Jumping the Spark, Part One

(Warning: contains spoilers for Smallville)

In the TV business, it’s called the Moonlighting Syndrome, or “jumping the spark.” Viewership is high while the two love interests dance around each other in a will-they-or-won’t-they tango. But once they actually get together, interest wanes. TV shows try to solve this by throwing huge, unlikely obstacles in the couple’s path to happiness. Sometimes it works—sometimes it doesn’t.

Over the past year, I’ve been watching all of Smallville. (For the uninformed, it’s a TV show about Clark Kent, aka Superman, as a teenager and young adult. Pre-cape and tights. It’s the longest running sci-fi show, currently in its tenth and final season). I’m halfway through Season 8, and tortured love stories abound. Every season is filled with angst.

There is Clark Kent, of course, with his two main love interests, Lana Lang and Lois Lane. Lana is Clark’s childhood love—he thinks they’re destined to be together. Their relationship is fraught with difficulty since Clark feels he can never be truly honest about the whole I’m-an-alien thing. And this is bad because Lana is obsessed with complete and total honesty for the first 5 or so seasons. (Until she has some pretty hefty secrets of her own. Funny how that works.) Clark and Lana eventually break up. Many times.

Lois and Clark meet early on in the show, but they can barely stand each other. It’s not until season 8 that Lois begins discovering her feelings for Clark, which is great fun. I especially like this scene, where Lois and Clark have been wired up to a polygraph by a crazy guy who thinks they are a couple.If they lie, they get electrocuted. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjH_ROqLc0k At the end of the episode, when they talk about what happened, Lois doesn’t know what to say. Luckily for her, Clark just assumes that Lois is the best liar ever.

My favorite angsty bits in Smallville, though, involve Chloe Sullivan. (Chloe is a character created just for the TV series—she never appears in the comic books.) Any relationship Chloe has is fraught with angst. Chloe loves Clark all their growing –up years, until they graduate high school. It’s a huge unrequited love thing, and who doesn’t love unrequited love? (Unless you’re the one having it. Then it sucks.)

Then Chloe meets Jimmy Olsen. Chloe and Jimmy seem perfect for each other. They’re all cute and spunky and fun, until *foreboding power chords* Davis Bloome, paramedic extraordinaire and tortured hottie, arrives on the scene. He is drawn to Chloe because she’s nice to him and helps people and is awesome. She is drawn to him because he’s hot. I haven’t seen all the episodes yet, but I do know enough to tell you that unbeknownst to him, Davis Bloome happens to be Superman’s greatest enemy, Doomsday. In the comic books, Doomsday and Superman have an epic battle, and both of them die of their wounds. (But Superman comes back because, like the Doctor, he doesn’t really die—he just regenerates. :P)

I love this Chloe-Davis angst. I think about it all the time. I wonder if their mutual attraction was real, or if it was just manipulation by Doomsday and Brainiac (who was infecting Chloe at the time—a whole other story). There are these Smallville fans who HATE that Davis eventually dies—they feel cheated out of the romantic fairy tale. But really, how often do you get that when you watch TV? The thing about fairy tales is that they end once the prince and princess get together. Why? Because what comes afterward is boring unless it’s happening to you.

This is one of my favorite Chloe-Davis scenes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJaeGTQHyXo. Not so much the subject of the conversation (Davis is worried he’s a ruthless killing machine), but the subtext—their trust for each other, the way Davis is confiding his greatest secret, Chloe’s complete confidence that Davis is a good person. And this line: “I wanna believe you’re right more than anyone.” How much more does that change the meaning than if he said, “I wanna believe you’re right more than anything”? It’s a beautiful moment.

Angst all over the place. Jimmy and Davis both die, and Chloe is alone. Again. Clark, Chloe’s best friend, basically announces that he’s done trying to be human because it hurts too much. So Jimmy’s gone, and Davis is gone, and Clark is closing himself off to human emotion, leaving Chloe all alone.

Halfway through season 9, Chloe and Oliver kiss, after this scene. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouMamjLbO1M Who the heck is Oliver? His name is Oliver Queen, a multibillionaire tycoon more commonly known as the Green Arrow. He and Chloe have known each other for a while, and she’s often his sidekick, doing computer-y stuff for the superhero. Oliver is hot and funny and saves people.This is when they meet for the first time. Sparks, no? (Actually, it probably seems fairly innocent if you don’t know they end up together later. But I like it anyway.) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M49MCezD0LU
So immediately we’re rooting for Oliver and Chloe, right? Regular girl gets the super-awesome, normally unattainable guy. How sweet is that?

Too sweet. Not enough angst. So Oliver gets kidnapped, and then Chloe trades places with Oliver. Oliver thinks he has been released and Chloe is kidnapped, but in reality, Chloe traded herself for Oliver because she believed it was more important for him to go on being Green Arrow and saving people. The kidnap exchange took place at the beginning of season 10 in this beautiful scene here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stLg8T0wyEY. It’s especially poignant when you realize that Chloe knows exactly what she’s giving up, yet Oliver has no idea who just bumped into him, no idea that the love of his life is walking out of his life for good. There’s lots of angst in season 10 as Oliver pines for the lost Chloe. Here’s some: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slXAFITjgMU. Kind of takes a Dear John letter to a whole new level. Of angst. :P

Why do I love Chloe’s angst so much? It’s not that I revel in her pain. I desperately want her to get her happy ending as season 10 wraps up this spring. I like Chloe so much because I relate to her. I see more of myself in her than in any of the other characters. The scenes where she is happy and in love with whoever and being all kissy-kissy are okay. Good, even. Somehow the gooey stuff Oliver says about listening to your heart in the arrow-shooting scene is sweet instead of cringe-worthy. But that scene doesn’t stick with me the way the others do. I don’t think about it often, turning it over in my mind, asking myself questions. There are no questions to ask about that, really, except, “Do they kiss then?” (Answer: yes.)

I suppose part of it is emotional resonance, and part of it is that angst is a problem to be solved. When everything is going right, and everyone’s happy and in love, there’s no problem to be solved. Nothing to continue thinking about at length.


Coming Soon: Jumping the Spark, Part Two (because this is too big of a topic for just one entry)