SMALLVILLE Minicaps / Season 8, Eps. 13-16

The Smallville season 8 minicaps is happy to see Lana again, but really concerned with her state of mind after what happens here.

Stewart here…

Chloe has been infected by Brainiac, and after her wedding gets crashed by Davis as a giant rock monster, that illness has to finally be dealt with by Clark (with some help of some 31st century heroes). Before Chloe gets downgraded from her Brainiac powers, she gets in touch with Davis about that pesky thing where he’s a kryptonian super weapon and meant to destroy Clark and humanity. Add to that, Jimmy’s been hospitalized because of Davis’ rampage, and Lana has reappeared in town. A lot of stuff for Clark to handle in this round of minicaps, especially with Lex being alive and not so well. So, let’s jump in…

“Power”

Hey, you ever wondered what happened to Lana in all that time she was gone? Well, we find out here, and it breaks down like this: Lex’s goons made her film that breakup video, she escapes, she starts training to be all tough, then goes and has her skin burned off to get some new superskin that makes her superpowerful. It’s the latter part that goes, “man, Lana has some serious issues”, which Clark can’t hear over the whole “we can sleep together, Clark, and its no biggie for me” from her. Clark, did you not hear me when I said “had her skin burned off”, because that is a massive red flag of trouble.

Do you want your Lana Lang regular or extra crispy?

–Allison Mack (Chloe) directed this episode, and would go on to do another one next season.

–Look, when your girlfriend tells you not to worry after she’s undergone an experimental procedure to make herself superpowerful and that it would benefit you, WORRY. WORRY A LOT.

–Hey, Dr. Groll is back. Remember him, right? No? Really?

–Tess takes a few seconds to curb stomp that Regan guy to death in her own office.

–Seriously, in all the time Chloe’s been in Lana’s former offices, she’s NEVER noticed the hidden safe behind the radiator?

“Requiem”

So now that Clark and Lana can have something resembling a normal relationship, how does that go badly for them? Well, chalk that up to Lex getting a twisted toymaker to make kryptonite laced explosives and one of those bombs leaving Lana with a lot of kryptonite in her new supersystem. Lana keeps Clark from getting some brutal revenge, only for both of them to watch Lex’s base of operations (with him in it) get blown up. And who did that? Oliver did, actually. Not that it matters much for Clark and Lana since they really can’t be together anymore.

Ewww…ewwww…stop it…stop it…ewww…ewwww…

–So, say goodbye to Lana for the rest of this series (which I’m sure a few of you aren’t exactly weeping over) and Lex (which I’m sure a few of you are weeping over)…sort of…we’ll come back to that another time.

–Tess is kinda cool with Oliver buying up most of LuthorCorp? Um, why does this worry me? And if to twist the knife for Oliver, the Toyman was a former employee of Oliver’s company certainly is one more jab at him besides blowing up Lex.

–The lack of Michael Rosenbaum as Lex is really felt here, in essence because of how much work they do to hide the double for him this episode, but that he doesn’t really say anything. Really, he couldn’t do a voiceover for this? It’s not like he hasn’t had experience there.

–And Winslow, the Toyman, also manages to escape capture to play with Oliver again, but that will be next season.

–I got my issues regarding how we got to the last scene of this episode, but man, it does tug at the heartstrings when it happens.

“Infamous”

Linda Lake returns to threaten Clark by revealing his secret to the world unless he starts helping her. So he cuts her off at the pass by revealing it himself, and then things go really bad for him and everyone he knows. Good thing he has that time traveling Legion ring to help fix things, except maybe for the sexual tension between him and Lois. And too bad it doesn’t fix another problem, when Linda threatens Davis and Davis politely declines by smothering her to death.

This seemed a better way to break it to Lois about his secret than his previous attempt of overheating her coffee with his heat vision.

–Clark destroys the Legion ring because he thinks time travel is bad, even though it saved his ass this episode. And with that ring, you can fix the whole “Lana gets superskin” stuff. Do I have to think of everything around here?

–Lois is afraid Clark won’t reveal his secret to her if he uses the ring to go back in time, and turns out she’s right. For now.

–It’s a nice joke that even after he fixes that screw-up not picking up Lois by going back in time, she still has something to complain about him for doing. She makes it so hard sometimes.

–If Linda is made of water, if they shut off the electric cuffs, won’t her corpse turn into a puddle? I’m just curious about that.

–“Guess I should stop calling you ‘Smallville’.”

“Turbulence”

With Lex dead, now there’s concern Tess may find out Clark’s secret. Certainly the unexpected trip with her to L.A. doesn’t alleviate that, as does the flight being sabotaged. Jimmy has some concerns too while he’s recovering in the hospital, like dreams of Doomsday and Davis murdering people. The latter turns out to be actually happening while Jimmy’s is resting up, but his drugged up haze doesn’t help his argument of that, as does his impromptu imprisonment.

“Jimmy thinks I don’t believe him? I better tell Davis about this…oh. NOW I see what he’s talking about.”

–So yeah, Tess staged the entire plane sabotage to see if Lex’s theories on Clark were true, which would have been hilarious for her if somehow that didn’t turn out the way it did. And she claims he can trust her. Yeah, right.

–You know, despite Jimmy’s behavior this episode, he does have a point about Chloe not trusting him but totally trusting Davis (hell, she’s ready to point out how naïve Clark is for not keeping Tess in check). But I’m sure she’ll realize that before something really horrible and unforgivable happens.

–On that note also, Chloe crying again. And once again, wrong about what she believes, except for Jimmy maybe becoming a pill-popper.

–Davis is actually kinda cool with killing people now as long as they are criminals. Let’s see how long that holds up.

–Clark changes in a phone booth. Not into a suit with a cape, but it works.

NEXT TIME: The magician Zatanna causes some trouble with Clark and friends in “Hex”, Clark discovers the truth about Davis in “Eternal”, Lois plays hero to weed out the mystery superhero that is Clark Kent in “Stiletto”, and Clark finds his closest friend is sheltering Davis is “Beast”.