Dan Liebke's Astonishing Tales

Starring Clark Kent (Tom Welling) as Superlad, Lex Luthor (Michael Rosenbaum) as Sinead, Chloe Sullivan (Allison Mack) as TIAC, Jonathan Kent (John Schneider) as Bo, Martha Kent (Annette O’Toole) as Boring Old Ma, Lionel Luthor (John Glover) as Porthos, Kara Kent (Laura Vandervoort) as SBH and Lana Lang (Kristin Kreuk) as herself. For more information on these people and more, consult the scorecard.

A week passes real time, but, nuttily, we fast forward three months in Smallville time. People have recovered from tornado trauma. TIAC has been to Metropolis pretending to be a reporter. And nobody has thought to search for, say, that missing spaceship that’s just sitting in the field waiting to be found and muck everybody’s life up.

So we’re back for the first day of school and TIAC is being amusingly cold towards Superlad. She’s got the irrits because Superlad didn’t email her while she was away, so makes up a lie about how she met somebody way hotter than Superlad at Nerd Reporter Camp.

Superlad looks puzzled. “Hotter than me?? That doesn’t sound right,” he says. “Look at me! I’m as buff as they come!”

TIAC ignores him. Good Ol’ Pete nods agreeably.

Also, there’s a heat wave. This is important because it gives us an excuse to see the new teacher wearing an amazingly short and revealing dress that leaves absolutely nothing of the figure to the imagination.

And then, after Physics with Mr Marrinon, they head off to Biology, where the same phenomenon applies, but this time with the new female teacher.

The teacher, Miss Farquar, unveils a sex education tape (namely, her successful stint seducing an idiot boofhead named Pacey in series one of Dawson’s Creek) which only succeeds in getting Superlad sufficiently worked up that a new superpower emerges – namely heat vision, which bursts from his eyes and sets the film ablaze. Everybody runs out screaming.

Sinead roars up in the Luthormobile, gets out, embraces Miss Farquar and informs Superlad that he’s going to marry her tonight.

“That seems perfectly reasonable,” says Superlad.

“Also, I want you to be my best man.”

“Okey-doke.”

So Superlad heads home and tells Bo and Ma about a) his new-found ability to incinerate movies with but a glance and b) Sinead’s wedding to Miss Farquar.

Bo ignores b), but scurries off to move his Dukes of Hazzard video collection to a safer place, well away from the lad’s conflagratin’ eyes.

Meanwhile, back at Luthor Manor, Sinead is trying to convince Miss Farquar to sign a pre-nup.

She kisses him and Sinead’s mind is clouded and he says ‘screw it, pre-nups are for losers’. We are supposed to believe that Sinead’s mind has been mesmerised by Miss Farquar’s extra-minty-fresh Kryptonite breath, but I see that as an unnecessary complication.

So they get married, and it’s a beautiful ceremony with personal wedding vows.

‘Do you, Sinead, promise to remain bald and slick…’

“Do you, Sinead, promise to remain bald and slick and under the power of her mind-altering pheromones, ’til the end of this episode do you part.”

“I do.”

“And do you, Miss Farquar, promise to remain buxom and babelicious and capable of all kinds of villainy and mischievousness until the end of this episode do you part.”

“I do.”

“Then I now pronounce you bald man and babe. You may grope the bride…. no, not you, Superlad…”

“Oh. Sorry.”

Beautiful. Excuse me while I take a moment to pull myself together.

I’m sorry. I always cry at weddings.

Anyway, after the wedding, Superlad and Lana return to Lana’s cafe-cinema thing for a cup of ice coffee. They’re talking about stuff – haberdashery, Lana dumping Whit, deciduous trees, favourite episodes of Family Ties – when something gets Superlad all sexually excited (either the memory of Mallory or the Ivy leaf Maple) and his eyes start blowing things up again.

“Eek! Flame!” says Lana and runs away.

So Superlad refuses to go to school the next day, because, y’know, of the fear of setting people ablaze just because he lusts for them.

Bo will have none of that. He comes in and tells Superlad that he’s built a scarecrow out the back and he wants Superlad to practise his heat vision on that.

Superlad protests. “But the heat vision only works when I’m sexually aroused!”

“Y’know, son, we Earthling men much prefer to commemorate sexual arousal with… well, let’sjust say with the emergence of the tallest steeple in the chapel of love… if you get my meaning…”

And he gives a sly wink to Ma who blushes profusely. Superlad looks totally baffled.

“Besides,” continues Bo. “Wait ’til you see this scarecrow! Vavavavoom!”

And he’s right. Because the scarecrow is one of the sauciest straw women ever seen and soon enables Superlad to master the mysteries of his heat vision. During an ad break he gets it all under control. No longer will mere sexual arousal incite the blazin’ peepers.

Which is handy, because Miss Farquar-Luthor shows up and tries to seduce him. She unleashes her freshy-mint-Kryptobreath on him, but he resists!

“I’m sorry, but Sinead is my friend and I would never do that to him. Besides, I’ve recently found true love with Betty Straw-Breasts.”

“Oh,” says Miss Farquar-Luthor and slinks off.

Superlad heads off to class the next day and dobs to TIAC about Miss Farquar-Luthor.

“Pshaw,” says TIAC. “Yeah, right.” Maintaining her impressively cold stance towards Superlad.

Superlad ignores her and instead heads off to dob to Sinead, who is stylishly playing snooker with himself.

“Ah, Superlad. Come on in. Y’know, eversince I was a wee lad, I never allowed myself to have friends because my father raised me to believe that friendships were only for Communists and pixies. But ever since the first episode of this show when you rescued me from the car crash and gave me that lingering kiss–”

“Mouth to mouth resuscitation, Sinead! It’s a legitimate first aid technique. Look it up!”

‘–since that lingering kiss, you have been the one friend I could rely upon and trust’

Sinead raises his eyebrows disbelievingly. “–since that lingering kiss, you have been the one friend I could rely upon and trust. Which is why it hurts so much to hear you tried to seduce my babe wife.”

Superlad denies this but Sinead doesn’t believe him. Superlad heads off, muttering to himself about bald people choosing dates before mates.

Then, because nobody else has thought to do so yet this episode, Miss Farquar-Luthor sets a car on fire.

Superlad gets the blame for this, so the Lazy Smallville Cops show up and throw him in jail! Madness! Since when is car destruction a criminal offence in Smallville??

Furious, Bo heads off to visit Miss Farquar-Luthor and confront her about her mischief-making. Miss Farquar-Luthor unleashes the minty-fresh-kryptobreath on Bo, who doesn’t resist all that much. Boring Old Ma… or extremely curvey, wet and nude Miss Farquar-Luthor… it’s a tough choice all right.

Then TIAC finds the script and visits Superlad in jail to explain how Miss Farquar developed super-pheromone powers in the meteor shower and how she has a history of seducing rich billionaires, then not-so-rich boofheads who murder the billionaires, leaving Miss Farquar with all the money.

So after TIAC leaves, Superlad sets the jail on fire, breaks out, zooms over to Luthor Manor where Miss Farquar-Luthor has unleashed a shotgun-wielding Bo on Sinead. Bo tries to shoot Sinead, Superlad burns the bullet in mid-air with his burny-eyes and that’s about it.

The Lazy Smallville Cops decide dealing with this is all too hard – attempted murder by Bo, jail-breaking from Superlad, arson all over the place by Superlad – and in the end they decide to arrest Miss Farquar-Luthor on a charge of ‘making men not think clearly’. And on that patriarchal note of triumph we finish.

(Also, Sinead simply keeps all his money, ignoring the fact he didn’t sign the pre-nup, Bo and Ma ignore the fact he was out flagrantly kissing other women and everybody continues to ignore the fact that the freakin’ spaceship is still missing!!!)

Very excellent stuff again. Always exciting when Superlad comes up with a new power. I therefore give this episode 4 blazing-hot stars.

Next week: Something else

Discuss this episode at KryptonSite

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