Last week it was Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, this week it’s Cloverfield which is the movie to rip off as Smallville 8x10 Bride kicks off with a fairly obviously Cloverfield lifted video opening and then closes with it too, much like the movie. In Smallville’s defense, the Cloverfield imitation is put to good use and makes the cliffhanger episode darker and more epic, but blatant imitation is still blatant imitation, and Smallville really needs to cut it out.

Besides plagiarism, Doomsday comes to town, or rather he’s been around all along in the form of the evil medic with a last name as his first name, Davis Bloome. Since the show is Chloe centered now, he arrives just in time to ruin Chloe’s wedding reception and kidnap her over to the Braniac controlled Fortress of Solitude. Of course this requires some tinkering with Doomsday’s origin, Smallville’s Doomsday is a lot younger than the DC comics version, and he’s the product of General Zod’s efforts and I would imagine he’s a lot weaker. Still it’s a half-decent way to introduce a worthy adversary for Superman.

And besides Doomsday, Bride also features the return of Lex Luthor and Lana Lang, possibly working together, along with more of Lois’ cloying love for Clark, which completely cuts against the grain of the story, is out of character and has been plopped in with no development at all. Naturally quickly after coming home, Lana finds herself in the hospital again. Because no episode with Lana would be complete that did not find her in her own hospital wing. But overall Bride is a well done episode, despite all these problems, and a decent setup for the entry of a real enemy. Let’s hope Smallville doesn’t blow the landing.

Having a show’s brainy plainer female character amass a great deal of powers building to an explosion is not exactly a new concept for a series, and while Smallville did seem to be headed down that road with Chloe gaining the ability to read just about everything ever written on the internet (including the Sonic fanfic) in a minute while accessing Kryptonian data crystals. By the time she killed a nice homicidal mind reading psycho to protect Clark’s secret, you would have assumed that things were building to a pitch, and they were but just not the pitch you thought.

Instead Smallville 8x09 Abyss reveals that Braniac’s code is what’s giving Chloe her powers, with the artificial intelligence that much like a vampire just won’t stay dead regenerating again using Chloe. Naturally the whole thing ties into evil medic who also happens to be the artificially created son of Zod and the ultimate destroyer. While Braniac’s code removes memories of everyone but him from her mind, Clark recreates the Fortress of Solitude, a surprisingly underwhelming moment, and gets positively chummy with dear old dad, who this time around willingly helps his friend without exacting a murderous price. Despite my mockery it’s actually a fairly nice moment with Clark sounding like Superman instead of a petulant teenager.

Meanwhile back in Chloe’s head, Smallville launches an ambitious ripoff of yet another movie, this time aiming as high as Charlie Kaufman by stealing from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, complete with Chloe looking for a safe memory to put Clark into and escaping into childhood. It’s a nice moment, it’s also hopelessly plagiarized and scenes like this make me wonder what the writers and producers are thinking when they copy so blatantly. Do they really think no one will notice or care? Probably the latter.

Either way Clark decides to erase Chloe’s memories of his superpowers from her mind. Naturally this is a stupid idea which will set up lots of drama, but is virtually inevitable because there are a shortage of friends Clark knows who don’t know his secret. And by shortage I mean one. Now two. Of course by and probably well before season’s end, Chloe will discover it all over again followed by plenty of handwringing. And logically, erasing Chloe’s memories of Clark’s superpowers also removes a ton of other information ancillary to this, including major chunks of her life. But who’s talking about logic. This is Chinaton, I mean Smallville.

If there’s anything that can be said for Season 8, it’s that Smallville has finally gotten serious about bringing Clark not just somewhere around the neighborhood of becoming Superman, but into actually becoming Superman, and while there are fumbles, the season is moving it along. Smallville 8x08 Bloodline features another visit to the Phantom Zone, a Zod arrival, a Kandor quest and a show that feels a lot closer to the comic books than ever.

Of course it also features the return of the show’s most obvious failed attempt at a recurring character, Kara, still being played with all the dept and range of an audience member in a George Foreman grill commercial. The producers of Smallville seem to have realized how badly they screwed up and last time around had dumped Kara off screen, only to bring her back in Smallville 8x08 Bloodline and then send her packing to look for Kandor.

This time around a mysterious stranger sends Clark the crystal only to have it whoosh him and Lois off to the Phantom Zone. Kara apparently has been living there to avoid opening a portal to Earth that the Zoners could use. Naturally Clark wants to send Lois him and risks both their lives and earth to do it. Mission accomplished, but with Zod’s wife as a passenger possessing Lois who promptly goes to look for her son, who turns out to be a genetic creation masquerading as evil medic, or the Anti-Clark.

Overall Smallville S8e08 Bloodline is not at all a bad episode, heavy on the comics and low on the freaks of the week.

Smallville has spent a lot of time showcasing Clark in red and blue but Smallville 8x07 Identity crosses the rubicon or does as much with the closest thing the series has had to date to the birth of Superman. Not of course the actual shove the baby in a spaceship on Krypton birth, but the costume, as Jimmy snaps a speeding red and blue blur that happens to be Clark dressed in his usual red and blue, all but guessing Clark’s identity resulting in an elaborate attempt at a disguise that has Green Arrow donning a blue suit and a red cape to become the real Clark and in the process the real Superman.

In an episode that ends with Superman on the cover of the Daily Planet, Smallville se8e07 Identity goes a long way toward redeeming Season 8 from the endless whiny Jimmy and Chloe episodes we’ve been subjected to lately, even the Saw ripoff. It’s not exactly canon and the idea of Superman as not only junior to just about every other superhero out there but gettingh is costume idea from a clumsy attempt by a drunken Green Arrow doesn’t sit all that well either. But it still plays out well enough.

And an ending that has Chloe all in black taking out Tess’ memory thief the final way is a bit startling and raises some questions over who Chloe really is and how far she’s prepared to go. Smallville is not exactly big on originality and the idea of making the brainy girl into an uncontrolled superpowered menace along the lines of Willow is a long way from original. Even MutantX did it first. But it’s still a lot better than enduring any more relationship episodes between Chloe and Jimmy. Just about anythign is better than that.

Back when Smallville’s eight season was being held up by the negotiations to keep the actress playing Chloe on board it seemed as if it would be a shame for the show to lose her, after all she was the one truly smart and savvy female character on the show. And now with Smallville 8x06 Prey putting us 6 episodes in, it’s unfortunately all too clear that the price of keeping Chloe was much too high. Not only is Smallville now burdened with one pointless Chloe relationship involving Jimmy that everyone knows is doomed, but we get a second pointless Chloe relationship with the Jekyl and Hyde EMT Davis, and on top of that Chloe doing a Lana impersonation by running Isis group therapy sessions complete with treacly feed good advice. Basically Chloe has become the new Lana and it’s not a pretty picture.

By the beginning of Smallville S08e06 Prey it’s obvious that Clark has shifted into Superman mode, he’s listening to a radio scanner and flying off, or jumping up to fight crime, which should be the center of the episode. Then there’s the Martian Manhunter taking on his phony J’onn J’onzz identity on the Metropolis PD force. Both of which are major factors in Superman’s journey. By the end of the episode J’onn J’onzz has even suggested a costume to Clark to disguise his identity. Instead though Smallville Prey centers on Chloe and the two men in her life, almost as if Clark was just a supporting character in her drama.

And that’s exactly what it is. Smallville 8x06 Prey lays out a not particularly mysterious mystery that any idiot will be able to foresee the twists for in a few minutes flat, both of which naturally center around Chloe. Lois herself is absent in the episode, so is Tess, not to mention Green Arrow and much of the cast. It’s almost as if Smallville had become a series about Chloe. With Season 8 the producers should have simply terminated Smallville, created a new series called Metropolis and taken it from there. At the very least deducting 50 points from Chloe’s IQ and turning her into the center of all the relationship drama was really the wrong way to go.

Smallville 8x05 Committed gives the viewers more of what they really want, bad ripoffs of successful movies. Smallville has long ago topped Sliders in centering entire episodes around bad ripoffs of mainstream movies but somehow only Smallville could rip off Saw and center it around the usual soap opera of tangled relationships and saddest of all it’s not even the first time that Smallville has ripped off Saw but the second time.

This time around there’s a Jigsaw lite clone in a mask whose wife lied to him. So naturally he killed her and has been using his jewelry store as a front for observing engaged couples and kidnapping them, using electroshocks in a lie detector test and killing the ones who aren’t meant to be together. Also naturally he’s got a Krpytonite bracelet. Even more naturally, Jimmy and Chloe run afoul of him and get taken to his greenishly lit cellar to be interrogated for some overacting and screaming. This serves as the linchpin for a “larger” story about two other potential couples, one past and one present, Oliver and Tess, and Clark and Lois, who apparently fell deeply in love with him one or two episodes ago but is dedicated to never telling him. Not only does this run counter to the whole canon storyline, but it runs counter to Lois’ personality who has never been the shrinking violet type but the go out and get em type.

A week after Instinct, Smallville turns out yet another episode of relationship angst, particularly with the doomed relationship of Jimmy and Chloe at the center of it. Clark and Lois have been retconned to be madly and secretly in love and the series is still trying to push that Green Arrow spinoff by giving us pointless scenes between Tess and Oliver, who viewers are supposed to pretend is straight to boot. It’s a lot of work with no real purpose. I’m sure the actress playing Chloe Sullivan has some solid people working for her and when they renegotiated her contract for an 8th season, it came backed not only by top billing but by pointless storylines centered around a pointless relationship. But the series in the end isn’t Charmed, it is Smallville. 7 years of this nonsense with Lana should have been more than enough for the writers to get all the relationship angst out of their system.

Smallville 8x04 Instinct isn’t quite another “Everyone’s Mooning Over Everyone Else” episode, but that’s only because it really doesn’t even have that much content. Maxima is at least a DC character who isn’t shortchanged, mainly because she’s pretty dopey to begin with, so unlike say Green Arrow or Black Canary there’s not much to complain about in her depiction. As Maxima usually does she arrives, looks for Superman in order to make him her mate but instead winds up nearly having sex with him in the elevator. Emphasis on the nearly, which can only bring Clark that much closer to being the protagonist in Tomorrow He Comes.

But whatever content Smallville s8e04 Instinct winds up being mostly dedicated to showcasing the pointless and doomed relationship of Chloe and Jimmy, something that probably no one has cared about for a year and a half or so, and the even more absurd idea that Clark and Lois have some kind of special soulmate bond, which is the sort of thing you might want to develop before just throwing it out there.

Maxima this time around isn’t much of a threat except to the men who make out with her and Clark easily manages to send her home. Meanwhile the crystal becomes the latest artifact that the series is centered around with Tess triggering it to send out a Kryptonian beacon, only to have it stolen from her by a mysterious someone who tells her she isn’t ready for it yet. I assume that Brainiac’s Fine is lurking somewhere in the background again. Meanwhile most of the cast once again doesn’t show up for the episode making you wonder why they’re listed at all and the writers for Instinct seem to have forgotten that it was Lexcorp and not the government that locked up Chloe. So basically everything is much the same on Smallville in the quality department.

Seemingly less of an episode of Smallville and more of an attempt to give Hartley’s Green Arrow yet another shot at a Smallville spinoff featuring a lame rendering of a Justice League character, Smallville 8x03 Toxic kicks off with Clark and Chloe at a rainforest fundraiser to fight global warming or something like that when Oliver Queen stumbles in and pulling off his greatest big of acting yet, collapses and then informs everyone that he only has 12 hours to live.

Naturally Clark and Chloe take him to the Isis foundation room which has become the new default headquarters. Even more naturally Chloe calls her new paramedic friend over, whose own meteor powers are being telegraphed loudly enough to set off alarm bells even all the over in Gotham City, meanwhile Oliver has a flashback of being trapped on a deserted island with Tess, learning to shoot arrows and escaping a kidnapping. So of course naturally the kidnapper came for him along with an exotic tropical poison.

Questioning Tess, Clark learns that there’s an antidote but the lab is all the way over in Brazil. Clark retrieves the antidote. Oliver lives to simpler for another day and we learn that he and Tess have a history together which at some point the show will no doubt inflict mercilessly on us. Afterward Tess clears her schedule for a nice bit of murder and drives away in a car with a license plate that seems to read NOMERCY, which means that the DMV is pretty lenient about giving supervillains their own personalized license plates. This is a step down though from Lex’s own personalized EVILBALD plates.

Smallville 8x02 Plastique kicks off with Clark Kent doing the reporter by day and Superman also by day thing as he holds down a desk at the Daily Planet after a quick more formal wardrobe makeover by Lois Lane and rescues injured people from a bus explosion. Along with those civilians is one Tess Mercer who also happens to to be running the Daily Planet and keeping her eye on Clark, which is about the only explanation for why a College dropout whose only work experience was on a wacky High School newspaper could have a job at the Daily Planet at all, that and his mother being a United States Senator, though oddly enough no one mentions that Clark Kent is a US Senator’s son.

In any case as it turns out Tess was on the bus chasing an escaped girl from the Montana facility who has the power to make things to boom. So naturally Lois and Clark go off and investigate the whole thing, Chloe even more naturally adopts the girl while filling Lana’s annoying do gooder shoes in between possibly being engaged to Jimmy Olson and meeting and flirting with a medic who may have some major issues. Of course the story ends the same way just about every meteor freak story on Smallville ends, with the girl on the way to Belle Reeve until she’s bailed out by Lex or in this case Tess trying to assemble a League of Injustice.

Meanwhile much of the cast, particularly Green Arrow remain absent, suggesting that the cast list is heavily padded out in the first place. Clark does get his first story, an orbit, and Chloe gets a new career as social worker to meteor freaks, which naturally jettisons 90 percent of what was interesting about her in the first place. Otherwise even relocated to Metropolis, aside from one obligatory visit to the Talon which is still not a coffee shop for some reason despite the death of Lex Luthor, Smallville ticks on much as always.

In the usual way of Smallville cliffhangers turning out to be short on the cliff, Smallville 8x01 Odyssey picks up after the implosion of the Fortress of Solitude leading to the disappearance of Lex Luthor and the almost disappearance of Clark Kent. Except of course instead of disappearing Clark Kent winds up in Russia loading caviar for gun toting thugs. Meanwhile instead of being locked up by the Department of Fictional Security, Chloe has become a brilliant mathematical genius and is locked up unknowingly in a Luthorcorp facility helping them track down what’s left of the Justice League.

If you remember that the last time Clark’s powers were taken away by his father, it took being killed to bring them back, except this time instead of being shot with a bullet, Clark is shot with an arrow by a hypnotized Green Arrow, and is rescued by the Martian Manhunter with a little trip to the sun where he’s cured of his powerlessness. Clark’s temporary loss of powers makes for an underwhelming storyline and the Justice League still looks a little silly. Chloe through has graduated to posthuman status with two superpowers, which should make for more guessing games over just where she belongs.

Meanwhile Luthorcorp now has two dueling executives in control, both extremely underwhelming and unimpressive as villains go. The meat of Smallville s8e01 Odyssey only kicks in at the end, as Clark makes the choice to leave the farm behind and head to Metropolis to get a job as a reporter at the Daily Planet. Sure the idea that a guy who seems to be a college dropout with average scores and whose only work experience was at a school paper reporting on meteor freaks would be able to get a desk at the top newspaper in Metropolis seems farfetched, but it’s still a stirring moment when Clark looks across at Lois, wearing a Christopher Reeve haircut that makes you do a double take for a moment and as that old Superman music plays, you find that you can forgive Smallville for a whole lot.

If there’s one thing that you can fairly reliably predict about a Smallville season finale it’s that by the end of it most of the good guys will be either dead or dying or otherwise in dire shape, evil will appear triumphant as the episode ends and the summer begins leaving us on that edge of a cliffhanger. Smallville 7x20 Arctic is certainly no different and before it’s over Chloe Sullivan has been hauled off by the fantasy version of Homeland Security, Kara is in the Phantom Zone, Clark is under Lex’s control and possibly dead and Lois is off investigating oil spills. So bad news all around.

The problem isn’t any of that, it’s everything that leads up to it. Smallville s7e20 Arctic ends Michael Rosenbaum’s last season on the cast which means it also jettisons Lex Luthor and allows the show to finally let Clark and Lex come face to face, but like his murder of Lionel Luthor this is a clumsy and anticlimactic moment. It isn’t simply rushed and lacking in any real impact, but conceptually it requires Clark to stand around begging Lex not to take control of him all the while he could simply move at the blink of an eye and snatch the orb out of Lex’s hand. The Kara scene suggests he wouldn’t succeed, but it makes no sense whatsoever that he wouldn’t try, barring some kryptonite.

As it turns out, unsurprisingly, Kara is Braniac, while the real Kara is in the Phantom Zone. This would seem like another great plot by Braianiac, except as it turns out, Braniac infected Lana and kidnapped Kara into the past on Krypton all in order to… trick Clark into thinking he’s Kara. As plots go this is vastly overshooting the mark. Before it’s all done Clark has supposedly killed Braniac with a whole lot of electricity in yet another anticlimactic scene that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. This is followed by another anticlimactic scene in which Lana breaks up with Clark via videotape right after getting out of a coma, but apparently she had time to do a video and burn a CD. Some of this mess may be the fault of the WGA strike, but a lot of it has to be the fault of the writers and producers and it. Under the clumsy weight of all this ridiculousness piled into one episode, Smallville 7x20 Arctic flounders even long before it gets to the frozen north.

As the season finale of the seventh season of Smallville approaches, Smallville 7x19 Quest clears the deck so to speak. Half of Smallville throughout the years has consisted of DaVinci Code like scavenger hunts for various mysterious artifacts around the world combined with guest stars from various SciFi series. Quest brings both together as Lex Luthor’s hallmark card with gears obtained at great trouble from the safe last week turns out to be nothing but a key to finding another key which is hidden in a church run by a rather mad Jason Teague, played by Star Trek Voyager’s Robert Picardo, which reveals another key in Lex Luthor’s mansion’s fireplace which actually contains the orb. Whew that was a mouthful.

Much as on Lost’s Cabin Fever, we’ve got another extended scavenger hunt, as Clark and Lex both go searching for the answer to the Veritas mystery after an assassin bursts in and carves some Kryptonian symbols on Lex Luthor’s chest. This pretty much jibes with the general uselessness of Veritas assassins up till now who can’t get anything right and this fellow isn’t much better at it. 15 minutes in he has already been shot to death by Lex. His higher up is Jason Teague, husband of Crazy, Medicine Woman back from Smallville Season 4, currently dressed as a monk and busy worshiping the traveler.

Faith is a fickle thing though and when Jason Teague learns that Clark has just been sitting on his ass moping while Lex has been trying to take over the world, he reacts with the same frustration felt by many viewers, but with a better plan, by sticking Clark on some sacrificial altar in the Church filled with Kryptonite. Of course like the true deranged supervillain he doesn’t actually stick around to watch Clark die. By the end of Smallville s7e19 Quest, Lex has the shiny orb at the end of the scavenger hunt, Clark has completely forgotten about Lana despite her dread disease which had consumed him for several episodes and Smallville is set for its season finale.

Smallville 7x18 Apocalypse follows in the footsteps of Heroes with what’s meant to be an It’s a Wonderful Life style look at what earth would be like if Clark had never made it to earth in a vision that Jor El (Terrence Stamp, Kneel Before Zod) shows him when Clark decides to commit suicide by inaction and let Brainiac kill him in the past.

Smallville S7e18 Apocalypse is an episode with potential that’s squandered with a great deal of silliness, beginning with the ridiculous premise that Lex Luthor who’s barely 30 is somehow already President of the United States. Maybe Braniac went back in time and managed to impersonate George Washington and managed to modify the Constitution too. Then there’s the fact that no one on the planet would elect a creepy bald guy in a white suit who wears one black glove to anything except best costume at the creepoid convention, hell Lex couldn’t even win a pissant State Senate race in a small town.

But the writers are too busy carving out a facile Iraq war analogy using Luthor to bother trying to make any sense and while Clark’s return to a timeline where he never existed does give us the pleasure of seeing him in Clark Kent getup complete with glasses, romance Lois and features Jimmy in standard comic book form, the fact that it was all an illusion only serves to accentuate the gap between Smallville and Superman and how thoroughly the writers have gotten Lois and Jimmy wrong.

Smallville just doesn’t have enough dysfunctional relationships. Between Clark and Lana, Lana and Lex, Chloe and Clark, things weren’t quite dysfunctional enough, so the producers really feel the need to do Jimmy - Chloe episodes that usually proceed and end on the same dysfunctional note, in which neither of them trust each other, Jimmy uses passive aggressive tactics, Chloe feels guilty and it all ends unhappily ever after. That’s Smallville Sleeper s7e17 in a nutshell. Also throw in Jimmy getting to play James Bond and Lex finally getting his hands on the big secret weapon, which turns out to be some sort of weird Kryptonian Hallmark card.

The basics have Clark resuming his search for Braniac after neglecting it all last episode, despite last episode ending with Lex murdering his father and stealing his key, the sort of thing that Clark now decided no longer to care about. Instead he discovers that Brainiac and Kara have apparently gone to Krypton, and Kara is sending him messages from Krypton circa 1989 when Krypton is run under Reaganomics and the Kryptonian Cold War is well under way, since Braianic’s extremely convoluted plan for killing Clark apparently involves going back to Krypton’s past and killing him as a baby.

This is the most convoluted plan ever and really underestimates how easy it would be to just walk up to Clark or fly up to Clark with a handful of the green stuff, tap him on the shoulder and stick it down his throat. But so be it. Meanwhile the least plausible government agent ever recruits Jimmy, provides him with James Bond gear for no real sane reason, in order to spy on Chloe, which he halfway does until Chloe catches him and the agents turn out to be the sort of psychos they tend to be depicted as on Smallville and in DC comic books. Jimmy winds up in hock to Lex and everything ends unhappily ever after.

Smallville’s most intriguing premise didn’t involve its Clark as Superboy storyline, though that worked out pretty well, but its Lex Luthor who walked the edge between good and evil and mostly seemed to fall on the side of good. Its most promising journey involved Lex’s descent into evil, but that journey has been pretty schizophrenic, particularly this season with Lex unaccountably switching from repentant jailbird who believes in angels to unrelenting homicidal villain. The problem is that Lex has gone evil so many times by now that Descent’s much hyped storyline about Lex “finally” descending into evil seems more than a little anticlimactic.

Bouncing off Veritas’ attack by Braianiac that left Lana in a coma and Kara off in space (the producers sure do seem to be using every excuse to keep her off screen and who can blame them), S07e16 is Lex’s big moment which begins with him killing his father and ends with another promised showdown between Clark and Lex, one that hasn’t gone anywhere yet.

Lionel Luthor has always been a sublimely evil figure and his death if anything took too long. Descent spins more old elements around, another piece of evidence that gets covered up, another powerful artifact to search for, Lois once again being shot and trapped and the same game continues, but the episode manages to boil the old standbys into a fairly engaging if dark mix.

Smallville has thrown together plenty of attempts at trying to turn Clark’s arrival into some sort of prophecy and fit together ancient conspiracies, but the Veritas concept is probably the best one to date because it keeps things simple. Four powerful families that we’ve all met. One great overpowering secret. One man willing to kill anyone he can to get his hands on it.

Smallville 7x015 Veritas features not just the return of James Marsters as Brainiac but his true arrival as a menacing figure. The Brainiac of Season 5 was more silly than dangerous, trying to pass as a professor and than as a CIA agent, acting as Zod’s pawn and finally sacrificing himself to set Zod free in Lex Luthor’s body. This season though Brainiac has emerged as the dangerously brilliant villain, ruthless and calculating, a cybernetic Moriarty worth of the name and for everyone who thought that James Marsters didn’t have enough in him for another memorable villain, have been proven wrong.

In Smallville 7SE015 Veritas, Brainiac is back with a hidden agenda that requires taking Supergirl into space and he proceeds by taking Lana’s mind hostage, even as Lex Luthor digs into the archives of his memory to try and discover the Veritas secret, meant to stop the Traveler. I guess the Vertias quartet had yet to hear of Kryptonite, which seems to be lying around everywhere. For once the Luthor story is actually the weak point of an episode and the Clark story the strong point, which is as it should be. The constant Luthor artifact quests have grown old and it’s long past time for Lex to kill off Lionel Luthor and move to the next stage of fighting that war with Clark that last season teased us about.

Season 7 of Smallville has felt very scattershot with unstable character development and plot twists that seem to go all over the place and while there have been some cool moments, the season as a whole has been flailing, but Smallville 7x014 Traveler seems to be the first of a series of episodes that’s set to put things back on track.

Now on a surface level, Smallville s7e14 is basically Roswell’s first season finale, with a green cage instead of the white room. And you have to wonder why it took so long for it to happen. But instead Traveler returns to the Lionel vs Lex dynamic that has more than a tinge of The Godfather in it, right down to the final murder of Patty Swann.

Probably Smallville’s worst mistake was to progressively neuter Lionel, instead of making him a true rival for Lex. Traveler goes a little further to try and undo that mistake by restoring the Lionel who operates on his own hidden agendas, who’s ruthless and almost as dangerous as a friend as he is an enemy.

The Veritas idea is a good attempt to bring together some of the more scattershot elements of the series, trying the Teagues, Virgil Swann, Oliver Queen and the Luthors together into a nice bundle as being part of a larger agenda awaiting Clark’s arrival. And based on future episodes, it appears that this is something that will play a major role toward the conclusion of the season.

Let me begin by recapping Hero. Stride. Stride chewing gum. Stride. Stride. Stride. Also One Republic.

I didn’t think any show could seriously top Ben Silverman’s The Office for obnoxious product placement but Smallville pulled it off heroically with s7e13 Hero, from the very beginning dumping One Republic combined with constant references to Stride chewing gum. Which apparently gives you chewing gum like stretching superpowers, poisons you and drives you crazy. At least as long as you’re chewing it.

Hero brings back Pete Ross and along with him reminds you of the days when Smallville was a good series, before Pete Ross was replaced by two increasingly disposable and annoying bimbos. And it does this by reminding you of how good Pete was while forcing you to endure Kara wandering moping and pulling a Lana.by collaborating with Lex. At his best Pete Ross brought a real energy to the show by hiding a dark side, which Hero lets out to play as Pete wants to the hero and wants to stop the Luthors.

Meanwhile Lex Luthor is well into being the Lex of the comic books, dark and ruthless and is still the one good thing about Hero and all too often Smallville in general, which Hero bogs down with an excess of soap operatics, Jimmy jealous of any guy who talks to Chloe, Kara throwing a hissy fit, Pete with a crush on Chloe, Chloe with a crush on Clark and the whole melodrama wheel keeps going round and round. For some reason Lex wants Pete to break into Lionel’s safe, even though by this point Lex is turning out cybernetic killing machines, which makes you think he could have someone break into a safe.

So in between breaks for Stride chewing gum commercials and One Republic concerts, it all plays out as Lex takes Pete to a One Republic concert in a Stride chewing gum factory, probably to torture him. I mean if you’re going to torture someone, take him to an emo concert and begin breaking his arms. And then do some chewing gum product placement. By the end of Hero, Lex is still alive and in charge, Kara is still an empty brained moron except more so, Smallville is still recycling old storylines and Stride chewing gum still turns you into a crazed diseased mutant.

Short version, Smallville does The Cell. Smallville has never been too shy about ripping off movies for episode concepts and Fracture S7e12 is hardly Smallville’s first episode set in someone’s mind but the premise is a rather obvious takeoff on Cell. But while Fracture tries to make the inside of Lex’s mind horrific, only in the final struggle does it even come close. That might be in part because Fracture is very clearly Smallville’s version of a bottle show, low on special effects besides some low grade rotoscoping, and set in all the usual places including the same studio hallway the characters regularly get chased through and low on guest stars, or in other words cheap.

The larger problem is that Cell was horrific because Jennifer Lopez’s character was entering the mind of a lunatic while much as the show likes to insist, Lex isn’t insane. Lex Luthor was never conventionally insane, he was a megalomaniac and while Smallville has been best at dealing with Lex Luthor, Season 7 has seen an increasingly unstable depiction of Lex Luthor, from the penitent who voluntarily went to jail and believed that Kara had been an angel, back to the same old Lex Luthor, who in between cloned and killed several versions of his brother.

Meanwhile Lionel Luthor, once Smallville’s coolest evil character, has been watered down and made completely senseless. Last week he was trying to bring Lex down, this week he’s busy telling Lex that he loves him. The scenes between Lex and Alexander are occasionally disturbing but they are hard to believe and don’t do justice to Michael Rosenbaum’s more complex take on Lex Luthor. Meanwhile Kara reemerges with Fracture, this time devoid of memory and still devoid of acting skills. The only saving grace for Fracture is that we see Chloe use her powers and struggle with their responsibilities.

With Sirens, Smallville continues playing its own games with DC mythology, bringing in Black Canary as a right wing brunette columnist who transforms into a fishnet wearing superheroine, with apparently artificial legs, a minor point that doesn’t seem to be addressed, unless the actress herself is disabled. Anyway the Black Canary is the title Siren with some vocal powers, presumably Kryptonite induced, of sonic energy and she has her own sense of justice and somehow thinks Lex is the good guy. Of course this now means there are three superheroes working for the Daily Planet, making it almost as popular a superhero destination as Lois Lane.

Speaking of Lois Lane, she is the second siren of the title, who has to deal with Oliver Queen coming back to town to be hunted by the Black Canary in the pay of Lex, which allows Lois to discover that Oliver Queen is really really gay, I mean the Green Arrow, which of courses causes her to break up with him while having a heart to heart talk with Clark about love and destiny. The obvious foreshadowing here is Clark and Lois, though at this point Lois would have to be mentally retarded not to recognize Clark as Superman, when he shows up.

The third siren of the title is Lana, who’s oscillating between being the spider queen and trying to make things work with Clark. Lionel Luthor has meanwhile had one of his changes of heart yet again and has decided to bring down Lex, father and son switching roles with Lex the mastermind and Lionel scheming to bring him down. The problem is it’s all been done before and will be yet again. Lionel should have been dead years ago and Lex should have been the one to do it. Now it’s a little too late.