Smallville Review – “Aqua”

Smallville gets a taste of a little more from
DC continuity.

Cast

Tom
Welling
as
Clark Kent

Kristen Kreuk as
Lana Lang

Michael
Rosenbaum
as Lex Luthor

John
Glover

as Lionel Luthor

Annette
O’Toole
as Martha Kent

John
Schneider
as Jonathan Kent

Erica Durance as
Lois Lane

Allison Mack as
Chloe Sullivan.

Written by Todd Slavkin and Darren Swimmer.

Directed by Bradford May.

Original Airdate


Aqua
originally aired on Thursday,
October 20, 2005.

Synopsis

Aquaman is incorporated into the Smallville
mythos.

High Point

The Junior Lifeguard Association joke. Much more
natural than the one
in “Run.”

Low Point

Clark knows Lex watches him on security
cameras, and yet…

The Review

This didn’t feel like an original episode.
We’ve already
seen the introduction of JLA members like the Flash in
“Run,” and the
plot was the standard “misunderstanding leads to
combat before the
team-up happens” formula for the superhero crossover.
We made some
nice headway in establishing the character
relationships for this
season, though. I give it 3 out of 6.

The effects were mixed. The underwater
projectiles looked
pretty cartoony, but the effect they had on Clark was
very well done.
I give it 4 out of 6.

The story had some good moments, with some
interesting
developments for the long term. The problem was that
some of the
acting didn’t sell me, which made the script look
weak. Since those
weren’t actually script problems, the episode still
receives 5 out of
6.

The acting, as I mentioned above, had some
weakness.
Specifically, the entire romance angle between Lois
Lane (Erica
Durance) and Aquaman (Alan Ritchson) wasn’t
convincing. (How hard can
it be to act attracted to Erica Durance when she’s
standing there in a
bikini?) I give it 3 out of 6.

The emotional response wasn’t as strong as it
could have
been. It wasn’t as fun as “Run,” and it didn’t sell
me during some
scenes. Most of the response, again, was in the
positioning of
characters, relationships and plotlines for the rest
of the season.
It might have helped if I had much interest in
Aquaman, but he’s only
appealed to me on the Timm/Dini animated Justice
League

episodes, and even there they had to win me over.
This “brat” version
did nothing for me. I give it 4 out of 6.

The production was nicely done, particularly
in the difficult
underwater scenes. They are certainly pushing
production values well
past the standards of live action television. I give
it 5 out of 6.

Overall, we get some more foundation laid. I
like the
coherent feel to this season, as we haven’t had any
“one shot”
episodes so far that could have been aired at some
random time. I
give it 5 out of 6.

In total,
Aqua
receives
29
out of 42.

17 replies on “Smallville Review – “Aqua””

  1. James Marsters
    His character being introduced as Clark’s professor really surprised me. We know he’s all slimey & alien, and here he is being a role-model for Clark.
    I’m having trouble adjusting to his non-accent though.

    • Re: James Marsters
      The hair color sort-of threw me off, but his lack of accent really got me. I think I’m liking this angle on his character (don’t know if everyone knows who he is yet, so I won’t mention it). He’s studying humanity and its history, so it’ll be interesting to see his conclusions.

      • Re: James Marsters

        The hair color sort-of threw me off, but his lack of accent really got me. I think I’m liking this angle on his character (don’t know if everyone knows who he is yet, so I won’t mention it). He’s studying humanity and its history, so it’ll be interesting to see his conclusions.

        Does he know who Clark is? I missed the second ep of the season (stupid baseball), so I don’t know what else we’ve seen of him.

      • Re: James Marsters
        I particularly liked the quote from the preview for next week: it’s apparently a Halloween episode involving vampires, and they had Marsters saying "Are you kidding? There’s no such thing as vampires!" ;-)

  2. More JLA members?
    Who should we see next, if anyone? I doubt they’d do Hawkman or Hawkgirl, since the effects needed would be too expensive and/or look bad, but what about Wonder Woman or Green Lantern? I’d love to see Bruce Wayne show up (who wouldn’t?) but the more I think about it, the more I think they won’t go that way.

    • Re: More JLA members?

      Who should we see next, if anyone? I doubt they’d do Hawkman or Hawkgirl, since the effects needed would be too expensive and/or look bad, but what about Wonder Woman or Green Lantern? I’d love to see Bruce Wayne show up (who wouldn’t?) but the more I think about it, the more I think they won’t go that way.

      Hmmm… Great minds think alike, I guess.

  3. This leads inevitably to the question…
    What other DC universe characters do you want to see on Smallville before the run is over?

    I remember there were some rumors that a young Bruce Wayne would show up a couple seasons back. Who are you still waiting for?

    • Re: This leads inevitably to the question…

      I remember there were some rumors that a young Bruce Wayne would show up a couple seasons back. Who are you still waiting for?

      Bruce Wayne was pulled as a plot line when Batman Begins went into production, so I don’t think we’ll see him. Wonder Woman probably won’t get any further than the headline in Lionel’s newspaper from a few seasons back. Green Lantern would be expensive, but Green Arrow could work quite well. It would also be nice to see an older vigilante around to convince Clark that the double life deal can actually work.

      • Re: This leads inevitably to the question…
        Brilliant! I love it!

        Incidentally, you don’t happen to have a link to a shot of the newspaper you’re talking about, do you? I don’t remember it.

        • Re: This leads inevitably to the question…

          Brilliant! I love it!

          Incidentally, you don’t happen to
          have a link to a shot of the newspaper you’re talking
          about, do you? I don’t remember it.

          No, I don’t. I’ll try to spot it when I rewatch the DVDs
          for the full season reviews. It just mentioned Themyscara
          (which I probably misspelled in several ways) in a
          headline.

      • Re: This leads inevitably to the question…

        It would also be nice to see an older vigilante around to convince Clark that the double life deal can actually work.

        That Would Be Very Interesting To See, Something So That he Does Feel He Can Lead A Normal Life, And Continue With His Powers. It Seems Like Now, he Doesn’t See How He Can Act Normal and Have Powers (Even Though He’s Doing That.)

        Also, When Do We Get To See A Marvel Version Of These Shows? A Weekly, Live Action Fantastic Four Could Work Pretty Well, I Think.

      • Other cameos, other stories

        Green Lantern would be expensive, but Green Arrow could work quite well. It would also be nice to see an older vigilante around to convince Clark that the double life deal can actually work.

        I’ll freely admit that this whole "J.L.A. meets up as kids and, after a few character-building tussles and misunderstandings, learn respect for each other" schtick is a lot more interesting to me than I suppose it should be. After all, (insert canonical chanting sounds here) in the original comics, the heroes all met as full-fledged grown-up superheroes, with costumes and everything, so *technically* this is all revisionism. (end canonical chanting… thank God…)
        However, it’s still fascinating to watch the stories unfold as they might have done. Every young person (says the crotchety 35-year old from his walker) goes through that funny stage where they’re figuring out what they want out of life as adults, and having superpowers just means that there are a few additional wrinkles. And I will most definitely give WB serious kudos for including Lex Luthor in the show for purposes of not only defining where a ‘villain’ comes from, but how a villain becomes such. I’ll blushingly admit that I haven’t been following the show as religiously as I might have, but I believe that one of the most interesting things about the development of Lex’s character and story has been that there isn’t this diamond-clear, diamond-hard rut from ‘troubled young genius’ to ‘leader of the Legion of Doom’; if the chips had fallen a different way on a couple of occasions, you get the impression that he might have tread a path similar to Bruce Wayne.

        Other ideas (sorry if they’ve already appeared in the show):

        Black Canary: believe it or not, this one might actually be the simplest one in terms of special effects for powers (sonic scream, street-fighting), and mildly more interesting in terms of story effects (she’s supposed to be quite a looker), though the most difficult element might be how to justify her getting into the storyline at all.

        Martian Manhunter: Something like Braniac turned upside down. He’s a shapeshifter, able to assume a perfectly normal human appearance but still working on human behavior, seems to like human-folk, wants to help us if he can, and generally wants to make a place for himself until he can make it home to Mars. Pretty easy to ship into Smallville, either as a somewhat-established character or even originating there, after a fashion. (M.M.’s canonical origin is left as an exercise to the reader, but suffice to say that it would be easy to adjust)

        Resurrection Man: Admittedly, in the comics, Mitch Shelley’s merely a provisional member and only fought alongside the JLA once, but his backstory just needs a little tweaking to plug him into the storyline. Originally, he was around 35 (and by all accounts, a really smarmy git) when he got blown up in his law office. He got better, got his powers boosted, and basically followed in the footsteps of a certain Dr. Banner: wandering the world as a bum, helping out when he can. Of course, the fact that he *can’t die*, just gets up a couple of hourse later with different powers, could form the basis of a fascinating episode where he keeps showing up on the edges of one disaster after another that Clark has to handle, fails to save him, but then misinterprets his constant reappearance as some kind of guilt-trip.

        Green Lantern: yes, this one could be expensive, but remember that, alone among the JLA, G.L. isn’t just a guy in spandex with a gimmick. Alan Scott aside, *all* of the ring-slingers (Hal Jordan, Guy Gardener, John Stewart and Kyle Raynor) were just Terra’s representatives in the Green Lantern Corps… which means that while we could have a Green Lantern show up in Smallville, there’s no reason that it has to be any of the aforementioned guys, or even a humanoid. Story idea might be for an evil, yet human-like alien to hide out in Smallville, with a really alien G.L. in hot pursuit. Perhaps Apros, Chaselon, M’dahna, or Zghithii (look the names up here (http://www.glcorps.org/book.html) Clark would have to deal with fighting the alien criminal with an even more alien partner, when he’s the only one in Smallville who thinks that the G.L. is a good guy and the alien crook has been spreading around a lot of lies and yellow paint (the hardware store’s having a big clearance sale, y’see…)

        Challenge: Ralph "Elongated Man" Dibney and Eel "Plastic Man" O’Brian show up in Smallville. Ralph has always been heroic, if an unrepentant class clown, while ol’ Eel used to be a burglar. They’re both after the same crook, Bill MacGuffin, who stole some vital military plans. The twist is that Eel was trying to set Bill up in a one-man unofficial sting operation (Plastic Man’s usual M.O. back in his rookie-hero days, using his reputation as a crook to help catch bad guys) that didn’t go as planned. Ralph is convinced that Plastic Man is in cahoots with Bill and tells Clark so. Eel, for his part is trying to juggle A) catching Bill, B) fending Ralph off, C) convincing Clark that Ralph has misjudged him, all the while without losing his cover as a criminal.

        Any other thoughts?

  4. Perhaps…

    (How hard can it be to act attracted to Erica Durance when she’s standing there in a bikini?)

    …all he needs is to be standing in front of Tom Welling in a speedo? }:-) Now there’s a plot line we’ll never see…

    • Re: Perhaps…
      Hah! A friend of mine made that joke this morning when we were talking about last night’s ep. Then we got in a debate about whether or not Erica Durance is natural or “enhanced.”

      • Re: Perhaps…

        Hah! A friend of mine made that joke this morning when we were talking about last night’s ep. Then we got in a debate about whether or not Erica Durance is natural or “enhanced.”

        They were suspiciously round and firm…

        • Re: Perhaps…

          Hah! A friend of mine made that joke this morning when we were talking about last night’s ep. Then we got in a debate about whether or not Erica Durance is natural or “enhanced.”

          They were suspiciously round and firm…

          While what you say is not without merit, I feel compeled to point out that Ms. Durance has an amazing pair of legs, and last I checked, they don’t make silcon for those…

          • Some Brainiac
            Since Space is a couple weeks behind, I just saw this one. I agree with the assessment of the episode, in that it’s a real mix of good and bad elements. My pet peeve? Repeating that overhyped non-fact that we “only use 10% of our brain.” Bad enough to hear it again, but from a professor who’s really Brainiac? Yeesh….

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