Episode Review: Patriot

"And as you can all clearly see from this schematic, Oliver Queen is second in line of the biggest mafia organization on the East coast".

Smallville’s final season has certainly intrigued me so far, not only as a fan, but as a critic.  Typically, I’ve always known with a relative amount of assuredness which episodes I would end up enjoying more than others based on what I knew about said episode going in, how the preview looked, etc.  This year has nearly always defied those expectations, to both positive and negative effect.  I thought “Harvest” looked like a throwaway Halloween-themed episode based on the trailer, for example, and I wound up really enjoying it.  “Patriot”, on the other hand, had an outstanding preview that really had me psyched about seeing the episode, and yet – as much as it hurts me to say this – a good portion of this episode actually came off somewhat boring for me.  But there were also aspects of this show that I adored.  Normally, when faced with reviewing an episode on which I’d had such conflicting thoughts, I tend to focus on the negative elements first and leave things on a good note.  Fortunately for me, “Patriot” ties in perfectly with my writing style, as virtually everything I didn’t love happened in the first half of the episode.  The episode’s opening scene is a prime example.  We’re introduced to Colonel Slade Wilson, who’s been charged with enforcing the so-called Vigilante Registration Act.  He sees all superheroes as threats to national security and vows to stop them by whatever means are necessary, official channels or otherwise.  Now, I do understand (now) that the Colonel is played up to the hilt because he’s been corrupted by Darkseid, but the problem is that this plot point isn’t made clear until the final act of the episode, making the character come off as extremely one-dimensional and even a little silly for the majority of the show.  This was really unfortunate, and I can’t help but feel that some other method could have been devised to introduce the Colonel as what he actually was instead of having his over-the-top persona set the tone for the ensuing 42 minutes.

AC was doing his best to satiate Mera's desire to kiss on picturesque beaches with explosions for backdrops, but it was starting to get cost-prohibitive.

Our next scene, on the other hand, is extremely cool.  Aquaman returns to “Smallville” in grand fashion, swimming at incredible speed toward an offshore oil rig alongside his new wife, Mera.  The two ensure that no one is aboard the rig first, and then set a series of charges which take out the entire facility.  I thought it was an extremely clever touch to have this saboteur approach performed by AC (who was actually introduced in Season 5 in much the same way) and a new character that we’ve never seen.  It immediately causes the audience to question AC’s motives and methodology here as the character’s past isn’t exactly squeaky clean.  It’s a terrific way to put us in Clark’s shoes right away, establish that these two are together in what they’re doing, and have a pretty fantastic explosion to cap the whole thing off.  I’m truly impressed with how cinematic Smallville has remained, surviving even the heavy budget cuts of Season 8 to secure its place as one of the best-looking series on television, and this scene certainly proves that the show still has what it takes to be epic.

"Oh! Uhm, hey, Oliver. Hey, look man, Emil and I were just kind of in the middle of something. Could you come back in like ten minutes"?

At Watchtower, a well-meaning assertion by Clark that the country’s laws need to be upheld even if it means registering for the VRA leads Oliver to volunteer to do so first, his secret identity already having been revealed.  I know this scene was supposed to be filled with dramatic tension and leave us wondering what was in store for Oliver, but I have to admit that I found this exchange really tiresome.  We’ve had endless talks throughout the last eight episodes between Clark and Oliver on this exact same topic, and in hearing them both go on for five more minutes about whether coming out of the shadows and stepping into the light was a good idea, I found myself growing weary of the whole argument.  This is Season 10.  Yes, it’s time, fellas.  Yes, people need you to lead by example and not hide yourselves away in a secret headquarters.  Yes, the world needs icons to look up to and heroes to inspire the best in humanity.  I thought all of these things were pretty well understood by everyone at this point.  In watching this scene, a newcomer to Smallville might come away with the impression that this was the very first time (instead of the hundredth) that these characters had discussed or even seriously thought about these issues, and it’s one of the few times that I have ever actually found myself annoyed by this series’ predilection for circular dialog.  Now, given where “Patriot” ultimately takes this story and these characters, I won’t be too terribly hard on this scene.  It’s not executed badly or acted poorly.  It’s just well-covered philosophical territory that we don’t need to hear again.  But it’s a functional scene that needs to accomplish two goals: have Clark volunteer to register to set up Lois’s arc for the rest of the episode, and have Oliver step in to do so instead to set up everything else.  And on that level, I suppose the scene does do precisely what was intended.

I would attack Ollie's not-so-great disguise as being less than convincing, but he is at The Daily Planet, so glasses admittedly go a long way.

By the time Oliver shows up at The Daily Planet to tell Lois that he’s the mysterious hero who’s volunteered to register, I was kind of relieved to see Erica Durance.  As I said last week, Lois has become possibly my favorite character on this show lately, so after a somewhat rocky beginning, I was hoping things would start righting themselves here.  Unfortunately, this turned into probably my least favorite Lois scene of this year (preposterously inhumane torture sequences notwithstanding).  When she begins telling Oliver how stupid she thinks it is for him to register, Oliver tells her that Clark was considering doing it before he offered to go in his place.  This revelation has an effect on Lois that I have never seen in Erica’s portrayal of this character and I hope not to see again as the show draws to a close.  Lois is immediately offended that Clark had planned on taking this huge step without telling her and, even worse, after telling others.  Okay, show, what are you doing?  The one thing that sets Lois Lane apart from everyone else that has ever been in Clark’s orbit is that she is selfless.  She’s protective of Clark, but she understands that he has a higher purpose, some of which has nothing to do with the idealistic whims of a newspaper reporter.  Lois has defended Clark’s – and, before him, The Blur’s – actions to a fault for a year and a half now.  And yet just a few episodes after discovering his secret she’s suddenly insulted that she wasn’t consulted on something that, in fairness, Clark was only momentarily contemplating?  I really felt that Oliver should have stuck up for Clark some here instead of just throwing him under the bus, because he made it sound to Lois like Clark was dead-set on registering before being stopped, which wasn’t really the case.  But even if it were, Lois’s reaction here was just way out of character.  She’s always known and accepted that Clark had other, bigger obligations in his life, and her sudden regression into the needy girlfriend figure really seemed contrived to me.  It’s almost as if she were being spoon-fed insecurities that we’ve never seen in her before just so she’d have some reason to overcome them later in the episode.  I don’t know, maybe I just really misread this, but Lois’s attitude really didn’t seem in keeping with who she’s always been, and it didn’t work for me at all.

"All right, that's it! NO ONE puts me in a dunk-tank but Lois"!

The next few scenes are mainly transitional, so I’ll try and hit them all together.  Clark confronts AC, who evidently is easy to find since he’s pool-side next to some dolphins.  I really don’t like that people are getting from point A to B lately with either no explanation of how they got there or some throwaway line that provides reason for it to happen.  Clark needing to confront AC doesn’t explain how he knew where he was.  Nor does it explain why they’re both so needlessly confrontational from the outset here.  AC telling Clark “I didn’t hurt anyone, don’t make me start now”?  What is that about?  You’d think these two had been enemies for years.  I thought things were starting to come together for the Justice League, especially after “Salvation”, but I guess not.  Mera dunks Clark in the pool in what I assume was meant to be a show of strength.  But it really doesn’t make much sense logically to try and hurt Clark, these characters know this, and the whole scene just came off a little too artificially pumped up with angst that shouldn’t have been there in the first place.  I might have been able to overlook this if the show kept going with it and made it logical, but in the very next scene, we have AC and Mera calmly talking to Clark about why exactly they targeted the oil rig.  As it turns out, the rigs are actually holding facilities for the world’s superheroes.  Once he discovers this, Clark is onboard with the cause.  So it begs the question, why not just have had this exchange to begin with instead of the senseless, counter-productive posturing these three did a few moments ago?  Evidently, the show just needed some added drama, and so it stopped making sense for a few minutes.

After much financial wooing, Oliver finally agreed to sign on as the President's Chief Advisor on Superheroic Affairs.

There’s also a brief scene thrown into the mix where Lois meets with Colonel Wilson and manages to sneak a snapshot of the blueprints of the oil rig.  Going through “Patriot” scene by scene, I’m struck by just how contrived it all really is.  Why would the Colonel keep such sensitive information out on his desk for anyone to see?  It just doesn’t make the slightest bit of sense to me, except that Lois needed a reason to be useful in this particular show, so it just happened that way.  Also, the scene between them goes on for quite a while, and the only thing that really goes on is her getting that picture.  Most of their discussion is very similar to her talks about the superheroes with her father in the early scenes of “Ambush”, and this scene just feels like more of the same – with the token military character painted as a hard-edged, stubborn man of paranoia.  Coming off far better is the following sequence with Lois and Tess.  It made me realize how great Erica and Cassidy play off of each other, and I hope they have a chance to do so a lot more after the events of “Patriot”.  I love how these two have a love / hate relationship and somehow know they can work together even if they’re keeping each other at a distance for (ironically) the same reasons.  I also enjoyed how it was their mutual worry for Oliver as he officially signed his registration that wound up bringing them together here.  It was really great to see the two of them begin this scene suspicious of one another and end it with this sense that they were together in at least their concern for someone else.

Sudden descents into homicidal tendencies must run in the family, huh, Lo?

I hate to hurl one criticism at “Patriot” after another, but the show’s editing really stands out as particularly problematic in breaking things out for this review.  In yet another contrivance, we jump to Lois waiting for Dr. Emil at Metropolis General.  Apparently, the writers were foreshadowing John Glover’s return this week by having Lois walk out of the shadows in a room that she’d been standing in for God knows how long.  Clark has supposedly been mentioning Dr. Emil’s name a lot (though we’ve never seen one instance of this occurring), so she knew to question him.  Okay, that’s slightly difficult to swallow in one piece, but I’ll try my best to be the apologist I have it in me to be and go with it.  I’m not sure how I feel about Lois’s threat – and retraction – to Dr. Emil, though.  Something felt a bit odd about that.  Lois has a certain way of doing things, and again, she just seemed out of character in this episode for me.  I liked the way she did things in “Supergirl”.  That’s how you present our Lois as someone who stands with Clark.  Having her hold a medical tool to someone’s neck doesn’t really feel as heroic somehow.  Maybe it’s just me.

While he didn't yet average 1850 lbs of pressure per square inch, Ollie was definitely building some hurting bombs.

Clark and AC have found a new locale as well, aboard one of the rigs that Mera has located by tracing seismic activity.  This is all glossed over very quickly, and again, it really came off as a means of getting our characters from one place to another (however loosely connected the dots were) as quickly and cleanly as possible.  We get a few moments here of AC telling Clark that he should give Lois more of a chance to be a part of his life before the two quickly split up and head off to separate installations in hopes of rescuing Oliver.  We get a quick shot of AC coming to a stop in front of his target before things switch to Ollie, who’s somehow found his way into Ivan Drago’s high-tech training facility from “Rocky IV” (an analogy I might not have drawn quite so quickly had the workout montage not also been shot just like “Rocky IV”).  I was a little confused with the exchange here between Oliver and the Colonel.  It seems that after undergoing a series of rigorous physical endurance tests in the middle of nowhere, Ollie is only now beginning to ask questions about why he’s here and what Slade wants with him.  Naturally, the Colonel shows his true colors here, and we discover that he’s managed to capture AC – a much-needed action sequence which unfortunately took place entirely off-screen.

"What do you mean what am I doing here? What are YOU doing here? And where is AC? And why is Mera naked? Heeeeeey..."

I suppose that had I gone into “Patriot” just accepting that people in this episode had developed teleportation and telepathy powers, I could have enjoyed it a bit more than I ultimately did.  Having learned from Dr. Emil that Clark and AC are in Miami, Lois naturally finds them instantly.  The very next time we see her after booking a flight is walking into AC and Mera’s place.  I mean, don’t get me wrong, I know that TV shows are structured in such a way that they need to move things along and certain details are meant to be understood, but seriously, this particular episode just asks too much of us as an audience for my taste.  It almost makes me wonder if “Patriot” was once planned as a two-parter and then later shortened.  It just moves too quickly to be remotely fluid (no pun intended).  Mera begins this scene being just about as inhospitable with Lois as she was with Clark.  I can’t imagine she has many visitors acting this way to newcomers.  Having established for the first time in this episode that Lois apparently has some latent inferiority issue with Clark, the writers give Mera the opportunity to play on it a bit, setting up a rivalry between the two girls that never really comes to much of anything.  When Lois is finally shown inside, she meets up with Clark who is…well, I’m not exactly sure what he’s doing back here if I’m being honest.  I thought we’d established that he and AC were checking out the other oil rigs to try and retrieve Oliver, but I guess Clark just deemed that whole thing a job for Aquaman?  Well all right, then.

There were certain things that one could not unsee, and Tess had just found out the hard way that it may not have been a good idea to have wall-mounted flat panels absolutely everywhere.

While the process of getting “Patriot” to this point may have been insanely hard to buy for me, the payoff was darn-near worth it.  This, to me, was the turning point on which the entire feel and effectiveness of this show hinged.  As much as I found myself scratching my head through the first half of it, I thought the rest of “Patriot” was a huge improvement overall.  The scene here with Lois just being there with Clark when Tess calls in to give him her update was so great.  The look on Tess’s face was hilarious to say the least.  I love the play on dramatic irony that was done with these characters, and it’s fantastic to see this series finally have some fun with its ever-more-complex web of who knows what about Clark and about one another.  Naturally, Lois’s earlier photograph comes in quite handy here, as the group deduces that Oliver and AC are both being held in the one facility that’s fully operational.  Yes, it says right there on the blueprints that only one of the planned facilities is online, and the address for said facility is clearly labeled in the image Lois managed to capture in low light on her smart phone.  Okay, I promise I’ll stop questioning these things now.

AC had heard that the best part of Splashwater Falls was walking across the bridge at the end. He was not disappointed.

After we get a few more minutes of Slade droning on and threatening AC and Oliver, Mera is the first one on site to get the two of them out.  She uses her power to manipulate water to break the tank that Ollie’s been immersed in and drench AC, powering him enough to break his chains.  It almost made me wonder how, if AC’s really that powerful with just a thin coating of water, Slade managed to capture him to begin with (even if he did know he was coming).  But I suppose he had something specific set up as a snare just as he does with Clark when he runs into him in the hallway.  Slade attempts to shoot Clark and succeeds in taking a ricochet to his arm for his effort.  Just as Clark begins moving toward him to get him off the rig before it self-destructs, Slade lowers a cage powered with Kryptonite around Clark, containing him.  I really like how  Clark continues to try and reach Slade, even when it’s painfully obvious that there’s no way he’s going to be swayed an inch.  It’s only after he uses his x-ray vision and notices the Omega symbol in Slade’s forehead that Clark realizes who he’s dealing with and accepts that he can’t help him.  They’re taken great strides lately in bringing Clark much closer to the iconic Man of Steel that we all know he’ll eventually become.  He truly believes in the good in everyone and that all people can be saved, even those like Slade who are pretty much beyond reason or redemption.  I think it’s that quality that has led some to feel that Superman is a bit too much of a naïve, idealistic boy scout.  And yet it’s also what gives him his greatest strength and sets him apart from every other hero out there.  He believes because he chooses to, not because there’s a mountain of evidence of man’s inherent goodness in front of him.  Speaking of the phrase “Man of Steel”, there’s a terrific nod to it here at the end of this scene as the oil rig explodes with Clark and Slade both still aboard.  All in all, the action climax of “Patriot” doesn’t disappoint.  It did come off a bit like a lower-rent version of “Justice” at times (and I think it probably would have played better had that not been in the back of my mind as I was watching), but it was still very entertaining and got me back into the show in a big way.

"Do you always have to wear that same blue t-shirt, Clark"? "Oh, sure, look who's talking"!

As “Patriot” winds down, we get a trio of reconciliation scenes.  The first is with Clark and AC, and I swear, you’d never guess that these were the same two characters from the beginning of this episode to hear them talk now.  AC tells Clark that he trusts him and that, from now on, he and Mera will lead by example and not resistance.  They also have a few words about Lois and how Clark needs to allow her to become more involved in his world if he’s going to stay with her.  I really think this is a fantastic place to take things with Lois, and I hope it sticks going forward.  Clark has always looked at the people he’s been with as vulnerable and as people he had to worry about protecting or putting in harm’s way constantly.  The only way that can be avoided with Lois is if he starts letting her in more than he has, and as much as I think this point was made out of convenience by having Lois exhibit characteristics that were pretty unlike her, I’m glad it was made nonetheless.  The second scene is one with Lois and Mera.  Mera concedes that, while Lois isn’t super-powered, she’s the companion that Clark needs to fulfill his destiny.  Again, I don’t mean to take away from a scene that I actually enjoyed watching in saying this, but it just didn’t ring true thematically for me.  Mera spends so much time belittling Lois earlier in this same episode for being a mere mortal that it just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense for her opinion to be completely changed after seeing Lois bring Clark a screen shot of a few blueprints.  Sure, she says it’s because Lois demands that Clark treat her as an equal, but we really haven’t seen a whole lot between Lois and Clark with Mera present to justify that belief suddenly manifesting.  On the other hand, I did really appreciate how well this scene tied in as a bookend to Lois’s talk with Kara at the end of “Supergirl”.  On the whole, though, I kind of hope this is the last we hear of Lois wondering if she’s “good enough” to be with someone meant for a life like Clark’s.  They chose each other, and they should be partners in all things and shelve the uncertainty now that they’re finally together.

"Oh my God...it's a diamond. I can't believe he actually got me a CLARK"!!

Our final of the three make-up scenes is definitely my favorite.  Lois and Clark appear to finally bury their issues with being with one another, and the two get a lot of things settled that have been gestating on “Smallville” long before Lois was even in the picture.  I love the implication here that things truly are that much easier when you’re finally with the right person, and Lois seemed to assuage about ten seasons of fear, doubt and responsibility in Clark here in about two minutes of screen time.  I really enjoy the way they are writing Lois and Clark in Season 10.  They both have the unerring ability to make the other feel okay about being exactly who they are.  If there’s one thing that makes Clois work it’s that, in a sense, both of them have the same neuroses about themselves, and when they’re together, they help each other find a way through them.  It’s interesting, because that’s much the same as a real-world, healthy relationship actually functions.   It’s not about being a perfect person, or even close to it.  It’s about finding someone who can love you because of – and not despite of – your imperfections and, over time, maybe even make you see those parts of yourself through their eyes.  Lois and Clark do this for each other, and I really love how things were changed up here, with Clark reassuring Lois about their relationship and Lois reassuring Clark about what he needs to do in the larger picture of being a hero.

"And this is where your cousin's husband was brutally run through by the Kryptonian Death Monster she was harboring".

As much as I loved that scene, though, the next one is even better.  It’s interesting how you can watch so many seasons of a television show and never see element A mixed with B, but be intimately familiar with both.  Season 10 seems on some level to be about pushing things together that we’ve seen play out for years separately.  One such example was Lois’s fortress scene in “Abandoned”.  Another is this scene.  Lois gets her first look at Watchtower, and it’s really a weird thought to think that Erica has never been shot on this set before now.  I sort of missed the inclusion of a line about how this place was Jimmy’s wedding gift to Chloe, and how Lois’s cousin had been keeping them all safe from this position for the last few years.  Those little bits of information seem to me like they’d have meant an awful lot to Lois, but I suppose I need to finally come to terms with this show having amnesia about all things Jimmy Olsen.  Such is life.  Tess and Lois’s banter comes full circle here, with Tess descending from the staircase in grandiose fashion, like an overlord of the place.  Ollie’s entrance was probably my favorite, though.  He played shocked but instantly accepting and hospitable to absolute perfection with his “Lois!…hi” delivery, and it made me smile when I heard it.  I don’t know if I was the only one, but I got a twinge of excitement in seeing Clark brief everyone on the nature of Darkseid with Lois present.  The low-angle shot of everyone listening to him lay things out was really wonderful-looking.  Speaking of that, I do have to commend all involved for making “Patriot” look amazing.  As I said earlier, this seemed like a much bigger-budget episode than it probably was, and that’s a great testimony to the work the creative team does every week.  I’m also really glad that a way was found to explain away the Colonel’s actions by saying he was taken over by Darkseid, not just that he was from a military background (though Clark’s apparent “doodle” of the omega symbol really made me chuckle – that thing was pretty amazingly done unless he had a stencil of it lying around).  As Clark explains just how high the stakes are this time, I was suddenly struck once again with a feeling of sadness that we’ll soon be saying goodbye to all of these characters.  I feel like everything is finally all falling into place, where it’s been headed inexorably for the last ten years…and yet when we finally get there, it’ll be over.  It’s both exhilarating and terribly depressing all at once.

"I am Locutus of Borg. Resistance is futile".

The final shot of the episode reveals that Slade, too, has survived the rig explosion and has upped his evil factor with a metal eye plate which, as we all know, makes a comic book villain just that much more formidable.  I know it probably seems like a hated “Patriot”, but the odd thing was that I really didn’t.  I was entertained for the most part (though, admittedly, I did find a good portion of the first half a bit too talky for my taste), and I thought the episode rounded out with a series of really great scenes to balance out an uneven beginning.  I just couldn’t quite suspend my disbelief in all the places that I felt I needed to to fully enjoy this entry.  Usually, I don’t have that problem when watching a show about a man who has superpowers as it kind of comes with the territory, but I just felt that too much went unexplained this time for me to give the episode a full pass.  Still, “Patriot” wasn’t my least-favorite episode of Season 10 (that dubious honor still goes to “Shield”), and I really, really loved the final few scenes with Lois coming into her own as a part of Clark’s team.  Hopefully, “Luthor” will be a fantastic return vehicle for John Glover, and I know I’m not the only one who remembers the comment that we’d see a Lois and Clark engagement “within the next three episodes”.  That was – let me see – two episodes ago.  Is anyone else out there excited?