SMALLVILLE Minicaps / Season 1, Eps. 17-20

Smallville minicaps! Still can't stand to fly. Its not that naive.

Smallville minicaps! Now with 25% less meteor freaks.

Stewart here, and be warned of spoilers within…

So here’s where we are so far this season: Clark is dealing with all sorts of meteor-powered trouble, Lana is running a coffee shop, Chloe just had her first trip to the hospital, Whitney has been dealing with all kinds of “my dad is dying” issues, and Lex had to deal with demons form the past as well as hide his investigation of the car crash from his new best friend. With that, let’s get to the meat and potatoes of this…

“Reaper”

Someone gets the ability to kill people by touching them, and uses his power to mercy kill the elderly. Guess who fits that bill that Clark knows? Whitney’s ailing dad. On another front, Lex is getting investigated by Lionel for finances, and Clark is having issues with Jonathan. Its all about fathers and sons this episode.

Talk about a bad touch, right? (crickets chirping) Sigh.

–Not sure I buy Tyler’s turn to needing to ash the dying the way he does, let alone him deciding to ash himself when discovering his mom didn’t die at his hands.

–Lex does a solid for Whitney by letting Whitney’s dad see him play with the Metropolis football team. This is after, though, Lex drugging and leaving one of Lionel’s accounting drones locked in his trunk for Lionel to find.

–Although, that scene does make me wonder: Lex has enough resources to ditch a pricey sports car with a man in a trunk just to spite his dad to walk home, I guess?

–I’m actually surprised Clark never broke his old fishing line considering the damage hinted to earlier in his childhood.

–Clark’s response to Chloe reading that spontaneous combustion story: “You don’t have to look so happy (reading it).”

“Drone”

School elections are tough, especially when one of the nominees may be involved in sicking an unnatural amount of bees on their opponents. Its too bad for Clark that Pete put him into the running for class president and right in the crosshairs of the bee attacker. And in other news, Lex has to deal with an ambitious lady reporter looking to make a career out of him the only way he knows how. No, not sleep with her. But he does get her a promotion.

–Of course, Lex ran for student council and won. Did you not see how he made that reporter finish her performance as a fake masseuse?

–And in the “we should probably give Lana a subplot this episode” department: she uses some slightly dirty tactics to tarnish a rival coffeehouse in order to keep the Talon afloat. And she enjoyed doing something that underhanded. No shock there.

No amount of Proactiv is getting rid of that.

–I’m not sure how they did the effects work on that girl who gets covered in bees, but…yikes.

–Its probably never a good idea to blow up a shed with you and someone who can catch fire in it, Clark.

–“I stand for truth, justice, and…other stuff.”

“Crush”

One of the Torch’s cartoonists has gotten the power of telekinesis thanks to a hit and run that left him unable to use his hands. The bad news is, he wants revenge on the people he thinks wrecked his life. This puts a Clark in a bad spot with Chloe, who is not only upset with him but now dating Justin, the cartoonist. Also, Smallville High is going to need a new principal on account the current one becomes the filling of a car/garage wall sandwich.

–Principal Chan gets killed by Justin, and the messed up part is, it was Chan’s son who caused the hit and run in the first place.

“Really, no one wanted to leave me an umbrella?”

–Speaking of peripheral characters dying badly, Whitney’s dad dies and like most funerals, things get awkward for Clark. Like walking away alone in the pouring rain while a cover of Cyndi Lauper’s “Time after Time” plays in the background awkward.

–As if that morbidness wasn’t enough, Lex finds out his nanny is dying from cancer. Geez, way to hammer down on the mortality stuff this episode, Smallville.

–“Let’s make everything float again” should not be the first thing you should think about when the guy you’re kissing reveals he has telekinesis.

–This episode’s biggest lesson: never, NEVER, try to crawl out of a small gap in a stuck elevator.

“Obscura”

Bad news, Lana haters: she survives a gas explosion in the cold open of this episode. And worse, she’s given some kind of psychic connection to someone who has kidnapped Chloe. Good news for Chloe lovers, though: she survives this ordeal and then Clark asks her to the spring formal. Speaking of other Kent news, Lex offers to help the Kents again with their mortgage (and that pesky chemical spill from a few episodes back), which gets turned down by Jonathan right around the time Lex discovers something alien in the field where Clark’s ship landed. Oh, Jonathan.

"Hi Chloe, I'm here to help you into another hospital bed scene this season. Don't mind the gimp suit."

“Hi Chloe, I’m here to help you into another hospital bed scene this season. Please ignore the gimp suit.”

–First mention of Chloe’s “cousin”. It’ll be a while before you see who that is…

–The kidnapping deputy has his own costume! You think people see that and go, “No way does this guy look like he’s going to drug and bury me in a coffin”, do you?

–On the subject of traumatic things this episode, Lana gets to see the villain’s POV as he gets a bullet to the face. Somehow that doesn’t scar Lana as much.

–Weird to see Aaron Douglas (Chief Tyrol from Battlestar Galactica) sarcastically interrogating Lana.

–Get ready to see more of that alien metal octagon thing for a while.

–No way can trusting a tabloid journalist to stay away from the Kent family will end badly for Lex, right?

NEXT TIME: We wind down on season one as the spring formal approaches with some twists and turns (and not all of them come from the twisters barreling down on Smallville) in the season finale, “Tempest”. Then, I’ll do some analysis of the season along with some other goodies.