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xparrot(Yes, I know attempting to apply Earth-logic to any television, and most especially SV, is a schizophrenia-inducing shell-game, but someone has to do it, daggnabbit, and I'm just the loony for the job!)
Okay, I admit it. I am a Lex Luthor apologist. I've been trying to stay neutral, because I like villains. I like analyzing their motives and figuring out why they do the wicked things they do. I love redemption stories, but I also just enjoy villains being villainous. JLU's Lex Luthor rocks my socks, for being an unabashedly, thrillingly, evilly badass badguy.
I'm not talking about the comicbook or cartoon Lex Luthor now. Smallville's Lex, I can't see as a villain (I'm wondering if some of the show's writers genuinely believe he's the protagonist). It's not just that I think he's psychologically damaged, a victim of circumstance and a tragic puppet of destiny/AlMiles; or that I'm convinced he's got nobler intentions than are ever explained. It's that when I really analyze what he does, more often than not I find that I agree with him. Not only his motives, but what he's actually doing. In fact, the more I look at it, the more I think that Lex's fundamental problem is that he is the only sane man in a world of lunatics.
How many people die through meteor-mutant related actions in the first season alone? Counting the mutants themselves, it's well over a dozen. (Does anyone have the bodycount for the whole series?) Lowell County's per capita mortality rate has to be one of the highest in the nation's, especially for juveniles. That's not mentioning the non-fatal casualties or the property damage. And yet the government inexplicably does nothing. Dr. Hamilton is called crazy for thinking the meteor rocks have anything to do with it; the LuthorCorp plant is suspected but never closed down, never even sued, as far as we see. In the real world, I'd expect a quarantine after the fourth or fifth meteor-related homicide, but despite the Kents' biggest fear being that someone - the government or a private interest - will come for their very special son, no one ever turns up to do anything about the meteor mutants. Oh, there's a few (private sector?) experiments on a possible telepath (and Ryan was not a krypto-freak) but even when it's general knowledge, certified by a medical doctor, that there's a girl who can teleport, the military doesn't sit up and take notice.
And citizens don't abandon Smallville, which is the biggest mystery of all. Around the time the tenth kid died of a mysterious accident/obvious murder at Smallville High, were I a student's parent, I would pull my child the hell out of there. And move to a different county. Or a different country. The meteor rocks must have a soporific effect in addition to the obvious mutagenic properties, that everyone stays so complacent in the face of this terrible crisis.
Everyone except Lex Luthor, who after years of helping his new community in other ways (arranging the plant buy-out to prevent loss of jobs, pulling strings to get fast FEMA aid after the second meteor shower) decides to look into the mutant problem he and everyone he knows have fallen victim to countless times. Maybe he even tried to bring in the government; no way to know. After they dropped the ball for so many years, I wouldn't blame him for having no faith in the system. (Not to mention he has evidence that the government is compromised by alien invaders; see Milton Fine.)
33.1
So what does Lex do? His biggest effort is starting a research project on the mutants themselves. Logical enough. Now, I know 33.1 not only has a cool name and is top secret, but also gets alt rock and weird camera effects, so it's by default evol. (Not to mention, it's science-based. SV's underlying theme of science = bad is deserving of a whole rant unto itself.) But the facts are ambiguous, to say the least.
We don't know a lot about 33.1. We know it does "experiments" on meteor mutants and apparently kryptonite as well. (LuthorCorp's previous research efforts, under Lex, have included an ill-fated attempt to help end world hunger, and an effort to make a vaccine against most of the world's worst viruses. Clearly, this is an evil that must be stopped.) The first times we hear about 33.1, it seems to be researching volunteers - Mikhail in "Jinx" didn't seem terrified when he was introduced to the place, and the mutants in "Mortal" sound right put-out that they were booted from the program. In 6th season we meet at least one man who was not so happy to be there, in "Static" - but he is a homicidal mental patient who was moved from Belle Reve asylum (which we, and Lex, know is not the healthiest or helpful of places) to 33.1. He says he was going to be released, but he is a mental patient, and he certainly isn't acting stable. Most of the mutants in Belle Reve are in there for a good reason - usually because they murdered or attempted to murder someone. Or several people.
Moreover, 33.1 does release at least some of its subjects; it sounds like the mutant in "Subterranean" may have been a subject there for a time before being re-introduced into society. Whereupon he promptly went homicidal and killed a couple dozen people. And Lex, upon finding this out, is pissed off with about the most genuine emotion we've seen from him all season, extremely angry that closer tabs weren't being kept and the man's nocturnal activities weren't uncovered sooner. But LuthorCorp doesn't seem to be suspected in the case; Clark comes to accuse Lex, but it doesn't seem like the police or the press take the connection seriously. And when we see Lex, he's studying footage of the murders, not the man's escape. Lex doesn't need to worry overly much about the bad publicity, or the lost mutant; what appears to disturb him is that the deaths that happened on his watch.
6x15: "Freak"
Which is probably why he decides to get a bit more proactive. Does he start rounding up mutants for 33.1 before they flip out and kill people? Does he start invasively investigating anyone who could possibly be a mutant, based on exposure to meteors and unexplained phenomena around them? Would either of these tactics really be out of line, considering we're dealing with what is, in essence, a widespread environmental contamination with a very high mortality rate?
Lex doesn't do any of this. He finds a foolproof way to be absolutely sure someone is a mutant, then nabs them and tags them and lets them go with no harm done other than a rough night. Okay. Abducting people without warning or consent isn't the nicest thing to do. But these are meteor mutants - "meteor infected," as Lex is calling them. A population that is, from the evidence, about 95% latently homicidal. Chloe herself says she's a walking time-bomb, upon finding she's a "freak" (as our heroes are calling them). Frankly, with those odds? Preemptive incarceration of all meteor mutants would not be out of line; it could be reasonably considered a quarantine. Monitoring them while letting them continue with their everyday lives is an invasion of privacy, but better than most of the alternatives (which are, generally, murder, insanity, and death.)
In "Freak," the doctor running the program had fairly autonomous control; he was likely the one who designed the abduction, study, sampling, and restoration procedure (presumably adapted for speed and lack of obvious signs afterward, though the doctor did have a reason to hate his subjects - his wife was apparently murdered by one - so he could have had a sadistic bent.) Lex may or may not have known the exact details of the procedure; he sees the video of Chloe's abduction at the end, but that's after he's taken possession of the doctor's research, so whether he had access before is anyone's guess.
Another detail in "Freak" - only one meteor mutant actually dies in the episode, despite the implied deaths of the others. I don't believe Chloe was in danger of anything but getting her GPS tracker deactivated. Lex wants no loose ends - a dozen or so sudden deaths in a single night would be awfully ends-y; moreover, the episode never says anything about any deaths reported the next day (a murder rap that, with the computer Clark stole, they probably could pin on Lex if they brought it to the police). More likely a team was dispatched to deactivate and possibly remove all the trackers, leaving nothing to trace to LuthorCorp via the compromised computer. The boy who died, having been warned of the abduction by Chloe, probably panicked at the men in black coming for him and ran into traffic. We're never given the details of his fatal car accident.
And a final point about this ep - Lex asks for Tobias to be brought to him, "unharmed". It's a very specific and odd request, if he just wants to experiment on him (one which the doctor promptly ignores anyway. Lex, hon, you have got to hire better minions. Not only do they betray you, they're all stupid and crazy. This has been your biggest problem since season 1, you really ought to have learned by now.) One wonders how he was planning to tie up Tobias's loose end. By giving him his operation, perhaps, and trusting in gratitude and ignorance to seal his mouth? Or was Lex planning on telling Tobias more about his real objectives, perhaps recruiting him fully into the program?
What's my motivation?
What exactly is 33.1's purpose? The Green Arrow and his Merry Men seem convinced Lex is creating a mutant army - it never seems to occur to them to wonder why Lex might want a mutant army. To sell to the military? A private force to take over the world? To, I don't know, save the planet from imminent alien invasion? If they know the exact nature of Lex's research, they haven't seen fit to mention what it is, though they seem convinced it's dangerous.
33.1's purpose is fairly crucial to Lex's story arc (thus, knowing SV, I don't know if we'll ever find it out...) as it seems like it might be the most important project in his life. The end of "Static" is telling. While Lex is MIA, Lionel finds out about 33.1 and swiftly hides it before Lana or Frequency McZappyPants can expose it to the world. Lex is...less than gracious about this save. Their confrontation about the matter is interesting, because Lex, who has faced off with his dad for over five years and come out on top more often than not, is not only furious; he gives every indication of being desperate, if not downright terrified. Lionel is in fine form, sharp and sarcastic and easily doling out their usual baiting, but Lex isn't playing any game. "You did this for selfish reasons" - it's a strange accusation, if 33.1 is only Lex's pet project for world domination. Lionel even offers him a little once much-desired praise, but Lex isn't interested. He practically has tears in his eyes when he's demanding to know where it is. For whatever reasons, he can't lose 33.1, and especially not to Lionel.
Lex's desperation in this scene compares with his interactions with Lionel in "Promise." Both times, Lex conceivably might have been overplaying his reactions to manipulate Lionel, letting him think he was in control - implying that whatever Lex is doing is important enough to him that he's willing to seemingly debase himself before his father. Or else he is that desperate, under so much pressure he can't play the game. Either way, could it be for the same reasons? If Lana's lost baby was (is?) a production of 33.1, did Lex's need to keep her close - and keep her from Clark - have less to do with romance and more to do with whatever was incubating in her womb? If 33.1 is related to Lana's pregnancy, it especially explains Lex's panic in "Static" - he's on a tight time limit, no time to dance to Lionel's beat.
(...For the record, I don't really think this is what was going on in "Promise," but damn if it wouldn't save the episode and most of this season for me! The other explanation is that it's all about Teh Lana - Lex doesn't want Lionel to reveal his evol sekkrits to her? - and I don't really want to consider that.)
One more thing about 33.1, which never occurs to Chloe or Clark or anyone else, is that Lex Luthor is "meteor infected" himself. Why everyone forgets this is a mystery - as freaks go, he's one of the most obvious examples on the show; the man is bald as a naked mole rat. There's also evidence that he has a mutant healing ability; Lex doesn't get sick, and he recovers from an incredible gamut of injuries in record time. He's been aware that there's something unusual about himself since first season, and was confronted with the possibility that he was a mutant by the beginning of 3rd (thanks to Chloe's research; for some reason she seems to have abandoned this line of investigation, even though one would think she would want to know as much as possible about their new foe.) Lex has personal reason to want to know everything he can about the meteor mutations.
Ultimately, whatever Lex's motives for 33.1, I can't help but see a good side to the project. Someone needs to try to control the meteor mutation problem, and honestly, Lex's ways seem preferable to Clark's method of haphazard crisis control, in which a lot of people get endangered, injured, and killed (especially the meteor infected victims themselves. The mutant being held in 33.1 at the end of "Subterranean - he is in a coma. And why is he in a coma? Because our neighborhood plainclothes Superboy put him there...) How many classmates does Clark lose to the meteors? The evil of 33.1 isn't in what Lex is doing - it's that it took this long for someone to do it.
Lex Luthor would totally have my vote. You know how they say of Mussolini, that he was a fascist dictator, but at least the trains ran on time? Lex Luthor - maybe he's an evil supervillain, but at least our kids aren't dying by the busload!
Okay, I admit it. I am a Lex Luthor apologist. I've been trying to stay neutral, because I like villains. I like analyzing their motives and figuring out why they do the wicked things they do. I love redemption stories, but I also just enjoy villains being villainous. JLU's Lex Luthor rocks my socks, for being an unabashedly, thrillingly, evilly badass badguy.
I'm not talking about the comicbook or cartoon Lex Luthor now. Smallville's Lex, I can't see as a villain (I'm wondering if some of the show's writers genuinely believe he's the protagonist). It's not just that I think he's psychologically damaged, a victim of circumstance and a tragic puppet of destiny/AlMiles; or that I'm convinced he's got nobler intentions than are ever explained. It's that when I really analyze what he does, more often than not I find that I agree with him. Not only his motives, but what he's actually doing. In fact, the more I look at it, the more I think that Lex's fundamental problem is that he is the only sane man in a world of lunatics.
How many people die through meteor-mutant related actions in the first season alone? Counting the mutants themselves, it's well over a dozen. (Does anyone have the bodycount for the whole series?) Lowell County's per capita mortality rate has to be one of the highest in the nation's, especially for juveniles. That's not mentioning the non-fatal casualties or the property damage. And yet the government inexplicably does nothing. Dr. Hamilton is called crazy for thinking the meteor rocks have anything to do with it; the LuthorCorp plant is suspected but never closed down, never even sued, as far as we see. In the real world, I'd expect a quarantine after the fourth or fifth meteor-related homicide, but despite the Kents' biggest fear being that someone - the government or a private interest - will come for their very special son, no one ever turns up to do anything about the meteor mutants. Oh, there's a few (private sector?) experiments on a possible telepath (and Ryan was not a krypto-freak) but even when it's general knowledge, certified by a medical doctor, that there's a girl who can teleport, the military doesn't sit up and take notice.
And citizens don't abandon Smallville, which is the biggest mystery of all. Around the time the tenth kid died of a mysterious accident/obvious murder at Smallville High, were I a student's parent, I would pull my child the hell out of there. And move to a different county. Or a different country. The meteor rocks must have a soporific effect in addition to the obvious mutagenic properties, that everyone stays so complacent in the face of this terrible crisis.
Everyone except Lex Luthor, who after years of helping his new community in other ways (arranging the plant buy-out to prevent loss of jobs, pulling strings to get fast FEMA aid after the second meteor shower) decides to look into the mutant problem he and everyone he knows have fallen victim to countless times. Maybe he even tried to bring in the government; no way to know. After they dropped the ball for so many years, I wouldn't blame him for having no faith in the system. (Not to mention he has evidence that the government is compromised by alien invaders; see Milton Fine.)
33.1
So what does Lex do? His biggest effort is starting a research project on the mutants themselves. Logical enough. Now, I know 33.1 not only has a cool name and is top secret, but also gets alt rock and weird camera effects, so it's by default evol. (Not to mention, it's science-based. SV's underlying theme of science = bad is deserving of a whole rant unto itself.) But the facts are ambiguous, to say the least.
We don't know a lot about 33.1. We know it does "experiments" on meteor mutants and apparently kryptonite as well. (LuthorCorp's previous research efforts, under Lex, have included an ill-fated attempt to help end world hunger, and an effort to make a vaccine against most of the world's worst viruses. Clearly, this is an evil that must be stopped.) The first times we hear about 33.1, it seems to be researching volunteers - Mikhail in "Jinx" didn't seem terrified when he was introduced to the place, and the mutants in "Mortal" sound right put-out that they were booted from the program. In 6th season we meet at least one man who was not so happy to be there, in "Static" - but he is a homicidal mental patient who was moved from Belle Reve asylum (which we, and Lex, know is not the healthiest or helpful of places) to 33.1. He says he was going to be released, but he is a mental patient, and he certainly isn't acting stable. Most of the mutants in Belle Reve are in there for a good reason - usually because they murdered or attempted to murder someone. Or several people.
Moreover, 33.1 does release at least some of its subjects; it sounds like the mutant in "Subterranean" may have been a subject there for a time before being re-introduced into society. Whereupon he promptly went homicidal and killed a couple dozen people. And Lex, upon finding this out, is pissed off with about the most genuine emotion we've seen from him all season, extremely angry that closer tabs weren't being kept and the man's nocturnal activities weren't uncovered sooner. But LuthorCorp doesn't seem to be suspected in the case; Clark comes to accuse Lex, but it doesn't seem like the police or the press take the connection seriously. And when we see Lex, he's studying footage of the murders, not the man's escape. Lex doesn't need to worry overly much about the bad publicity, or the lost mutant; what appears to disturb him is that the deaths that happened on his watch.
6x15: "Freak"
Which is probably why he decides to get a bit more proactive. Does he start rounding up mutants for 33.1 before they flip out and kill people? Does he start invasively investigating anyone who could possibly be a mutant, based on exposure to meteors and unexplained phenomena around them? Would either of these tactics really be out of line, considering we're dealing with what is, in essence, a widespread environmental contamination with a very high mortality rate?
Lex doesn't do any of this. He finds a foolproof way to be absolutely sure someone is a mutant, then nabs them and tags them and lets them go with no harm done other than a rough night. Okay. Abducting people without warning or consent isn't the nicest thing to do. But these are meteor mutants - "meteor infected," as Lex is calling them. A population that is, from the evidence, about 95% latently homicidal. Chloe herself says she's a walking time-bomb, upon finding she's a "freak" (as our heroes are calling them). Frankly, with those odds? Preemptive incarceration of all meteor mutants would not be out of line; it could be reasonably considered a quarantine. Monitoring them while letting them continue with their everyday lives is an invasion of privacy, but better than most of the alternatives (which are, generally, murder, insanity, and death.)
In "Freak," the doctor running the program had fairly autonomous control; he was likely the one who designed the abduction, study, sampling, and restoration procedure (presumably adapted for speed and lack of obvious signs afterward, though the doctor did have a reason to hate his subjects - his wife was apparently murdered by one - so he could have had a sadistic bent.) Lex may or may not have known the exact details of the procedure; he sees the video of Chloe's abduction at the end, but that's after he's taken possession of the doctor's research, so whether he had access before is anyone's guess.
Another detail in "Freak" - only one meteor mutant actually dies in the episode, despite the implied deaths of the others. I don't believe Chloe was in danger of anything but getting her GPS tracker deactivated. Lex wants no loose ends - a dozen or so sudden deaths in a single night would be awfully ends-y; moreover, the episode never says anything about any deaths reported the next day (a murder rap that, with the computer Clark stole, they probably could pin on Lex if they brought it to the police). More likely a team was dispatched to deactivate and possibly remove all the trackers, leaving nothing to trace to LuthorCorp via the compromised computer. The boy who died, having been warned of the abduction by Chloe, probably panicked at the men in black coming for him and ran into traffic. We're never given the details of his fatal car accident.
And a final point about this ep - Lex asks for Tobias to be brought to him, "unharmed". It's a very specific and odd request, if he just wants to experiment on him (one which the doctor promptly ignores anyway. Lex, hon, you have got to hire better minions. Not only do they betray you, they're all stupid and crazy. This has been your biggest problem since season 1, you really ought to have learned by now.) One wonders how he was planning to tie up Tobias's loose end. By giving him his operation, perhaps, and trusting in gratitude and ignorance to seal his mouth? Or was Lex planning on telling Tobias more about his real objectives, perhaps recruiting him fully into the program?
What's my motivation?
What exactly is 33.1's purpose? The Green Arrow and his Merry Men seem convinced Lex is creating a mutant army - it never seems to occur to them to wonder why Lex might want a mutant army. To sell to the military? A private force to take over the world? To, I don't know, save the planet from imminent alien invasion? If they know the exact nature of Lex's research, they haven't seen fit to mention what it is, though they seem convinced it's dangerous.
33.1's purpose is fairly crucial to Lex's story arc (thus, knowing SV, I don't know if we'll ever find it out...) as it seems like it might be the most important project in his life. The end of "Static" is telling. While Lex is MIA, Lionel finds out about 33.1 and swiftly hides it before Lana or Frequency McZappyPants can expose it to the world. Lex is...less than gracious about this save. Their confrontation about the matter is interesting, because Lex, who has faced off with his dad for over five years and come out on top more often than not, is not only furious; he gives every indication of being desperate, if not downright terrified. Lionel is in fine form, sharp and sarcastic and easily doling out their usual baiting, but Lex isn't playing any game. "You did this for selfish reasons" - it's a strange accusation, if 33.1 is only Lex's pet project for world domination. Lionel even offers him a little once much-desired praise, but Lex isn't interested. He practically has tears in his eyes when he's demanding to know where it is. For whatever reasons, he can't lose 33.1, and especially not to Lionel.
Lex's desperation in this scene compares with his interactions with Lionel in "Promise." Both times, Lex conceivably might have been overplaying his reactions to manipulate Lionel, letting him think he was in control - implying that whatever Lex is doing is important enough to him that he's willing to seemingly debase himself before his father. Or else he is that desperate, under so much pressure he can't play the game. Either way, could it be for the same reasons? If Lana's lost baby was (is?) a production of 33.1, did Lex's need to keep her close - and keep her from Clark - have less to do with romance and more to do with whatever was incubating in her womb? If 33.1 is related to Lana's pregnancy, it especially explains Lex's panic in "Static" - he's on a tight time limit, no time to dance to Lionel's beat.
(...For the record, I don't really think this is what was going on in "Promise," but damn if it wouldn't save the episode and most of this season for me! The other explanation is that it's all about Teh Lana - Lex doesn't want Lionel to reveal his evol sekkrits to her? - and I don't really want to consider that.)
One more thing about 33.1, which never occurs to Chloe or Clark or anyone else, is that Lex Luthor is "meteor infected" himself. Why everyone forgets this is a mystery - as freaks go, he's one of the most obvious examples on the show; the man is bald as a naked mole rat. There's also evidence that he has a mutant healing ability; Lex doesn't get sick, and he recovers from an incredible gamut of injuries in record time. He's been aware that there's something unusual about himself since first season, and was confronted with the possibility that he was a mutant by the beginning of 3rd (thanks to Chloe's research; for some reason she seems to have abandoned this line of investigation, even though one would think she would want to know as much as possible about their new foe.) Lex has personal reason to want to know everything he can about the meteor mutations.
Ultimately, whatever Lex's motives for 33.1, I can't help but see a good side to the project. Someone needs to try to control the meteor mutation problem, and honestly, Lex's ways seem preferable to Clark's method of haphazard crisis control, in which a lot of people get endangered, injured, and killed (especially the meteor infected victims themselves. The mutant being held in 33.1 at the end of "Subterranean - he is in a coma. And why is he in a coma? Because our neighborhood plainclothes Superboy put him there...) How many classmates does Clark lose to the meteors? The evil of 33.1 isn't in what Lex is doing - it's that it took this long for someone to do it.
Lex Luthor would totally have my vote. You know how they say of Mussolini, that he was a fascist dictator, but at least the trains ran on time? Lex Luthor - maybe he's an evil supervillain, but at least our kids aren't dying by the busload!
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no subject
Date: 2007-04-03 01:52 am (UTC)And you're right - they made Lex just too damn likable - I'm hoping that they did this for a reason so that makes the betrayal all the more ruthless....but it seems all I have is hope.....because I'm still waiting.......for that moment - when I jump and look at the screen and just cannot believe what happened and how evil Lex is/was. But I'm not seeing that happen any time soon. With the baby thing - I'm kinda borderline not feeling sorry at all for Lana - she made her bed and now she's sleeping in it.....mutant baby - probably.....Lex's kid....not 100%.....Lana going to end up on Springer or the like....most likely.
no subject
Date: 2007-04-03 05:14 am (UTC)I thought when xparrot mentioned people leaving in droves from Smallville they were talking about the people actually living in Smallville on the show? Maybe not?
No, that's how I read it, and that's what I was trying to say, too. Maybe I was confusing in my post? I just meant that Smallville's not the only town where the population should be experiencing an exponential decline...
no subject
Date: 2007-04-03 02:59 pm (UTC)It's kinda funny - more people moved to Smallville after the first shower hit - go figure. Guess they figured 'hey this town's been hit by meteor's it's got to be the safest place in the country now! so what if there are a few freaks....makes life interesting' =)