If could change ONE thing about Chloe, what would it be?

[HalJordan4184]

I've talked about this several times, in different ways: I would've merged her with Lana. Basically, just take this character and change her name to "Lana Lang". From a pilot/early days point of view, it probably wouldn't have changed anything major about the show (maybe down the line, but I'm focusing on the start of the show). Just looking at the pilot, you could've kept Lana's parents being killed by the meteor shower. Have her be on the cheerleading team, wear the necklace and date Whitney... but we quickly discover a hidden side to her: an obsession with the 1989 meteor shower (caused by the trauma of her parents death), that have led to Chlana (the merged Chloe and Lana) into investigating it and to create the wall of weird. Thus really giving a motivation for why she began going down the path of investigating the meteor shower and started creating the wall of weird (outside of "she's a wannabe reporters... reporters investigate"). After Chlana quits cheerleading in "Hothead", she becomes involved with the Torch.

I really am of the opinion, that the Chloe Sullivan character should've been merged with Lana Lang during development of the show. Because Lana was supposed to be the female lead during seasons 1-7, yet Chloe was given all the interesting stuff. A merged character would've resolved the issues with Lana, while allowing Chloe to be the person of Clark's romantic affections/occasional girlfriend (as many viewers wanted).

This ^

Really though, Chloe essentially was in large part, Lana Lang. The Lana created for Smallville was, in essence, a new character divorced from a lot of the prior versions of the character. Historically, Lana was almost a proto Lois. Not only would this bring her more in line to the "historical Lana", but I think it would, as pointed out, get rid of a lot of the gripes about Lana's character. Chloe on the show, for the most part, was a better match for Clark, and the Lana presented, was sort of the personification of the youthful things we grow out of as we become adults. Clark, from day 1, liked Lana for no actual stated reason. He wasn't close to her, barely knew anything about her, and had nothing really in common with her to that point, as presented in the show. Chloe was the total opposite. Clark's pining for Lana, especially with the intervening almost 20 years to think about it now, makes less sense to me than it did at the time.