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Smallville
airdate 11-13-01
As the episode opens and the camera focuses once again on glittering green rocks, this time resting underwater, loyal viewers might be thinking okay, enough with the Kryptonite, already. Although it starts out promisingly with a locational oddity rather than a human one, this week's Smallville serves up a routine Wall of Weird villain but saves itself with some interesting character development.
In one of the most realistic scenes ever to depict middle American high school behavior, there's a party going on at Crater Lake. Bonfires, pizza, beer (referenced, but never seen) and clumsy attempts at random hookups in the middle of nowhere.
Sean Calvin (likely a play on the similarly named temperature scale) is a cool guy who makes a play at Chloe to get another notch in his belt, but he gets even cooler when he falls through the ice in the krypto-lake.
It's not clear what happens, if the lake is sentient and sucks him in or if he was just under long enough to be affected, but now he's cold, or at least swathed in thick blue makeup; breathing in fire and sucking the warmth from other people keeps him warm but wanting more. There are a few decent effects from this, including one that freezes candle flames into little ice sculptures as he walks past them. His own confusion over his frozen state is a nice change from intentional villainy, but it's still predictable X-Files action with a subtle theme.
Sean is cool, in the colloquial sense, and then he is cold; he's looking for warmth, in the literal sense, but gets it by pretending to want the more metaphorical "warmth" of friendship. (Also, Chloe thinks he's kind of "hot.") Yeah, it's not a great argument, but it wasn't a great theme-o-the-week, either, at least not in this storyline.
The chilly reception that the Kents have given Lex, on the other hand, works well against his warm, friendly overtures to help them out with their farm. Jonathan insists on staying independent, as his own father was. As it turns out, though, Clark's not the only Kent with a secret. Grand-Pa Kent used government subsidies to stay afloat during tough times. Everyone's been learning tough new things that turn their worlds upside down, lately.
Since the main plot only marginally involved him, and he is the main character, Clark tries to take Lana to a Radiohead concert in Metropolis (though if my grasp of fictional geography is correct, it would take a lot longer than an evening to get there in a limo). Knowing that Chloe had plans to meet Sean that night, when they hear the news that he is wanted for killing a girl, Clark runs off to save her instead of going on his "non-date" with his "friend."
The death of this tertiary, sort of slutty girl is actually the most jarring moment of Smallville to date. With the exception of the pilot, someone has died in this relatively small town during every episode, yet this is the first time we've seen it affect the other characters in any meaningful way. Next week, someone else is overtly prophesied to die, and it will be interesting to see what kind of reaction this brings, as it's not exactly unusual so far as we know.
It's nice to see the secondary characters get more time. Jonathan and Martha are great characters, especially interacting with Lex. Chloe can be more than an intrepid girl reporter who may or may not have a crush on Clark, and it's nice to see her and Pete serve more purpose than a multicultural Scully and Mulder. Whitney and Lana continue to show unexpected depth.
In the end, though, it's Lana's last line to Clark, in response to why she stays with Whitney, that may shape his future more than anything or anyone else: "Because when I need him, he's always there. I guess he makes me feel safe."
To echo the theme-o-the-week: Burn. That's cold, man.
