The show began with Clark discovering his true identity and Lex striking out on his own, trying for the first time to run a factory without his father's guidance. Clark's world had just been majorly shaken, as he survived what should have been a fatal car crash, then was told by his father that he was from another planet. Lex's world had been majorly rearranged, and he had two goals: one, to get out from under his father's shadow and prove himself, and two, to sustain a hip lifestyle while doing it. Both were learning about their limitations, and they bonded and helped each other to grow up. Lex would screech down the road in his latest sports car, and Clark would get short-tempered with worry over it. Clark would struggle in his relationship with Lana, and Lex would give him older-brother advice. Meanwhile as they went through their struggles side-by-side, Clark began to develop Superman's integrity, while Lex grappled with his heartless father in an attempt to wrest away his father's reign over LuthorCorp. "I'm beginning to understand," a reporter remarked to Lex. "It isn't so much your picture on the front page of the Ledger as the caption under it reading 'Son Outshines Father'." His father was pressing him to become great. Lex wanted to exceed his father's expectations. When his ex-girlfriend reproached him that they could have been great together, Lex replied, "I plan on being great all by myself."

In the second season, although all the characters were featured doing uncharacteristic things, Clark and Lex continued to develop. Lex's relationship with his father became more complex as they adeptly played psychological games, Lionel attempting to manipulate him, Lex trying to untangle the knots his father tied. In a battle in which Lionel pitted Lex and his half-brother against each other, Lex was kicked out of the mansion and turned to the Kents for help. By the end of the season, Lex's father had been revealed for a sick man without moral boundaries, and Lex's compulsive need for approval and family support began to be fulfilled as the Kents at last accepted him and he summoned the courage to propose to his girlfriend. The complicated father-son relationship between Lex and Lionel paralleled the complicated father-son relationship between Clark and his biological father, who, like Lionel, had very different plans for his son's life. By the end of the second season, Clark and Lex were again headed down similar roads, both driven away by emotional rejection. Clark believed, fearfully, that he could be meant to conquer the world, and strongly believed that everything he touched ended badly, ruining lives. Lex struggled in his relationship with his fiancée, trying to maintain honesty and get used to emotional vulnerability, when every instinct he had was to protect himself. Clark would be forced to make choices and take a stand. Lex would be motivated to protect himself from getting hurt again, no matter what.

In the third season, Clark and Lex were both faced with the loss of almost everything they loved. They dealt with it in the same way, by rejecting reality. Clark coped by putting on red k and creating a new life where he didn't have to care. Lex coped by inventing a figure who would raise the questions he was inwardly asking, so that he could take a stand and fight his demons. It was the beginning of a deep and complex evolution. "It seems Fate has bigger plans for me." He returned home unresolved, questions brought to the surface, raw emotion taking over. His wife, whom he had tried to defend to his hallucination, tried to murder him. When his father offered him a job, he reacted with the wariness that experience had instilled in him. ("It's hard not to consider the implications when your mortality has a dollar sign attached to it." "I'd hoped we'd moved beyond this trust reflex." "It's called common sense.") Before long his inability to trust his father led to serious friction, until he finally gave way and agreed to his father's plan. The reluctant act of trust was his undoing: Lionel used it to drive Lex into madness, sending a chattering, wild-eyed Lex to a mental institution. When through a fluke, despite the drugs Lionel had administered, Lex recovered, Lionel refused to recognize it but had him treated with radical electroshock therapy, a dangerous procedure that the doctor objected to. Lex awoke from the treatment with seven weeks of memory erased, a quiet, broken person.

For a time after that, Lex was defenseless. Shortly afterward, affected by kryptonite-induced power that prevented him from lying, the truth came out. (Lex: "Because he won't give me the only thing I ever wanted from him." "And that would be?" "I want him to love me.") Later in the episode, however, Lionel demanded, "What is it you want from me?" and Lex refused to tell him. Lex was learning to harden himself to his father's advances, steeled against them because he knew that he would never receive his father's love. In an attempt to retrieve the memories erased by the electroshock therapy, Lex agreed to be the subject of an experiment to draw out repressed memories. During one experiment, Lex relived repressed memories of his twisted childhood, in which Lionel's psychotic method of parenting drove his wife to kill their baby. Young Lex had witnessed the murder and, protecting his mother, told his father that he had done it, so deeply traumatized that as the years went by he began to believe that he had truly killed his infant brother. After the experiment, Lex confronted Lionel and told him the truth about the murder, leaving Lionel in shock, as he realized that for years he had made Lex psychologically suffer for a crime he had not committed. Lionel tried to apologize to Lex, but Lex walked away. It was too late. At the end of the season, Lex had his father arrested and put in prison for murder. Lionel called Lex a traitor, and his parting words as he was taken away were, "Be careful, son. Don't forget. Judas hung himself with his own rope." And in a dark prison scene as Lex visited his father, Lionel told him, "No matter how wide the chasm gets between us, son, I'm your father. I'll always be your father." Lex replied quietly, intensely, "And the devil that haunted me since the day I was born."

I know that, in the end, Lex will be Clark's enemy. For three years we watched his journey down a dark path, betrayed by everyone he trusted, rejected by everyone whose love he craved – compulsively needy, abnormally wary, and willing to do whatever it took to take down his father, the psychological abuser. We saw him learn to love, we saw him learn to despise, we saw the complex, oppressed, twisted abused kid grow disillusioned and begin to harden. We learned why he is who he is in later years. I could not have made it any better. (Well…)

The fourth season offered no progress. Interaction with his father, with Clark, and with the Kents was sparse, and the little there was often seemed forced, accomplishing nothing for his character. After all the development on his intense relationship with his father, Lionel was released from jail after all and the two lived in the same house, clashing only with meaningless verbal quips. "Dad, if you want to play games, there's a deck of cards in the parlor." Lex's sole focus was to collect and unite three kryptonian stones, the same stones his father was, somewhat passively, attempting to unite (or perhaps just thinking of uniting). We did not learn why he is who he is. We merely watched him in his activity as we would a guest star. In the end, Lionel and Lex were captured and tortured, and to prevent Lex's death Lionel revealed the location of one of the missing stones. When Lionel and his captor faced each other, Lex killed the captor. Both father and son's actions were left undefined; their motives could have been either self-preservation or saving one another. However, left so undefined, the impression left was merely self-preservation – getting rid of their attackers.
(See "Lex" in Season Four)

After such a vague season, in which Lex merely had generic action, the writers suddenly brought Lex to (in all appearances) the Great Turning Point.

When Lionel collapsed onto the floor, Lex caught sight of the final stone in his pocket and crawled forward to touch it. There was a flash of light and he was flung back against the wall. When he rose again, something had apparently snapped. He whispered darkly to his father, "You did create the son you always wanted." He spent the rest of the episode in a rage, screaming at people and shoving Chloe around, demanding to know the whereabouts of the stones.

Only twice before had we seen intense rage and raw, animal-like emotion from Lex - once after returning from the desert island, and once when being tormented by Lionel in Belle Reve. Now it was because he had touched a kryptonian stone.

Season Five continued with the same manic Lex. He watched Lana collapse, expressionless, without much interest. He set up Clark so that his powers would be exposed. He shoved his father – the father whose love he craved – up against a wall and bellowed at him. He tortured a teenage boy in an effort to get information out of him.

Emotionally ironclad, he delivered his lines like a machine. It was almost as if he was drugged, there was such a distinct wall between him and the characters who once were such a deep and sometimes disturbing part of his life.

That's where the writers have Lex right now. And here's why I think the writers are wrong.

"Smallville" is a show about the evolution of two young men living turbulent lives and destined to follow very different paths. (Sound familiar?) It isn't about Clark the Hero: it's about Clark the person, somewhere between the human and the hero, on a journey to a destiny that we know about. And it isn't supposed to be about Lex the Villain: it's supposed to be about Lex the person, travelling his dark road to a destiny that we know about. Lex the person has not made any appearances in quite a while. The Lex we see on screen is defined by being The Villain.

Right now, all we know about how Lex got to be The Villain is this: It wasn't his choice. He never decided to take a stand and say, "The time has come for me to be a villain." He never was faced with a choice, whether or not to set up Clark, whether or not to give up, in his words, "the closest thing to a family he's ever had." Instead he snapped and went on automatic pilot without hesitating, thus defeating the purpose of "Smallville" – how the choices you make affect who you become.

I believe the real Lex, the complicated, brooding abused kid, would try to keep that as long as possible. I believe he would keep justifying his darker side to himself as long as he could, making excuses, using loopholes, trying to keep as much as he could for as long as he could – until one day something happened and he realized, sickeningly, how far he had slid downhill without letting himself notice. He would descend into the darkness, but he would look back at Clark, the one who represented all he was leaving behind. In the best villains, there is something empathetic, something tragic, something human that you want to save. And we saw that Lex had all those elements in heartrending detail.

"Smallville" isn't about the destination. It's about the journey. I know that Lex must descend into darkness, but this is precisely the wrong way to descend – being pushed off a cliff instead of walking steadily downward. Lex needs to come back. He needs to make choices. And he needs to walk that road of his own free will - conflicted and paranoid and human, every step of the way.

After all, as Lex told Ryan,

"The road to darkness is a journey, not a lightswitch."

Update: Here's a video on Lex's tortured soul that says it all. Lex's most tortured, violent, twisted moments came in the first three seasons: his journey was much more active, not to mention darker, back then. That's because so much was going inside his head. Courtesy of YouTube.com.

Update 2: The video has been removed...but I'll leave the link so it can be searched if it ever gets put back on. (Incidentally, this was the best YouTube video I've ever seen. If you know the author - tell him to put Lex: The Villain of the Story back on!)