Season Ten: Up, Up and Just Go Away.

[BkWurm1]

4 hours ago, rue721 said:

Errm....I think you meant "a fait accompli," oui?

Ha,ha,ha!  That was supposed to have been my place holder for when I went back and looked up the correct spelling.  Oops!

 

4 hours ago, rue721 said:

It's even more difficult to know how Jor-El and his AI were/weren't the same person, because I guess we never even got to meet Jor-El...

Except we did.  And that dude was not a homicidal asshat.  I'm sticking with the AI programming had a glitch.  

[GHScorpiosRule]

Just now, BkWurm1 said:

Except we did.  And that dude was not a homicidal asshat.  I'm sticking with the AI programming had a glitch.  

And I still say they should have put on aged up make-up on Tom, since he played young Jor-El during his walkabout/rite of passage on Earth in Season Three's "Relic!" It was jarring to see a Jor-El who was now blonde with an English accent. After "Transference," I know that Tom would have done a bang up job.

[BkWurm1]

11 minutes ago, GHScorpiosRule said:

And I still say they should have put on aged up make-up on Tom, since he played young Jor-El during his walkabout/rite of passage on Earth in Season Three's "Relic!" It was jarring to see a Jor-El who was now blonde with an English accent. After "Transference," I know that Tom would have done a bang up job.

Agreed, but not only was there probably a time issues with TW being in the other plot with Tess, it was during that time when Allison Mack was barely allowed to have scenes with TW.  Even if he was playing his dad, there would have been too much chemistry.  

[GHScorpiosRule]

15 minutes ago, BkWurm1 said:

Agreed, but not only was there probably a time issues with TW being in the other plot with Tess, it was during that time when Allison Mack was barely allowed to have scenes with TW.  Even if he was playing his dad, there would have been too much chemistry.  

Right. Forgot about that. Fucking Souders and Petersen, may they rot.

[rue721]

4 hours ago, GHScorpiosRule said:

Alexander was different, because Lex cloned him using not only his own DNA, but also Clark's DNA, so he became Connor Kent; Clark's DNA were apparently stronger and good, so they over imprinted Lex's memories and the hate he had for Clark. That's my head canon anyway. The only knowledge I have of that character is from Young Justice.

Yeah, Alexander was an entirely new person, who happened to have a connection (via memories) to his "past life" as Lex. That's why I say he was more like a reincarnation of Lex than like Lex himself. When his connection -- the memories -- to that past life was taken away, he was able to grow into a new person with basically no relation to Lex.

I don't think Clark's DNA was especially "good," because Clark's relatives/ancestors weren't especially good (or at least, they had the capacity for evil). Jor-El's AI proved that IMO. I don't think that the AI being terrible and illogical necessarily meant that Jor-El himself had been terrible and illogical, but I do think that it meant that Jor-El at least had had the *capacity* to be as terrible and illogical as the AI was. 

I also don't think that Lex's DNA was especially "evil," because I think that Lex had a capacity for good, and legitimately had a good side to him (at least at one point). What I do think that Lex's DNA had was *instability.* To me, it seemed like Lex was pretty (emotionally) delicate even as a young kid, and he just couldn't handle the knocks that life gave him. That was my takeaway from his flashbacks, because he was falling to pieces in virtually all of them -- he was either weeping hysterically, or becoming psychotic, or going blind with rage and nearly beating someone to death. That was also my takeaway from anything on the show having to do with Lillian. Maybe that's unfair, though, because we really only got to see Lillian within Lex's head. For all we know, she was nothing like he thought of her. But the Lillian in his head seemed very unstable, in any case. And also pretty relentlessly cold and cruel IMO.

Anyway, when they showed Earth2 Clark, I think they showed that, while on the one hand, it was nurture rather than nature that turned Lionel's children into wretches and monsters (not his DNA), and even Clark wouldn't have been exempt from becoming basically the same as the others...although, on the other hand, Clark also apparently had a fundamental resiliency to him that meant that he was ultimately capable of overcoming that treatment in a way that Lex wasn't. I mean, Earth2 Clark ended up kind of softening up by the end, right? Once Our Clark talked to him?

I do think that that resiliency was coming from his DNA in a sense, in that I think that his emotional resiliency was probably aided by his physical resiliency. He could afford to be softer and less paranoid than Lionel's human children even just by virtue of him being less physically vulnerable than they were. I mean, forget about how intimidating and awful Lionel's headfucks were, he was *physically* really scary -- just onscreen Our Lionel literally tried to murder Lex more than once, actively tried to maim him (I'm thinking of the electrocution), left him to die a bunch of times (at the hands of kidnappers or doctors or just whoever), and even just hit him or knocked him down quite a few times onscreen -- and that was when they were both *adults,* and Lionel should have been physically outmatched by Lex. Clark wasn't completely impervious, given that he had the meteor rock problem, but I don't see him being physically scared of Lionel in the same way a regular human being (like Lex or Tess) would be, given that Lionel's physical...I don't even know what to call it. Assaults? Bullying?...would literally, physically have hurt him less. 

But anyway, I don't think that means his DNA is "good," just that it's not human and gives him different vulnerabilities from a human's. 

You know, thinking of Earth2 Clark -- I guess that that Clark would also have been raised by Lillian? What would have been interesting is if in Earth2, Lillian hadn't killed Julian. (Or Lex or whoever did it wouldn't have killed him -- I don't entirely trust Lex's "recovered memories"). Because with two sons and maybe even a daughter being raised in the house already, there just wouldn't have been the same need. Julian could have just joined the brood, or maybe watched from the sidelines as Clark and Lex were pitted against each other.

That is, if Lillian actually killed him because she didn't want to see Julian and Lex pitted against each other. I don't quite think that was why she did it? I think the reason she did it was slightly different -- that she didn't want Julian to be ruined like Lex was. She told Lionel that pretty much flat out:  that he'd already ground Lex down, and she didn't want to watch him do the same thing to Julian. How Lex framed her decision when he talked to Lionel about it (in the present day), he made it sound like she was thinking that Lex and Julian would be pitted against each other, and that *Lex* would be one of the threats against Julian, and she wanted to stop that rivalry...but really, based on what she said to Lionel, I think it was more that she didn't want Julian to follow in Lex's footsteps. I even think that Lex might have understood his "recovered memories" that way, too, despite what he told his father, because in every subsequent memory or vision or whatever of Lillian, she's saying that Lex is ruined, lost, he should die or give up in order to stop himself from ruining things even more, etc. Which is more like what it sounded like her thinking was, in terms of not wanting Julian to be ruined the same way she already thought Lex was.

Man, I find Lillian so fascinating. I wish she had been on Earth2, too. What would have she been like as a character, OUTSIDE of Lex's head?

Conversely, I wish we had seen more of Lionel from inside Lex's head, because I'm curious about what he thought of him, and how the Lionel inside of Lex's head might have different from "actual" Lionel. I'm imagining Lionel as both even more of a terrifying imp AND more of a loving mentor inside of Lex's head than he seemed to be outside of it. I think that Lex also tended to dwell on Lionel's worst traits and behavior, and consciously tried to keep stoking up his rage against him, and might actually have had *warmer* feelings toward him inside his own mind than he wanted to actually think about or express. (And IMO that would even have been prudent of Lex, because, for his own safety, he needed to constantly remember to NEVER trust Lionel. He needed to make sure that no warm feelings or naivete ever blinded him to the threat that Lionel actually represented). Even when Clark goes into Lex's head in Fracture (S7), I think the reason that that random childhood memory that Clark stumbled into was in the part of Lex's mind where he never wanted to go, was because of *Lillian's* anger and disgust toward Lex in that memory, not because of anything Lionel did in it. I don't think that Lex shied away at all from thinking the worst about Lionel, but IMO he clearly did shy away from thinking the worst of Lillian. And I think he had pretty well accepted by then that Lionel despised him, but he still didn't want to think that his mother had, too.

Well, I guess none of that mattered by S10 in any case, except in that, while I don't think Lionel himself was a very complex or even necessarily very interesting character, I think that the other characters' perceptions of him actually were complex and interesting.

I would also have liked to know more about Clark's perceptions of Lionel, to be honest. To me, it seemed like, if Clark spotted someone in trouble, he would save them. He didn't sit in judgement of whether the person "deserved" saving or anything, he just saved whoever needed saving. (I don't think Lex could understand that, and that's why he was always searching for ~meaning~ in Clark's decision to rescue him on the bridge, or even in Kara's decision to rescue him in the same way in S7). But he could never really see if/when someone needed saving from Lionel? People were constantly in trouble around Lionel, and Clark never really rescued them. That most obviously concerns Lex, but not just Lex. Martha was hanging out with Lionel for years, Tess was having lots of dramz with him later on, etc. I mean, Clark had a lot of actual information about Lionel, but he never seemed to understand him at all?

And then when Clark goes to Earth2 and is immediately thrown in with Earth2 Lionel, it seems like he should have gotten an even fuller picture and understood even more how and why Lionel was dangerous? I mean, it seemed like he was seeing Lionel in a different light when he got there.

When Clark went to Earth2 and Lionel was so immediately domineering (toward Clark), Clark looked shocked. Like at the end of that first fencing match? The look on Clark's face at that point is total shock IMO. And then near the end of that episode, Lionel takes a belt and just starts whipping Clark and talking about how he (Lionel) is the survivor and is basically trying to build himself up by tearing Clark down. Clark knew Our Lionel pretty well at that point, but IMO that had to still be eye-opening for him. Earth2 Lionel was acting like a lunatic. I mean, if you think back to when Our Lionel died, and how Clark tried to "defend" Lionel to Lex, and made that stand at Lionel's (pathetic) funeral...did seeing Earth2 Lionel act like that make him rethink his behavior toward Our Lionel?

But he basically just stayed away from Earth2 Lionel, as well as I remember. Clark couldn't and wouldn't just kill him or anything, so I guess in a sense his hands were tied. But it didn't seem like Lionel was even especially on his radar.

Although then he later did the same thing with Lex, apparently, and just let him fall off his radar and go on his happy merry little way to the presidency. Poor Clark. I guess he's just really kind of overly literal, stolid, and unimaginative to the end?! (LOL). I can see now how the rivalry could potentially go on FOREVER. Clark never steps in until the last possible moment, when someone is literally about to be engulfed in a fireball or something. He's always late. He never nips a problem in the bud! So of course he would let Lex become president and just let the problem brew and brew and brew and only actually step in once the nuclear warheads are deployed or whatever. And even then, he'd probably just throw the bombs into the sun or something, and then let everything go back to the (unstable, untenable, doomed) status quo.

OK think all brings me back to the conclusion that yup, Clark just really doesn't get people.