This week, and not for the first time, I wondered why Gough and Millar chose to reinvent Superman at all, when it's pretty clear their allegiance belongs to Batman. Why piddle around in Smallville when you left your heart in Gotham?

Witness this Arkham-esque episode, in which Clark's vanquished foes unite in their profound hatred for the Boy of Steel, urging Lex to join them or ... something. Doesn't ever really become clear. But it does answer the question of whatever happened to clone-boy Ian.

JTT, erstwhile Superboy Eric Summers and meteor-vigilante Van are all fellow inmates of Lex's at the Belle Reve Sanitarium, a believable enough location for those three, but for ultra-rich Lex Luthor? The low-rent loony bin is not the right place for the Metropolis elite, even if, as the show posits, Lionel is framing his son to make him seem insane long enough to undergo electroshock therapy and conveniently forget the damning evidence he has against his father (not to mention Clark).

As if the Luthors, of all people, don't know how to "keep up appearances."

The electroshock plotline was odd to say the least, not in its existence but its execution. Lionel is pushing for the untested, risky procedure to save himself rather than Lex, at least that's what the show would have us believe, but at the same time, if it goes wrong, he will be furious.

But at what? Because his son would be lost to him, or because his son would choose to distance himself?

And while we're at it, why does Lex continue to dig for things he doesn't really want to know about his father? Is he trying to discredit his own fears? Is he seeking approval from the outside, as if by exposing his father as evil he will be seen as good? What will be the final straw, the line in the sand that causes Lex to cast out his name or cast his lot with his old man?

It's at the heart of their complicated relationship, and something I've always found fascinating. Probably because I can pull it out of every single scene between Michael Rosenbaum and John Glover, who both truly put thought and nuance into every line and movement. I'm not one who generally finds the antagonists more interesting in a narrative, but in this case the protagonists are just so dull and predictable, I can't help myself.

Despite fighting against it and trying his best to halt the shock treatment, Clark is unsuccessful and Lex's brain is duly fried. He remembers nothing, acts saner than ever and we'll probably see some sort of backlash by May sweeps, but this still goes nowhere in establishing a basis for a future villain.

It was a LOT of sound and fury, signifying nothing. I suppose this applies to one of my major complaints about the show, and be a lesson to Clark that he cannot always interfere and cannot save everyone; you could make a case for that, and the Kent parents certainly do, but in this case, the lesson itself is much less interesting than the aftermath - which we have yet to see.

Speaking of sound and fury: Eric and Clark do some more power-swapping, in a dark fight sequence that left me, ever-so-briefly, with a tiny amount of hope that maybe this time it would stick, that maybe Clark would lose his powers and get them back for May sweeps, and that would rule and he'd have to think instead of act and start to figure out the secret of the yellow sun, and meanwhile Eric would wreak havoc in the world and learn to do things Clark never imagined and there would be a real excuse for scrutiny of the town of Smallville, and despite Clark's all-consuming normalcy all signs would point to him and yet ...

Oh, sorry. Got carried away there. Clark spends about five powerless minutes before taking it back from Eric. Sigh. I'm not trying to be negative, but really, how much more interesting would the next 12 episodes be if they did it my way? Come on, fanboys, listen to your hearts.

Customarily, I end by recapping whatever happened to Lana, because I don't generally care enough to bother including it but figure I ought to tack it on, just to be thorough. This week, though, might see the last of that, because it's entirely possible that she really has moved on.

When last we left our helpless heroine, she was in intensive care, having been trampled by a horse after Lex pushed her into the stall, and she was telling Clark to go away. Damn thing seems to have knocked some sense into her, but it also broke her leg in four places and required her to spend a month in rehab, learning to walk again.

Of course, her emotional and physical recovery couldn't come entirely from within, because this is the WB, and cute boys are sort of required to make young female characters strong and likeable at the same time. She meets one, named Adam, who may or may not be interesting. He was seriously injured trying to rescue his parents from a burning building. He failed, he was hurt, they died. The "anti-Clark" angle is not beaten to death. Yet.

It wasn't until the end, though, that I was entirely convinced that things might really be different this time, and it won't be until Ian Somerhalder (Adam) shows up in the opening credits that I'll be completely certain. But Kristin Kreuk did pull a bit of acting out of her hat that impressed me. When she looked up to see Clark at her "welcome back" party, her face was more than its usual blank prettiness, registering warm happiness at seeing him and rather than confusion, a kind of awareness that her heart isn't leaping the way it used to, or perhaps the way she still expected it to. Then, watching him leave, she actually conveyed something to the audience beyond "present," like she was starting to come to grips with the minor void left in her heart, and wasn't necessarily unhappy about it.

Well, at least, that's what I took from her expressions. Could just as easily have been trying to read the cue cards, I guess. But still, it was an honest and very well-done scene, with a minimum of angsty dialogue and a good job done by both actors conveying the puzzling emotion of "just friends."

So all signs are pointing to yet another "new direction" - let's see if this one sticks.

Sarah Stanek