Somebody Else's Nimrod

I'm really worried about "Memoria" tomorrow for two reasons:

(1) Little Lex with his big shocky eyes, getting cast as Cain--and obviously internalizing it, whether he deserves it or not--may be more than I can bear;

(2) Although I am completely unspoiled, I believe the writers could only be playing the woobie card with him so forcefully if they're planning to have him do something pretty damn horrific shortly.

One dissatisfaction: because Lionel has slowly lost most of his S1 nuance and become much closer to the unreasoning monster of badfic, his plots have lost their ability to cause shock or awe. I didn't feel a scrap of sympathy for Lionel in "Shattered" (not that one should have felt much--but since I had no sense he was genuinely conflicted about doing what he did to Lex, I felt none); I was more amused than anything else by his nearly-staged suicide in "Crisis"; and if it turns out that *he's* responsible for Julian's death and pinned it on Lex, well, it will be both unsurprising and not particularly revelatory of anything. I appreciate the verve Glover brings to the character, but somewhere the writers lost the message with Lionel and committed the fundamental error of making him no longer *interesting*, and I honestly don't see how that can be fixed.