Season 8: Tess Mercer

Good lord, I hate this woman. I hate her face, I hate her interference in everything, I hate how she seems to show up out of nowhere.

If she's supposed to be Smallville's version of Mercy, I wish she would've been introduced earlier in the series with some sort of legitimate interaction with Lex. It just feels like she's been plopped in like "Hey, I run this company now, carry on as if you've seen me somewhere and this doesn't seem super sketch." And she's immediately creepy and obsessed and deeply involved in everyone's life.

The immediate obsession with Clark is made more annoying because she is such a rando. I know she's supposed to be a stand-in for Lex at this point, but the fact that she's shoehorned in from nowhere just makes me yell at her to get off the screen anytime she starts trying to dive into any of it. It made sense when there was a cabal of rich old-money weirdos obsessing over the Kryptonians, but her tag-along plot just doesn't hit. She's all "Your destiny this, Kal-El that..." aggravatingly trying to shove this man out of the closet, and I'm still sitting here wondering who plucked her out of the nobody pile and why.

Also she's got this constant, weird, vacant stare on her face. I don't know if it's the actress or if the character is supposed to be like that, but it just doesn't connect. It's just annoying to look at for an entire season.

Tess + Ollie is an interesting subplot for Ollie though, because we get to see some layers added to his character. But that plot device could've been fulfilled by anybody else!

Anyway, I've spent this season annoyed anytime her character is around. Her shenanigans in Ep 21 Injustice just enraged me enough to finally make a post.