Nikita and Smallville

[rivkat]

Ok, I admit that as much as I find the actress playing Alex appealing, I have been grumbling pretty much the back half of the season about how they hired Maggie Q and then made the story so much about the white girl's (also extensive) girlpain.  I'm still kind of annoyed about that, but Alex herself endeared me to her at last with her awesome answer to "why?"  Because screw you, that's why!  Best possible response.

giandujakiss, where's my Nikita vid now?

SV: I really don't know what to say.  So much of it was terrible, and by so much I mean "almost all of the dialogue."  The anvils were directionless! 

So bad it was good: Tess apparently cooperating with being changed into a hospital johnny for involuntary heart surgery (WTF? why cover the area?) and then remembering that she was a martial arts expert (as opposed to her terror at being cornered in the car--when we first met her, Tess would've smiled and maybe spared a moment to pity the guys who'd boxed her in, dammit!) so that she could bust out the amazing moves.  Enjoy the view, buddy.

Lex: okay, I can totally work with that.  I refuse to believe that all of the emotions are gone, even if the memories are.  Though as saraht said, it would've been awfully nice for Clark to pair the apology for not saving Lex with one for not having tried.  True, he was young, and Lex was his practice billionaire, but the show's incredible hypocrisy about trusting/faith in everyone but Lex--including Lionel, for fuck's sake!--still grates. But, as I said, I can totally work with the mindwipe, especially since we saw the birth of Lexcorp along with Lex.

Comments

[margrave]

Question - do you think the writers meant for the viewers to interpret Lex with no memories as a Lex that is redeemed, or a Lex with a chance at redemption? Afterall it was the memories of evrything Luthor that makes Lex so conflicted. I have been going back and forth on this. Lex in WHITE as President was not comforting - Cassandra left too much of an impact for me to ignore the suit.

Also, agreement on Clark's apology. It was really difficult for me to love the show post season 3, though I did enjoy the last 2 seasons.

[rivkat]

My favorite interpretation so far is that Lex goes bad because he has nothing he knows/loves/wants to preserve, and as awful as the overall muddle was the theme was that it's your past that makes you strong/human/able to be good. So without a past, Lex is without a conscience. Now, I wouldn't write him that way, but I like him bad before he's good.

I think you can go any way, really. It would be poetic if Lex was an awesome president, without Lionel's evil hanging over him; wouldn't be the first thing Smallville's meteor mutants were wrong about.

I watched the past couple of seasons as if it were a different show entirely. This enabled me to enjoy Tess (after a while of resenting how she was a version of Lex that got a redemption arc, simply because Clark decided to trust her along with lecturing her) and even eventually Oliver.

[margrave]

Now, I wouldn't write him that way, but I like him bad before he's good. Agreed. Redemption (or not being a megalomaniac) is only worth something when the person involved choose to do it themselves.

Poetic justice is the only thing keeping me from wanting to hate the finale, and the thing is, if Lex hadn't made an appearance I'd have been OK-ish with the way the series ended.

Definitely - to me, the last couple of seasons wasn't really the series I fell in love with, I kind of dubbed it Justice League: Metropolis in my head. It took me a very long time to love Tess (same reason as you), and it took me longer to love Oliver. It was just so damn hard to dislike this Oliver.