SMALLVILLE Minicaps / Season 8, Eps. 17-20

The Smallville season 8 minicaps is now 100% Lana free. It took us a while, but we finally got around to it. Thank you for your patience.

Stewart here…

We had some brief returns of some long-time players in Smallville that have been absent this season. One was Lana, who underwent a procedure to become superpowerful, only to get her and Clark’s new perfect relationship sunk when she gets irradiated with kryptonite. And that happens thanks to the other returning player, Lex Luthor, who is physically destroyed from that experience at the Arctic, and who ends up dead thanks to an explosion caused by Oliver Queen. Meanwhile, Tess seems to be aware of Clark’s secret, and lets him know as much despite his denials. Our other villain this season, Davis Bloome, is now murdering criminals and keeping people off his scent through some pretty extreme measures, like Jimmy, who thinks Davis is the killer, and gets drugged up bad for it. That drugging up doesn’t help Jimmy convince Chloe of what’s going on, and either due to the pills he’s starting to pop more than regularly or his own insecurities, wants to not be married to Chloe anymore. Sniff.

Oh, Chloe, can you make things worse somehow? Not to spoil what’s coming up here in this round of minicaps, but the short answer is “yes”…

“Hex”

On her birthday, Chloe wishes she could have a life more like Lois (one that hasn’t been wrecked by being so protective of Davis), and the magician Zatanna grants her that wish by making her appear to everyone as Lois. While trying to return Chloe to normal, we discover Zatanna has been granting a lot of wishes recently, like Clark’s wish to be normal giving him amnesia instead. She also needs Oliver’s help to find an ancient book to bring her dead dad back to the living, and the spell requires a soul trade-off. But things are looking up for Chloe after all this is taken care of, now she has a job watching over Oliver’s super-team. She still has a marriage to fix, but still, little victories.

“See, Lois? I framed the whole rules of journalism thing you wrote, even the rule about not being ‘a big doody-face’!”

–Zatanna is another pull from the DCU, and one that will reappear again, just not this season.

–Clueless Clark was good for a few laughs, especially trying to explain how he pulled a door out.

–Clark framed Lois’s rules of reporting. Awwww, that’s cute.

–A nice little visual joke in Chloe’s usual attire not completely fitting Lois correctly.

–A thing you never expect to hear Clark say: “911?”

“Eternal”

Clark’s finally interested in all those killings that have been happening all season, and it seems Tess is too. Clark wants to stop the killer, while Tess’s interest in that Veritas stuff seems to peg her interest in Davis. So yeah, we discover Davis’s past as he arrived in that first meteor shower in Smallville and how he met a young Lex Luthor. And through that trip down memory lane does Davis figure out a way to stop himself by getting fatally exposed to kryptonite. Too bad it doesn’t work out like that, with Davis still being alive, and Chloe agreeing to take care of him to keep his mass murdering urges in check. (head slap) Chloe, Chloe, Chloe…

–Tess’s talk with Clark in the hospital does kind of retcon a lot of things we’ve seen to somewhat effective results. And do we still really think Tess is all okay with letting Clark be who he is, because despite her “wanting to be all chummy” talk, I doubt that. Plus there’s that other kryptonian orb she has that gives that impression away.

–I did find it interesting to see even after finding out Davis is a mass murderer, Clark would want to spare his life while Chloe, completely trusting of Davis at the start of this episode, is willing to help Davis kill himself.

–How about we not make jokes about Davis being exposed to a kryptonite Gatorade shower, okay? We good with that?

Dammit, above note! I had a good joke about what championship he won to get the Gatorade shower!

–It would have been interesting to see Lionel in those flashbacks, but alas, we won’t see him again…unless…

–Words Clark says I’m sure he’s going to regret saying later: “Jor-El said he was the ultimate destroyer. Didn’t turn out to be much of a fight.”

“Stiletto”

Lois really wants to get an interview with the superhero running around Metropolis, so she makes up a superhero identity in Stiletto to lure him out. Clark wants to find Chloe’s stolen laptop (more because it has a lot of info on the “Justice League” on it), and Lois’s attempt of cosplay collide when the thugs who took the laptop want to bump off the mystery lady hero. And after her brief sojourn into heroics, Clark’s still nice enough to give Lois an “interview” with the Blur. Just in case you asked, Chloe is still hiding Davis in the Talon’s basement because she clearly has forgotten the whole, “destroyer of Clark and humanity” stuff. That blood David dragged in certainly hasn’t got the point made.

“I suppose I could have made an outfit more practical for fighting criminals, but hey, you make what you can find from your pleasure dungeon work!”

–You might note I’m avoiding calling Clark the “red and blue blur” because, well, it’s a crap name. Why not call him The Flash? What?

–So Jimmy (welcome back, Jimmy!) conveniently works at the bar this new crime boss runs? Sure, OK, I’ll let it slide. And Jimmy’s still addicted to drugs.

–These criminals have Kryptonite inked counterfeit cash because, um…I got nothing.

–The Stiletto costume makes noises when moving. One of those things you need to be aware of when going into the hero game.

–“I was going to sew an ‘S’ on my chest. Is that tacky?”

“Beast”

Chloe’s still keeping Davis around isn’t going well, because now The Daily Planet has pegged him as the serial killer, and Clark is figuring out Davis isn’t dead. And when Jimmy’s pill-popping (and Oliver’s failed attempt at intervention) leads to breaking into Chloe’s place for a fix and another bad encounter with Davis, she’s ready to hit the road to protect her not dead houseguest. Clark gets enough motivation now to go after Davis and dump him in the Phantom Zone (not kill him though), but Chloe screws that up and takes Davis away with her to somewhere Clark can’t find them. And she’s doing all of this to protect Clark from Davis? Hoo boy, we got some confused priorities here.

“Hey Chloe, I also got some potpourri to mask the smell of dead bodies in here!”

–Gaeta’s back! Sorry, I meant Dr. Emil Hamilton, and even he doesn’t want Davis around once he examines his cells.

–Oliver offers Jimmy a job doing…stuff…at his office. Probably better than giving him that money for a fix.

–Speaking of Oliver, he is right about Clark needing to make some tough calls, but probably a bit extreme in suggesting killing Davis, if only because Davis was killed before and look how that turned out.

–Chloe, your dreams now involve a limbless corpse being strung up with a bloody “S” on it. Welcome to therapy.

–“I don’t want to hurt you.” “Don’t worry. You can’t.”

NEXT TIME: Season eight of the Smallville minicaps wraps up as Tess moves with her own group of superfriends to stop Davis in “Injustice”, and Doomsday arrives with turmoil between our heroes and death in tow in “Doomsday”.