Day 23 - Most annoying character

[fabrisse]

I thought this was going to be another "I don't really have one" answer, and then it came to me in a nightmare dream -- a preternaturally pwetty pink pwincess named Lana Lang.

I hated her. If you rewatch the first season, you can see that Lana actually has some reasonable moments in the first couple of episodes. Plus, anytime there was a flashback to four-year old Lana, it was a bonus. That kid could act.

Kristin Kreuk, well, I've seen her on Edgemont and she can play a bitch fairly well. Lana, however, was supposed to be all that was good and pure and sweet and light and -- there goes my dinner. There might have been an actress who could play her. I do think many of the problems with the character are from the writing. The producers/writers were so eager to make it logical for Clark to be in love with her, for Whitney to be her boyfriend, for the Kent parents to like her, that they made Lana a simpering fool. But I think there are actresses who could overcome it. Heck, I think Alison Mack, who played Chloe, might have been able to give the character some sense of strength.

Instead, Lana always seemed to be blown by the wind in her interests, her motivations, and her relationships.

Comments

[eanja]

I think it was really a shame what they did w/ Lana. It's like they couldn't wrap their head around anyone both being nice, and having a personality or being in any way interesting. In the first few episodes, she really did come across as a genuinely nice person that you would expect Clark to have a crush on. But they missed the part where in real life, people who get good grades, and do charity work, and are competitive as several sports, and are consistently cheerful and friendly to everyone, are usually also people who have a good amount of gumption and common sense. They are not the same people who sit around being sad mopey princesses who need to be rescued. And the whole having her go faux rebellious, where there wasn't really any indication that anyone had ever been forcing her to do anything to begin with, was a pretty desperate way to try to build character.

She should have been someone who, when faced w/ a problem, actually dealt with it, and didn't sit around crying over her dead parents. The moping just really, really didn't fit the rest of the character. I gave up on the series about the time all that secretly reincarnated witch stuff showed up.

[fabrisse.livejournal.com]

I'd forgotten the reincarnated witch stuff. *headdesk* Bad.

Yes, perfect and mopey was the problem.

[riverfox.livejournal.com]

GAH! Completely agree. I couldn't stand her.

[fabrisse.livejournal.com]

Not a great character. And it's frustrating because there are glimmers in some of the early episodes of what could have been an interesting evolution for Lana.

[riverfox.livejournal.com]

When they tried to "toughen" her up, giving her martial art skills, it was so contrary to the established personality that I don't understand what the writers were thinking. They couldn't believably take a Princess-In-Distress and suddenly give her a backbone without having her go through some heavy strength-building trauma. The shit Lana went through was nowhere near what was needed to make the character "grow up". And that whole fiasco with Lex ... good god.