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Smallville: Whisper

Clark: "Behind the Raybans, I'm still the same old Clark."

So this time it was a meteor freak with a magical singing adams apple.

Fortunately, that was only a tiny piece of the plot, because Clark was blinded in a freak Kryptonite heat vision meteor freak jewel robbery accident. Which was almost as silly. Except then it turned into a pretty good episode about Clark developing another new power: superhearing. And having blindness trigger his superhearing even sort of made sense.

Superhearing brought Clark a lot of unexpected new information, starting with Lionel's disintegrating business relationship with Chloe, and the still unresolved something that was going on with Jonathan. At least Chloe finally came clean with Clark. There's something disturbing and sort of fascinating about Lionel and Chloe, two of my three favorite Smallville characters, juggling for position and blackmailing each other like mad. Unfortunately, Lionel now has the upper hand, what with getting Chloe's father fired and losing her the Daily Planet gig. This means war, of course.

This was a good episode for Pete. His kidnapping actually got semi-heavy, and we met his rather gorgeous mother, Judge Ross. (We hadn't met her yet, had we?) Pete even got to sound all heroic while he was protecting Clark's secret.

In other news, Lana appeared to be experiencing Florence Nightingale syndrome with Adam. And Lex, who sounded a lot more like his usual self here, paid Lana's medical bills. He even teased her about Adam. Or was he mildly jealous? I'd like for him to be jealous, but I'm probably projecting.

Bits and pieces:

— Clark Kent actually wore glasses for the first time. I'm not so sure Tom Welling looks that good in glasses. Maybe it's all that hair.

— Lionel's temporary blindness last season sort of made this episode seem repetitious. The writers brought it up several times to sort of defuse it and make it seem like less of a coincidence.

— I sort of think the writers were almost too careful, plot-wise. Imagine what havoc a blind Superman could have wrought, after all.

— The window display for "Smallville Jewelers" had ceramic roosters in it.

— Nathan broke a windshield with his magical adams apple. One point.

Quotes:

Jonathan: "Last time we trusted a doctor, she sold his blood to Lionel Luthor."

Clark: "Suddenly, I'm the ultimate eavesdropper."

Chloe: "This is not the only piece I'm working on for the Daily Planet. I know I could interest them in a story about an eccentric billionaire with an obsessive interest in a Kansas farm boy."

The meteor freak was outright ridiculous, but the superhearing/Chloe/Lionel/Pete stuff made up for it. 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.

4 comments:

  1. The meteor freak was, probably, the worst of the bunch and even the blindness I found a bit boring. I agree that it was an interesting way to introduce the superhearing, but overall a bit ho hum.

    I find it fascinating that Lionel gets so emotional around Chloe. She is, after all, just a kid. A smart, fearless kid, but a kid. What is it about her that leads him to blackmail her and ruin her family? He seems incapable of just walking away and leaving her alone. Interesting...

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  2. This episode, for me, was the biggest missed opportunity in the entire series. They had a (semi-)plausible reason as to why Clark needed glasses, then they took them away. After 2 1/2 seasons of Clark fearing being discovered, using the glasses as a way of deflecting how physically perfect Clark is would have been right on the money. And Clark, in glasses, in his Junior and Senior yearbook photos would go a long, long way towards having people think he always had them. By having him run around without them into his mid-20s, people would never fall for the glasses bit, so wonderfully ingrained in the Superman mythology.

    Although there were many great episodes afterwards, here was a character choice that would have spared us much of the issues with seasons 7-10 if they just had the foresight to look past the end of Clark in High School.

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  3. I'm still on my Ian Somerhalder rewatch and AM sharing my thoughts...

    In the first scene, all I could think was "Panty hose? Really?" Lame.

    The meteor freak looks like he has extreme constipation whenever he "sings".

    Lionel's hair in his scene with Lex looks greasy. (Ha-autocorrect wrote "great.") It's big and full of secrets...

    ...PS- I am the same Liz that posted earlier comments. :)

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  4. Damn that Lionel... completely inappropriate to threaten Chloe and her dad's livelihood like this... like @ChrisB said. She's just a kid. And damn that Lex too tbh, ruining what originally felt like a gratifying scene of Clark immediately relaying to him the upsetting truth behind his return to work by telling him they're taking the fall for his good deed and that he should be.... GRATEFUL?! for that. The Luthors are on my shit list now!

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