Well, if you ignore the first 45 minutes, there was in fact something there. Of course, if you focus on the last 15 minutes, you might wonder what the hell that something was.

Look, fanboy! Phantom Zone! Ooh!

I'm sorry, who wanted to see the Phantom Zone? Of all the things they could have - and have - borrowed from the movies, why that?

As I've said many a time before, I understand the constraints of a television series. Your finale needs to wrap up the thrusts of the season but leave something open to bring your viewers back for more in the fall. Or, in the shows that lack a season-spanning story arc, you just need to pull out all the stops and create an episode so good that you can go out on a high note.

And then you're this show. You spend all year dithering about this and that, only to take the last six episodes to build to a confusing climax that will change everything…but only if you tune in next year! (As if there had been any doubt, The WB confirmed during the past week's formal fall schedule announcements that Smallville will continue to air Wednesdays at 8 p.m. W-Be there!)

So in another bone (heh-heh) to the fanboy contingent, a hot young blonde appears naked in the forest, making her superstrong way to the Kents' front door. We can safely assume from the promos airing for the last two weeks that she will introduce herself as Kara, which she does.

Jor-El, she says, has kept her waiting in the walls of the cave since the meteor shower, waiting for Clark to cross over to her side where everything will be explained; it is not in fact the Kents for whom Clark was destined, it was the caves.

Kara is almost too good to be true, but she does spend a lot of time standing in sunbeams and acting all alien, and also she's quite fetching, so Clark has a lot of conflicted emotions that rang surprisingly true at first. Although her dire warnings that the humans he loves so much will all turn on him make him uneasy, so does her cavalier attitude towards killing the Luthor's pet FBI agent when she catches him eavesdropping.

But it all starts coming true, or at least it seems to. An imprisoned Lionel sends a surprise package to Clark, giving him the key to open up Lex's secret shrine to all things unusual and Kentish, effectively ending that friendship and sending hordes of fanfic writers screaming to their keyboards to write effusive reconciliation sagas. With Pete gone and Lana on her way to Paris, hugging Lex of all people at the airport, Clark feels so abandoned that it's just about enough to push him into Kara's clutches.

I'm not sure how he gets to feel all indignant about two people leaving town for reasons of their own, no matter how indirectly influential he might have been in their decisions, and I'm really not sure why he feels slighted by Lana when he once again let her down and didn't give her a ride to the airport and it's not like she was privy to his most recent falling out with Lex...

But we really don't have all week and I've got bigger bones to pick this time.

Like, say, with Jor-El. I've always been able to suck up my objections to his continued presence, despite the fact that he really should be dead. He should have ceased to be.

I didn't object to his first appearance in what I assumed was a highly-sentient spaceship, because his message was essentially inert. I sort of let it go when in subsequent appearances he was taking a much more active role in his son's life than seemed feasible. But I cannot stay quiet anymore.

Jonathan's ultimate price is revealed; the heart attack and all of his attendant heart problems are punishment for postponing payment. In exchange for like, six minutes of power last year, Jonathan promised to return Clark to his natural father. There's only one problem with all that.

Jor-El is DEAD! The whole planet was destroyed! Kara is of course not actually Kryptonian anything, just a girl unfortunate enough to be in a car accident near the caves when the meteor shower hit. She's another pawn in a game that makes no sense! Jor-El doesn't exist anymore and should not be taking such an active role in the development of this story and these characters!

I just don't understand how this is interesting. I know I've had my gripes that Clark doesn't seem interested in his mysterious origins, and spent more than a few weeks wondering why he wasn't curious about anything that didn't have long shiny hair. But the reason I want to see that, and the reason most longtime fans want to see it, is to see how Clark Kent processes his Kryptonian heritage into his earthbound life. Not to see him go out into space and be all alien.

I want to see nurture triumph over nature. I want to see the story of Clark Kent, not Kal-El. When I know more about Clark, maybe I'd like to see how he feels about being the last son of Krypton, because if I like him, I'll want to know more. But I don't really know this Clark at all. After three years, I know exactly the same things I knew about him in the pilot and very little else.

It's just so sad. The flagship superhero of the DC Universe and after only three years, the well is so dry they have to go to Krypton? This treatment is shortchanging a lot of great characters.

As the show all comes to a head in the crescendo of those final 15 minutes, we leave our characters for the summer thusly.

In the earthly realm of Luthoriffic evil, Chloe and her father, after getting out of FBI cars, enter a fancy new house that promptly explodes into a ball of fire. Lex collapses in a dramatic heap, his customary highball probably poisoned.

Lionel, in prison, denied bail and in fact, still dying, has his head shaved. When the deed is done, he says, simply, "Thank you."

In the other, Ma Kent watches their field erupt into fiery Kryptonian symbols. Jonathan lies in the cave, I hope not dying. And Clark, well, Clark got sucked into the Phantom Zone to be reborn in October.

Sarah Stanek