#welcome to cake critique with your host lionel luthor

[jupitermelichios]

Smallville S2E21: Excelarate

Chloe functionally isn’t in this episode, and I’m 100% here for that. Long may it continue

Who decided that teen genre shows would all feature cinemas which show black and white horror movies? Why is that a thing?

We’re getting right into the plot with minimal bullshit this week – Lana is clearing up the cinema (we’re had multiple episodes about contracts involving the cinema, and this is the first time we’re actually seeing it) when the projector starts playing a home movie of Lana as a kid, and then the kid from the home movie just fucking teleports in and freaks her out. To be fair to the show, it’s actually a surprisingly effective horror bit. It would be more effective it is was happening to literally anyone other than Lana, but hey.

The not-ghost is in Lana’s bedroom now. Which would be spookier if anyone in this fucking town LOCKED THEIR FUCKING DOORS

Okay, so the little girl is Lana’s childhood best friend who drowned, and Lana has screaming nightmares about it. Hands up who thinks this trauma is ever going to be addressed again after this one specific episode?

Oooh, concept – youtube channel where professional stylish bastard Lionel Luthor does food criticism

Okay why is this, why is ‘Lana’s being fucking haunted’ the point at which Chloe draws the line? Insect men? Sure, everyone knows Amazonian tribes can do that. Shapeshifters? Obviously. Vampires? Totally a legit thing. Ghosts though? No way, that’s just fucking weird.

I need some context for how far it is from Granville to Smallville, because this small not a ghost apparently walked it no problems

Oh good, we’re like three scenes in and the meteor kid du jour has already murdered someone. Why does everyone in this fucking town turn to murder as their first option!

Why does no one in the show own an umbrella? Is the director just real into seeing Clark get all wet? Because I try not to kink shame, but that’s just weird.

I love that this kid decided the best way to reconnect with her old friend was to go full on Chucky

I know for a fact Smallville hospital has security, so why the fuck are people allowed to just wander in and out of patients hospital rooms? Especially when so many of them end up being there to kill someone!

“Who needs human friends when you could have a definitely haunted evil doll?” Learning some things about Lana today.

Lana and Clark are way too okay with finding creepy murder basements. I know that happens to them like once a month, but I really don’t feel like that’s something anyone should get used to.

Okay, I get why a mad scientist might want to clone his dead daughter. I get why he’d do it in a creepy murder basement. The thing I don’t get is why the fuck he gave her superspeed of all thing, speaking as someone who’s done a fair bit of babysitting in their life, that seems like the worst possible power to give to a nine year old.

Why the fuck is the not-ghost murder child sitting in a creepy rocking chair like she’s fucking sweet Audrina. Wait, little girl who’s not the same as a dead little girl but might be the same and she’s got a rocking chair and her dad is trying to force her to remember her childhood trauma… Oh fuck, Smallville was bad enough without bring VC Andrews into it. What’s next, a flowers in the attic episode? I guess incest is the one taboo they haven’t gone to bat for yet in this show.

Lex I love you, but if you don’t want people to think you’re a supervillain you really need to stop starting conversations with “all ethics aside…”

Okay, I can forgive Lana a little bit for her shit because she at least knows that if a child gives you a drawing you have to say you like it, even if the child is a murder-clone

“She’s got severe chromosomal damage, she has no concept of right or wrong.” What the fuck does that have to do with chromosomes, Smallville writers?! Could it be that maybe she has no morals because she’s three days old!

Oh wow, we’re two season in and it turns out Kristin Kruek can actually act? And I get why you wouldn’t bother with scripts of this calibre, but I can’t help feeling her career wouldn’t have had to go full on Legend of Chun Li if she’d just tried at least this much more often.

That might just be the worst fake CPR in the whole history of fake CPR, and that’s really saying something.

Holy shit, are actions having consequences? Are we getting… fallout? Someone official has actually noticed all the people who died in the white saviour prophesy caves, and yeah it took Lionel bribing them for their to be any action, but they did something! That’s a major step forward. I’m proud of you Kansas state government.

So every character arc in this episode can by summarised as “Bitch, get some got damned therapy!”. None of them are going to get any therapy.

Hey does anyone remember that episode of Buffy with the invisible girl, and at the end it turns out there’s a whole government department that recruits invisible kids as assassins? Yeah, that. Lionel is doing that. I should probably be less on board with that than I am, but honestly as the only person in this show who actually gets shit done, I’d rather Lionel had the evil superpowered clone army than, say, the government.