this episode he was everything I had been saying I wanted him to be - scary, effective, villainous, for once not self-pitying - and I hated it.

Oh, I know exactly what you mean. Be careful what you wish for, I guess.

I'm not sure I can take watching a whole season of this Lex.

Yeah. This is why I'm concerned about the way the Lexana went. If they had made it a real romance (rather than Lex, apparently, trapping her into marrying him by creating the fake pregnancy), at least we could have continued to see the human side of Lex and that would have made it somewhat easier to watch. This was just....awful. I don't WANT to hate Lex.

At the very least, we need some eps solidly from within his POV so we can at least understand his motives or something.