It begins - writing with constraints.[]
Edit It began with the season opener, where Chloe inexplicably didn't take Clark up on his obvious interest in discussing their kiss - presumably because she was so taken with Jimmy Olsen, a guy who she had previously referred to as "not special." Also the guy who took her virginity when she was a 15 year old spending time alone in the big city. Yea. Very plausible that she'd meet him at 19 or 20 and throw out her 7 year obsessive love for a superhero for the guy. All this so Chloe can be "out of the way" as a romantic interest - since it's not canon.
But this particular episode does something even more transparently obvious as an attempt to force the canon outcomes onto the show - I'm talking about Lois's sudden, inexplicable turn to newspaper reporting.
Clark becoming a newspaper reporter I can buy. He did it all through school, he needs a cover, and he has an in at the Daily Planet. He'll get there when he gets there.
But this show's version of Lois (its official version of Lois - obviously Chloe is its real answer to Lois, since she has all the character's traits and fills all her functions except the most important one) has no interest in journalism (to quote Chloe), and her whole history of it on the show is one episode's worth of editorial writing for a school paper.
Did anyone buy it when something weird happened in this episode (the 90th extremely weird event Lois has experienced - but actually one of the less weird or newsworthy ones) and Lois's impulse was suddenly to get it published in a newspaper? I mean what horrible writing. Why would she suddenly think to try to do that? It's just out of nowhere. Of course we know why she REALLY does it - she's named Lois Lane and eventually has to get from here to there.
Maybe then it would have made more sense to, I dunno, either not introduce her on this show at all, or to have Chloe become her, or to have her be something who could plausibly have made a turn to journalism.
Then there's the matter of her getting it in a major metropolitan tabloid. I know lots of crazy crap happens in this show, and lots of stupid stuff - a state Senate campaign is run like it's a national campaign, etc - but try being 20 year old waitress with no college education or journalism experience, and send a story in to a major tabloid paper and see how that works out.
This is why in many ways season 5 is the last "real" season of this show. It's the last season the show was itself, and was being written naturally, without the constraints of the canon. One gets the feeling that if Jonathon Kent had survived season 5, he'd never have been allowed to die, since in the canon both of Clark's parents have to survive.
Chloe kissing Clark in Vessel may be the last moment this show had free will.
Ollie as villain...[]
I think the weirder thing in this episode is that Oliver is behind Lex's kidnapping. Oliver is portrayed as a good guy the rest of the series, but the first thing he does is order a kidnapping. I mean I understand there is a line about the kidnapper going too far, but why does Oliver hire goons in the first place? He doesn't have goons any other time? Why didn't he kidnap Lex himself and use his voice changer thing if he was worried Lex would recognize him?