Goodbye My Lover(s)

Have you ever been in love with someone who isn't real? I have...multiple times. I'm sure this says something quite worrying about my emotional health, but lets just ignore that for a second and get back to unreality. As I look back on my TV watching career, there are two women who stand out for me. Two women whom I'd have committed a serious felony for. Two women whom I would have eloped with at the drop of a remote control. Two women whom...ah, you get the point. Anyway, those two women are Brooke McQueen and Lana Lang. You may not agree with my choices, you may think they were horrible characters on crappy TV shows, but frankly, I don't care. Love covers a multitude of sins...or something.

I bring this up now not because I want to take you on a disturbing journey through my teenage years of fantasy love. That's a journey we'll take another time...like, say, never. No my dear readers. I bring this up because I just found out that Lana Lang will never again be seen in five episode's time. I'm not sure what's happening to her (though if the picture above is to be believed, then perhaps Clark ties her up and leaves her to burn), but I know she is just not going to be shown on Smallville any longer, and so this is a sad day indeed.

Losing Brooke was hard on me, especially so suddenly and without any kind of plot resolution whatsoever. There she was, rejected by Harrison, standing in front of Nicole's speeding car, and that was it. Gone. I checked the forums, I checked the news sites, just hoping against hope that Popular would come back and Brooke along with it. But alas, nobody was dumb enough to make my dream come true, and Brooke McQueen remained sleeping with the fishes, lost in a sea of prematurely canceled TV shows.

Then along came Lana. Sweet, pure, innocent Lana. Never mind the old adage 'Once bitten twice shy'. It was love at first sight, and it lasted the guts of six years, until it finally came to the stage where Smallville had gotten so bad that watching it made me hurt, both emotionally and physically. Even the draw of Lana Lang wasn't enough to keep me coming back for more, so just like that I stopped tuning in to new episodes. However, knowing that Lana lived on was enough for me, even if I wasn't at all interested in what she or any of her friends were up to.

But now this. This...this...travesty. She's leaving, never to be seen again. Her character is finished with, soon to be joining Brooke McQueen in the morgue. Oh to be in that morgue with them! Given that I'm slightly more grown up, there's a good chance that nobody else fictional will be joining them. And so this is it. The last of my fantasy crushes. Rest in peace, Brooke and Lana. Rest in the knowledge that you were always so much hotter than Sam and Chloe.

Of course as a sort of corollary of falling in love with a TV character, you tend to fall in love with the actress too. And so I thought I'd check and see what Kristen Kreuk is up to these days. Maybe she's making something of herself, which would certainly soften the blow of losing Ms Lang. I started to get really excited, pondering all of the various projects she could be working on now that her schedule is cleared up. Perhaps some new show aimed at teenage girls for me to get addicted to? Perhaps a romantic comedy starring Mark Ruffalo? Oh the possibilities!

But no. Here's what Kristen Kreuk is now working on:

Street Fighter: Legend of Chun-Li

Yep. She's doing a computer game-based movie, because those have always worked out real well for the actors involved [?]. As a rule of thumb, if you find yourself starring as a computer game character, then you need to take a long hard look in the mirror and ask yourself if you're really cut out to be an actor.

That said, I'm totally going to go see this movie on the off chance that it makes its way to Irish cinemas, or just cinemas in general. I mean I went to see Hit Man in the cinema. How much worse could this be?

But enough about Hit Man, enough about Street Fighter and the frightening possibilities that a movie based around Chun-Li entails. This is Lana's moment, and here's the scene of hers that will feature long in my memory. Tom Welling is in it too (not that that's a bad thing...I mean He is freakishly good-looking). Oh, and there's some kissing at the end, and some pretty bad acting throughout, so watch out for that. Still though, I just love this scene, especially in its context (which I won't take the time to explain). The music, the cheesy dialogue - it's got it all, and for me, it cemented Lana's place on the list. Enjoy, if you dare...

The Birthday Scene