X Never Marks the Spot

Been busy with work and family visiting and also, of course, my shiny new SGA obsession - may I just say how good it feels to be fanning hardcore on a show I actually enjoy watching. --This is the norm, really; SV was the exception, being in fact painful to endure. Though I'm enjoying it more now that I've gone back to my original method of watching the Lex Show and fast-forwarding through anything not Luthor-esque.

And this show has lately provided surprising satisfaction...( A few comments regarding recent SV, through 7x07. Vindication on two fronts! )

But enough about SV. Onto the squee! You all have seen the new Doctor Who Children in Need special, yes? Yes! Excellent! ( a few spoilery things that have to be said )

And last but by no means least, there's SGA. ( Spoilers through 4x08, plus for the end of SG-1. Warning: may contain unpopular opinions? )

Latest SV musing: is Clark's alien nature catching? Because Chloe seems to have picked up certain subtle inhuman traits.

( The 'heroes' have been awfully disappointing lately... )

But, for the record: frustrated as I am with Clark now, I don't blame Clark for Lex. I think there was a time he might have been able to save Lex, and he didn't; but that doesn't make him responsible for what Lex does, any more than he's responsible for what the people he saves do. And I agree that Clark was young for most of the series, too young to be held fully accountable for the mistakes he made. And Lex definitely made more than a few mistakes himself; Lex is really, really bad with relationships.

I honestly don't blame Clark for that.

( I blame Lionel! )

SPN 2x19 was terrific fun as always. We caught John Shiban's writing credit at the beginning so didn't bother watching for plotholes, just enjoyed the ep. Loved Dean especially, fitting into the prison environment so uncomfortably easily, so determined to do the job. Sam questions the merit of helping convicted criminals at such risk to themselves, but Dean is blind to human evil, except when it's directly targeting his family. As far as he's concerned, it's Us vs Them, and while he's relentless and ruthless in his pursuit of Them, when it comes to Us he is solidarity all the way. If Agent Hendricks was in danger from a ghost, Dean might bitch about it, but he'd save him in an instant without hesitation. The only exception are people who are deliberately using ghosts/spells/etc.; they're siding with Them. (And folks who go after Sam, naturally!) Everyone else in the human race is part of Dean's extended family, and gets the protection that implies.

Of course the other reason the plotholes didn't bother me is because after a steady diet of Smallville, I'm becoming inured against the common garden variety of logical inconsistency. SV doesn't so much have 'plot holes' as it has 'a few tightrope strands of plot suspended swaying over the void'. Which doesn't mean that "Nemesis" wasn't awesome.

Not that I liked it unreservedly. ( Spoilers for SV 6x19 )

Scrubs was cute and fun. Supernatural was cute and fun x100 and Sam was looking way yum and Dean's hair was so fluffy in the final scene that I nearly exploded from the need to reach through the screen and tousle it.

In SV news, idly reading a random journal, I think I found myself obliquely accused of being a Nazi sympathizer for my Lex posts. It could have been another post mentioned in their comments...but it sounded a lot like they were referencing our prattle about 33.1 and why it maybe is justified as Third Reich-esque propaganda. I'd be more disturbed by the comparison if we weren't talking about a totally fictional scenario. (If it was my post they were talking about, the person was polite enough not to flame me; they didn't even reference me by name. Such a well-mannered fandom!)

It's wild that Lex-fans are dividing into such totally opposite camps. Half of us think he's a sociopath, willingly marching down the road to Hitler-hood; the other half think he's a victim caught in a terrible and inescapable quandary, being pushed and pulled down into something he never wanted to be. We all think he's awesome (when he's not being pathetic), and the final destination's the same either way...but it's like we're watching two different shows.

And frankly? I wish I were watching the other camp's show. SV's just painful for a Lex-apologist, because it's never going to redeem him, but it keeps giving us supporting evidence. And it's pretty depressing to find oneself rooting for the losing side.

I'm not going to say much about "Progeny", not because we didn't rip it apart at length last night, but because gnine already has gone on about it at wonderfully great ranty length, decrying that Lex was the villain at all. Go, check out her post, comment and discuss. There'll be a few spoilers to the ep here, but the real ep commentary meat's there.

( This post is about Lex, and morality, and myriad uncomfortable shades of gray. Possibly incoherent; I'm operating on too little sleep... )

(Have come down with an annoying cold, and it's more fun to focus on fictional angst rather than my own sniffles. Very long, rambling, and overly detailed analysis, proceed at your own risk!)

Regarding early 6th season Lex: our 5th season reading works so well I'm wondering if whoever came up with the idea convinced others of the staff to go with it (until Lana inevitably took over the story). Except by this take, things just keep getting more painful for Lex, because everyone is laboring under massive misapprehensions. "Zod" raises a lot of issues that aren't openly dealt with, but there's lots of room to interpret. I was getting pretty outraged with Clark, but now I think I understand where he's coming from, and my blame has shifted to other individuals. Meanwhile, Lex...oh, Lex.

( Open interpretations: where everyone stands at 6th season's start. )

( Lex and loneliness )

Just finished watching 5th season SV. After spending most of the season totally WTFing at Lex, because it initially seems like he just wakes up in the premiere with his supervillain switch flicked on - it's pretty cool how that's all explained in the second to last ep. Only it's done in such a way that we didn't get it until gnine figured out the explanation that makes the most sense, and now we're wondering where the fics are...the trouble with getting into fandom late is that we miss all the meta! (That is to say, you've probably seen this all before, I'm writing it out for my own benefit. And possibly future ficcing.)

Also - I gotta say, kudos to SV's writers. I'm not sure this is what they were going for for the entire season, but it does explain quite a bit that made no sense whatsoever otherwise, and it's a darn nifty slow-realization reveal. Even if man, yow. Poor, poor Lex. I've gone on before about the Tragedy of Lex but this...he's no villain. He's trying his damndest to be the hero.

( Wow. Lex in 5th season ascends to a whole new *level* of tragic! )

Watched Smallville. Watched the whole episode. I believe this is the first episode of this show I have watched straight through with no fastforwarding. Entirely not coincidentally, this is the first episode with no Lana whatsoever! Anyway, it was fun. Not so fun as to get me regularly watching the show, but fun. I love Lex, and I love evil, so, yeah, great tastes that taste great together. The ponytail line killed me.

Except that it's also sad, because we've been watching first and second season SV lately. And TPTB made this tactical error with Lex. Now, Lex (other than the movie interpretations) has always been the coolest of the cool, the most kick-ass supervillain, because he's ruthlessly ambitious enough to do anything and brilliant enough to be able to do it. He's got brains, wealth, power, and charisma, and Smallville went and gave him the one thing he was lacking, which was The Sexy. Bald is beautiful: Smallville's Lex can seduce the white off a cue ball. And that's cool. The appeal of Hot Evil is something anime cottoned onto a while ago and it's always been a matter of great regret that Hollywood is behind on that particular curve.

But Smallville didn't stop there. Nor did Smallville stop with the one-time melodrama of Superboy and Lex Luthor's broken friendship. Instead, they went on to make Lex himself a sympathetic figure. More than sympathetic; they made him tragic. In fact, they made him so tragic that rather than finding his future crimes reprehensibly unforgivable (if deliciously entertaining), a whole bunch of us find him totally forgivable no matter what he does. The problem? Well, it's hard to be rooting for the hero when you're spending much of the time shrieking at him, "You asshat! This is all your fault!"

( The Tragedy of Lex. In which I wax on for Way Too Long. Did I ever mention that one reason I fell so hard for Kaiba was that he reminded me of Lex? Because, yeah. I love my crazy hopeless completely f-ed up poor little rich boys. )

But enough of that depressingness. There's always Supernatural. Which is still apparently confusing its show bible with Mama BNF's Great Big Book of Yummy Fanfic Cliches. (When it's not being creepy as hell. Have I mentioned I hate horror? I hate horror. The trick with SPN is that I always forget I'm watching horror, being too distracted by the beautiful brotherliness, up until the point it has freaking creepy dolls - dolls! dolls are worse than clowns, even! - and swingsets moving by themselves and I wig out, because I'm a total wuss.)

( concerning SPN 2x11 )