Smallville 8x07 "Identity" - Discuss/Grade <SPOILER>

^ Well, I figure that in a lot of peoples' minds, it's somehow better if he's simply brain dead instead of dead dead. That way our hero Chloe doesn't have to be a murderer.

 

^ Personally I think brain dead is worse than dead dead.

 

Ok I can see that. But what if Chloe had simply hit the guy over the head with a bat? The guy lives but is brain dead. The result is the same but different weapon.

Sorry to bring personal experience into this BUT my brother suffered a massive head injury when I was a kid. He fell during a work accident. He was Brain Dead. My parents decided not to keep his body alive by machine.

He was gone.

If a similar injury happened as a result of purposeful attack -
that would be murder.

Yeah, I know its just a tv show. Not trying to be overtly seriously here. This was almost 20 years and I barely remember him I was so young. Just giving my POV. Which is that my definition of "Brain Dead" has been ingrained in my mind for my whole life.

while I think this guy was murdered I think it was really Brainiac in control and not Chloe. Just my current take....

We will see.

 

^ First, I'm sorry to hear about your brother.

Second, I call her ChloeIAC

 

Sorry to hear about your brother. I don't have any experience with this myself. I was just going with how entertainment like Smallville generally handles the situation. Unless the good guy is a soldier, a cop or some sort of anti-hero, most shows and movies of this sort have the good guy putting the bad guy out of commission without actually killing them.

Guess we will.

 

Stating the obvious, which apparently isn't to you.

So who's guarding the underside of the bridge? Jeez.

--Ted

 

I've snipped the unnecessary comments.

I don't see why Smallville needs to defend this, Battlestar Galactica does it a lot too. In fact, they stick things in the "Previously On" segment that never happened like Fisk and Garner being made commanders of Pegasus or Helo being sent to manage Dogsville.

 

When someone in the Heroes threads states that Heroes had a "Smallville moment," do you take that as a compliment?

 

No, because it's usually me saying it, as anyone who has read my comments on the recent development with Peter would know.

I don't hold Smallville up to a particularly high standard. I can see it for what it is, a cheap Canadian made show made primarily for teenage girls. It wouldn't be much different to any other show for teenage girls if it wasn't for the fact that it's about Superman.

I hold Heroes and Battlestar Galactica up to a much, much higher standard, so when Heroes does something I would criticise Smallville for doing then I think less of them.

 

Well I'd say Heroes' biggest "Smallville moment" was Nathan bleeding out with critically injured organs and being declared dead, then coming back to life and no one thinks twice about it.

Could you imagine on BSG when Starbuck came back from the dead, if no one gave it a second thought? No one wondering where she's been, if she's a Cylon trick, if she's a Cylon, or Apollo -- who saw her die -- simply shrugging it off like it was no big deal?

Characters being promoted or demoted off-screen isn't the same as an incomplete story coming back from commercial break completely ignored.

 

Nobody thought twice about it ? It was on the news!

No, I can't imagine that happening, largely because it didn't. The retroactive previously on segments did.

I know Ron and co got themselves in to a mess with the whole excised Baltar/Sagittarons storyline and as such they had to do something to explain why Helo was running Dogsville, but pretending that we'd just forgotten wasn't exactly the way to go.

I am not sure what specific Smallville storyline you have a problem with here. If you're talking about Chloe's apparent death after healing Lois' injuries, then I'm not sure there's a problem.

Yes, Chloe was declared dead but that's easily fixed. Chloe was able to invent an entire identity for Kara, I doubt it would be all that difficult for her to erase the records of her death considering that it did not look like the medical examiner had performed an autopsy.

As I said, I don't hold Smallville up to the same standards as Heroes or Battlestar Galactica.

 

Fairly new Smallville viewer here, with a quick question:
Are there any other reporters at the Daily Planet? Like, with experience or seniority?
Both Clark and Lois are both barely out of college, yet they always seem to be assigned the major front page stories. Isn't the Daily Planet like a major newspaper with a staff?

 

^Lois seems to have moved up the ranks fairly quickly, but there were other reporters - like the guy Lois borrowed the clothes for Clark from.

 

Smallville is like a modern day weekly Plan nine from out of Space. It's terribleness and discontinuity and unlikeness is mighty amusing. Just go with it.

That set they are using has been around since season 5 when Chloe got a job there IN THE BASEMENT... Of course for some reason the editor in chief also works out of an office in the basement... A few Editors ago, the person in that position had an all access pass to Lois' underwear, but someone shot him. She's been a staffer for a couple years who might have seen to have built up some seniority if TPTB had had the spare budget to build a new set, not that they don't still have the access tot he same number of soundstages that a new set can only exist at the sacrifice of an old?

Perry White was seen in season three as a drunk burn out long past thinking about doing a good days work because he lost his faith in simple human decency.

But no, there has been very little focus on other reporters at the Daily Planet.