SMALLVILLE Minicaps / Season 2, Eps. 1-4

Smallville season two minicaps are back, with 100% less Whitney.

Stewart here, and expect spoilers within…

So, things ended rather quietly last season with Clark having a wonderful time at the high school spring formal with Chloe, Whitney saying a tearful goodbye to Marine recruit Whitney, and Lex may have saved hundreds of jobs in Smallville. I keep thinking there’s something else I forgot. Oh yeah, there was this twister that barreled down onto Smallville, leaving Lionel caught under some debris, Jonathan chasing after some nosy tabloid journalist, and Clark racing off to save Lana, who gets sucked into the twister. And the spaceship that carried baby Clark came to life. So yeah, quiet. With that out of the way, let’s see where we start season two…

“Vortex”

And we start off exactly where we left off, with everyone trying to recover from the twister in their own way. Lana’s alive, although she thinks she saw Clark save her life. Lex saved Lionel, only to have his dad go blind. Clark searches for his dad, who’s trapped with that nosy reporter Roger Nixon. Probably for the best Lex snuffs Nixon in self defense/hiding his involvement in Nixon’s employment. And Chloe decides to stay in the friend zone with Clark after getting sort of ditched at the formal. Also, baby Clark’s spaceship crashes in a cornfield…again.

“Hey, you can’t park there! Oh, forget it.”

–You know, for such an important piece of alien technology, you’d think someone would’ve found a way to keep that octagon piece that activated the ship from coming off so easily.

–Talk about stones: Jonathan would rather die in that crypt with Nixon than let him reveal Clark’s secret.

–Sad Chloe is always a tough Chloe to see. And she still can’t get rid of those formal pictures either.

–Well, at least Lionel’s not pissed his son almost killed him and probably blind because of his operation, right? Um, right?

–“It felt like I was flying.”

“Heat”

Everyone’s back from the summer, and with it some new things, like Clark discovering he can burn things by looking at them. While he’s trying to keep himself from lighting things accidentally on fire, his new biology teacher has married Lex in an unusually quick amount of time. And Clark discovers she has the ability to make people do whatever she wants…well, except him that is. Oh, and Lana’s having second thoughts about this long distance relationship thing with Whitney. Well, its not like she has other priorities distracting her, like running a coffee shop for instance.

–I think Chloe may have been lying about shacking up with that intern in Metropolis for the whole summer. Oh, Chloe.

–With all the big ways that meteor freaks have been dispatched in the show as of late, it seems surprising Desiree is stopped in her campaign of mayhem by having her hand scorched on a Clark-heated door handle.

–I can see why Clark would be nervous during that training with the scarecrow. Hard to think about sex/setting fire to things with your Dad nearby cheering you on.

Dammit, I think he read my Clark/Chloe slashfan fiction!

–I’m sure Jonathan and Martha didn’t expect to have that sex talk thing with their kid when it came to him setting things aflame.

–“Next time I’m on a date, I won’t have to worry about setting her on fire.”

“Duplicity”

Clark has to deal with a big problem when Pete discovers the spaceship and enlists Clark to help him. So, Clark decides to make a pretty difficult call by letting Pete in on what he is. That would be dramatic enough, but a deranged Dr. Hamilton learns about the ship too and puts Pete’s life at risk. In other news, Lana’s aunt has a new man in her life that’s making things weird and Lionel wants to move into Lex’s mansion. Awkward.

–A nice callback to season one’s “Jitters” with Dr. Hamilton’s demise being the full blown onset of what was happening to Earl.

“No no, I wasn’t trying to touch you. I was trying to tell you to talk to the hand.”

–It’s a nice beat how Hamilton brushes off Lionel saying he’s blind so easily. He can’t even be bothered to say, “oh, I’m sorry to hear that” before launching into his proposal.

–Oh, and Lionel’s now interested in Lex’s meteorite investigation. That can’t be good.

–So, Lana did break up with Whitney and it went badly. This is the part where I’m supposed to feel bad for her, right?

–Chloe’s reaction to Pete’s not really a joke about Clark being an alien: “I thought aliens were little and green?”

–“This is gonna be fun.”

“Red”

Clark’s new school ring has a serious defect: its made from red meteorite rocks, and it turns our lovable hero into a complete dick (the guy buys satellite TV and goes late-night shopping with his dad’s credit cards without permission, so already that’s going from 1 to 8 on the dick-o-meter). He’s rebelling against everyone and its up to Pete and Clark’s parents to stop him before he really crosses the line. Also, there’s some subplot about someone escaping from the witness protection program with some secret files, or something. It plays into the climax where Clark goes from dick to just evil, but he gets turned back to normal, just in time to get shunned by Lana. At least until the next episode. OK, that’s unfair. Its maybe two episodes before she forgets that.

–Watching the DVDs with the commentaries, particularly this episode, has lead me to this conclusion: Michael Rosenbaum is a freaking delight.

–Watching Martha’s response to Clark’s new silk shirt, while standing in a farm full of expensive goodies is a nice kind of Marge Simpson-esque ignoring the obvious.

It’s not what you think. Really.

–That was kind of painful watching Clark tell Jonathan off for not being his real dad. The fact Jonathan gets launched at the door of his car afterwards seems pleasant in comparison.

–So, no one at that bar reported to the cops about some teen who beat up all these huge guys and may or may not have set a bat on fire by looking at it? Or at least reported a teen who seemed to have taken a lot of steroids before fighting several people?

–And in blind Lionel news, besides Lex gaining his office back after Lionel perched himself there without asking, he witnessed (not literally witnessed, because he’s still blind) Clark deal with that corrupt federal agent.

–“Clark would have to be on drugs in order to be on drugs.” Um, I’m sorry, but did Chloe just make a simple response more complicated by just repeating the obvious?

–“Don’t worry, Lionel. He missed.”

NEXT TIME: It’s a lethal poetry slam involving Lana in “Nocturne”, a cheerleader holds onto her youth by taking other kids’ youth in “Redux”, a woman arrives claiming to be Clark’s actual mother in “Lineage”, and mind-reading boy Ryan returns facing a tragic fate Clark can’t stop in “Ryan”.