Smallville (Page 2 of 2)

This thing was basically a copy of Scientology, that's what drew in the actors, like it does there.  Clearly Allison maintained relationships with people.  I mean when I saw her she had a group of people with her, as well as Glover.  I don't think anybody suspected the master/slave stuff, and apparently that's where she is most culpable. 

As for Scientology, I would skip Leah's show and just watch "Going Clear," the doc is far more damning.  Again, I can't understand how they aren't challenged, but they have a ton of money and power and probably dirt on a lot of people.

And there she goes. Allison has been arrested.

https://pagesix.com/2018/04/20/smallvil … lave-cult/

I don't see how anyone can be involved in anything with the word "slave" in it, without any question marks popping up. Most cults at least try to cover things up with more appealing terms.

Was she normal one day, and a total wack job the next? I have so many questions about this, and her role in it!

I swear, I should become a psychologist who specializes in cults. They fascinate me, while still appalling me.

and now quinn just tweeted about it!

https://twitter.com/MrJerryOC/status/987444361259438080

it's surreal to me that this was a topic of conversation a year ago here, and now, wham. national news story.

C'mon. We agree on more than that.

How do you feel about pineapple on pizza? I'm pretty fond of it myself.

Dear God. Who would do such a thing? Sour-sweet fruit on a meat pie... ? But it's your pizza.

**

I don't rewatch SMALLVILLE all that much. Season 1 is a mixed mag, Seasons 2 - 7 are a crime against culture, Season 8 is great, Season 9 is excellent, Season 10 is great for the first 13 episodes and then has numerous standout episodes among awkward ones that build to a puzzling series finale of confusion and awkwardness (due to the production problems rather than any lack of talent or ability). However, if I were to rewatch Seasons 8 - 10... I would mentally replace Allison Mack with Kristen Bell (who auditioned to play Chloe).

The really sad thing is that Chloe was a wonderful creation who was introduced into the actual DC Comics and was Jimmy Olsen's (ex-)girlfriend for a time. And while she hadn't appeared in awhile and Chloe's presence in the SMALLVILLE comics made it unnecessary to feature her in the mainstream DC continuity, there was the likelihood that some enterprising writer would incorporate her into the comics once again, making Chloe immortal and exist beyond SMALLVILLE as a TV show and Allison Mack as a performer. That's never going to happen now; DC Comics won't want to go near Chloe Sullivan ever again.

We both agreed that Allison Mack was a cultist, abuser, human trafficker and sexual slaver long before it was fashionable to do so. We both enjoyed the JUSTICE LEAGUE movie which the world at large considers a crime against humanity. Many friendships were founded on far less.

**

There is an open source technology recently popularized for its low system requirements which allows a user to digitally replace a person's face with another in pre-existing video footage. It was (of course) first employed to graft the faces of Hollywood actresses onto female pornography performers engaging in performative sex acts.

I propose that we assemble a bank of (used) Playstation 3s to form a makeshift rendering farm, map Kristen Bell's face using box sets of the three seasons of VERONICA MARS, and begin digitally replacing Allison Mack in SMALLVILLE with Kristen Bell instead and hire noted impressionist Robert Floyd (Mallory on SLIDERS) to re-record all of Mack's dialogue in Bell's voice. I propose we use the magic of CGI to remove Allison Mack from every single hour of television she ever performed, expunge her from every single frame of film and leave her with nothing but her crimes.

But to be realistic, anyone wanting to use Chloe before would probably just use Felicity Smoak instead and right now, who could blame them?

**

I just had this weird daydream of Justin Hartley's Oliver Queen confronting Allison (not Chloe) and yelling, "YOU HAVE FAILED THIS CITY!"

There's a lot of tragedy from that show.  Between Allison and Sam Jones III getting arrested (albeit for much different crimes) and Lee Thompson Young committing suicide....that's quite a bit.  There isn't anything else, is there?

Well, they're three very different things and sad in their own ways.  And I only threw Young in there at all because it was a tragedy too. 

Either way, 2 of the 8 main cast in the 1st season has been to prison (it could've been 3 if Kristin stayed in).  That's no good.

Well, I mean, to me....I don't really connect Chloe and Allison.  I don't think anything less of Chloe the character because of Allison the actress.  Bill Cosby is a monster, but the Cosby Show helped a ton of African Americans (emotionally and financially).  Louis CK has done terrible things to women, but his comedy helped a lot of people laugh.  And I don't think people that still choose to watch The Cosby Show or Louie are supporting Cosby or Louis CK by doing so....they're just enjoying the entertainment.

And I don't think Allison's crimes should be held against Tom Welling or Smallville or Chloe herself.  It'd be weird to see Chloe and it might make you think differently about the character, but I'm able to put a divider between real life and the show.

All I can think is that Chloe would be ashamed of Allison.  Which is good enough for me.

I mean... I'm not confusing Chloe with Allison really, but it would be hard to watch Chloe without thinking about Allison right now. And a lot of the things that made Chloe so appealing (her charm, her wit, her smile) are probably a lot of the things that Allison used to draw in her victims.

I sincerely hope that I will be able to forget that Allison is a real person at some point, and think of Chloe as some sort of computer generated character, but I'm not there yet.

Similarly, I used to enjoy watching 7th Heaven from time to time, because it was a silly, stupid, thoughtless fluff show. I haven't really had any desire to return to that series since Stephen Collin's whole situation erupted.

Bill Cosby... same. Don't get me wrong, I have a loooooooooot of questions about that case, but my ability to watch the Cosby Show and see him as the all-American father that everyone wished they'd had is long gone.

A lot of this stuff is probably because these are still "current" cases and none of this dust has settled at all. I know all about Hollywood history and how horrible some of those people were back in the day, and I can probably still watch a lot of their old movies.

Aw, hell. I just read that some of the charges against her involve trafficking children. Does this bitch ever stop getting worse? What the hell?! How have we never heard stories of her being this evil before this story broke? Was she just really good at hiding it?! Was she somehow brainwashed into being evil? I never stop being disgusted by this horrible woman.

And yes, I know that calling a women a "bitch" is triggering for some. Sorry for that, but the shoe definitely fits in this case and there are no words nasty enough for this monster.

Still... no need to bring Ann Coulter into this. She can stay way, way over there. Far away from Smallville.
(I don't know enough about Tomi to care about her one way or the other)

Allison is out on five million dollars bail, to her parents' custody. She is not allowed to contact anyone related to the cult. I assume that includes her wife, but who knows

Both she and her parents put up their homes and their retirements for this. I would not have made that deal if I were her parents.

If found guilty, Allison faces fifteen years to life.

Sam Jones III must feel such relief, since he's no longer the disappointing member of the Smallville family.

I've been wondering to myself where Allison goes from here. Is there any chance of redemption, not of her public image as much as her soul or personal life. On Leah Remini's Scientology series we see people like Mike Rinder, who also did some very bad things while under the thrall of that cult. Now he is trying to make amends. So is there any amends for Allison?

The thing is, while Mike (and others) was guilty of some misdeeds, he was also very much a victim. Beaten and broken, mentally and physically, until he was forced to be compliant. He makes no excuses for what he did, but he was still a victim.

Allison appears (from what we know) to be much less of a victim. We have no reports suggesting that she was beaten or tortured into submission. In fact, reports suggest that a lot of the physical violence was her idea. So this would seem to make her more of a David Miscavige figure than a Mike Rinder figure. Miscavige took all of the worst parts of L. Ron Hubbard's personality and his cult, and took it to even deeper levels of evil, which is saying a lot, because Hubbard was pretty evil.

So, is there any path to redemption for Allison? Say she gets mental help, deprogramming, and treatment for whatever the hell is wrong with her head, can she become something better?

As a Christian, I want to believe that she can. I believe in redemption. But realistically, I'm not sure that I see it happening. She's shown no sign of humanity since this all began. And as for her willingness to turn on her master... I don't know. Some reports say that she's willing to go to prison to save him. Maybe her actual arrest scared her. Maybe not.

No, that's not what I meant. Allison made these decisions and did horrible things all on her own. And I'm really interested in the psychology of that and understanding how she got there, but that doesn't matter as much at this point, because you can't unpull that trigger.

At the same time, I wonder where she goes from here. She is a young woman, so presumably she has many years ahead... Hopefully in prison, but years nonetheless. So is she incapable of human emotion and empathy, and incapable of becoming something better, or is she capable of becoming a better person?

In prison.

Like I said, right now she seems like a David Miscavige figure, and he is nothing but evil. But there are straight up murderers who become better people. In prison.

No excuses. But like I said, I'm a Christian. We think about things like forgiveness and redemption a lot. I'm not talking about legally forgiving her, or having her appear at cons. I'm just talking about her own road forward. Is she going to Charles Manson it, and ride the evil wave right into the grave? Or does she get a wake-up call and become a person again?

In prison.

And without internet access, because she doesn't deserve Twitter followers anymore. How is she still on Twitter but comedians get kicked off because someone was offended by a joke? But that's a whole other rant.

I blame my writer brain for always asking too many questions and wanting more information. It doesn't change the fact that I think she is a horrible person who did evil things, and she must be held accountable.

Ah, okay.

There is no redemption for a human trafficker, for procuring children to hand over to a pedophile, for enslaving and torturing women into forced labour. I have no concern whatsoever for Allison Mack's recovery or well-being and I'd suggest we save our concern for the victims and not the perpetrator.

Another interesting article about Allison, with comments from people who actually knew her:

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/amp/f … er-1112107

we don't have to worry about her.  good head on her shoulders.

With luck, this will cause courts and the government to revisit their views on Scientology and recognize them for the cult they are.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uV0M3aZcoOM

One of my favourite actresses, Sara Fletcher, is playing the role of Allison Mack in this movie about the cult.

There's a scene in Season 10's "Ambush" that I really like where Lois finds her sister, Lucy, kissing Clark. Lois' reaction is to drag Lucy away and tell her to go crush some ice. Lois doesn't doubt for a moment that Clark is faithful to her and Clark says Lucy surprised him. But then they have an argument anyway.

I thought it was a really well-written episode in a well-written relationship that really showed how Lois and Clark were both devoted to each other but still had the capacity to oppose each other in various conflicts.

I revisit SMALLVILLE, but in my head, to be honest. I don't actually rewatch it. I think of Clark's amazing supersaves in Seasons 8 - 10, especially him saving Lois from a crashing train and saving Chloe from a Checkmate fired gunshot to the head in almost still frames of slow motion superspeed. I think of how Tom Welling, who started as one of the worst actors to ever appear on television, came to embody Clark Kent's decency and humility and gentleness so well by subsuming the role into his own personality which turned out to be a perfect match.

On Planet Ireactions, SMALLVILLE opened its first season with Tom Welling, Kristen Bell, Sam Jones III, Kristin Kreuk and Michael Rosenbaum playing characters in Smallville University as opposed to Smallville High.

In my head, Kristen Bell didn't play Chloe; she played Lois Lane but was otherwise exactly the same as Chloe. Also, in my world, the Kryptonite freaks, having Kryptonite inside their bodies, often injured and nearly killed Clark and were increasingly powerful with each episode.

And on Planet Ireactions, Lex is heroic and friendly but a bit ruthless and with a troubled past. In Season 5, everyone has graduated from university and Lex starts LexCorp. In the Season 5 finale, Lex is forced to bankrupt LexCorp to help Clark and friends save the world from aliens.

All of Lex's friends are grateful, but his now out of work employees and investors and most of Metropolis despise him and when Lex tries to explain to the world at large that aliens would have destroyed the world, he's mocked and dismissed as a crazy person, causing Lex to become resentful and bitter and this leads to him becoming evil in the middle of Season 6 and Clark is forced to accept that his best friend is now his worst enemy by Season 7. Lex goes further ballistic when he realizes that Clark could have outed himself as an alien to restore Clark's good name but ultimately declined to do so to protect Jonathan and Martha.

Also on Planet Ireactions, the most exciting setpieces of every week are Clark's supersaves, any time a character close to the main cast's age dies should be alarming and unusual and the show should really focus on it -- and the Lana/Clark romance is over by the middle of Season 2 and in Season 3, Clark admits to himself that he's in love with Lois but is terrified to date her because he'll never be able to hide The Secret from her.

And Planet Ireactions' SMALLVILLE definitely has Kyle Gallner as Bart Allen join the regular cast in Season 3. I have no real affinity for Bart, but I know Slider_Quinn21 likes him a lot so yes. And we also have those weird starfish aliens pester the cast for a season because that will make Temporal Flux happy. I want to think of something that would make Transmodiar happy, but the only thing that comes to mind is to stop typing now.

Always blows my mind how Allison Mack and that Keith guy were talked about on here before it became a story.  Today, unfortunately for her she gets sentenced. I feel bad for her but at the same time, no matter how swept up she was, she had agency.  And seemed to do some crazy things.

I find that in a typical animation project is pretty much like those DC animated direct to video films.

Allison Mack is a psycho. People are constantly telling me I'm crazy, sometimes on this Bboard, sometimes in the SLIDERS Discord, but even a lunatic like me draws the line at joining a cult and branding people. Three years is way too light for a sexual abuser and human trafficker, but I understand the prosecutors cutting a deal to get Raniere in jail for what's effectively a life sentence.

Grizzlor, I congratulate you on having taken Allison Mack's Wikipedia photo. Now I ask that you stay the hell away from this convicted criminal. She is dangerous and I don't want to lose our SLIDERS.tv ambassador to a creepy cult; we already lost one guy to Trumpism.

I got a subscription to Comixology for Christmas, and I was so sad to see that the Smallville comics weren't on there for free.  That was something I was looking forward to, before I understood the limits of Comixology Unlimited.

Maybe one day.

One of the most annoying things I ever saw in our community was from this one nutjob who was constantly angsting about Allison Mack's fate. Oh my goodness, how will Allison Mack live? How will she move forward? How will she be redeemed? How can we prioritize the well-being and safety of the privileged white woman over the victims she blackmailed, enslaved into sexual service, trafficked, intimidated, branded with a hot iron, imprisoned and isolated from her families? Oh no, how will Allison live? Jesus ****ing Christ.

Anyway. Allison Mack is in jail for a three year sentence, although I assume she'll be out in less than two with good behaviour.
https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/e … e/3273753/

Alfred Gough and Miles Millar created SMALLVILLE. They are also showrunning the new WEDNESDAY ADDAMS series on Netflix.

A WEDNESDAY ADDAMS series is a dream come true for me, but hearing that Gough and Millar are writing it -- well, it's the equivalent of hearing that NBCUniversal has commissioned a SLIDERS revival but hired Keith Damron to run it.

Gough and Millar are a truly peculiar choice for a property as eccentric and idiosyncratic as THE ADDAMS FAMILY.  SMALLVILLE had 217 episodes. Gough and Millar were showrunners for 152 of those episodes. Of 152, they only wrote nine. Their nine episodes, while solid, are action adventure mixed with teen angst and have none of the macabre, gothic, comedic sensibilities of THE ADDAMS FAMILY. Gough and Millar aren't innovative, insightful, witty or clever. They're entertaining and competent.

Outside of those nine 'event' episodes, SMALLVILLE under Gough and Millar had a serious quality control problem. Season 1 had a lot of adequate to excellent entries but were hyperformulaic with a repetitive monster of the week format, apparently mandated by Gough and Millar.

The backchatter I've heard from is that Gough and Millar were incredibly disengaged from SMALLVILLE. They originally set out to do BRUCE WAYNE: THE SERIES about Bruce's adventures between graduating from college and becoming Batman. They were unable to license Batman but were told they could get the rights to a young Superman. They sold the pilot to series on the WB network.

After that, Gough and Millar didn't know what to do and didn't bother. They had made Clark Kent too powerful to be seriously threatened; they had geographically isolated Clark to a small town and didn't have a wide range of story ideas within the town. Gough and Millar told the writers room for Season 1 to do monster of the week episodes to fill in the 22 episode orders and then Gough and Millar stopped working on SMALLVILLE scripts, focusing instead on writing screenplays (SHANGHAI KNIGHTS, SPIDER-MAN II).

The Season 1 writers came up with arcs and running plots in Gough and Millar's absence; when Gough and Millar came back at the end of the year to write the season finale, they threw out the Season 1 writers' arcs. The Season 1 writers mostly left for other shows. A new team was hired for Season 2 under the same restrictions with absent showrunners who'd occasionally return and demand that any character or plot development be reset.

As a result, Seasons 2 - 7 suffered from scripts that were produced under severe restrictions, trying not to build any characterization or storylines that the showrunners would just tear down when passing through. Gough and Millar didn't know how to run a 2000s-era TV show of ongoing arcs, viewing TV as strictly standalone, siloed episodes. They were as indifferent to SMALLVILLE as David Peckinpah was to SLIDERS, bringing their A-game to the episodes they personally wrote and uncaring about the rest.

As showrunners, they wrote only 6% of Seasons 1 - 7 and only seemed to give SMALLVILLE 6% of their attention.

Gough and Millar were, however, very successful at the *business* side of running SMALLVILLE. They got it to seven seasons and their successors got it to ten. Gough and Millar hired most of the 'regular' actors on 13 episode contracts and have them absent from nine a year, trimming those costs signifcantly. They cast unknowns to pay lower but equitable rates and less than what more experienced performers would cost. They marketed their actors as heartthrobs for their audience and kept them in the press.

They were great at selling the show and reducing their budget to keep pace with diminishing ratings. They were great at making SMALLVILLE cost less than its earnings in ad revenue. They were great at keeping SMALLVILLE on the air.

I am unnerved by Gough and Millar scripting a WEDNESDAY ADDAMS series, a show that calls for eccentricity, humour, inventiveness, wit, quippy dialogue, and the ability to balance the morbid with the amusing. Gough and Millar wrote nearly humourless scripts for SMALLVILLE even at their best. Their scripts were functional superhero stories that were nominally related to teenagers and had a flair for visuals, scenes that were playable for actors, a sense of myth and legend, effective in their action -- but they weren't comedies and they weren't in the vein of offbeat horror-comedy like THE ADDAMS FAMILY.

It looks like Gough and Millar are writing eight of WEDNESDAY's 10 episodes. That's 80% of the scripts. Hopefully, they'll give it 80% of their attention as well.

In addition, all ten episodes of the show are being directed by Tim Burton, also the executive producer of the show. Burton is a master of the eccentrically gothic and morbidly bizarre.

Maybe Burton is the true showrunner and actively reworking and writing Gough and Millar's scripts.

Maybe Gough and Millar's 6% efforts are all that Burton requires for his vision. I love Wednesday Addams and I hope that is the case.

I'm intrigued by this podcast.  I think Welling and Rosenbaum are both really good.  I worry I don't remember nearly enough about Smallville to enjoy it