Sunday, December 6, 2009

Smallville's Lois and Clark

I've given it some thought, and I've decided that this may be the best romantic story arcs I've seen on T. I wasn't sure why I like this show so much. Certainly the villains have not been well-handled. Lionel and Lex were great, Brainiac was great; but in the past few seasons it's been a disappointment with underwhelming presentations of Doomsday, of Metallo and now of younger General Zod. I think what may be driving my interest in the latter seasons is the strong way in which they've developed the Clark-Lois romance.



[I took that picture from a live journal page I found through google images.]

I'm not normally a shipper. In the case of Battlestar Galactica, for which shipping was a top topic among fans, I thought the Kara-Lee romance was a huge distraction. Not so with Clois, where I think it contributes to the story in a manner that recalls Buffy and Spike.

In hindsight they've done an excellent job of foreshadowing it and putting it together since season 4. In season 4's premiere, "Crusade", Lois found Clark naked, confused and Kryptonian in a field, the same field where Martha and Jonathan found him. It's a direct parallel and puts her in a position of trust vis a vis his life. When Lana first sees them together she immediately predicts they'll end up together...

They get on each other's nerves a lot in season 4, and one might superficially think they hate each other. That's not it. They're in psychological resonance. We don't see Clark get "annoyed" so to speak from anyone else. They're on the same wavelength, and everybody knows what's going on except for those two key characters on the screen.

There's that great scene, also in the season 4 episode "Facade", where Lois drops Clark into the water, we see them laughing at each other and Chloe is looking on, jealous. She can see they have a connection, and the viewer sees that it's obvious to others they're closer to each other than to other people.

Overall the transition from Lana to Lois could have been done 1 season faster but there was a lot of good that happened in between. I'm thinking of the episodes with Simone and with Maxima. Simone came in in season 6 for an episode with powers of hypnosis. She seduces Clark, and she asks him to leave Lana and he does so with little hesitation. Maxima comes in 2 years later with powers of seduction, and she seduces Clark taking great control of him. She in turn asks him to leave Lois... he hesitates, and then refuses. He leaves Maxima aside and runs after Lois... that makes an excellent contrast. His love for Lois is stronger than some superpower spell, which was not true of his love for Lana. Furthering the contrast this is before they even are together, whereas with Lana he treated her like crap in full relationship mode.

I now better appreciate why Lana was such an important role in Clark's development. As a viewer I really wanted to see Clark and Lana become a couple, and they could not. It kept being a trainwreck, mostly relating to issues of Clark's powers. In Lois' case, the contrast, it is with those powers that they will come closer together. He says to her in Pandora that he's stronger with her, whereas with Lana it seemed she always made him weaker. The symbolism reaches a crescendo in season 8 when Lana's veins become porous with Kryptonite. She is poison to him, entirely related to issues pertaining to his Kryptonian heritage. Lois, on the other hand will prove to be a perfect match.

It helps that these two actors are phenomenally good-looking.

We certainly want to see them get closer together. And while an army of prudish fans may prevent the executives from going in that direction, I'd like to see them take their clothes off and have sex. He was always hesitant of having sex before fearing he' physically hurt the woman. Would be a great completion if he does have sex with her, fully juiced, and is in great control. He would then have full control over his powers, and be Superman.

Apparently many others think so. Over at fancast.com, Lois and Clark won the best kiss of 2009, for the same kiss scene in Idol I posted two weeks back:
http://www.fancast.com/specials/year-in-tv-2009

3 comments:

  1. This essay touched on some of the same points... and is far better

    http://cccsupermanfans.wordpress.com/2008/07/29/foreplay-to-destiny/

    More comprehensive,

    ReplyDelete
  2. More
    http://www.kryptonsite.com/forums/showthread.php?p=5770684#post5770684

    ReplyDelete
  3. And:

    http://cccsupermanfans.wordpress.com/2007/08/12/clois-parallel-lives/

    ReplyDelete