Loved It? Hated It? What did you think of "Hero"?

[jon-el87]

The only Smallville episode penned by Aaron Helbing and Todd Helbing. If you're wondering why those names sound familiar: they're the guys currently in charge of The Flash.

It is indeed a terrible episode. We see Pete return after four years and you're quickly reminded why the character was taken off the show. All he does is whine and blames Lionel for causing his parents divorce. How Lionel caused that I have no idea. Does Pete think all his family's problems hail from them selling their factory to Lionel? As they don't flesh out on it, it just makes Pete come across as juvenile. Everything wrong in his life is either Lionel Luthor's fault or because of Clark's secret. How about accepting responsibility for your own actions and choices? It doesn't feel like he's actually grown up. Of course, as we know from The Flash, the Helbing brothers love writing adults, who acts like children.

Chloe gets upset that Lex monitors the DP computors... which he actually owns, so he has every right to know what they're being used for. The computors are there to help the employees with their work, not their private business. A lot of businesses have strick rules about employees using company computors for private matters.

The episode also features some very unsubtle product placement for Stride gum. It's not the first Smallville episode to have product placement. I think the episode "Jinx" was sponsored by Old Spice, but there they pretty much just mentioned Old Spice, prior to the football game, as one of the businesses sponsoring the game. Here you have part of the episode taking place in a Stride factory. The cause of Pete's powers is Kryptonite tainted Stride gums and they, apparently, includes lines taken from Stride ad campaigns. Ironically, the whole thing about their gum getting tainted by Kryptonite makes the company's factories come across as unsanitary.

[Antiyonder]

We see Pete return after four years and you're quickly reminded why the character was taken off the show. All he does is whine and blames Lionel for causing his parents divorce. How Lionel caused that I have no idea. Does Pete think all his family's problems hail from them selling their factory to Lionel?

Heck, back in Nicodemus, he even blamed Lex for it even though he was actually innocent of that, plus just being a child at the time.

Specific quotes:

Clark: Why? What do you have against Lex?
Pete: Hmm, let's see. He screwed my family out of the cream corn factory.
Clark: Well, Pete, that was 12 years ago. And it wasn't him, it was his father.
Pete: Still, I've never been crazy about the guy.
Clark: Why haven't you said something before?

[jon-el87]

We see Pete return after four years and you're quickly reminded why the character was taken off the show. All he does is whine and blames Lionel for causing his parents divorce. How Lionel caused that I have no idea. Does Pete think all his family's problems hail from them selling their factory to Lionel? As they don't flesh out on it, it just makes Pete come across as juvenile. Everything wrong in his life is either Lionel Luthor's fault or because of Clark's secret. How about accepting responsibility for your own actions and choices? It doesn't feel like he's actually grown up. Of course, as we know from The Flash, the Helbing brothers love writing adults, who acts like children.

Went back and had a closer look at the episode. His behavior is motivated by his arc in the episode. Pete comes in as someone whose life didn't turn out like he planned, so he used Clark's secret as an scapegoat. A way to shift responsbility to another person. At the end, he realizes that he was wrong and decides to get his life in order. The problem is that Pete's change of attitude seemingly comes out of nowhere. It doesn't feel like organic character development The episode largely blames his behavior on Kryptonite. Meaning, that Pete didn't start blaming Clark, until the night before he comes back to town. Before that, he would've soley accepted responsibility for how his life's turned out and then been returned to normal, after he stopped chewing Kryptonite gum. Meaning that the Kryptonite served to add non-existing tension between Pete and Clark.

That being said, I wouldn't have minded some follow-up on Pete trying to get his life back on track. Would've been interesting to know what happened to him after this.

I liked the little callbacks to previous seasons like the symbol on the Kent barn in "Rosetta" and Lana's season four tattoo. It's always nice when the show acknowledges its own past. Especially Lana's tattoo, which she had for nearly a year. Some are bound to have seen it and then reacted when said tattoo suddenly vanished. It's the sort of thing people would have questions about.