I enjoy watching Smallville. I found Lana tiresome almost immediately. Recently, the writers teased us by showing an alternate future where she died. Struck with the possibility of not having to deal with her while watching the show, I became very excited. Then they brought the character back, and I couldn’t bear to continue watching the show. Every minute she’s on the screen is a minute stolen from me through the dark arts of terrible acting. If I didn’t so enjoy the rest of the plots and characters, I could so easily just stop watching. (I am also starting to run low on SG-1 episodes…)
To help combat my annoyance with Lana, I think I’m going to measure her screen-time. I’m going to count every minute that she’s on-screen and not dead, or when the on-screen plot is a direct result of her idoicy. (i.e. Clark complaining about something Lana did.) The goal will be to reach a “perfect episode” Lana-minute score of ZERO.
As a bonus, I figure I should also track Chloevage minutes. I figure Lana and Chloevage timers shouldn’t run if they’re both on screen at the same time — they cancel eachother; I am neither frowning nor smiling. The Chloevage-minutes would be a tie-breaker for episodes with nearly the same Lana-minutes value.
Ah, the physics of abstract television analysis.
© 2006, Kees Cook. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License.