It would seem that all of Smallville’s cheerleaders have grown tired of playing second best to the ol’ pig skin and they demand respect and deovotion! How a ditzy cheerleader who appears to only care about shopping and boys was intelligent enough to come up with a formula for kryptonite love potion is anyone’s guess, but try not to spend too much time figuring it out. The answer to that burning question is not important to the plot on the whole. Ah, but I’m getting ahead of myself…

Let’s start at the beginning with Mandy. During football practice she offers her boyfriend a drink of what can only be described as kryptonite love potion. Well, they came up with a more scientific name for it later in the episode, but the pronunciation and spelling prove too difficult.

Mandy’s boyfriend becomes her slave, deciding to skip out on the rest of practice and suggesting the two of them go shopping together. However, their little shopping trip is postponed when Mandy’s boyfriend goes into a jealous rage and accuses Jason of trying to hit on his girlfriend. In his altered state of mind, he decides it would be a good idea to take a shotgun into the boys' locker room and shoot Jason.

Fortunately for Jason, Clark enters the locker room at just the right time to push him out of harm’s way and use his heat vision to force the assailant to drop his firearm. This does nothing to win Clark any popularity among the other football players.

The real fun begins when more people drink the love potion and are affected. It seems that drinking the potion heightens already existing emotions. This might imply that all the football players deep down really wanted to be the bellhops, valets, and shopping buddies of their girlfriends. Scary thought.

At any rate, when Chloe drinks the potion she falls madly in love with Clark…..again. She decides to give up writing for the paper and devote all her time to making Clark happy. Making Clark happy involves showing up in his loft wearing nothing but his football jersey. Scratch that. That would probably make most guys happy, but not Clark. We can thank Lana for that.

With Chloe out chasing Clark, Lois has to investigate the earlier locker room incident and interview the cheerleaders. Lois hates talking to cheerleaders just as much as the next girl with a decent head on her shoulders, but she desperately needs the credits. Mandy seems to dislike Lois at least as much as Lois dislikes Mandy, so the interview does not go very far. It turns out alright though because Lois manages to catch a glimpse of Mandy’s chemistry project on “the love molecule.”

Around this time, Jason also drinks from the cheerleaders’ water dispenser and the green eyed monster (green like kryptonite, get it?) rears its ugly head when Jason sees Clark talking to Lana briefly during practice. By this time Clark has also had a drink, but of course he doesn’t get giddy about anyone whose name begins with L and ends in ana. Instead, he becomes weak and sick. Jason tells the other players to go after Clark, but he is unsatisfied with the beating Clark receives.

Later that night, Jason shows up in Clark’s loft dressed much like the Unabomber and proceeds to beat him up. Clark is still suffering from the effects of the kryptonite and is no match for Jason. Before Jason can do more serious damage, Lex enters and scares him off. Lex informs Clark that he has called off all the investigations on him and extends his hand in friendship. Clark being Clark does the self righteous why-weren’t-you-honest-with-me-thing. He must have forgotten all the times he not only hid the truth from Lex, but outright lied to him.

The following day Lois tells Clark of her suspicions and convinces him to go to the cheerleaders’ party since they believed him to be under the effects of the love potion. Clark’s mission at the party is to distract Mandy while Lois searches for the chemistry project papers.

In a relatively amusing scene Lois obtains the papers while Clark and Mandy, the nymphomaniac, make out. Lois runs off to the boiler room to get a better look only to be attacked by a completely psychotic and jealous Chloe. In the struggle Chloe burns her hands against the boiler and instantly snaps out of the spell. Since the three of them are smart kids, it doesn’t take long to figure out that heat reverses the effect of the potion. Clark uses his heat vision to break a water pipe above the football players’ heads. They are sprayed with steam and are free of the evil spell that held them in bondage.

Surprisingly, they are also free of third degree burns.

And to tie things up nicely at the end we see Clark gain the respect of the other players when he wins a game. Clark also pays Lex a visit and it would seem they are on the way to rebuilding their friendship. He also enlists Lex’s help in getting Lois into college. This made me very sad because I had just decided that I do like Lois and her Nancy Drew ways. She did promise to visit, though.

Honda Dumitriu