Maybe it's the power of suggestion, what with so many people across the spectrum of the universe lobbying for Tom Welling to continue as Superman on the big screen, or maybe the thought of getting my hopes dashed by another reimagining of Big Blue was just too much, but I was happy to see Smallville return to my television set last night.

Of course, I always like Tom Welling's Clark a lot more when his primary motivation, directive, and scene partner isn't Kristin Kreuk's Lana, but even she was mostly bearable. I've never had any complaints about Michael Rosenbaum's Lex, but he's even better after a break; he seems darker, deeper, and more potentially menacing. I like it. Come on, y'all, coming from me that's high praise.

Even the contrived bits seemed less contrived than usual, which made me do the happy dance of subtlety. Lana stables Whitney's horse, Tyson, at the Kent farm, mostly so he can catalyze the evening's events with the enigmatic freak-of-the-week, but I will forgive it forever if the animal figures in to any one of the next five new episodes.

Even the freak is pretty subtle, and handled with a deftness I'd long since stopped expecting from this show. His name is Cyrus, and aside from being super-unbalanced, he may be a fellow super-being. He seems to be able to start fires (nevermind that this ability is certainly not limited to Krypto-Americans) and has strange healing powers, which is where Tyson the horse comes in to it, but he's also a shrimpy, dorky, easily picked-on kid with a habit for announcing his alien heritage to defend himself.

Being an easy target and living in considerably less nice foster care surroundings than Clark, Cyrus' prime goal is to get home. To that end, he's built a towering junk structure to serve as a transmitter, and his description of home seems awfully familiar.

Now, we as fanboys know that Clark is the last son of Krypton, which even this particular flavor of continuity seems to be respecting, but despite Professor Swann's information, Clark isn't quite convinced.

And he has a point, as far as he knows; if there are other Kryptonians on earth, they could easily have different powers and develop them at different rates. Part of him really wants to find a kindred spirit, but in the end, it's his earthbound side that defines him.

Which, as I've said a hundred times before, is precisely the point.

Clark relaxes with a little Nietzche, hoping for some clues to his origin.

The other purpose of a potentially alien Krypto-freak was, as in Leech, for Clark to test the waters of "coming out," as it were, without actually risking himself or his secret.

This was, of course, exploited shamelessly by the WB promo department, but the results of the informal alien survey were mostly positive. Chloe sees the importance beyond the front page or the Pulitzer, Lana says she'd keep an open mind, and Lex is sort of frighteningly fascinated with an intensity that probably took him off the short list of "people to tell," if he wasn't already off it.

It's all for naught, of course, because despite his healing powers, strange prophetic dreams, and detailed drawing of the spaceship, Cyrus isn't an alien. He lived with his parents at a farm very near where the spaceship crash-landed, and when they were vaporized by the meteor shower, he was taken in by an older couple and then bounced around between foster parents. The meteor shower must have imparted some sort of special gifts to him, though, as well as burning certain images into his brain.

As Cyrus is transmitting his signal to his supposed alien parents, hoping to be picked up and returned to the home planet, the school bullies rather improbably show up to harass him and pull his makeshift tower to the ground. Though Clark mostly saves the day, it's Cyrus who ends up saving the life of school bully, at the expense of his one chance at going home.

No, of course I didn't believe Cyrus was an alien. But even I was duped by the fire in the sky at the end (which was, of course, a police helicopter) and had second thoughts. And his subsequent mental breakdown, "like his mind is gone," leaves me a bit curious. That's two comatose people with more-than-average-knowledge of Krypton. Where have their brains gone to?

The secondary and tertiary plots gave good momentum to the overall story arcs, too: Dr. Helen moved in with Lex, and learned about his secret obsession with the caves, the octagon, Clark Kent and the car crash that brought them all together. I hope she's ready to be torn between two loyalties; the man she loves and her sense of doctor-patient confidentiality are about to be at odds pretty seriously, especially as Martha trusts her enough to confide her worries about her pregnancy and the spaceship's role in both that and her miraculous recovery.

And would you believe it, I'm kind of looking forward to it.

Sarah Stanek