Clark and Lana as a couple just don't excite me, and when the episode is centered around them, I'm often bored. Not so much this time, though, because of the wild and crazy plot.
An episode like this one is a great excuse for our main actors to dress up and play different parts and have uncharacteristic smoochies. Tom Welling and Kristin Kreuk did indeed look terrific in period clothes, and this episode was definitely hotter and sexier than Smallville usually gets. It was also full of fun tidbits of new info.
Seems that Lana's great-aunt Louise, who looked remarkably like Lana, was killed forty-two years ago by a drifter named "Joe" who looked remarkably like Clark. (Except the killer was actually Cancer Man from X-Files. But I digress.) Jor-El said that his father sent him, Jor-El, to Earth to teach him a lesson. It may not be Superman canon, but Jor-El's experiences with the kindness of the residents of Smallville, including Jonathan's parents, certainly explained why Jor-El sent Clark to Earth. He may even have been aiming directly at the Kent farm.
We got a brief and very romantic description of Krypton from Jor-El. "Where I'm from, we have colors that you've never seen. Our moons are so close, they fill up half the sky. We have sunsets that last for hours." Yeah, yeah, yeah. And a big red sun.
We learned lots of new stuff about the Luthor clan. Lionel was born and raised in Suicide Slums (was that anything to do with the drink he shared with Morgan Edge?), and his parents died in a tenement fire. Or did they?
Bits and pieces:
— Lex appears to be fine. Maybe I was imagining those nervous breakdown signs. Or maybe that shrink in the last episode was a good one.
— Hiram Kent's wife, no name given, was pregnant with Jonathan. That was kind of fun.
— The murderer turned out to be our old friend, Cancer Man, a.k.a. Mayor William Tate.
— Kristin Kreuk looks quite a bit like Natalie Wood, whose movie Splendor in the Grass was on the Talon's marquee.
— Yes, there was a Buffy episode that reminds me a bit of this one, where Buffy and Angel were possessed by lovers from the 1950s. They even danced to "I Only Have Eyes For You," like Jor-El and Louise did here.
— Jor-El tossed Louise's mugger into a lamp post; one point. (Was that really Lex's grandfather?) And Tate shot "Joe," and got the glass behind him; another point.
Quotes:
Lana: "You must have come from somewhere. It's not like you just fell out of the sky."
Clark: "It's just a hunch that the drifter was there."
Chloe: "I get that. It's the robbery outside the Talon with the Natalie Wood movie playing that's a little more detailed than your average hunch."
Clark: "I don't think you and Mom found me by accident. I think you were chosen."
Not my favorite type of plot, but I think they pulled it off. Three stars,
Billie
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Billie Doux had a love-hate relationship with Smallville, which is why some of her reviews are briefer than they should be.
I usually love episodes where our actors get to become part of another time. This one doesn't do it for me.
ReplyDeleteNot sure why, except that, like you, I don't much like the Clark/Lana combination. They have so little chemistry that I roll my eyes when I should be swooning.
Oh well. But, I do like the scenes with Joe at the Kent house. Explains a lot about why the spaceship ended up in a Kansas cornfield.
It was an interesting episode but I really felt like I was watching The Dead Zone instead of Smallville.
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