Breaking the Ice: Smallville and Lost

Hope you don't mind a little TV talk with your comics gab. Alex wants The Great Curve to expand its focus some to include other elements of pop culture. I watch a lot of TV and like to talk about it, so here I am. I'll probably limit myself to the genre shows I watch (unless there are a lot of Grey's Anatomy and Gilmore Girls fans reading), but let me know.

Lost and Smallville Spoilers Ahead!

I was frustrated by the device in last week's Lost of showing us all the behind-the-scenes stuff in the bunker from the premiere episode without advancing the plot any. I hope they don't make a habit of that. It was good info, but I don't wanna have to keep going back and filling in. I'm kinda getting tired of the castaway flashbacks too. I didn't feel like I learned anything new about Jack last week, and this week the only cool or new part of the flashback was that Michael once gave Walt a stuffed polar bear. There was a lot of flashback for that one moment.

I completely missed the detail that the Internet's been buzzing about: the logo of Desmond's corporation (whatever the relationship between him and the company may be) on the shark. A friend of mine thinks that the company sharks may be there to keep people on the island (that the island is a vortex of some kind that draws passersby to itself). That's possible, but the sharks could also serve the purpose of keeping people away from the island -- especially if there's some kind of experiment or other funny business going on there. Probably, the sharks serve both purposes.

Poor Jin. Watching him run across the beach screaming, "Michael! Sawyer!" was heartbreaking. Something about him being an outsider because of the language barrier and that being the closest to English that I've heard him speak. Emotionally, it connected him to them for me. He goes on to refer to "The Others" in English, but I'm not reading into that. That's what everyone's been calling them.

Smallville promises this season to be Everything I've Waited For. They don't know me very well, because I've been waiting for Clark to get over Lana and smooch Chloe (whom I'm still waiting for to appear in the comics, DC!). Lana was a little tougher and less whiny this season than she has been in the last two though. Hope that sticks. Nice to see that Erica Durance is a regular cast member this season. I love her Lois, even if I'm not sure how making her so connected to pre-Metropolis Clark is going to work out. Worry about that later, I guess.

Looks like this is the season that Lex officially becomes the villain. Although, from his point of view, he's the one who's being betrayed and is justified in opposing himself to Clark. Excellent. His experience with the other Kryptonians this episode excuses his distrust of Clark even further.

Speaking of the other Kryptonians, I'm not thrilled with the homage to Superman II. Nor with the Fortress of Solitude homage to Superman: The Movie. Homage is nice (I love how they occasionally work John Williams's score into the show and having the Phantom Zone look like it did in the movies was fun), but not when I'm looking at my watch and yawning because I feel like I've seen this story already. Still, they're obviously putting their own spin on it, so it's not like we know exactly what's going to happen. The Kryptonians and Lionel Luthor both mentioned Zod, but he hasn't appeared yet. That should be some interesting casting.

Stunt casting on Smallville is always fun. My wife got a kick out of it when I explained that the guy who does Jor El's voice on the show played Zod in the movies, and we've already enjoyed the fact that Clark's mom (Annette O'Toole) on the show was Lana in Superman III. I just realized the other day that Lana's boyfriend's mom last season (Jane Seymour) was Christopher Reeve's love interest in Somewhere In Time. And of course Reeve and Margot Kidder have both had roles on the show. And Annette O'Toole's real-life husband Michael McKean played Perry White.

The cliffhanger in this episode was boring as hell. Clark loses his powers again. How many times is that now? I know that he thinks it might be permanent this time, but the audience sure doesn't. So it might be new and exciting for him, but it's not for us.

I like the new titles sequence though. Dark.

Overall, this has the makings of a very interesting season, but it's starting off on some shaky ground.