Onyx

Overall

This episode was a mixture of fufilling and disappointing.

First - after a preview describing Lex as "having the best of both worlds", I was hoping that the episode would show the potential as well as the bad material, thus stressing the point of how Lex's choices would ultimately turn him in the opposite direction of Clark while they started out with the same potential. That was what I liked about episodes like "Jitters". That hope wasn't realized: the goodness Lex displayed was mostly "good innocence", not "good strength". (And from what we've seen, I'd think Lex has more good strength than good innocence.) However, in dwelling on Alexander, the dark side, they created another episode about the battle these two are destined to fight, and that was fulfilling.

To counterbalance that fulfillment, there was a sense of unfulfillment when the episode ended. They had given you an outline of what the future would be like - and then sent everything back to the way it was. In some ways, that made the future seem more distant than ever.

Details

Alexander was slightly over-played, perhaps over-written; I prefer to think that both of Lex's "sides" are as subtle and articulate and well-educated as the current Lex is. Alexander was far from subtle; his character was not quietly sinister but very overt. However, if he were too close in character to the current Lex, things could get more sticky, and the scenes with both Lexes would have a very different dynamic: perhaps the writers took the best choice they had.

Lionel's double-conversion is complete, leaving us with the question - Was it just that Lex broke Lionel's state of shock, or had Lionel honestly "become good" for a few weeks? I find it hard to believe the latter, considering the way he got involved in "Sacred"; yet with an episode with him talking about his charity function, etc., and being unwilling to fight with Lex, it's hard to tell. I got the impression that the writers weren't sure, either. And that's not a very comfortable impression for a viewer to have.

© Voice of Reason, 2007