Throughout Smallville’s fifth season, the inventive group for the hit tv sequence acquired orders from the CW community for vacation themed episodes. Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, the Smallville showrunners at the moment, answered with an episode for Christmas known as “Lexmas” and an episode for Halloween known as “Thirst”.
Trying again on the sequence, “Lexmas” is remembered extra fondly. The episode dove into Lex Luthor’s psyche and introduced an optimistic future the place he was married to Lana Lang, had a son, and was welcomed by the Kent household. The episode gave Lex Luthor all the things he ever wished with the only real value of turning his again on his organic father Lionel and successfully being shut out of the household enterprise Luthorcorp. The episode is ready to each give a glimpse to an alternate future whereas successfully displaying why it couldn’t be. Lana dies as a result of Lex not has entry to sources, and it convinces Lex that he wants energy with the intention to safe love, cementing the harmful path he’d been set on for seasons.
“Thirst” compared doesn’t have the compelling emotional beats or close to flawless execution. Given the order for a vacation episode, author Stephen S. DeKnight determined to take Smallville down a style fiction route and deal with vampires. As with most Smallville style excursions, the true offender ultimately was inexperienced meteor rocks, however for almost all of the episode’s run time, audiences are allowed to consider that Clark Kent and his mates are coping with the legendary creatures from folklore.
DeKnight made a number of nods to Buffy the Vampire Slayer inside “Thirst”. The obvious was the naming of the primary vampire Buffy Sanders, a transparent allusion to Buffy Summers, the protagonist of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The episode additionally has particular visitor star James Marsters who performed Spike in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and performs a equally villainous function in Smallville. But, even the nods to Buffy the Vampire Slayer couldn’t make the episode good. Gough and Millar thought it was the present’s worst episode and solid member Kristin Kreuk who performed Lana Lang detested it whereas filming.
The Nods to Buffy
Believing that the episode wasn’t working, the Smallville inventive group determined so as to add a framing narration for the story via extra scenes with Chloe, Clark’s finest good friend. The episode opens with Chloe getting rejected from an internship with the Every day Planet and informed to convey them a narrative if she needs an opportunity as a reporter. The remainder of the episode is framed by her narration, which is snarky and witty in a means paying homage to Buffy Summers. Chloe admits that the vampire’s title isn’t truly Buffy Sanders, however that she’s “modified the names to guard the vapid”. It’s a humorous and direct nod, even when the extra becoming reference would name the vampire Concord Kendall.
Concord Kendall was a facet character in Buffy, a imply lady who was mates with Cordelia earlier than Cordelia correctly joined the Scoobies. Concord later turns into a vampire however nonetheless approaches life equally as she did when she was a mere highschool scholar. Like Buffy Sanders, she’s blonde, vapid, and anxious with status. Not like Buffy Sanders, she didn’t flip the lead feminine of the sequence right into a vampire and attempt to kill mentioned lady’s boyfriend.
The episode is paying homage to Buffy the Vampire season 4 when the Scoobies had been in faculty. Chloe quips about going to the library to analysis a technique to kill her roommate — Buffy’s roommate ended up being a demon — and the evil Tri Psi sorority is described as being about bimbos, bikinis, and beer, bringing the notorious “Beer Unhealthy” episode to thoughts. Your complete Tri Psi initiation is framed round being “the chosen” and the way yearly there can solely be one, identical to in every technology, there may be solely the one slayer.
Criticisms of the Episode
Whereas DeKnight struggled with the course of the episode given the way it devolved right into a bunch of hissing between the feminine vampires, Kristin Kreuk struggled with it for a distinct purpose. The vampirism plot and the Halloween setting felt like extra excuses to needlessly sexualize Lana — in spite of everything, she’s in a skin-tight leather-based catsuit for half the episode. On the Speak Ville podcast with Michael Rosenbaum (Lex Luthor) and Tom Welling (Clark Kent) again in 2025, she talked about how she tried pushing again towards the episode to little avail. She admitted there had been issues within the script she refused to do, however she didn’t title what the issues had been. Kreuk chalked the episode as much as a studying expertise on setting boundaries on set and the way vital it was for shifting ahead each with the present and as an actress.
In a commentary for the episode, DeKnight, Gough, and Millar admitted the episode didn’t translate effectively to the display screen. Not like season 4’s “Spell” which handled witches and was thought-about a very good episode, “Thirst” didn’t land as they wished it to. The commentary revealed that the primary reduce of the episode depressed co-showrunner Gough and led him to provide you with the Chloe narration the place she defined a number of bits within the episode. Whereas this made the episode higher in his opinion, he nonetheless felt just like the episode may’ve been higher.
“Thirst” is unquestionably nowhere close to the very best episode of Smallville and is just one instance of the oversexualization of Lana that pervaded the present, however it may be a enjoyable time if viewers are within the temper for a much less critical episode.
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