Ellie and JJ, I completely agree with everything you said. I hate Lana. Her character made me stop watching Smallville in early S4, despite Jensen Ackles being on the show. I think that says it all.
The reason I hate Lana, apart from the fact that she's too whiny for my taste, is that she's the biggest Mary Sue I've ever seen on TV. I can't even begin to count the ways.
For starters, every single male on Smallville seems to be madly in love with her, or at elast totally enchanted by her.
Secondly, her perfection goes so far beyond anything that could ever be realistic, it makes me gag. Seriously, how does a teenager manage to go to school, get good grades and at the same time manage a cafe, even though an earlier episode clearly showed that she couldn't serve a cup of coffee to save her life? And then Martha, a woman twice her age who managed to juggle working for Lionel, the farm, the household, being a wife and being a mother, has to ask *her* for advice when she takes over the cafe?
And no matter what Lana does, she always comes out as miss perfect who can do no worng and the others are always the bad guys. What about the time she snooped around in Chloe's computer and found the pictures of Chloe and Clark at prom? In the end, *Chloe* had to apologize to *Lana*.
Gah, it's sickening. Ruined the show. That and the fact that they actually color-coded their characters.
Stepping off my soap box now...