Last week, in preparation for Smallville: Season 9 being released on DVD I decided it would be a good idea to revisit some old-timey episodes of yore. I spent the day wallowing in self grief/lying down and watching Season 1, which I haven’t done in quite some time. Boy, was I in for a treat. I only ended up watching the first 2 discs or so, but no matter, because I re-fell in love with Season 1, Episode 7, entitled “Craving” (ooooh, spooky). For those of you who aren’t familiar with this little morsel of t.v. cheese, one thing you can almost always expect in any episode is a) Clark Kent to be wearing red and/or blue, b) Some form of body-snatching and c) A vaguely famous actor making a cameo (by vaguely famous I mostly mean only Erin or I could identify them) as one of the ‘meteor-infected’. The episode of which I speak features a pre-almost-everything-of-note-except-maybe-Cruel-Intentions-2 Amy Adams. In a fat suit. Alas, I could only find one clip on the webernets, but lucky for you, it highlights some key points I’d like to discuss: (Note: For our purposes it’s really only necessary to watch clip up until the opening credits. Thank you, The Management)
So, where do I begin? At the beginning, I suppose. I like how right off the bat you’re just bombarded with “this girl’s fat” hints. If by hints one means getting bludgeoned over the head with lard slabs tethered to Amy Adam’s fiery red locks. Spaghetti, Dad? As if. Thai food? Me no think so. I’m so fat all I can eat are Kryptonite-infused puke shakes and that’s final. Also, they made a point of the Dad noticing the meteor rocks in the soil which he then completely ignored. If I saw my child skipping off to make a health shake out of vegetables pulled from sparkly, green soil, I might suggest a slim-fast, if that’s the route she insists on taking. Shake? Sure. Sparkle shakes? As good as that sounds in theory, I’ll have to pass.
Also, could they have found a more douche-ier looking dude to play the bully? That guys looked like a penis with legs wearing a gold chain and a hairstyle that was most obviously copied from Alex and Nicky Katsopolis. I half expected Aunt Becky to come around the corner, on her way home from Wake Up, San Fransisco, and scold Alex/Nicky for his remark. In fact, while I’m at it, Stephanie could have popped out with a meth pipe in one hand and said “how rude” – because even meth heads don’t treat people that way. Whale watching? Come on, she’s not even that big, which leads me to my next point.
I guess I can start off by saying that there would be no love lost with this girl if Hollywood, and/or Vancouver, decided to never use fat suits again. But, really, a fat suit? 168 pounds? Speaking as someone who has, in fact, weighed 168 pounds I am appalled. Even more so when she initially loses 19 pounds to 139 and still has a double chin and muffin top, even though she’s wearing the same outfit she had on at 168. I mean, come on. 168 pounds puts a girl at maybe a size 12 – which is still smaller than your average bear, and woman. I almost spit out the cookie dough I was eating in bed when she stepped on the scale. I don’t think they needed to specify her weight to get the point across that she dropped a few l.b.’s – when you put a number to it you automatically encourage pre-existing weight complexes in teenage (or late-twenties) ladies across the land. Bad move, Smallville, bad move.
My favorite parts of this scene are a) the Dido angst anthem in the background and b) the inexplicable lack of diarrhea. Seriously? She was in the bathroom anyways, where did all that weight go? Back to Krypton? Everybody knows what that gurgle in the belly means. It means you’re on a collision course with a shitsplosion. I mean, it looked like she had the sand worm from Beetlejuice twirling around in there. I wanted them to show a giant sand-worm poop coming out of her that had vagina teeth like the monster in Dreamcatcher. No such luck. It’s fine to humiliate a girl for being fat, but poop talk just plain crosses the line. Lame.
What you don’t get to see (and woe is you for that) is that later we, the collective viewer, find out that as a result of her lipo-shakes she develops an insatiable hunger that sends her on my dream binge. But, when that isn’t enough she turns to the next logical step…eating a deer. That’s right. Fatty eats a deer. She hits the deer with her car and in a ‘what the hell?’ sort of a moment nonchalantly detaches her jaw and sucks that Bambi dry. No bigs. Except that once she’s seen how great a deer is she naturally moves on to, you guessed it, Nicky Katsopolis. Talk about karma, man. Don’t make fun of fat people because they will literally eat you.
Of course everything gets solved and tidied by the end. It’s Kansas, people. But, I couldn’t help but be left with the image of my 17 year-old self, cowering in fear and self-doubt and waiting ever so patiently for someone to hook me up with some f’ing meteor shakes. I’ll eat you and I’ll eat you good.
