Hey, listen kids, this week, I didn't yell or scream even once. I didn't even have to fight the urge. This week, Smallville took a step it should have taken at least ten episodes, if not a whole season, ago and stopped messing around in Buffy's cast-offs.

Somehow the show managed to weave parallel plots together, with Pa in the hospital for life-saving surgery as another patient dies, is resurrected and then dies again, without losing momentum or the inherent poignancy of life and death.

As Clark strains with super-ears to hear his father's iffy prognosis, his classmate Garrett loses his older brother Vince to a liver disease. Instead of being summarily embalmed and buried, Vince is sent post-haste to Metropolis, where he is injected with a mysterious serum that brings him back to life.

Garrett reacts as anyone might, spending the rest of the episode a tad bit unhinged. I must say that a dead relative returning to life in mere hours, as if the diagnosis of death was somehow a mistake, is at once a wonderful and terrible fantasy, so the rest of this storyline is not only more plausible than usual but rather touching, as Garrett tries to prevent his brother from being taken from him yet again.

Of course, I must also say that I sympathize with the producers' Canadian locations, but every single tertiary character could not sound less like a Kansanian if he were speaking Swahili -- seriously. At least remind them that Amurricans don't say "mum and dad."

The rest of the episode played out as it had to, with little in the way of surprises, mostly the fault of the WB promo department. The "big reveal" that Adam's serum was manufactured from Clark's blood was completely given away last week, and I feel unfairly so. We've built up at least a little history for the restorative properties of kryptonite, so it would not have been unthinkable as a misdirection.

As our own characters didn't realize what it was until almost 45 minutes in, why did we as viewers need to know? I'd like to think I would have realized it, but maybe not, and I would have liked the chance. Damn promo guy.

Jonathan and Vince are both under the knife at the Smallville medical center, the former undergoing a triple bypass and the latter being, well, mostly dead. (Leave aside for the moment the question of why Vince was allowed to escape the lab - for once I am going to assume that question will be answered rather than ignored.)

Garrett takes the hospital hostage with a glowy-green bomb, which is nicely and unobtrusively explained (his uncle's demolition business uses the meteor rocks as explosives) instead of just put out there as an obstacle to Clark's saving the day.

Clark, in another very nice moment, has gone off to poke around Vince's mysterious recovery rather than wait with his mother for the outcome of the surgery. He was maybe not nearly as conflicted as he could have been about it, I suppose, and came to the realization that his role in the "greater good" was more crucial to the world at large a bit too fast for a teenager who not even three episodes ago was blaming himself for his father's health.

But it also gave us the first glimpse of the extended Kent family actually acting like one, as Pete and Lana join Martha to await news from Jonathan's doctors.

When Clark returns with the serum to prolong Vince's recovery, he has learned very little that the audience didn't already know -- LuthorCorp is involved in the strange research and Adam has also been a patient in this trial. He passes the serum to Garrett, where it reacts with the kryptonite and loses potency. This is what clues Clark in to its origins, and prompts Garrett to set off the bomb.

Jarringly, the Smallville sheriff's department shoots Garrett down (likely dead) before the bomb detonates, but his fall pulls the trigger anyway. Having the uncharacteristic presence of mind to grab a lead-lined X-ray vest, Clark speeds away with the bomb before it causes any damage, and it is never spoken of again.

That sheriff does have selective vision; she'll nail Clark to the wall on any number of strange coincidences but a missing bomb following a hostage situation she's willing to overlook?

At any rate, Jonathan comes through the surgery well, although Clark is now curious about the healing properties of his own blood, just in case. Lana is even starting to act less stupid, wondering what was in the serum that resurrected Vince and sustained Adam's craziness.

Will this be the end of Jonathan's heart problems? Much as I love him as a character, I hope not - it would be a cheesy resolution to the one plot point that's truly resonated this season. I somehow suspect Jor-El could figure advanced medical techniques into his ultimate price, but I could be wrong.

Not that I want him to die or anything, but any developments that bring me more scenes with the Kents and their son, returning to the family dynamic I so loved in the pilot episode, are welcome and pleasing.

Sarah Stanek