neurological dryer lint

switching from good entertainment to terrible, i forgot to mention the train wreck that was smallville: in china!. that show has gone from good to cheesy & repetitive to barely watchable to "i can't believe someone let that be produced".

i seriously think every week they just take the script from the week before, find & replace some names, switch the locations up at random, change some dialogue and film it. watch the next time someone comes into lex's office (for a mansion with security, everyone in the city manages to get themselves in with no trouble). the dialogue will involve a non-lex character walking in, accusing lex of something. lex will respond with the character's name and then 'you must have been talking to [my father/clark/lana/jason/jason's mom/new character of the week].' and then offer a retort about why that character is actually the one at fault. if non-lex character = clark, the scene will end with lex asking clark a question, and then clark just standing there looking at the camera until the scene ends. if non-lex character = lionel, the scene will involve no less than twelve obscure classic literary references. oh, and if you ever want to find anything lex is hiding, you'll want to look in the middle center of his bookshelf.

i could go on and on, about clark's parents and their cookie-cutter portrayal every week (every line out of mr. kent: "clark, son, your mother and i have told you not to [insert thing clark shouldn't be doing this week], you KNOW that, son!");

clark doing something conspicuous in the loft of the barn that at least two people walk in to uninvited every episode, and he still looks shocked;

smallville's hospital and their single free room, and everyone in smallville's tremendous medical insurance;

metropolis, where every week it's 15 minutes closer than it was last week. originally it was supposed to be 3 hours away, i think we're down to an hour now. and apparently they have the best doctors on the planet there, cause lex always offers to fly them in whenever anyone gets a paper cut;

clark, out of prison even though he's been at the scene of every major crime in the city in the last four years... you get the idea.

i did go on and on, my bad.

there is a suspension of disbelief, yes, we're talking about a hugely powerful alien raised by humans. but that suspension doesn't cover dry, unoriginal acting, HORRIBLE writing (a character should say the name of the person he's talking to at least four times in every line), ridiculous, laughable storylines (they're chasing three mystic stones that apparently are from krypton - where every ancient mystery on Earth now has its origins)... this last episode, seriously, no one must have paid attention while they were shooting it. the first and last 10 minutes of the show were typical smallville, and the middle 40 were just embarassing. don't even get me started on the super-lassie episode from last week.

so why do i still watch smallville? i honestly don't know. it's like a train wreck anymore - just can't look away. only one more season, and honestly i'm kinda curious how they'll end it and if season five will be worth it at all. and i want to see lana learn the truth about clark. i'm sure it'll involve lana staring at the camera for ten minutes, followed by a shrewish, half-angry, half-poor-me, everyone-lies-to-me-arent-i-cute line that clark can't seem to logically respond to without staring at the floor like someone just took his lunch money.

oh, and enterprise was canceled. it won four emmys. just like to point that out.