“Cool”

“Cool” is an alright episode.  A little is made in the direction of the Clark-Lana relationship and the Kent-Luthor relationship, and even a little forray into Chloe’s world which was welcome, but it was wrapped in a non-descript FOTW episode.

First question.  Do meteor rocks just make everyone evil and greedy?  It seems after five episodes that all meteor freaks turn evil so Clark can stop them.  Now granted, Sean Kelvin (with a name like that you knew his power was going to relate to heat or cold) was a “dog” as Clark put it, but to go from a dog to a cold-blooded murderer (yeah I just made a funny there, I know) once he becomes Iceman?  A bit much.

And it all just made even less sense than usual.  Ok so he fell into a frozen lake with meteor rocks.  Somehow, now he can breathe underwater or at least hold his breath for a long time.  He gets out and suddenly takes the heat away from anything he touches.  Ok.  I’ll deal with the breathing thing, and can get into the drawing heat from a source fine.

Meanwhile Lex coerces Clark into finally asking Lana out after dishing out some well timed criticism at Whitney to Ms. Lang.  If this were another character we’d have no doubt to his intentions, but given what we know fo Lex Luthor’s destiny, we can’t help but be like Jonathan and be skeptical.  Although I do believe that at this point he is completely well intentioned.

I also believe his plans to help the Kents out of their financial difficulties is also manufactured out of at least mostly pure intentions…but you can never be sure.

With Chloe, we finally see that beneath her sharp tongue, and brash exterior lies a girl yearning for love.  Of course it almost turns her into a frozen popsicle.

Clark finally gets a date with Lana…or a non-date.  Their moment is interrupted by news reporst of Sean killing his girlfriend and Clark’s need to go save Chloe, given their planned meeting that night.  It was a well done sequence up until that point and while slightly cheezy, served well as young love.

Of course it is a tease, and at the end they are definitely just friends again, but it is deftly handled.

Clark of course saves everyone but the ending is a point of criticism again for me.  Ok, so Clark gets mad enough and punches Sean so far that he lands in a body of water on the Luthor estate…and it freezes solid.  Um what?  If that was true wouldn’t the lake have frozen solid once his powers manifested?  I know you  his powers developed and grew stronger over time, but it just seemed off to me and took me out of the story.

The episode isn’t a complete failure as they are trying to develop the characters but there still is too much FOTW and it needs to evolve.

C

Previous – 1.04

Next – 1.06

REFERENCES:

1. Chole asks Clark if he’s from an ice planet.  Yes in fact he is…

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