Smallville review, Season 8, Episode 2 – “Plastique”

Assuming this is the last season of Smallville, I’ve decided to write mini-reviews for all 22 episodes. They won’t be written in order but later on it won’t matter; we’ll all be dead in 2012 when the asteroid strikes earth.

“Plastique”

Cheap-ass follow-up to the season 8 premiere. An off-camera bus explosion outside the Daily Planet introduces paramedic Davis Bloom, who is really Sam Witwer, the Sith Apprentice from Force Unleashed. Chloe befriends “Bette”, a sassy “15-yr-old” street urchin with Asian eyes who was on the bus (if there’s anything I hate more than women I’m not having sex with, it’s girl-women I’m not having sex with and can go to prison for having sex with). Bette shacks up with Chloe, then, Clark in tow, goes to look for “Tommy”, a suspect who was also on the bus.

Upon seeing Bette, athletic teen Tommy runs away, only to be thwarted by a chain link fence barely taller than him. Bette secretly uses some kind of heat vision and ignites one of a few FLAMMABLE oil drums conveniently stacked nearby. Clark, who can “hear a dog bark 10 miles away” and see bullets moving in slow motion, doesn’t notice what really happened. It’s probably better Tommy got roasted, otherwise his ghost would be pissed off Superman was 20 feet away yet couldn’t save him.

Back at the Planet, Lois announces her plan to get ahold of Tommy’s autopsy report and Clark lopes along after her to remind her how wrong it is to steal and that she’ll go to prison “for years”. (I hate when Clark is dumbed down, which means I’ll be hating a lot of casual moments this season).

Chloe and Davis Sith share a Moment screwing…in a light bulb at the” Isis Foundation”. Could Davis be some sort of new love interest for Chloe? Since Jimmy Olsen proposed at the end of Season 7, the timing is somewhat bad. OR IS IT? At “Metropolis General Hospital”, Lois shows off her arsensal of stolen electronic passcards to a worried Clark, who then runs into the Sith Paramedic.

“Chloe is engaged and I thought you were the engager, Clark!” “No, Bloom, I didn’t know she was engaged.” “Oops. Then don’t tell anyone, gotta go!”

According to the “medical” report, Tommy had a long rap sheet (!!!) but the barrel shrapnel from the explosion went toward him, not away! OMFG! Tommy was innocent and Chloe, Lois informs us with a “joke” 10-years too late, is babysitting “Psycho Spice”!

Meanwhile, Chloe and the Firestarter/Jailbait discuss “Black Creek”, the Lex-made prison-lab for people with powers where Chloe was captured last week but Bette was kept in for 3 years. (It should be noted here, for no reason at all, that while hot, Bette has a very annoying, shaky voice, which she uses to announce she’s going to silence Chloe with death).

Chloe runs and Clark arrives just in time to deflect Bette’s fire-eye-balls, thus completing this episode’s single minute total of special effects. After the commercial break, some flashing red/blue cop lights on the outside wall of Chloe’s loft explain that Bette has now been taken away to “Belle Reve”. This makes no sense since less than 5 mintues ago Bette was freaking out about The Authorities chasing and capturing her and has proven her willingness to kill people who help her, much les random strangers.

Tess “Cat Eyes” Mercer meets up with Bette in a green-glowing cage and invites her to join a team of others with powers, so either we’ll see Bette again later this season or we won’t.

Chloe calls Davis Unleashed but he can’t come to the phone, since he’s naked and curled into a ball in an alley! What the hell’s going on here?

And that’s that.

Congeniality

It’s not that I hate people

I just don’t like seeing them

or having to say Hi to them or driving on roads with them

or talking to them.

As the Poet said, I feel better when they’re not around.

As you read this you’re the perfect distance away.

Now we can be friends.

Thoughts deeper than you

“Could any Hell be more horrible than now, and real?”
— Jim Morrison

I’ve been thinking about suicide lately with the same conclusion Sam Kinison had about wife-beating: I don’t condone it, but I understand it.

I won’t kill myself.

For one thing, at my age there’s very little left to kill.  (- Bukowski)

Life is painful, unpredictable and typically just plain fucked-up in both meaning and execution: it’s unreasonable to believe that suicide would bring an immediate end to suffering from such a warped existence; suicide is the gleaming cheese in a mousetrap.

Suicide means physical death, but I don’t want death, because death means MORE: more suffering and more pleasure. I want neither, in favor of annihilation.

I’ve been fortunate enough to experience this annihilation, which is not an empty void but The Void, filled with Everything which is really only One thing. I could only enter this state of No-Mind under the aegis of a meditation master capable of projecting spiritual energy. The meditation group I was with only got to experience it perhaps a dozen times a year.

One minute I’d be sitting in my folding chair, the next there was NOTHING, all the chattering noise and nonsense composing the modern mind wiped clean like a giant eraser swiping across a dry erase board. Other types of meditation had different effects but coming out of the No-Mind sessions I always felt oddly refreshed.

No-Mind has been called ‘the only true final Enlightenment’ and if you’re lucky enough to merge with it beyond death, you win, that’s all, no more suffering, no more anything. Compared to this state, a heavenly afterlife seems ridiculous. If you can have limitless pleasurable experiences in Heaven, it stands to reason one moment will feel better for you than another. How is that Heaven? You’ll still be striving for MORE, even if by definition, in Heaven you always Receive it.

Nothingness sounds scary, I know. To a 300lb co-worker I presented the choice between a guaranteed immediate merging forever into nothingness or a chancy afterlife. His answer was, “I like existing.”

I do not like existing. I am trapped here, with none to rescue.

Another Jeopardy! Ball-Churner

There hasn’t been a hottie on America’s favorite trivia game show in awhile.  Kara more than makes up for this.  She would’ve made a better Supergirl than the eponymous ‘Kara’ on Smallville.

Kara lasted two days on Jeopardy! to my none.  She’s a high school history teacher and, being as hot as she is, has great potential to end up on The Smoking Gun.

She told Alex one of the two foreign language phrases she used while vacationing was something to the effect of:  “Is it OK to swim naked here?”  I think Trebek went home and masturbated furiously.  Wait, that was me, except it couldn’t have been, since Trebek had to go home and I was already home.

Seepage

Attempting to write anything of substance is futile when the bad news comes faster than the twitters of a coked-up OCD-enjoyer (that’s right–enjoyer--OCD folks are too busy to suffer).

I like the saying that, ‘it will take 4 years for the people who voted for Maobama to understand why the other half of the country voted against him’ except I don’t think we’ll make it a whole year before something collapses.

I had nothing to my name before this “sudden crisis”, no property and no stocks. Now it seems, once again, everyone is trying to emulate me, even if they don’t want to. I’d say it’s depressing except I already enjoy depression.

You must understand that if The Kenyan and the entire cast of fools in DC were beamed up by benevolent aliens and then beamed into the sun, the nightmare would not end. Half the country thinks they are owed a living from the other half by the virtue of merely existing. There is just as much to fear from the other side as a tyrannical government.

I try not to let it get me down but if you care at all, it will seep in. Learn to accept it. Countries rise and countries fall.