Oh, season 1 and early season 2 Lionel, back before you were a confirmed sociopath! I miss you!

Meanwhile, I suppose the charitable thing to think about the Rosses is not that they were total morons, but that Jonathan felt guilty for giving Lionel a foothold in Smallville, and when Lionel's crap factory became successful Pete's uncles bitched about it and it became this huge overblown thing in Pete's mind when it wasn't, really.