"Thirst" - Smallville

For many shows, airing at least one holiday-themed episode is sort of a tradition.  Christmas seems to be the most popular subject, but appearances by Hanukkah, New Years’ Eve/Day, Thanksgiving, and others are certainly not unheard of.  Having lasted an impressive ten seasons, Smallville had plenty of time to air plenty of episodes about plenty of holidays, and in Season Five, they decided to go the spooky route with a tangentially Halloween-themed episode, complete with costume parties and hot lady vampires.  Boy, was that ever dumb.

The ONLY bright spot here is that this was made before Twilight, so they couldn’t rip it off or make “fun” references.  And that is the only Twilight reference I will make in this review.  I knew you’d be expecting it, so I got it out of the way early so that, like the later Hitchcock cameos, it won’t distract you from enjoying the rest of the show.  You’re welcome.

I haven’t seen it in a while (except for this episode), but I liked Smallville.  For the first three seasons.  Then it started getting repetitive and focusing on that idiot Lana instead of that idiot Clark and nobody ever seemed to remember the lessons they learned six flipping episodes ago and then Michael Rosenbaum left and… anyway.  The episode I’m looking at today, “Thirst,” isn’t necessarily bad for any of the reasons I just mentioned.  No, this one is something extra special.

In the first few minutes, we find out that the whole thing is from aspiring reporter Chloe Sullivan’s perspective.  For those who haven’t seen the show, Chloe was created specifically for Smallville, probably so that people wouldn’t complain that Clark had no female friends outside of his love interest. (Lois Lane, Chloe’s more popular cousin, didn’t show up until Season Four.) Chloe is considerably more awesome than Lana.  At least in my house, don’t know about yours.

So why is this from Chloe’s perspective, you might very well ask?  Turns out that the only way to get her dream internship at the Daily Planet is to impress Pauline Kahn, the horrible and mean-spirited editor-in-chief, with a truly sensational news story.   Evidently, the story Chloe thought would impress her most was the one about the bloodsuckers’ sorority.  Spoiler alert: Kahn thinks it’s stupid.  And yes, that is what this episode is about—sorority girls who are vampires.  Yay?

So anyway, the real story begins at the Tri Psi Sorority House at Metropolis University, where we meet the world’s luckiest pizza delivery guy.

 

Of course, when I say “luckiest,” I’m referring to bad luck, not good.  The girls get him naked in a hot tub where they eventually get around to revealing they’re vampires and do what vampires do.

 

Okay, first off, there is no way that much blood could have gotten into the Jacuzzi that fast, he’s been bitten like four times max.  Unless he’s a hemophiliac, which just makes the whole thing worse.  (Though yes, fine, it does look kinda cool.)  Second, why?  Okay, sure, they’re vampires so they need to drink blood to survive, but… why a pizza guy?  It’s obvious from the bikinis that their plan was to seduce the pizza guy, but did they ask specifically for a gullible male delivery guy?  Do they order pizza a lot and know that they’d get a man to deliver it?  How did they know they wouldn’t get a faithful guy in a relationship?  Or a heterosexual female?  When you’re dealing with a need as necessary as food, it seems to me that you wouldn’t want to take quite this many chances. 

And while we’re at it, why don’t we ever hear about this again?  Didn’t the pizza place realize one of their guys had gone missing while making deliveries and start asking questions?  I have to assume he was one of those jerks who steal their coworkers’ lunches out of the office fridge and nobody liked him anyway.

Meanwhile, back in Smallville, Lana tells Clark at the very last second (she’s literally packing and about to head out the door) that she’s going to college at Metropolis University instead of Central Kansas A & M University, which is the school Clark attends.  Yeah, this is the quality of people we’re dealing with.  They selfishly keep secrets from loved ones and then try to justify it with “I totally had your best interest at heart, I swear!” (Though in this case, Lana claims that she “didn’t want to get her hopes up” about getting into Met U, but that doesn’t explain why she didn’t tell Clark about her acceptance right away.)  And that goes for everybody, not just Lana.  I really have to wonder why I watched this show as long as I did…

Whatever.  This little twist only exists to push the story forward, as the only campus housing left for Lana to apply for is at the Tri Psi Sorority.  At said sorority, we meet the members, including the leader, named Buffy Sanders.  I’ve never seen Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but Smallville’s Buffy is an evil blonde clique chick cliché that probably annoyed the heck out of the Buffy fans and forced only a mild chuckle and an eye roll from the rest of us.  Even Chloe points this out when she says that the names of everyone in this story have been “changed for the vapid.” (So why does she still refer to Clark and Lana as Clark and Lana?) They’re clearly acknowledging that this was a stupid attempt at humor aimed at knuckleheads, so why’d they do it?

Oh yeah, and we also meet the sorority’s token black girl.  See if you can find her!

 

This is probably at least partially justified, considering that black people make up a grand total of 6.1% of the population of Kansas as of 2011, though I somehow doubt that was going through the casting director’s head when he/she was hiring the girls for this episode.  Especially since she never shows up again.  So I guess my mentioning her was just an excuse to show off my rad research skillz.  …^_^

Meanwhile, at Clark’s college, our hero (?) is sitting through what appears to be a, uh… historeconaticology class... when perennial antagonist Lex Luthor randomly walks in.  The professor takes this opportunity to not-so-subtly blast LexCorp for the last few minutes of the class, and once the students leave, Lex has a chat with the professor, Milton Fine. (Yes, that makes him Brainiac, but that’s really not relevant to this episode except insofar as he is played by Spike from Buffy.)

 

"You've been painting me as the poster child for corporate villainy.  Some of the things you say come dangerously close to libel."

No, it’s only libel if it’s in writing.  You’d think the Luthor family would be more familiar with this concept than a blogger who saw Spider-Man, but apparently not.

 

"Slander's spoken.  In print it's libel."

A little later, Fine shows up at the Luthor mansion to banter and exchange veiled threats with Lex.  Blah blah blah, the point is to show that Fine can access Lex’s super-secret no-touchy files any time he wants, a skill which will come in handy in about twenty minutes or so.

Back at Met U, Lana has earned her spot in the sorority.  Already.  Well that was quick.  Now there’s only one initiation ritual left—hot off-screen lesbian kissing.  Apparently, a little same-sex action is a small price to pay for gaining the ability to get punched down a flight of stairs by your sorority sister and live to tell the tale.  I for one would like a follow-up episode investigating whether or not the fraternity guys feel the same way.  For science.

 

If you listen to the commentary (featuring the creators Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, episode writer Steve DeKnight, and executive producer Ken Horton), you find out that the kissing scene was a relatively last-minute addition and was shot with body doubles, hence the shadows.  So they don’t get any flack from me for being afraid of the censors.  Of course, all of that credit is immediately taken back two scenes later when one of the guys (not sure who) refers to Chloe’s college roommate, who only has one scene, as adding a little “Hispanic spice” to the show.  Yes, because THAT’S what Hispanic actresses bring to the table—SPICE.  And when they don’t, they’re bringing in the CLEAN TOWELS.  (Looking at you, Arrow.)

Meanwhile, Chloe and Clark have become concerned about Lana’s behavior—she’s staying up late drinking and treating Clark like dirt—so they decide to infiltrate the Tri Psi Sorority at a conveniently timed costume party.  They arrive during an equally conveniently timed flash of lightning.

 

Ha, ha, Clark has a mask and is dressed as superhero.  Ha, ha, Clark later complains about how much he hates masks.  NEXT.

They discover a newspaper article that partially explains how the vampire sorority came into existence.

 

If you can’t read that, it says that Buffy spent three days trapped in a bat cave outside Smallville.  That happened six years ago and she’s been… at Met U ever since?!  Buffy’s been at Met U for six years?!  I know it’s taking longer and longer for people to graduate these days, but I always got the feeling they’d kick you out eventually.  Also, the article never specifies what kind of bat cave it was, but Lex later confirms that they were vampire bats.  Which is impossible, since vampire bats don’t live anywhere near Kansas.  DO YOUR HOMEWORK.

The costume party comes to an abrupt end for our intrepid investigators when Lana, upon losing the hot guy she was about to take a chunk out of, makes a meal out of Chloe instead.  Clark gets to her just in time and takes Chloe to the hospital, where they have no idea what’s wrong or how to save her.  Apparently she caught vampire rabies or something.

That’s when Fine waltzes back into the plot, finds out what happened to Chloe, and tells Clark to ask Lex about a certain project of his, Project 1138.  Clark does so, and several intimate close-ups later, Lex reveals that LexCorp was responsible for saving Buffy from that cave.  He goes on to say that the cave where Buffy was found was home to a population of vampire bats (@!%$&*!) infected by meteor rocks (kryptonite).  After being bitten by them one too many times, she and one of the LexCorp employees who helped rescue her developed vampiric tendencies.  This led to the development of an antidote and... wait, WHAT?!!!

 

YOU HAD THE ANTIDOTE THIS WHOLE TIME????  You... you just... you developed a vampire cure, used it to save your employee, but didn’t think to monitor Buffy for the same vampire disease and then cure her when she displayed symptoms?!  Are you kidding me!!  What kind of rescue operation was this!  You dunderheads not only failed Buffy, you failed the dozen-or-so sorority girls that Buffy also infected, not to mention what must be the hundreds of bloodless corpses that were their victims!  What were you trying to do, create a vampire apocalypse?!

(Yeah, and look at what they are using to keep the antidote active—a big old stalactite of kryptonite.  Kryptonite?  On Smallville???  Be still my beating heart!  And why does Lex have a whole suitcase full of antidote just lying around anyway?)

The sorority girls aren’t happy that Lana left her victim alive—the ultimate vampire faux-pas—and insist that the only way she can atone for her sin is to bring Clark in for an all-you-can-eat buffet.  Lana goes to get him, interrupting the lovely moment Lex and Clark were having.  Clark, weakened by the kryptonite, can’t resist when Lana starts drinking his blood, which gives… her… heat vision.  Um.  Fairly certain Clark’s powers aren’t stored in his blood cells.  Though since Lana only gains the heat vision and nothing else, apparently all of his other powers are stored elsewhere.  Does that make it more or less stupid?

Lana (somehow) lugs Clark (still clutching the cure, evidently—you’d think she’d have taken that away by now) back to Tri Psi.  She tries to convince Buffy to turn Clark into a vampire instead of eating him, but when Buffy laughs her off, Lana unleashes the full fury of her heat vision, though since we’ve already been shown that it’s impossible to kill a vampire for more than five seconds, I’m sure it’ll have no effect on—

 

Holy flipping animal crackers, what the Funk and Wagnall’s was that?!  What ever happened to vampires being immortal?  They can survive being punched down two flights of stairs and breaking every bone in their bodies, but they can’t reconstitute themselves after being barbecued?  What are the rules for this? 

Whatever.  Lana’s the new queen of Tri Psi until she tries to convert Clark to vampirism in a scene that looks a little too rapey for my tastes, but Clark delivers a shot of the antidote just in time. 

Like I said, Pauline Kahn thinks the vampire story is a load of hooey (despite all the super-special official evidence Chloe brought in) but she thinks Chloe has talent and hires her anyway.  So Chloe gets to work at the Planet, Clark and Lana’s relationship gets to limp along another day, and the fact that Lana totally murdered Buffy—who was not so much a villain as she was a victim, just like all the other girls at Tri Psi—is completely brushed under the carpet along with her heat vision, never to see the light of day again.

Even back when I genuinely enjoyed this series, “Thirst” was always the worst episode of the series for me, and apparently the creators agree.  (In the DVD commentary, one of the first comments is “this is a little thing we like to call ‘what the hell were we thinking’.”)  And yeah, it’s not hard to see why.  I can suspend my disbelief when it comes to space babies crash-landing in Kansas and people getting powers from glowy meteorites every other Thursday, but sorority vampires are where I draw the line.

Plus, aside from all the weirdness, the whole episode is… how do I put this… Swiss cheese.  Like I said, I haven’t seen Smallville in a while, so I don’t know if these kinds of gimundo plot holes are the norm, but dang they’re big.  Obviously, the fact that LexCorp never cured Buffy when they should have realized she was infected is the biggest offender, though I still wonder about that pizza guy.  Not to mention the other victims these girls must have killed over the years.  And speaking of cheese…

 

Their faces are like that the entire time.  Would you believe this episode was over-budget?

And honestly, even if there weren’t any plot holes or ridiculous overacting, I can’t get over the fact that Buffy was murdered and no one cares.  She wasn’t born a vampire—it was a disease she acquired either from her nights in the batcave.  Yes, she ended up spreading it to a bunch of other girls, who in turn helped spread it to still other girls, but that doesn’t make her any less a victim.  She could have been cured just as easily as any of the others if it weren’t for LexCorp’s stupidity and Lana’s vampirism.  She wasn’t the villain here in any way, shape or form.  Or at least, she wasn’t any more of a villain than the rest of Tri Psi, including Lana, and obviously they aren’t supposed to be looked at as anything but helpless victims.  How can you possibly justify her death?

And yeah, it doesn’t help that Lana was the one who did the killing, because Lana is a boring Mary Sue who kept getting shoved into the spotlight long after she should have become irrelevant.  The second Lois shows up, we know it’s going to turn into Lois and Clark eventually anyway, so why the drawn-out mess?  Why not have them break up and reduce her role?  Though I should probably qualify that by saying that foregone conclusions do not always have to ruin a plot—historical movies like 1776 and Gettysburg are both very entertaining in their own ways even though we know the outcomes from the word go, and that’s mostly due to the likeability of the characters.  Now if only Lana Lang was as sympathetic and lovable as General Pickett.

 

Next Time: Gonzo reviews a miniseries that features archers with all their limbs and little girls who haven’t been squished.  What a novelty!

Images from Smallville and Spider-Man