Smallville 4x09
I need to talk about Smallville season 4 episode 9 "Bound".
There is... a lot happening here. Some of it is good! Some of it is yikes. Some of it is huh. It feels like a microcosm of what does and doesn't work about season 4.
My first thought about the episode is how impressive the budget is. I really wish they'd had that kind of money from seasons 8-10. Don't get me wrong the later seasons do a great job making what they have work, but you just don't get real locations like the opera house in this episode and that's a damn shame.
I like the tension between Lex and Clark. We're besties and I have your back but I honestly don't know if I can trust you feels like a very natural evolution and it's really interesting to watch.
HOWEVER, why are we slut shaming Lex? The show is committing the cardinal sin of a middle of the road choice. It wants to punish Lex for behaving like a misogynist, but doesn't have the guts to show him doing anything actually bad. Having casual sex with consenting adults is not in any way a bad thing.
The scene in the elevator should have been Lois and Clark rather than Clark and Chloe. It's a scene with manufactured sexual tension which works if you have two characters who are pretending not to be into each other like Clark and Lois are at this point in the series. It does not work if you have one character who is head over heels into the other person and one person who just isn't interested in the other character. As it is I just feel bad for Chloe. It doesn't work. It feels mean.
Shout out to the guest stars. I thought both Colbie Smulders and the woman who played the lawyer were fantastic. I also enjoyed the superman nod that Lex didn't recognize Cobie with glasses on, it's silly but I liked it. I did not care for the way the Cobie character was written though, she does not act like a person
I had other thoughts but this sat unfinished in my drafts for too long and now we're in season 5 of the rewatch so those thoughts are lost to time.
