Tone Deaf: Whisper
Written by Hope

I won't say Ken Horton, the screenwriter responsible for tonight's episode, "Whisper," is a freelancer, because in a review in the near future I get to eat crow when "Magnetic"'s Holly Harold returns to Smallville, but I will say that this is Horton's first script for the show, and universe willing, it'll be his last. Oh, I was in tears by the end of the episode, but I'm afraid they were tears of laughter.

"Whisper" has to be the most unintentionally funny episode of "Smallville" ever aired, and quite frankly, I don't know where to begin. It was like funhouse-vision; all of these characters of whom we've grown so fond and not so fond, were walking around in a familiar setting, but based on their characterization, the screamingly bad dialogue coming from their mouths, and the total disappearance of all logic, external or internal, I really have to wonder if Clark and friends weren't ducking down alleys to smoke crack while we weren't looking.

I'll start with the good things about this episode, because it's a very, very short list. Chloe and Lionel's scenes together were strong; and the complication of what Clark overheard and shared with Lex turned their overall arc for this season nicely. Lana was actually consistently written for once, and fairly sympathetically at that. It was wonderful to see a script that tried to incorporate the entire ensemble cast, welcome back Pete and Martha.

And that's about it on the good side.

Horton is plainly acquaintances with these characters, and that's a shame, because the rampant crack problem in Smallville tonight has become canon. Chloe is, apparently, so brain damaged that she'd expect Clark to truly understand her terrible plight with Lionel. Then, to escape the horrors of that, she smoked a little *more* crack to allow herself to believe that after Lionel threatened to kill her column at the Planet, and fire her father if she didn't behave, she was shocked that Lionel *actually* killed her column at the Planet and laid off her dad. Who'da'thunk it- he threatened her then carried through on it. A nice guy like Lionel, imagine that.

Clark is so high on crack that no matter how many times he's recovered from seemingly insurmountable physical ailment in the past to regain his powers, he believes the blindness he's experienced for a whole *day* is permanent enough to try to make time with Lana. (Is that a seeing eye dog in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me, Clark?) And since it takes Kryptonians longer to recover from the effects of crack, it seemed like a very, very good idea to bumble blindly into a rescue, and then *shout* for Pete, because the bad guy couldn't possibly be standing RIGHT THERE, could he??

Pete only had a tiny bit of crack; I guess he just wanted to show off the blind guy at school- chicks dig guys who wear accessories- since he already knew Clark's locker combination and thus, had no actual need to escort him into the school to retrieve his books.

Jonathan is so brain damaged that he will handcuff a doctor (very forgiving physician, not to have called the police- oh wait, was that a metaphor? sorry, the literal version works with all the crack they're smoking,) to have Clark's eyes looked at, in spite of the fact that he's performed *surgery* on his son in his very own kitchen to avoid medical intervention. Actually, I guess the doctor must have been signed up for a course of electroshock therapy, since that was a *reasonable* solution to Lex's little problem of knowing Clark's secret. Smallville's not going to have an ophthalmologist left, since I assume the Kent's didn't victimize the same doctor twice to get Clark's glasses. Martha's dose this week primarily came in the form of a contact high from standing next to Jonathan, nodding her head while he performed acts of crackheadedness near her.

And poor Lex- hasn't he been drugged enough? It's really unfair to make him drink crack juice, blithely fire a guy who *mortgaged his house* to help start LexCorp, after cozying up to Lionel (whom Chloe might have noticed, and perhaps she could have warned him, is not a very nice man,) to tattle the information that *Clark* so graciously shared with him. I mean come on, this is the man who managed to get Helen Bryce BACK ON AN AIRPLANE after she tried to kill him in one. ECT doesn't burn out *that* much grey matter. It had to be the crack.

A special award goes to Horton for pre-crackifying a character we hadn't even met before. Oh, poor Judge Abigail Ross (who is looking mighty *youthful* for a woman who's borne FIVE CHILDREN,) she must have been on the stem all through law school, skipping those vital courses in procedure. Since Judge Ross missed the class, let me fill you in: judges are allowed to remove themselves from a case because of conflict of interest. The kidnap and attempted murder of one's son to sway a judge's decision? That would be a conflict of interest. Just a teeny, tiny one. Itty bitty little legal technicality that anyone who's seen one episode of Law & Order, or hell, Ally McBeal, would know.

Shockingly enough, the only character consistently represented both within this episode, and in the greater framework of the show, was Lana. The status of her relationship with Clark hasn't really changed, and she remembered that she met someone new last week. She must be abstaining from the crack, as it probably interferes with her physical therapy. Okay, that's one more nice thing- and I did like the Lex and Lana scene. They continue to have a comfortably prickly, brother-and-sister rapport with each other. Paying off her bill *and* finding out who the strange guy she's been sending fruit baskets to, that's Lex. He must have skipped the juice for that scene.

In the past, I have defended FotWs as a storytelling tool; there are quite a few of them I enjoy as individual characters, and as a tool, I will continue to defend them. However, Yodel Boy- no, I'm sorry, I don't even care enough to go look up his name- would not be one of them. It's hard to watch the show when one is rolling on the floor in hysterical laughter, imagining much filthier names to call a mutant who can *vibrate his lips*, so suffice it to say, Yodel Boy will not be on my top 10,000 list of favorite FotWs.

On a side note- I don't know whether Clark's shades were in the screenplay or not, but whoever was responsible for letting them make it to the screen should be shot. Tom Welling has progressed beautifully as an actor since first season, but he needs his eyes to put in a good performance. With his best asset hidden, his performance is like staring at a block of very pretty wood for an hour, and between us? I don't stand in front of a Michelangelo that long. I'm just saying.

From a purely technical standpoint, I suspect that this script ran short. That's the only explanation I can divine for the interminably long "focusing through the noise" sequence, the endless inner-tympanum effects, and the documentation of Lana's full walk out of the loft, into her car, and drive down the driveway sequence. We should probably be grateful for that; I'm horrified to think of what might have actually been *edited out* of this script. God forbid, the characters might have talked some more.

Overall, this episode played like bad fan fiction, which it basically is- novice writers, especially those unfamiliar with the canon and the characters, get bogged down in minor details like each step it takes to get someone in and out of a car, but forget that everything included in a story should *serve* the story. In this case, there was no particular story here. Clark got his superhearing, the end. If only it had been that succinct.

Screenwriting: D
To Watch: C-

Next Week: The promo wants us to think Adam's convinced Lana to pull a Lizzie Borden on Chloe; somehow, I suspect that the promo might be a little misleading.

Note: The views of Hope don't necessarily represent the thoughts and feelings of everyone at KryptonSite. The site's webmaster Craig LOVED Whisper. Well, you know what they say: The world don't move to the beat of just one drum. What might be right for you, might not be right for some.

Return home