Lower Decks

Warrior Angel first appeared in Smallville’sfirst season as one of the show’s first allusion to Superman.  From visual clues (the cover to the first comic book for both Warrior Angel and Superman are almost identical) to character clues (Warrior Angel and his nemesis, Devilicus, are very similar to the stories of Clark and Lex), it could’ve simply been a one-time reference to the fans.  Instead, Warrior Angel has become a staple for the series, appearing a total of nine times so far.  And, here, we finally get to meet a real-life version of Warrior Angel.

When I first read about this episode, I didn’t really know what to make of it.  The whole comic book convention setting worried me because it seems like the writers like taking little jabs at the fans, especially considering that Clark Kent is usually the most critical of “fanboys.”  And then there’s the whole “kid becomes a superhero and turns bad” idea – which is both cliche and a little easy.  And following up last week’s “Absolute Justice”, I was hoping for something a little more concrete.

And what happened was a little surprising and yet a little disappointing – the whole Warrior Angel thing became more about Chloe than anything else.  And while I absolutely love the focus on Ms. Sullivan, I feel like they left some things on the table that could’ve made it really cool.

I’ll start with the bad – I’m not entirely sure that it was necessary to bring Zatanna into the mix for this episode.  I’m not complaining about the Super Guest Star because I feel like it’s something that needs to happen on the show all of the time.  The problem is that it isn’t going to happen all the time, and that means that these guest spots need to mean something.  And I’d rather someone like Zatanna show up as part of a super-team-up than a B-story.

Because, honestly, the whole Warrior Angel thing didn’t have to be Zatanna-based magic.  It could’ve happened a number of ways, and it seems like Zatanna was just forced in there for convenience.  Again, don’t get me wrong, I love when DC characters are included..I just think, if this is her only appearance of the season, we could’ve had something cooler.

Then there was Warrior Angel himself.  With all of the connections between Clark and Warrior Angel, I was almost certain that we were going to get some kind of confrontation between the two.  Whether Clark and Warrior Angel were going to fight Devilicus alongside each other or Clark was actually going to fight Devilicus/Warrior Angel, I thought it could be a cool finale for the pair.

Instead, Clark never even sees Warrior Angel.  It’s actually Zatanna who defeats him, and Clark only sees Alec in his kid form…never in his adult one.  And while I’ve basically given up on the idea of having a decent super-powered fight on the show, they didn’t even try it this time.

Outside of that, I was pleasantly surprised.  The comic book stuff wasn’t overdone in my opinion, and there weren’t really any shots at the fans that I was expecting.  It would’ve been nice to have a Justice Society reference (even just as a costume on someone random), especially since it just happened a week earlier, but I wasn’t terribly upset about that.

Like I said earlier, this episode was mostly about Chloe.  She’s the first one who’s saved by Warrior Angel, and she immediately moves to recruit the new hero onto her team.  She doesn’t know that Warrior Angel is just a 12-year-old kid, and it’s a little funny as Alec is completely oblivious to her romantic advances.

What I really liked, however, was the continuing idea that Chloe needs to have some fun.  It was nice to see her outside of her serious and/or angry modes, simply enjoying herself.  We’ve heard people tell her that so many times this season, and it’s nice that they actually followed through with it.

And, in an interesting connection, the actor playing Warrior Angel has actually been seen before.  If you remember two seasons ago, Smallville had an episode where Clark saw a version of Earth where he never existed (“Apocalypse”).  In that episode, Chloe was happy and engaged to a young man…played by the same actor who played Warrior Angel.  Because of the age difference, it’s obviously not supposed to be the same character, but it’s funny that they used the same actor for two characters Chloe was interested in.

But things do end up on an interesting romantic note for Chloe, who returns to the Watchtower to find Oliver doing some shooting practice.  One thing leads to another, and the next thing you know, Oliver is softly helping Chloe fire an arrow into the screen.

It’s obviously a hint that the two could become a couple, and it’s one that I really think could work.  Chloe and Oliver have been working closely for a long time now, and I think they’d be pretty great together.  It’s just a bit odd because there hasn’t been any indication that their relationship has been anything but platonic up until now.  We’ve seen a couple of intimate scenes between them (most recently in “Roulette”), but nothing to really tell us that they’re anything more than friends.  Interesting.

I also found it odd that Oliver was drinking.  I thought he’d basically admitted that he’s an alcoholic – shouldn’t he be avoiding alcohol?  And especially the idea of drinking by himself?  I realize that he’s young and rich, but that doesn’t mean he has to have a drink every night – right?

As far as everything else goes, it was all pretty generic.  Zatanna kisses Clark to try and give him some form of perspective, and Clark brushes her off to keep things going strong with Lois.  It was a nice little story, but it wasn’t much to write home about.  And, of course, the writers took advantage of the comic book theme and got Lois into a sort of “Xena” outfit.  No surprise there.

All in all, it was a pretty solid episode.  I wish there’d been a reference to the whole Justice Society event, but at least the goodwill between Clark, Chloe, and Oliver remained.  And the mention of the Red-Blue-Blur was nice, although I was sort of hoping that Clark would consider going back to those colors again.  He was just wearing black in honor of Jimmy, right?  Shouldn’t it be about time to go back to Superman colors?

Next week’s episode looks a bit cheesy, but hopefully they can give us a strong B-story to override it.  Otherwise, it might be one of those episodes that falls on it’s face.  Let’s hope it isn’t.