Voice of Reason: Season Five: Thirst

Kristin turns around suddenly and looks at Clark with that bright, intense look like something's just occurred to her. Again, good acting. You understood exactly what was going on before a word was spoken.

Kahn tells Chloe that if she wants a break, Kahn will need to see some good writing first. Surely Chloe's past columns for the Daily Planet would be archived, and surely if Kahn was showing enough interest to meet with Chloe personally, she'd have enough interest to look at what Chloe had written.

The Chloe-narration was an interesting idea. Chloe's practical commentary lent a sense of balance to the whole imbalanced idea, showing that even the writers were not taking the whole Vampire thing too seriously. However, sometimes the campy feeling that the commentary induced was an awkward way to go. It was strange to be watching the characters go through an intense and/or emotional scene, and to start experiencing things alongside them, and then be jarred by Chloe suddenly voicing a dry narration.

On to the more specific problems of narration. When Chloe was unconscious in the hospital, she wouldn't have known what Clark whispered to her or about Milton Fine coming in. She wouldn't have known about how Lana spent her time as a vampire (the drinking parties, straightening her broken neck…) when Lana herself didn't clearly remember. And I'm positive she wouldn't have known about Milton Fine killing someone and visiting his spaceship. And, even if she was only supposed to be narrating one storyline, or two, they seemed to mix her in at random moments, never explaining what specifically she was narrating or why exactly she was narrating it. At times I thought we were hearing what she was writing. But if she was writing that, Chloe should not be working at the Daily Planet. She used several cliches and committed several grammatical errors, and used a very conversational voice. (Not voice meaning "intonation": voice meaning Writing Voice.) It was more as if she was making a documentary, like the Chloe Chronicles. Since she obviously wasn't making one (where would she get the footage?), she was telling the viewer the story, and Smallville was translating some of her words into footage. (i.e., instead of hearing Chloe say, "Then I realized Lana was crawling onto my bed," they skipped her narrative and just showed it.) The question is, then: Why is she telling us this? Maybe it's asking too much, but it would have been more settled and less out-of-place if we'd been given a context.

I'm sure everyone noticed that when the vampires held Lana's arms, Lana just gave little tugs away, and didn't use a single kung-fu move – didn't even use her weight to get them to loosen their grip.

What is it with Lana getting kissed by mutated females? Granted, this wasn't exactly a kiss, it was just one vampire forcing Lana to drink a drop of blood from her tongue, but still, the writers should have judged the success of "Façade" and tossed that bit accordingly. It was, like most of the vampire plot, contrived. She could have just used the blood from her nail, spit the blood into a glass/onto her finger/into Lana's mouth, etc. Any of those would have been more practical than "mouth-to-mouth termination".

All right…the pool shots. Although I love the idea of Milton's mathematical mind processing the angles of pool shots, a) it was very obviously not Milton making the shots, and b) they very obviously used the same shot twice, just from different angles (unless Lex is in the habit of playing with two eight-balls and rearranging his furniture between Milton's shots...). Couldn't they get more than one good shot?

At first I thought it was weird and conveniently blind that Chloe thought Lana was hungover. But then I remembered Lana in Paris, and at that time she really was looking like "sorority material". That part wasn't as contrived as the rest, after all.

Vampire Behavior – sensitivity to light, hating normal drinks, and craving blood. Also, her body wasn't the only thing that changed: her mind seemed to adjust to this new outlook – she didn't have a fear or compassion problem with draining people of blood. "Well, then. To breakfast!"
Giddy Behavior – partying at night, drinking, flirting with other guys. She was all about the fling, and I don't think this drastic behavior was meant to represent the inner Lana who just returned to normal. As Chloe said, "Lana, this isn't you. You wouldn't hurt Clark like this." Everything in this category was another side effect of her vampirization. (Vampire bats are notorious for giddiness and loud parties…)
Ambiguous Behavior – complaining about Clark's "tameness", draining Chloe's blood…these things are so direct that they shouldn't be categorized as repressed instincts, but might have been meant to represent vague emotions, exasperation with Clark and feeling threatened by Chloe. Since under normal conditions Lana has no reason to be exasperated with Clark, rather is "finally" enjoying their romance; and since Chloe and Lana are close friends and offer each other support and help, I think it is more likely that this was just unusually callous behavior, and should be a subcategory, along with Giddy Behavior, under "Erratic Behavior". Some may disagree, however, so I'll list them separately.
Genuine Lana Moments – concern for Clark, love for Clark. Although she didn't have much of a problem drinking Chloe's blood, Lana still connected with Clark. She was jolted out of her other behaviors – at least most of them – after Clark saw her, and was notably disturbed when the other Tri Psi's told her that she would have to kill Clark. She refused to kill him, etc., etc. There was no clear explanation of why she retained this Love-Clark instinct while all other instincts were soon warped. She certainly didn't harbor much tenderness toward Clark when she exclaimed, "This is so much better than sitting around listening to my boyfriend whine about his feelings," or told Clark witchily, "Maybe we should rethink this relationship." It just popped in when Clark witnessed her draining Chloe's blood, and intensified until her cure.

Where exactly the Genuine Lana fit into the mix was left unexplained, and the combination of the first three behaviors was at times mystifying. They should have let you know what was happening: perhaps with prior warning that, "with the right signals, the mind will override the vampire instincts," or something like that, the mix wouldn't have seemed so contrived. Granted, in an episode with this premise, everything tends to look contrived.

Didn't the sunglasses Lana put on look exactly like the sunglasses Clark wore in "Red"? I'm usually not that conscious of the styles of sunglasses, but there was such an obvious parallel with the erratic behavior and donning of sunglasses that it struck me. Maybe it's just me.

"…one of the Pretty Plastic People told me she was asleep…at three in the afternoon." We never see these girls or Lana get into any trouble for their flings…doesn't anybody notice that they're all tired during the day, sensitive to light, miss classes? Apparently this sorority has lived on for a while – shouldn't somebody have noticed over the years?

"Never confront a vampire when they're hungry." First of all, hearing Chloe's matter-of-fact voice reminded you not to worry, she'd come out of it with her sense of humor intact. That message left you torn between two perspectives. Secondly – that's grammatically incorrect, and Chloe ought to know it. "a vampire", "they're hungry". It should be either, "Never confront vampires when they're hungry," or "Never confront a vampire when it's hungry," or "she's hungry". Or simply, "Never confront a ravenous vampire." As a journalist, she'd know numerous ways to correct.

"Ask him about Project 1138." In Star Wars ("A New Hope"), Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher) was rescued via a pretend "prisoner transfer" from cellblock 1138...in turn a nod to Lucas's THX 1138.

Lana bites Clark and receives one of his powers. First of all, the only reason she is able to bite him is because there is kryptonite nearby, and kryptonite, among other things, makes Clark's blood literally boil. So a), she would have burned herself on his blood. (Yes, their bones can't break, etc., but they can still obviously hurt themselves if they can dig nails into their tongues and draw blood.) At the very least, she would have noticed that his blood was boiling. Then, after drinking his blood, she takes on his characteristics. I guess if drinking vampire blood made her take on vampire characteristics, that isn't too disruptive to the inner consistency of the episode, but if that's the case then why doesn't drinking normal peoples' blood make them take on normal characteristics? Perhaps, though, it takes a strain of some virus-like substance – or simply strong and unusual DNA – to override their normal instincts and give them new characteristics. However, if it's that straightforward, then b) why would she only receive one of his characteristics?

Clark's heat vision was initially triggered by love/lust before he learned to control it. The two sources of heat vision, then, were love/lust and control. Since Lana couldn't have known how to control heat vision when she first received it, are we to assume that it was love/lust that triggered her first heat vision that broke the mirror? If so, how did she learn to control the power so quickly? We saw Clark practicing on scarecrows, candles, foil packets of popcorn, before he felt comfortable with his control. Yet Lana presumably didn't use it again until she was threatened by "Buffy", making the slaying of Buffy the first controlled act of heat vision she'd ever made, after only one unintentional incident. That's a bit hard to believe (especially with the way she was gazing at Clark by the fireside).

Why would heat vision break the mirror? Wouldn't it melt it? Now that would have been an interesting Matrix-like moment, and if they'd dwelt a moment on the weirdness and mystery of it, we would have taken this whole plot a lot more seriously. This was the one sequence where I felt a bit too "shooed on".

"terrified, exhilarated, aroused…" Chloe's article seemed to contain a long string of adjectives in its first sentence. That looked very amateur.

"…tall tales about slaying Buffy the Vampire…" So Chloe told about "Buffy's" death? How would she know about it? Once cured, all the vampires remembered "nothing coherent", which makes Clark the only one who would remember. And since Lana killed Buffy using his heat vision, I don't think he'd volunteer his eyewitness account of her death. Also, Chloe told Kahn that everything she wrote was backed up by facts, and gave her a folder full of proof. How would she medically explain heat vision?

Thirst

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