Walking the (Plot)Line
Posted by: Hot Toddy

This week I'd like to take a look at the two different types of plotlines we're regularly treated to on Smallville - the "Freak of the Week" (henceforth FotW) and the "mytharc," if you will. Let's define the terms, just for the sake of being thorough. FotWs are, of course, the tales that have sprung from the various superpowered folks who have turned up in Smallville over the course of time. And the mytharc is that part of the story that refers to the moving forward of the Smallville theme as a whole. Now, as far as that goes, the things I'm most concerned with are the ones that are retelling the Superman mythos - Clark's slowly developing powers, the evilification of Lex Luthor, the building of Clark's character, and so on. One could consider the bizarre love parallelograms and such to be a part of the mytharc as well, but to me they're only a secondary one at best, as they're more a retelling of the Clark story rather than of the Superman one. Sure, I'd like to see Clark and Chloe get an honest shot, but personally I'm much more interested in the directions that the Kents and Luthors are headed, and I think that those things are more important stories to follow. You can probably imagine this show without all the wuv and wuv-related angst ("Well, no, it's on the WB," you shout), but try imagining it without Clark's growth into the future character of Superman and the Clark/Lex element and the Luthor family oddness and perhaps you'll see why I consider those things more important.

Both of these types of story serve a necessary purpose. The mytharc is what really ties the show together. It acts as a vehicle to move the story forward as a whole. Without this element, Smallville really turns into nothing more than a live-action Superboy serial, where each week Clark and his band of intrepid sleuths solve another bizarre mystery, possibly with the assistance of a giant dog. It loses coherence as a whole and becomes a simple collection of stories. But that's not to say that the FotWs are secondary to mytharc in terms of importance, as they also have a perfectly good raison d'etre (French for "raisin toast"). They're a buffer. I might call them filler if that word didn't have such negative connotations. Basically, they provide spacing and variation. They keep the "main" themes from becoming as unnecessarily complicated and convoluted as they would have to be in order to fill 20+ hours a season for multiple seasons. They keep things mixed up, keep things different. Viva la difference! ("Oh, dear, I have spilled some difference. Where do you keep the paper towels?") Aside from what this does for the story, it's also important in terms of landing new viewers, because if somebody new tunes into Smallville they're much less likely to watch for a bit and then go "oh, I'm so hopelessly behind, I'll never catch up with all of this." They can be pulled into the tale at a more gradual pace.

Now, in my opinion, there are a few very important things that writers and producers have to keep in mind as far as getting these two different plot elements to peacefully coexist (and even work together). First of all, I think it's critical for the right mix to be found, because either thing can be overdone. I had a bit of a problem with this mix early in the first season, when it seemed that the FotW element was getting shoved down our throats. It's possible that this was done on purpose to a degree - to give we the viewers a chance to get to know the characters a little bit before they started throwing the larger elements at us, to let us start to love or hate them before they started playing on those emotions - and that possibility keeps me from griping about it as much as I might. But whatever the reason for the early proliferation of FotWs, I really think Smallville hit its stride somewhere around "Leech," and since then I think an excellent job has been done as far as keeping the right mix is concerned.

Since I've already used the word "mix" to describe something I consider important, I guess I can call this next one the blend. This concerns any effort to let these two different elements work together. Just because we get a FotW episode, for instance, doesn't mean they should just drop the overall continuity and themes that week. Before I got hooked on Smallville I was an X-Phile, and I can point to that show as a good example of how not to do this. For some reason, 1013 seemed to have serious issues with episode-to-episode continuity, even if the most important thing ever had just happened the week before. One week, a arc-centric episode would end:

Scully: (awakens from coma)
Mulder: Welcome back. We've been worried about you.
Scully: What happened?
Mulder: As near as we can tell, some members of the conspiracy put you in a coma so that they could empty out your ovaries...
Scully: Ohmigod.
Mulder: ... and give you cancer.
Scully: Ohmigod.
Mulder: And while you were under, they apparently also killed your
Vietnamese potbellied pig.
Scully: Mulder, I don't have a Vietnamese potbellied pig.
Mulder: Well, they seem to have also found a way to travel back in time and leave the pig outside your building, where you would find and then adopt it. This appears to have done just so that they could then come back to our time and kill it. Interesting, the coma seems to have protected your original memories from the temporal effects.
Scully: Ohmigod.
Mulder: Oh, and while they were back in time, they also had your name legally changed to "Steve."
Steve: OHMIGOD!
<fade to black>

And then the next week, we'd get the first in another series of standalones:

Mulder: (walks into office waving plane tickets) Hey, Steve!
Steve: Uh-oh. Mulder, what are those?
Mulder: Plane tickets. We're going to Dry Creek, Idaho, to look into an unusually popular elementary school bake sale.
Steve: Well, I'm sure there'a scientific explanation, but let's go ahead and check it out because I certainly can't think of anything else worthy of investigation around here.

And my mind would boggle. 1013 never really learned - or even seemed to try to learn - how to get their mytharc to blend well with the standalones. It seriously hampered believablity and was one of the many ways they decided to throw continuity out the window. In spite of this, I still loved and continue to love the show, but I often wonder just how good it really could have been if they'd addressed issues like this. Smallville seems to do a much better job at this sort of thing - they can let an important theme fade into the background without ignoring it entirely.

The third and last thing I'd like to look at is the way each element itself can be varied to keep it fresh. For instance, within the mytharc, there are so many stories to tell. Lex's family, Lex's past, the circumstances of Clark's adoption, the growth of Clark's powers, Clark's origin itself, the unexplainable vagaries of Clark and Lex's meeting, Clark's attempts to keep his abilities secret, and other things have all spent their time in the spotlight this season, and as such none of it really seems overworked at this point. There was more of a problem with this as far as FotWs were concerned, because we did see a lot of them that seemed a bit
formulaic. Someone gets exposed to the meteor rocks, they get powers, they do bad things, Clark and his friends investigate the bad things and then Clark puts an end to it. As with the mix, however, I felt that this was addressed as the season went on, and we began to see more of a variety. Eric Summers stole Clark's powers rather than gaining his own, the FotW in Nicodemus was actually a flower, Ryan's powers weren't explained to have come from meteor rocks and the "bad guys" in that episode were just normal humans, and so on. That's a trend I'd like to see continue, and one of the things I'll be watching for as season 2 progresses. Another way this element could be varied would be to have the return of some of the freaks we had in the first season - after all, Clark didn't kill all of them. ^_^ That gets any origin tale out of the way, for one. It also introduces an element we haven't yet seen, that being someone who *knows* Clark's abilities going up against him and working to find a way around them. Multiple-episode storylines are another option along these lines, and I wouldn't be surprised to see one or both of these variations in the future.

So. There you have it. As I've probably made clear with my comments, I think that Smallville has done a pretty good job dealing with these different elements to this point - I can kinda put any early-season-one-possible-birthing-pains stuff aside, because it's a perfectly regular occurrence for a new show to maybe take a bit of time to find its footing. I do think that footing has been found, however, and from this point on I'll be very interested to see how they continue to juggle all of these different story elements. It looks like it's going to be a helluva ride.

Thanks a lot, you've been great. Enjoy Foghat.

Note: The views of "Hot Toddy" don't necessarily represent the thoughts and feelings of the people behind KryptonSite. Therefore, send any hate mail to hottoddy@backstreet-boys.com. Yes, Todd still doesn't like Lana Lang, but he obviously knows a good "mytharc" when he sees one.