All Episodes Discussion: Use Your Words,Please

[GHScorpiosRule]

11 minutes ago, BkWurm1 said:

Some of my memories of the first two seasons are fuzzy so I call on those that recently rewatched to back me up

I will back you up since I just finished my re-rewatch and seasons one and two are still fresh in my mind!

12 minutes ago, BkWurm1 said:

the first time Lana and Chloe ever really interacted, it was when Lana was looking for a copy of her mother's speech and I remember Chloe being very helpful and generous to her.  Clark was not an issue at all.  In fact when Clark was brought up, they kind of laughed at him for thinking Lana's visit was about him.  

Yep. It was the first season, and Lana just glommed onto Clark around that time whenever Whitney wasn't available and all of a sudden, she's hanging out with the original Scooby gang and inserting HERSELF when she'd never hung out with them before.

15 minutes ago, BkWurm1 said:

I don't remember when Lana was briefly handed the Torch (it was season 1 or 2 - I think it was in season two)  but with or without Clark involved, I think Chloe would have freaked because Lana went in I believe after telling Chloe that she would speak in her behalf and instead came out in charge of the paper, what at first blush seemed like a really underhanded move.  I do believe the Lana just got caught up in the moment and didn't think about how Chloe would feel having to answer to Lana - even if Lana intended to be just a figurehead.  Still, it would have seemed like a betrayal. 

In season one I really don't remember Lana and Chloe having much of a relationship, but the one they had once they interacted was certainly friendly even if they were not hanging out.  

No, all of this happened in the first season. And again, Herself offering to speak to Kwan on Chloe's behalf to see if she could change his mind. Why didn't she just tell Kwan, that it was Chloe who really had the passion, as she'd been working on the paper since day one, and was made the editor. But no. She accepted his making her the editor, and only after Chloe ripped her a new one, and rightly so, did she write whatever she did, and which had Kwan calling her out. And Clark was being an ass of course, because he thought he was making inroads with Lana, and was defending what Lana had done, and Chloe, legitimately had a right to be upset and say that of course Clark would defend Lana, since he's always "objective in all things Lana" or something like that.

Lana had never ever, until she learned about her mom, shown any interest in The Torch, or working on it. She acted as if that office was her own personal space as well. Recall my rant how I pointed out in "Hug" how she just stormed in there, and told Pete and Chloe she needed to speak to Clark because he didn't side with Whitney? And they just left, and she was all judgy because he wouldn't believe that Whitney didn't start that fight, how Whitney would "never do something like that" and when Clark brought up except for when he strung Clark up in the cornfield, she's all butthurt because Clark hadn't forgiven Whitney. Excuuuse me, but Whitney never apologized for it. Or if he did, I don't recall.

It wasn't until "Crush" that Clark realized he had feelings for Chloe. And this was in season one. And he asked her to the Spring Formal at the end.

And I don't agree that Lana was in any position to forgive and forgive Chloe for anything she said to Lana, after Kwan took the paper away from her and just handed it, unearned to a former cheerleader, who had no experience writing for the paper, and being hurt, quickly exited the office. There was nothing to forgive, let alone forget.

25 minutes ago, BkWurm1 said:

In season two I recall that Chloe seemed to get sidelined when it comes to screen time and that they tried to actually make Lana look better in comparison.  I remember it being really blatant that the writing seemed to say to the audience, no, you're supposed to  love Lana, not Chloe.  So I do know somethings I tended to roll my eyes over and forget.  But I do recall that Lana was faced with having to move away with Nell pretty early in the season (by episode three I know Nell was set to get married) and Chloe is the one that came to her rescue and offered her a place to live and I remember very clearly after Lana had moved in that Chloe went out of her way to make her feel welcome and not someone that had to be perfect in order to stay.  

Yep. And everything else you said.

[rue721]

26 minutes ago, BkWurm1 said:

I don't remember when Lana was briefly handed the Torch (it was season 1 or 2 - I think it was in season two)  but with or without Clark involved, I think Chloe would have freaked because Lana went in I believe after telling Chloe that she would speak in her behalf and instead came out in charge of the paper, what at first blush seemed like a really underhanded move.  I do believe the Lana just got caught up in the moment and didn't think about how Chloe would feel having to answer to Lana - even if Lana intended to be just a figurehead.  Still, it would have seemed like a betrayal.

From what I remember, Principle Kwan fired Chloe from the paper for printing explosive stories that she couldn't back up with solid evidence (or at least not evidence that she could make public). I don't think the stories were untrue or even that Kwan was saying that they were untrue -- just they were controversial, so he was getting a lot of blowback, and he thought that Chloe was acting irresponsibly by putting the stories out there without being able to properly defend them. I don't remember exactly what the stories were, though. Probably something having to do with a meteor freak or maybe LuthorCorp.

Lana did defend her to Kwan, then Kwan said if she cared about it so much, that she should step up herself. Lana accepted and immediately told Chloe, and immediately told her that she had no interest in actually taking Chloe's position, and that she would basically just be Chloe's puppet. Chloe flipped out and didn't believe her, or didn't care. When Clark tried to defend Lana to her, Chloe just blew him off.

IMO there was nothing underhanded going on. Lana wasn't going to tell Kwan no when he made her the offer, because there was NO chance that he was going to give the paper back to Chloe at that point seeing as he had literally just fired her. The reason there was a vacancy at all was that Kwan didn't want Chloe, *specifically,* in charge of the paper. Lana accepted so that Chloe could still be in charge of the paper, even if/while she didn't have the official title of E-in-C. That's what she said, and her actions backed that up afterward. The implication was that if Lana hadn't accepted, the job would have gone to some random other schmuck and Chloe would *actually* have been closed out, instead of just feeling like she was closed out.

Lana really didn't do anything wrong there. Chloe was feeling insecure and like she was getting closed out, and obviously she was also in a state because the paper itself was important to her. Chloe always tended to run pretty emotional when they were in high school, so her freaking out and taking things hard also wasn't anything out of the ordinary. But it was yet another example of her believing the worst about Lana and being defensive and overly possessive. Then she ALSO had to drag Clark into the conflict, and be like, well of course you don't care and will throw me to the wolves, because you want to get into LANA'S pants and not mine. I thought that was uncalled for, and disrespectful to BOTH Lana and Clark.

I get where Chloe was coming from, but if I had been Lana, I wouldn't have wanted to deal with it. I just would have gone ahead and been Editor in Chief at the paper and gotten with Clark, iced out Chloe, and let Chloe figure her own shit out on her own time. But that's not what happened. Lana immediately felt terrible about taking over what Chloe saw as her rightful place, and she and Chloe worked through it together, and over time (a long time) became closer. I think that forgiving Chloe for that outburst, or any others, wasn't unrealistic of Lana -- but the ONLY reason it made sense and was realistic was because Lana apparently genuinely wanted to be friends with Chloe. If all Lana had wanted was what Chloe had, and didn't care about the friendship (or, at that time, potential friendship) itself, then she could have just taken it and shut Chloe out, like Chloe was afraid she would.

Anyway, when they were living together at the Sullivans, I didn't get a sense that Lana was just using Chloe. Lana really didn't seem to have any trouble up and leaving places or even leaving people if it suited her. I think she was clearly there because she wanted to be there. And then she and Chloe were roommates at college afterward.

Like I said, I don't read anything about Chloe and Lana's friendship into Lana's refusal to call the Sullivans her family, because IMO that was about Lana's issues about herself and her own family, and not about anything to do with the Sullivans at all. IMO it would have been weird and contrived if Lana had been able to talk about the Sullivans as her family, to the point that it would have been like, "is Lana OK? is she losing it?" Coming from her, IMO it would have felt like weird overcompensation and out of character, and a sign that something was wrong -- or at least, had fundamentally changed in her. I think that Chloe was confused by Lana not being able to reciprocate on the "sisters" thing, at least initially. Maybe she even took offense or it arguably caused a rift between them, who knows. But I personally didn't have a problem with it. YMMV.

Anyway, college is where I started seeing an actual imbalance in their relationship. Lana seemed to see Chloe as her friend, whereas Chloe seemed to see Lana as Clark's friend and therefore her own friend by default. When Lana was in trouble with that drug even after Lana and Clark had broken up, Chloe went to Clark instead of pursuing it herself. In contrast, when Lana was getting married, she had Chloe as her maid of honor. When Lana saw Clark reveal himself as having superpowers on her wedding day, she didn't get het up that Chloe had apparently been hiding this from her all this time. In contrast, Chloe did bring up how involved she was in Clark's life (after she found out about ISIS, I think), when she was acting possessive about Clark yet again, and was saying that if Lana screwed Clark over or hurt him or go him into trouble, she would be dead to Chloe.

Chloe made it clear that Clark came first to her, and that she was fine with her relationship with Lana being through Clark. Lana didn't choose Clark over Chloe or make a competition out of the friendships, and she didn't use a conduit in her relationship with Chloe. To me, that makes it seem like Lana felt closer to Chloe than Chloe felt to Lana, or at least that Lana wanted to be closer to Chloe than Chloe wanted to be to Lana.

IMO another issue is that Lana was very withdrawn and aloof in general, and Chloe was assertive to the point of boundary pushing, as a general rule, so Lana was relatively distant in *all* her relationships and Chloe was relatively intimate in *all* her relationships. In their relationship with each other, in that context, I actually thought that Lana was markedly LESS distant/withdrawn/aloof than she was with others, and that Chloe was LESS pushy/intimate than she was with others.

Anyway, during the time when they were in college is also when Lana was deciding to move in with Lex, and that relationship started up. Chloe wasn't happy about it, but she also wasn't about to get herself involved. At that point, IMO it seemed like she was just going to let her friendship with Lana slowly wither and die. Then there was that scene around that time, when they had gotten into some big fight or another, and Lana finally coaxed Chloe into meeting her at the Talon to give her back her stuff -- and it was all random weird stuff, like an old eraser and Lana's own overdue library book, and was all obviously just an excuse to get Chloe to meet with her-- and when Chloe called her on it, Lana flat out said that she had tried to contrive a meeting because she didn't want to lose Chloe. That was when they repaired their friendship and IMO was a major turning point for them, because Lana managed to actually be at least somewhat demonstrative. That she came up with some ridiculous scheme just to get Chloe to meet her for a coffee IMO shows how difficult expressing her feelings was for her, and how much she *wanted* to express to Chloe that she wanted to be her friend.

Lana's a cold fish, she's not demonstrative at all, she's not expressive at all, she's extremely withdrawn, but IMO that doesn't mean that she doesn't actually care, IMO that means that she either has no idea how or is too terrified to admit/show how much she cares.

I think Chloe runs a lot hotter than Lana, so of course she'd be the one to be more expressive about ALL her feelings concerning Lana, whether saying how much she cares about her she is or saying how resentful of her she is or whatever. I don't think that actually means she *cares* more, though, I think that just means that she's more expressive.

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I actually don't disagree with what you are saying about why Lana doesn't call Chloe family, I just hold it against Lana as one of her deeper faults.  And I don't think Chloe said it lightly.  Chloe understands loss of family too.  But she took a different lesson from her mother leaving.  She learned to value those that were there.  Lana never accepted anyone that could fill that void.  

Chloe does understand loss, but that doesn't mean that she's coming from the same place that Lana is or feels the same things that Lana feels (or vice versa). IMO Chloe and Lex are more on the same page, in terms of losing a parent who they love and miss *as an individual, not just as an idea.* They also both have the issue of *knowing* their legacy and being terrified of it. Clark and Lana, on the other hand, both lost parents who they love and miss only as abstract figures, not individuals who they actually knew or remember much of. They also are disconnected from their legacy, so they are at least *seemingly* more free to create their own destinies (at beast) or flying blind (at worst). IMO those are very different scenarios. I don't think one is "easier" than each other or anything, but IMO they're very different. 

Anyway, I don't think that it's a fault not to be able to accept a new fake family as "your" family, especially after your life has been defined by not having a family. I mean, that's a very big ask IMO.

And it's not like the Sullivans even were a family to her in any real sense. They were kind to her, they were good friends to her, but *family*? Pushing it IMO.

YMMV. Not trying to be argumentative, just enjoying discussing an interesting point :)

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But again, I don't think the digging Chloe did was the same as what Lana did.  Lana was just idly looking.  Chloe dug into Clark really only three times.  For a homework assignment that Clark was ignoring her about (just answer the damn favorite vegetable question and she wouldn't have had to hit legal records) on her own cause she thought he'd want to know, and once under the Truth gas.  From what we were told in season three, what she gave Lionel wasn't anything she hadn't already dug up and wasn't anything Lionel didn't already know.

Chloe *knew* that she was upsetting Clark and crossing his boundaries, and that it wasn't OK. She crossed a lot of boundaries in Truth, and she was choosing her questions specifically to exploit her temporary ability to disregard people's boundaries because of that LuthorCorp gas. Don't get me wrong, I actually really liked it. That's my favorite version of Chloe!

But Chloe dug into the cheerleader's feelings, and the football players', and Lex's, just because she was curious. She had no use for that information, and she didn't try to do anything with it after, she just wanted to know for the pleasure of knowing. She wanted to find out more about Clark's adoption because she was curious, too.

I mean, fair enough IMO. But you know, that's just how it went on this show. People would get curious, and try to get information that other people didn't want them to have, and cross some lines, and a lot of time they would get a lot of blow-back for that.

IMO neither Chloe nor Lana were the worst offenders, but both WERE offenders, just like everybody else.

IMO the most interesting time that that came up was actually when Lana got angry with Lex for having surveillance cameras inside his house, including inside her bedroom. I thought that was interesting, because on the one hand, that is completely inappropriate and awful. Everyone deserves some amount of privacy and dignity. But on the other hand, how many times had people tried to kill Lex in his own home? He had reason to be paranoid, and the cameras actually made some practical sense, and I understood why he was unwilling to get rid of them. Just an interesting scenario IMO, because there wasn't really a right answer. Even though, within the show itself, it was Lex's house, so Lex made the rules, and the cameras stayed IIRC.