|
|
Smallville
Jitters
airdate 12-11-01
For goodness sake, I got the hippy hippy shake
Who can take a catwalk, shake it to the floor?
LuthorCorp messed with meteor fragments? No!Last time on FanboyPlanet we suggested that LuthorCorp needed to come to the forefront as an accountable source of evil and villainy, and lo and behold, this week on Smallville, they did.
Well, yes, it still comes back to kryptonite, but at least it was LuthorCorp's fault. And anything that brings back Lionel Luthor is welcome.
Earl Jenkins, a former farmhand for the Kents who left for a job at the LuthorCorp fertilizer plant, suffers from a mysterious condition causing him to shake violently and uncontrollably. Candyman himself, Tony Todd, plays the human earthquake with a menace and desperation missing from previous Freaks of the Week. He turns up at the Kent farm looking for help from Smallville's most upstanding man, Jonathan Kent.
But Ma and Pa aren't around; they've left for an anniversary trip to Metropolis and Clark is living out the teen movie dream with a huge party. The effects and gags with Clark's superspeed are well done and amusing, especially to his returning parents. Brief though they are, the scenes in Metropolis are just right, set against a dark glittery big-city background.
Although wanted for murder, Earl doesn't seem terribly interested in clearing his name. He desperately wants to get back to the fertilizer plant and the super-secret Level 3, where an experimental explosion drove mineral particles deep under his skin. ("But no mineral I've ever seen," says the Smallville doctor treating him, because remember, not many people take the meteor shower that seriously.)
Conveniently, some Smallville High students are on a field trip to the LuthorCorp plant when Earl busts in and takes them hostage until he can get to Level 3. Everyone, including Lex, Lionel, and Chloe's father, the plant manager, insists that there is no such secret area, but Clark believes Earl.
After the hostages are released, Clark dashes back inside the plant to close off a gas leak and locate the elevator with his X-ray vision. Lex has gone in to negotiate with the increasingly twitchy and angry Earl. Their respective parents wait outside, worried but maybe a little proud.
In helping Earl and revealing LuthorCorp's secrets, though, Clark reveals a little more of his own secret to Lex, who doesn't miss anything. Level 3 has been completely vacated, but Earl provides enough danger, shaking the catwalk to the point of collapse, and Clark pulls both men to safety. It is conceivable that Clark's explanation of "adrenaline" would fly, because the mysterious "mineral" illness that plagues Earl also leeches Clark's superpowers, but is Lex going to buy it?
There's no question that as worried as they might have been about Clark, Jonathan and Martha are proud of him. The real question is between Lionel and Lex, and it's clear that neither of them is used to dealing with emotions enough to know themselves. Lionel's veiled smirks and grimaces are, of course, coming from John Glover, so it could go either way.
It's not Glover's fault that he's so inherently evil (and for further seasonal proof of that, check out him oozing smarm against Bill Murray in Scrooged) but it does underscore the general ill feeling many harbor for the Luthors. We are also reminded that Lex is still pretty new in town, and may not deserve the animosity.
But still, like father, like son.
