You say that you're bothered by the 'pleasure' Lex took in his actions in both "Cyborg" and "Aqua." I didn't see him taking any particular pleasure in his dealings with the cyborg guy; Lex clearly felt a certain satisfaction that the medical procedures they'd been testing had been successful (which is natural enough), but in his conversation with the patient himself, Lex seemed merely to be trying to calm the guy down (albeit unsuccessfully) as he explained the reasons for both the procedures that had already been done and the procedure they were about to do. That hardly strikes me as sadism.
In "Aqua," Lex was dealing with someone who had verbally attacked him the moment they'd been introduced, and then proceeded to break into a secret installation and try to sabotage a multi-million dollar piece of equipment at a particularly critical time. So, yes, Lex was taking a certain pleasure in taunting Aqua (note that I say 'taunting,' not 'torturing'), but I don't think it was any greater than the pleasure Clark later took in taunting Lex after the equipment HAD been destroyed, and Clark and Aqua had escaped. Furthermore, not giving Aqua the water he asked for wasn't simple cruelty on Lex's part; it was a purely practical precaution against Aqua's escape, since Lex had clearly deduced that giving the guy water would vastly increase his strength and enable him to escape (which, in fact, it later DID).
So, no, I don't see Lex as a genuine sadist. Oliver Queen, yes. Lex Luthor, no.
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You say that you're bothered by the 'pleasure' Lex took in his actions in both "Cyborg" and "Aqua." I didn't see him taking any particular pleasure in his dealings with the cyborg guy; Lex clearly felt a certain satisfaction that the medical procedures they'd been testing had been successful (which is natural enough), but in his conversation with the patient himself, Lex seemed merely to be trying to calm the guy down (albeit unsuccessfully) as he explained the reasons for both the procedures that had already been done and the procedure they were about to do. That hardly strikes me as sadism.
In "Aqua," Lex was dealing with someone who had verbally attacked him the moment they'd been introduced, and then proceeded to break into a secret installation and try to sabotage a multi-million dollar piece of equipment at a particularly critical time. So, yes, Lex was taking a certain pleasure in taunting Aqua (note that I say 'taunting,' not 'torturing'), but I don't think it was any greater than the pleasure Clark later took in taunting Lex after the equipment HAD been destroyed, and Clark and Aqua had escaped. Furthermore, not giving Aqua the water he asked for wasn't simple cruelty on Lex's part; it was a purely practical precaution against Aqua's escape, since Lex had clearly deduced that giving the guy water would vastly increase his strength and enable him to escape (which, in fact, it later DID).
So, no, I don't see Lex as a genuine sadist. Oliver Queen, yes. Lex Luthor, no.