Though this wasn't a bad episode, it hit a lot of sore spots for me, which made it hard to enjoy. Though not particularly subtle in its message, at least it knew that and didn't pretend to be anything else. They got a lot of things right, not least of which was pacing and tone. But there was plenty wrong. (Though on the plus side, unlike Gilmore Girls the hour before, Smallville was not interrupted for any kind of election coverage.)

Sore spot #1: Clark's adoption, as first covered in Zero. Jonathan's throwaway line about "clearance" was probably just that, but it piqued my curiosity more than was likely intended.

A strange woman shows up in Smallville claiming to be Clark's mother. Although he knows she couldn't be, and tells her so, she's not deterred. Rachel Dunleavy was the only one to give her child up to Metropolis United Charities, and Clark was the only child adopted out of it, so you can't quite blame her for getting "four" from two and two.

Naturally, it's not that simple. Through the power of flashbacks, we learn that it wasn't really a matter of clearance so much as a "deal with the devil." Said devil, of course, being Lionel Luthor. After the meteor shower wreaked its havoc, Jonathan stopped to pick up a hysterical Lionel, even though he had a spaceship in the back of the truck and a very strange child sitting placidly in his wife's lap.

Thinking quickly, Jonathan grabbed the newly-bald and unconscious Lex from the field, and drove him and Lionel to the hospital. Convinced that this rural farmer had saved his son's life, Lionel pledges a favor to him. When Deputy Ethan accidentally sees the little boy at the Kents, and Martha blurts out that they've adopted him, Jonathan calls in that favor so they can back up the lie and keep the boy.

Favors from Lionel come with strings attached, though. In exchange for keeping Clark's adoption process under wraps, he wants Jonathan to convince the Ross brothers to sell their land to LuthorCorp. This has always been Jonathan's biggest secret and his darkest moment; Clark feels responsible for the meteor shower that wreaked so much destruction and freakiness upon Smallville, but Jonathan feels responsible for letting in LuthorCorp to wreak its own brand of destruction.

Clark immediately tries to take that on as well, because he wants to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders, but Jonathan refuses. This is his cross to bear, as if the Kents themselves are responsible for all bad things inside the city limits and so must do copious amounts of good to make up for that. Oh wait. That's it exactly.

Oh, and a word about those flashbacks: They're fabulous. John Schneider looks just like Bo Duke, and everyone else is "de-aged" well. The little boy playing Clark as a toddler is just freakin' adorable; I'm not sure if the scenes with him were shot last year, concurrent with the pilot, or if he's some kind of computer-generated ageless child, but he's Supercute. And I am not the type of girl who says stuff like that.

But wait! There's more: Rachel was an employee of the Luthors, and her son Lucas was also Lionel's illegitimate son. She's a complete nutjob to boot, and spent several years in a mental institution after she gave up her son.

So now there's some hoo-haw about Lex and Clark potentially being brothers and a DNA test for Clark. Not by blood drawing, sadly, but from a cheek swab. Pete and Clark are immediately off to Metropolis to keep the strange DNA ("If I even have DNA") from being analyed. Never mind that now Clark is somehow scientifically related to the Ross family, but I guess that's not the real concern.

Sore spot #2: Clumsy Parallels. Chloe is indirectly responsible for bringing Rachel to Smallville, by posting some of Clark's information on the Internet. He's pretty furious with her, and in their fighting, throws out a tidbit we've never heard before, but which makes a few things about Chloe fall into place - her own mother left when she was five. She's never known her mother, and is anxious to, so she thought Clark might feel the same. Projecting much?

And Lana ambushes her potential biological father, Henry Small of the Smallville Smalls, just about as suddenly as Rachel ambushed Clark. Like Clark, he's made a happy life with a happy family, but unlike Clark, he eventually comes around and is willing to find out the truth about his relationship to Lana.

(Sore spot #3: I don't think I need to harp on this one any further. Clark should show some interest in being an alien. He knows he is, he knows there's a spaceship what brung him - dance with it already!)

Sore spot #4: Julian Luthor. What, then, became of Lucas Luthor, since we know he's not Clark? Well, that's the question of the day. Lionel claims the boy died before his first birthday (never mind that this would make him much too young to be Clark anyway, duh), but in the now-obligatory Luthor vs. Luthor ending, the blind Lionel takes a photo and a lock of hair out of some secret pocket and fondles it thoughtfully. It's a much older boy in the photo, and he isn't Lex. But is he dead or alive now? Only Lionel knows for sure.

So maybe Lionel has a secret son, upon whom to heap his hopes and dreams, which is exactly what Julian was supposed to be, but since that pretty much got tossed aside with the rest of the first season, whatever. Lionel's fixation on hair remains the subtlest thing about his relationship with Lex; the timing of Lucas' removal from his mother may underscore another of Lex's unwitting failures at his father's secret tests.

It wasn't bad, it wasn't. It was a bit predictable, but maybe not to someone who watches a normal amount of television (ie, not me), and it at least moved away from the campy, over-the-top tone the show had been taking for the previous shows.

I like the flashbacks, though, and would like to see more of Clark's childhood development (how did he learn English? How soon did he exhibit powers? When was he introduced to other kids in the neighborhood? How did Jonathan and Martha survive, emotionally and physically?) - and not just so I can see more of that adorable little kid.

Sarah Stanek