"Whitesnake?"

Well, after several weeks of superhero glee (and one week of mental weirdness), we were due for a shipper episode. This week’s Smallville pulled out all the stops. “Oh the Horror!” you say, but it wasn’t too painful. "Crimson" contained a large dose of humor, a new mystery character, tons of angst and several fairly major events (at least, on a relationship level).

It all starts with a misguided attempt by Jimmy Olsen (Aaron Ashmore) to set up Clark with Lois Lane at a Valentine's Day party. Since they are currently at the “oh god, not her/him again” stage of their relationship, the attempt bombs like a Marvel Civil War crossover.

Enter the mysterious “new age-esque” potion vendor with a cure for Lois’s loneliness, in the form of love potion lipstick. Since Lois likes the color (and it was required by the plot), she gives it a try and immediately falls in love with the first man she sees.

Of course, Clark walks by at the exact wrong moment. The kicker was that the red color in the lipstick comes from Red Kryptonite -- you know, that stuff that completely removes all of Clark's uptight Midwestern inhibitions. Oh dear…

What follows could have been trite and predictable (like last week's episode) but was instead funny, revealing and at times almost scary. There is much fun watching Lois go gaga over Clark. She even burns him a CD of love songs, Whitesnake no less (I knew I liked Lois). Then when she kisses Clark and doses him with Red K he goes scary nuts, almost giving away his secret and crashing the Lex/Lana engagement party. Clark really shows how much he is repressing his feelings here with some very powerful dialogue.

Of course, our lovely and smart Chloe figures it out, and saves the day by having Jimmy obtain an antidote potion for Lois and clueing in Clark's mom so she knows to use Green K on Clark to counter the Red K. (The science of Kryptonite must be a fascinating study.) (Wow, did you know that MS Word has Kryptonite in its spell check data base? How cool is that?)

Unfortunately Jimmy has become jealous of Chloe’s obsession with Clark and breaks off the relationship, once again proving that he is just a clueless kid. This episode also left the mysterious potion vendor mysterious. I wonder if she will be back and if the use of Red K was really an accident?

For a shipper episode it was actually quite fun. You get to see Clark rip the clothes off of Lois, really verbally ream Lex and Lana and lots of humor. My favorite moment (other then Lois’s new taste in clothes) was when he tells Lex “I should have let you die on that bridge." As Clark's mom points out later, Red K doesn’t really change you; it just removes your inhibitions to say and do what is really inside you.

So not too bad an episode, but here is hoping for more Martian Manhunter goodness next week.

Ron Talbot