schmevil: (On your motherfucking knees)
schmevil ([personal profile] schmevil) wrote2003-11-19 11:20 pm
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Spoilery ramble about "Shattered": Woe is Clark

Clark suffers from a failure of imagination.

When he's pushed, he's reacts instinctively and irrational, protecting his secret, no matter the cost. He has two strategies:

1. Blanket denial.
2. Using his powers to trick or assault others.

He's used both of these on enemies, friends and hell, anyone who comes close to his secret. He's always been willing, when it comes down to it, to manipulate and hurt others in order to protect himself. Sure, he feels guilty afterward but keeps doing it. The thing is that if he applied some creativity to his problems, he wouldn't have to go around knocking people unconscious and making them doubt their sanity.

Clark is a nice boy. He worries about his friends. He takes care of them. He wallows in guilt.

Clark is also necessarily selfish. He has a secret that needs protecting and I forgive him for going to extreme lengths to protect himself. No one wants to end up in a government lab. Or a Luthor one, for that matter.

What I can't forgive is the sheer laziness that has him using the same fucking strategies, three years after he learned about his origins, and knowingly ruining his best friend's life, because he's never bothered to move past his instinctive reactions. He's not a dumb kid. He could have found a way out of that situation that didn't involve Lex being committed. But then, he could have found a way to put off Lex in the past that didn't involve assuring a man with obvious issues that he was just obsessive and more than a little odd. "Alien? What alien, man? You know, you really need to lay off the late night Star Trek reruns..." Or alternately. "Alien? Um... *bash* Sweet, Lex won't remember any of this when he wakes up!" He knows Lex has problems. He fucking KNOWS and he PLAYS on them.

It's cruel, it's thoughtless and it's lazy.

Clark knows better but he's so scared, so panicked, so unfuckingimaginative that he can't figure out another way of protecting himself.

It comes down to this:

Lionel and Clark have destroyed Lex, in order to protect themselves. The only real difference is that Lionel understands the consequences and doesn't care. Clark will rationalize his actions to the best of his ability, and will likely always feel some guilt over his betrayal. At least sociopath Lionel has a plan to ensure that Lex will be cared for. Clark likely figures there's nothing he can do. Woe is Clark.

I really don't have anything to say beyond that. Woe is Clark. He's a self-pitying child who needs to grow up and objectively work on his problems.

Hmph.

[identity profile] rivkat.livejournal.com 2003-11-20 05:34 am (UTC)(link)
I dunno, I agree with you in general -- Clark has bad coping strategies. This one, I think, is a bit harder to pin on him. First, he's sick and panicked, understandably so, after meeting the unfortunately living Morgan Edge, getting a facefull of Kryptonite, and having Lex threaten to shoot him (which has to bring up memories of Hug). And though Lex's "you're not even human" is, I think, not horrified but amazed, I suspect Clark hears it as an accusation and a rejection. So I understand why he ran. Also, as a matter of causation, I don't think staying would have helped. The doctor is Eeeevil, so she was hell-bent on locking Lex up anyway, even if Clark had (preposterously and/or dangerously) claimed that he did turn the car into crumpled tin foil just like Lex said. I mean, something strange obviously happened to the car, but that didn't keep Lex out of the loony bin, and at that point I doubt a signed note from God would have helped.

While Lex might reasonably feel betrayed, he was just threatening Clark's life after Clark stuck with him past the point of reason, and I think this time Clark had a much better excuse for cutting and running than with most of the head injuries & mockeries he's inflicted on Lex in the past.

[identity profile] schmevil.livejournal.com 2003-11-20 05:52 am (UTC)(link)
Well, yes. I know. I'm just being reactionary and my positions is, I think, essentially indefensible. Of course "Shattered" presents Clark with a uniquely complicated threat to his secret, but...

[identity profile] mollymoon.livejournal.com 2003-11-20 01:08 pm (UTC)(link)
Good ideas in there.

Moreover, I think that Clark wants the best of both possible worlds -- seen in later years by having two personas -- he wants to be the human boy-next-door and the superhero. He enjoys his powers (Did you see that spark in his eyes at one point in this episode when he was kicking ass?) and enjoys using them.

As for Lex, we got a good bit of back story in this ep on him as well... Did he really cause his baby brother's death? How many psychotic breaks has he had?

Lots of questions to answer...