|
|
Smallville
Kinetic
airdate 02-26-02
My eyes! My eyes! Noooooooooooooo…
Everything was going pretty swimmingly on Smallville last night until that commercial for Sorority Boys, which stars Barry Watson, Harland Williams, and Lex Luthor himself, Michael Rosenbaum. It's basically Bosom Buddies: The Movie, and it tainted the rest of the episode with its mere existence.
Kristin Kreuk shilling for Neutrogena was much less jarring, although it might be difficult to believe that she's ever had a pimple in her life.
Commercial breaks aside, this was a reasonably good, if somewhat thin episode. The Freaks of the Week were entirely self-aware, not only of their freakiness but also of their evilness, which always makes a stronger plot. Chloe and Clark are interviewing Lex, and snooping around his mansion, when three ski-masked thugs appear from out of nowhere and rob the Luthor vault. Clark, suffering from the telltale effects of meteor malady, is not in time to save Chloe from falling out the window, nor to prevent the thieves from disappearing just as mysteriously as they appeared.
The distasteful lesson comes home again that Clark can't save everyone. Thankfully, Chloe mocks his overwhelming sense of responsibility by also blaming him for the Dark Ages and other missteps of the modern world. It hasn't gotten through his super-skull yet, but it might be starting to seep in.
Along with several thousands of dollars in jewels, art and cash, the burglars get away with some sensitive information on a computer disk (well, actually a MiniDisc, which wouldn't play in Lex's shiny Titanium PowerBook even if it had a disc drive). To take advantage of that, they turn to blackmail.
In the midst of Chloe's peril, though, she did notice a crucial detail: the thugs all had glowy-green tattoos. The krypto-ink alters their metabolism and allows them to 'phase' through solid objects (sorry, Marvel Universe moment, there). But the tattoos gradually lose their effectiveness, and they need fresh blood. Enter the newly despondent Whitney, who has lost his scholarship and seems to be stuck running the family store.
The thugs are former jocks themselves who lost their bright futures and accompanying shades, and they easily turn Whitney to their ways with sports metaphors. A few beers later, he's sporting some ink of his own and slipping through trucks like a ghost.
Whitney's decline has been developed very well over the last several episodes. He's gone from golden quarterback to dejected senior, and this storyline does manage to expand that transformation even while exploiting it. Like Clark, he wants to do the right thing, but it doesn't come as easily for him.
Ma and Pa Kent surface briefly to serve their purpose in life: tell Clark he can't save everyone but it's good to do what he can, and to encourage him to look for answers. Lex's butler teases us with the potential for John Glover, but it is not to be.
Clark saves Whitney, again, and the gang of krypto-freaks are brought to justice. Chloe recovers, and is somehow still able to blowdry her hair to flippy perfection with only one arm. Lana continues her campaign to save the movie theater from its new owner (Lex, of course). It's not really the "movie theater" part she's interested in, though, just the building, and Lex tentatively accepts her plans to renovate the place as a bookstore/café with historic landmark status.
Buffy and Hildegarde will unravel the mystery of Club Zero on March 12th; next week is scheduled to be a rerun of Jitters.
