalf.
Oh, I think Clark acknowledges that he loves Chloe, just not the way Chloe wants him to love her. Personally, I've never felt like there was any kind of romantic love coming from Clark with regards to Chloe. I've only seen them as best friends. But then again, I'm not really a shipper so... .See, I think the show sprinkled hints that Clark had romantic feelings for Chloe from season one. A lot of the time, it felt like they were doing it just in case they actually wanted to go there. (Which is a pretty common thing for TV shows to do.) And there were a few times when it looked like they actually were going to go that direction before changing their minds and pulling back (which is also common).
Basically, while it doesn't bother me that Chlark didn't happen, I wouldn't have been shocked if it had because there was plenty of ground work laid for it.
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I can't help feel bad for poor Davis. He wanted to be a good guy but really he wasn't ever human, just a kryptonian creation that adopted Davis as a mask to cover up what he really was.
This made me flash back to so many discussions I had on TWOP about Davis.
I don't agree with the idea that Davis was just a mask. Instead, I always sort of saw it as two beings possessing the same body, and Davis (the guy who truly wanted to be a good person and just live his life) wasn't any less real than Dooms (the remorseless killing machine).
The fact that he wasn't human, and was created in a lab, had nothing to do with it. Even if his creators only expected Davis to be a shell, Davis turned out to be a being with thoughts, feelings, and a moral code. He wasn't just pretending to care about other people, or pretending not to want to hurt anyone, or pretending to care about his job just to blend in. Those aspects of his character were real.
Basically, he was a sentient being and as much of a "real person" as anybody else. And I always fall on the side of sentient beings having a right to live their lives and be treated as real people.
Of course, I've been watching stories about characters who aren't human and were created in labs (or maybe some other way) for ages. So thanks to those characters, and storylines that dealt with their issues, I had a lot of opinions on the subject going into season 8 of SV. And that definitely influenced how I saw Davis.
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I checked out of the show in Season 9 and I don't regret it.
I hadn't completely checked out, but I'd stopped expecting the show to be in any way good or satisfying. Mostly, I was just happy when they turned out a scene I could enjoy all on it's own, without worrying about whatever else was going on on the show (because most of it didn't interest me), and rarely were any of those scenes about Clark, Lois, or Clois.
I'm really glad in the end that Sam Witwer got to originate the role of Davis Bloome, which I think was much more interesting and fresh, rather than having to step into the role of Zod and make it his own.Of course I'm glad SW got to play Davis, because he turned out to be one of my favorite characters. But I still would like to have seen him play Zod, because I think he would've been great in the part.
I've seen plenty of actors take on roles that have been played by other people, and manage to make those roles their own, and I think SW could've done the same thing.
In fact, I think Clark Kent, for example, is way more familiar to people than Zod, who I don't think most people are nearly as familiar with. But plenty of actors managed to convince me they were CK, including TW. (I never had a problem buying him as CK. He was just a CK I wanted to smack a lot. Which is more the fault of the writers than TW.)
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Fortune had Chloe telling Clark that she'd talked to the wedding chapel people and it was all a joke only for Oliver to show up with the other half of the wedding certificate,
Chloe and Oliver also had a whole conversation in the finale about their marriage, and whether either one of them regretted it or how it happened. So, according to the show anyway, they were, indeed, married.
I also have a very hard time believing the kid was anyone but Chloe's, because it was very much framed as "mom telling story to son," and kind of doesn't make sense any other way. Meaning either the kid were her's and Oliver's, or she divorced Oliver and had a kid with someone else. Hopefully not Clark because, while they weren't married, it's clear at the end of the finale that he and Lois are heading that way. And that would suck for Chloe if they had a thing, she had his kid, then their thing ended and he went running to her cousin.
That being Chloe and Oliver's kid, and them still being married (notice the big rock on her finger) is just the most logical read of the situation. But I agree that they left it vague to keep everyone happy. (And I've learned to take anything the TPB of SV say with a huge grain of salt.)
Now leave me alone while I stick my fingers in my ears and go la, la, la, la. Hey, it's all fiction. After TEN fricken years, hell, I deserve to have whatever ending I want.I'll join you in the lalalalalalalala!
Maybe I'd be there too if I was really into Chlark. But, while I liked the idea once upon a time, by the end of the show I disliked Clark too much to want him with Chloe. Basically, I thought Clark was a total ass by the end there, and thought Chloe (a character I still really liked) deserved way better. And, compared to Clark, Oliver was a total prince.
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I remain royally pissed off that the show paired up Oliver and Chloe, who had been on completely opposite sides by the end of season 8.
And I really liked Chloe/Oliver. I guess that, by the time they got together, I'd stopped expecting logic and reason from this show. All I know is that I enjoyed watching them together, and it was one of the few things the show had going on that I actually liked and cared about.
Plus, he had such amazing chemistry with Erica's Lois.I've read comments like this around here a few times and it's surprised me. I never thought there was anything all that special about Ollie and Lois's chemistry. I mean, I thought they made a good enough couple, and the scene where they broke up made me a little sad. But I just don't remember thinking much of them beyond that.
Of course, chemistry is subjective, so I guess other people saw sparks between them that I just didn't for some reason.
I suppose I should be grateful they didn't kill Chloe off in the end, but her having the baby of a man who's supposed to end up with Black Canary didn't make any sense to me and actually felt a bit foreboding. I don't want to imagine Chloe stuck in another love triangle ten years after the show is over!I guess to folks who were really into Oliver/BC in the comics, there were a lot of expectations about something happening between them on the show. But I didn't have those kinds of expectations. To me they were just two characters who happened to be on SV, and the fact that nothing happened between them on the show was no big deal.
And regarding Chloe ending up stuck in another triangle, I consider SV it's own thing separate from comics canon. And there's no reason to think that, in this reality, anything romantic ever has to happen between Ollie and BC.
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I think with time, and if the show moves beyond the 7th season, they'll get to that stage but at the moment it seems more believable to link their friendship to Elena.
Agree to disagree because I don't think there friendship was ever about Elena. It's why they were around each other some before the prison world incident, certainly. But I think them actually caring about each other started in the prison world where they spent lots of time together (talking, sharing meals, etc.) and actually got to know each other as people, something they didn't really do before. And I just don't buy that Elena was their motivation for doing that.
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Oh, Legend of the Seeker! I remember that show. It was great, wasn't it? Such a shame we never got past Season 2. Kahlan/Cara friendship easily became one of the best things about the show and I think I even became more invested in it than Kahlan/Richard. Still, in my opinion, those two women would never have found common ground with Richard there holding them together.
It's very true that Richard brought them together, and they never would've spent two seconds near each other (without one of them ending up dead) without him there. But two people can care about the same person without ever liking each other, which certainly could've happened between Kahlan and Cara. But their relationship eventually grew beyond the fact that they both happened to care about the same person, and they started caring about each other beyond their relationships with him. Which is what I think has happened with Bonnie and Damon.
Yes, I have to agree with you that the Bonnie & Damon friendship doesn't really hold up to strong scrutiny.Actually, what I find weird about it is that I do buy it. Because, not long ago, I would've scoffed at the very notion of Damon and Bonnie truly being friends. Now, I actually believe that they care about each other (independent of how they feel about anyone else), and the weirdness comes from the fact that, not long ago, I never would've thought it was possible.
And if I thought that the sole basis for their friendship was Elena, that I wouldn't buy. Them becoming friends because of the things they've gone through, and the time they spent together due to some very unusual circumstances, that I can believe.
That being said, I'd like it if some of their issues came up and were dealt with onscreen. Stuff like that has made the friendships on other shows stronger. I'm not holding my breath though because this is TVD, and they like to gloss over things like that.
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First of all, Damon and Bonnie being friends still weirds out a part of my brain. But that's another story.
the show was about her for six years.Which wasn't always a good thing when she was actually there. It would be even less of a good thing now that she's not even around.
I've seen other shows that have tried to keep missing (and popular) characters present by mentioning them and building stories around them. And while this might make big fans of the character happy (which I think TVD is trying to do), nobody else ever likes it. And there's usually much relief when the writers stop doing it. And, in my opinion, those shows were much stronger when they didn't try to keep working in that character.
Elena was the glue that held all these disparate characters together. A lot of them would literally be strangers, or might even have murdered each other several times over but for her presence.And I can think of many TV friends who met through another person (often the lead). But that didn't mean their friendship was based on that person. And, as a big fan of TV friendships (more than 'ships, actually) I really find that idea unappealing. I want my favorite TV friendships to be based on the fact that these people care about each other, not that they care about someone else, and that's what holding them together. Just no.
As weird as I still find the friendship between Bonnie and Damon, I also dislike it when people (and the writers, to some degree) try to make it all about Elena because I don't think it is. If it was, they would've become pals ages ago. Damon and Bonnie's friendship developed because of the experiences they had with each other, separate from Elena.
It actually reminds me of the friendship between Cara and Kahlan on Legend of the Seeker. (And here's a clip for anyone who doesn't know who I'm talking about.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jn2nhLdkcGU
Those two hated each other at first. (There were death threats, and actual attempts on each other's lives.) And they were only around each other in the beginning because of Richard. (In fact, one of his big fears was that they'd kill each other.) But Richard wasn't why they ended up becoming such good friends. That was based on them getting to know each other, and spending time with each other independent of Richard. If I had thought their friendship was all about Richard, I wouldn't have liked it nearly as much. Or at all, come to think of it.
So, while Bonnie and Damon's friendship is still a little weird to me, I certainly wouldn't want it to be all about Elena.
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Lois might write good first person accounts or even editorials but we never had any indication that she was a good journalist.Lois was shown to be a good writer back in season four, so it wasn't exactly a huge retcon.
Like I think BkWurm1 was saying, being a good writer is not the same as being a good reporter. In fact, I've heard (or read) many journalists say that some of the best reporters ever usually weren't the best writers. They were good enough to get the facts they'd uncovered across, but great writing skills weren't considered the most important part of the job.
It's very possible Lois had natural writing ability, and could spin a good tale. (Like she did at the tabloid I can't remember the name of.) But for several seasons, back when she was mostly comic relief, the show went out of it's way to show Lois as a really bad journalist who had little clue what being a reporter was really about (because that was supposed to be funny).
Then, suddenly, she's an awesome journalist who had, apparently, been studying the craft for years, and had worked her way up from the bottom to get where she was. Those were the retcons.
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Is there an Unpopular Opinion thread here? Because I found Kara to also be a huge fail. Did the network think this as well, since they got rid of her, but fast?
Kara did seem like she was going to have all this story potential and then it never happened.
The fans were very excited about Kara being on SV, and there was talk about a possible spin-off before the season even started. Then SV didn't end up doing much with her, and she and her storylines were so boring any talk of a spin-off faded away.
I think the reason the show didn't do much with her is that, once she was on the show, they realized they had this character with all of Clark's powers but none of his hang-ups about using them. She also didn't have his, "I just want to be normal and have a normal life," issues.
There was nothing stopping Kara from becoming a full-out superhero and spending all of her free time using her powers to save the day. Except that it would've made Clark (who had the same powers but wasn't actively using them to do the super hero thing) look bad. And there were already viewers who thought Oliver/Green Arrow made Clark look bad. The PTB didn't want Kara to do the same thing.
So they tried to come up with storylines for Kara that didn't involve her playing the hero. And they were mostly boring, so viewers lost interest in her. And, by the end of the season, I think the writers were tired of struggling to find stuff for her to do that wouldn't overshadow Clark, and were more than happy for her character to leave the show.
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The big change in their relationship happened after his dream in Lexmas. Dream, vision, his subconscious desires - maybe all three - whatever his "dream" was, it made him see Lana in a romantic light IMO for the first time.
One of the Powers That Be actually said that the "Lexmas" stuff was real. That really was Lillian showing Lex what his life would actually be like if he gave up the wealth and power and decided to live a different life. Unfortunately, Lillian sucked as a guardian angel, and showed Lex something that pretty much guaranteed he'd do the opposite of what she wanted.
So what we saw in that episode wasn't generated by some subconscious desire on Lex's part. Not to say those desires weren't there already to one degree or another. (Although, never being a fan of Lex/Lana, my mind doesn't want to go there.) Just that the events of the ep weren't all in Lex's head.
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I guess my unpopular opinion is that I like Lois. She can be irritating sometimes, but usually when she is, she's called on it in show, unlike Lana and Chloe. I like all three of them, but Lois is probably my favorite. I mean, c'mon, she's Lois Lane ;)
I guess that was my problem with the character. SV Lois had the name, but she was not Lois Lane to me.
I really wanted to like SV's version of her because, like you said, she was Lois Lane. But, the longer she was on the show, the more "not Lois" she felt to me. She had some of Lois's traits, just not the ones that made me a fan of the character. Then when they tried to give her those traits (with retcons and lightswitching) I just couldn't buy it.
I was never into the "Chloe is Lois" thing. But Chloe always felt closer to how I think of Lois Lane than SV's Lois was.
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To be honest, Smallville was in my opinion, at least at the beginning, only a bad copy of Roswell mixed with the MOTW-concept of Buffy with a little Superman thrown in so it wouldn't tank out of the gate. I don't know what it became later in its run, because I only watched the first season, but I have no interest in ever finding out.
First, I've never watched much Roswell but, from what I saw of it, I don't think SV was much like it beyond a few details here and there.
As for what SV was like later in its run, it had some great elements I think people might enjoy. Lex and his relationship with his abusive, sociopathic father was fascinating. And, from season three on, Chloe became an awesome character, and a hero in her own right. Then there was stuff like getting to see the very beginnings of the Justice League.
The problem is that, to see the good, you have to wade through quite a bit of crap. Which is what I tell people when they ask if they should watch it. If you accept that a lot of the show isn't so great, and try to focus on the good stuff, you can enjoy the show somewhat.
As for Buffy vs other genre shows, while I generally feel like Buffy holds up well and that it is still one of the greatest shows of all time, I can see how current genre shows will probably have an edge over Buffy, at least in getting new younger viewers to sample the show,I actually see a lot of younger viewers mentioning they've just started watching BtVS, and how much they love it over any of the current shows. And while other shows might have fans hooked, I don't think the fans are nearly as engaged, largely because there isn't as much to most of those shows.
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And I might be in the minority that liked Lois (or at least didn't hate her), but I thought their first encounter with brainwashed Clark being naked in the cornfield was priceless.
I liked Lois at first, especially in her first episode. And I really wanted to like her because I'm a fan of the Lois Lane character. But, by her fourth or fifth episode, I finally admitted she wasn't as great as I wanted her to be. And it was all downhill from there.
That being said, there were moments when I found Lois likable, so I didn't actually hate her character. It was just that, most of the time, she was written in a way that made her annoy me more than anything else.
Like I've said before, I think they were trying to do a Cordelia Chase thing with Lois. She was rude and bitchy, but we were supposed to like her (or at least think she was funny) anyway. But it just didn't work, mostly because I rarely thought anything she did was actually funny, so I just saw her as rude and obnoxious.
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Like, ironically, despite my issues with Chloe in those stretch of episodes with regards to Davis, boy did they have some smokin' hot chemistry!
ITA. Which was why I was so pissed off with the season ending, that was so botched it drove Sam Witwer right off the show when he had pretty explicitly been supposed to play Zod the next season. All I could think of was all the weird wrong places that chemistry could have gone.
I would've been interested to see how Chloe would've reacted to a Zod that looked just like Davis. (I remember hearing that she would've played a bigger part in that storyline if SW had returned for exactly that reason.) But even without the "he looks just like Davis" thing, I just wish we could've seen SW in the part.
Not to put down the guy they ended up getting to play the part, but I just think SW would've been awesome as Zod.
I will say, I was so pissed over what happened that I was very happy that Witwer refused to come back. Season nine would have been infinitely better but since my voice and my anger over what they did to Davis and characterization in general was never going to be listened to, I took a lot of solace in Witwer being able to speak for the fans.
As sad as I am that we didn't get to see SW play Zod, I didn't blame him at all for not wanting to come back. I blamed the writing for making him not want to come back. Giving me another reason not to like that finale.
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I can see what you're saying about Clark in that scene, but I felt nothing but sympathy. He had just been betrayed in the worst way by Oliver, Bart and Dinah. He couldn't find Lois anywhere. And Jimmy's death was the culmination of everything that went wrong with Davis. I could totally see him being broken the way he was. He's always there for Chloe, as sje is for him, but his actions made sense to me.
If the writers wanted me to sympathize with Clark, and somehow see his treatment of Chloe (who had just watched someone she cared about get murdered in front of her) as justified, they did it wrong. Very, very wrong.
Yeah, Clark had gone through some stuff. But it wasn't anywhere near what Chloe (the person he was kicking in the teeth) had gone through. So for him to be so caught up in his issues that he didn't seem to care about what his best friend (supposedly) was going through made him look like a world class jerk.
Also, Clark being so broken up over Davis makes no sense. The only way it would make sense is if Clark had been the one who fought so hard for Davis, and had believed so deeply in Davis's innate goodness that what Davis ended up doing was like a deep, personal betrayal of Clark's belief in him.
But that's not what happened. Clark barely knew Davis. And I sure don't buy that Clark had some deep belief in Davis's innate goodness. In fact, there was a point when Clark pretty much thought he was a lost cause.
Eventually, Clark decides to try to save Davis, but it was actually pretty impersonal. It was like something he'd do for a virtual stranger (which Davis really was to him), rather than being about some deep bond they shared.
So them trying to say Davis's actions could leave Clark so crushed and devastated was kind of ridiculous. And since I couldn't buy what happened with Davis could possibly be so emotionally devastating to Clark, all I saw was a jackass walking out on a friend in her time of need, and using a flimsy excuse to justify doing it.
And writing this is making those feelings of loathing come back. Because I truly did despise Clark by the end of that episode.
Oh my goodness I'd forgotten how much I hated him before Doomsday.Yeah, Clark had done plenty (like implying Lionel's abuse was kind of Lex's fault) to make me start disliking him. And I always wonder what the heck the writers were thinking when they had him do and say some of this stuff. (Something that continues in later seasons.)
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This season also made my Clark-Chloe love a little dented and I HATE that. While there was still a TON to love about them this season, I really didn't like that whole stretch of Beast, Injustice and Doomsday. Because I just got this really weird vibe. I don't know, like I feel that Chloe took some definite missteps in the Davis debacle and it was this shady kind of stuff while I think we were supposed to hate Clark for walking away at the end, but I didn't. I couldn't!
And I absolutely loathed Clark in that scene. To me, it wasn't even about whatever had gone on between him and Chloe that season. There are just compassionate, kind, decent ways to act towards other people, especially when they're going through something like Chloe was going through. And Clark (who the show like to tell me was so kind and compassion) acted like a complete and total jackass.
And I might have bought it if they'd actually set it up well. Some of my favorite TV moments have been characters doing pretty awful things, but I got it because the writing really planted the seeds for them to act that way. But the reasons Clark supposedly had for acting the way he did were so weak and selfish, all I could think was, "Man, what an asswipe."
She always took his side against Jimmy's. Which is another thing that bothered me. God help me I hated her relationship with Jimmy but if you married him, then he ought to be the guy. No-one else. She tasered Jimmy and then went to soothe Davis. I really couldn't understand Chloe as she was written here.And I had no problem with how Chloe was acting there. At the time, Chloe knew that Jimmy was suffering from PTSD and abusing drugs that were known to mess with peoples' heads. Then she sees him about to attack someone who was (as far as she knew) totally innocent. And she was supposed to stand there and watch it happen?
No way. It's one thing to be supportive. It's another to stand by and watch a loved one (who you have reason to believe is off their rocker at the time) hurt someone and just hope they have a good reason.
Then, later, I didn't see Chloe "siding" with Davis. She didn't believe what Jimmy was saying about Davis, but that because Jimmy was acting like a ranting loon at the time. (And, of course, Davis was "framing" him, but she didn't know that.)
I guess I have no trouble looking at things from Chloe's point of view, and remembering that I, as a viewer, knew things she didn't. Given what she knew, I think her actions made sense under the circumstances.
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I think the beginning was very good. It got kind of annoying midway through with all the potential nonsense, but even then there were episodes like Showtime that I liked. Plus Conversations with Dead People.
While I thought early season 7 was enjoyable (especially compared to season 6), I really don't consider any of the episodes great. And I think I liked them more when I first saw them because, coming off of season 6, they seemed like a breath of fresh air. But, now, they seem kind of "meh" to me.
Also, I didn't care much for what many consider the best eps of that season. "Conversations with Dead People," for example. (It's not a terrible ep, but I don't think it's particularly great either.) And the finale. (Which felt really empty and unearned after the eps leading up to it.)
I think it unfairly gets a bad rap just because people hated the potentials, Kennedy and Andrew.Actually, when I think about the things I disliked about season 7, none of those three things are on my list. I thought Andrew was amusing (although I could see why some found him annoying). And while I didn't love the Potentials (or Kennedy), I didn't loathe any of them enough for it to make me hate the whole season.
I just don't think season 7 was very good, and for reasons that had nothing to do with Andrew, Kennedy or the Potentials. (Except that the Potentials, for example, were handled as badly as a lot of other things that season.)
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in Buffy The Vampire Slayer
I totally agree here. So many of the highly-praised episodes of BtVS just don't do much for me, and "Tabula Rasa" is definitely one of them. Not only did TR seem pretty "meh" to me on first viewing, but then I saw "Spin the Bottle" (an AtS episode that I really liked which had a similar storyline) which made TR seem even more "meh."
Me, too. Riley might not have been the most exciting of guys but I liked him, and I liked him with Buffy. Sometimes, I enjoy couples who aren't high drama all of the time.
For example, I think one of the reasons I eventually grew out of Buffy/Angel was that, by the end of season three, I had just gotten tired of the angst. Which was a shame because I found them most interesting when there was angst. So, basically, I got tired of what I found most entertaining about them.
That's not why I didn't like Kennedy. While I liked Tara, I wasn't so invested in Willow/Tara that Willow moving on to someone else would make me hate the other character for it. I just didn't like Kennedy, mainly because she's exactly the kind of character that can get on my nerves.