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.

It’s the 150th episode! Surely that’s as good an excuse as any to travel back in time to, say, the end of Season Three and wrap the show up neatly there before it starts its inevitable downward spiral into silliness.

But no, the writers won’t listen to reason. They’d much rather celebrate the 150th episode by sending Superlad back in time and space to Krypton to save himself as a baby from the murderous knife-hands of Spike-iac, and thereby ensure he (Superlad) comes into existence. That kind of paradoxical nonsense worked well enough for Back To The Future, they argue. Why shouldn’t it work for us? And none of us have the heart to explain to them about exquisite comic timing and perfectly structured scripts.

But Superlad resists! He doesn’t want nuthin’ to do with no time-travellin’ back to Krypton. He explains why to TIAC. “Surely, if Spike-iac is going to kill me as a baby, then, as that event is in the past, it’s either happened or it hasn’t. Since I’m still here, it clearly hasn’t. So why do I have to go back again?”

“This is no time for you to start thinking clearly, Superlad,” she says. “Now come on, let’s get muddled up, time-travelley-wise.”

But Superlad would rather do an alternate future thing, where he sees how the world would have unfolded if he’d never existed. “Engh,” says TIAC. “Close enough.” And he grips that ruddy octagonal key and off he goes.

He emerges back in the barn, where he’s hollered at by some doofus-lookin’ redhead. “Whatchu doing in my barn?” says the doofus.

“What do you mean, ‘your’ barn?” says Superlad.

“I didn’t say ‘your barn’,” says The Doofus. “I said ‘my barn’.”

And such idiocy can mean only one thing. “Oh my god,” says Superlad. “You’re a product of the Smallville education system.”

“I sure am,” says the Doofus. “I’m Clark Kent.”

Well, that’s just crazy. This guy’s not a buff dreamboat! Superlad and the Doofus head into the kitchen to discuss how Bo and Boring Old Ma managed to have a kid without him and why he’s such a dorky looking creature and also the fact that Bo’s still alive, but wouldn’t appear in this episode for any sum.

Superlad eventually grows tired of his namesake. Dude can’t even heat-vision the cows! So he heads off to see how everybody else turned out without his alien presence disrupting their lives. First person he bumps into on the streets of Smallville is TIAC.

“Hey, TIAC,” he says.

“Do I know you?” she says, eyeing him up and down lustily. “I’m sorry. My inner database is coming up empty.”

Well you still talk like a pain in the ass.

“Well you still talk like a pain in the ass,” says Superlad. “I’m glad to know that quirk can’t be traced back to my existence.” Sick of TIAC now, he turns his attention to other things. “Do you know where I can find Lana?”

“The cheerleader?” says TIAC. “She and I didn’t exactly swim in the same social koi ponds. She flipped totally off my radar the second we left high school. I can help you find her, though. I have mad magical investigative skills.”

“No thanks,” says Superlad, halfway down the street, determined to escape from TIAC’s stupid way of talking this time around. “Looks like you’re happily engaged to that guy.” And he points vaguely.

“Come back!” says TIAC. “You’re way hotter than him!”

But it’s too late. Superlad’s escaped. He emerges at The Daily Planet, where he bumps into Jimmy-James Olsen, who, yet again, is taking candid lewd shots of Lois. The man’s insatiable!

“You’re Jimmy-James Olsen,” says Superlad. “Every time I see a photo in the paper that I think is awesome, it turns out to have been taken by you.”

Jimmy-James falls for this blatant buttering up. “Y’know what,” he says. “Because you like my photos, I’m going to drop all my responsibilities and help you trawl through the archives to find whatever you want.”

“That seems reasonable,” says Superlad. “I’m looking for a piece of crumpet I used to shag called Lana Lang.”

They head off. Jimmy-James finds that she’s married to a French billionaire.

French, huh? thinks Superlad. He supposes it’s slightly better than being brain-dead.

He goes to leave, but bumps into Lois on the way out. Like literally bumps into her. He grabs her before she hits the ground. “Wow,” says Lois. “Clumsy but cute.”

“I know you are, but what am I?” says Superlad wittily. He goes for a high-five with Jimmy-James, who doesn’t know what he’s on about.

“Be nice to him,” says Jimmy-James. “He just found out his old girlfriend is married to a Frenchman.”

“French?” says Lois. “That’s tough. Come on, I’ll buy you a beer and then we can go home and shag like spotted hyenas.”

Before this can happen, however, Lois is taken away by government officials, led by a besuited SBH. “You’re in big trouble, missy!” says SBH. Because, apparently hitting on Superlad is against the law in this reality.

“Wow, she’s sure in big trouble,” says Jimmy-James Olsen, ears functioning as expected. “Lucky she can’t be thrown out of office like, say, The President could be.”

“Huh?” says Superlad, not understanding the non sequitir.

Jimmy-James Olsen holds up a newspaper. “Like President Luthor.”

Huh, thinks Superlad, unable to decide whether the reveal or the awkward nature of the reveal is more disturbing.

Superlad tries to track down Lois, and if that means needlessly roughing up Jimmy-James and visiting that stupid nightclub set from a couple of episodes back and bumping into Sheriff Whatsername from several seasons back, who is now not the Sheriff but rather a government agent who inexplicably calls people ‘Slim’, then that’s what he’ll do.

Once he finds out where Lois has been taken, he swoops in at superspeed, knocks the government agents out and whisks her to safety. Lois swoons sexily, with her dimples flashing on and off, spelling out ‘I’m yours’ in Morse code.

She takes Superlad back to her apartment where she shows him a video she’s uploaded to YouTube™. It shows Sinead, dressed in his presidential white suit (but now with a dashing black glove added) vowing to ‘destroy the enemies of this nation with every nuke at his disposal’.

“Sounds reasonable to me,” says Superlad. “Bo always told me you’ve got to nuke your enemies. Makes them think twice.”

“But we don’t have enemies!” says Lois. “We’re the United States! Everybody loves us.” And she shows him evidence that she’s acquired from the United Nations Committee on Belovedness.

Superlad looks it over. It all makes sense. “Hey,” he says, pointing to the background of the video. “Is that Spike-iac?”

“Dr Milton Spike-iac,” confirms Lois. “He’s the Secretary of State.”

“He’s a crazed killer robot from another planet!”

“Engh,” says Lois. At least he’s not one of those lily-livered Democrats.

But Superlad decides he has to stop Sinead from blowing up the Earth with all the US nukes.

He gets Lois to dress him up as a four-eyed dork in a suit so they can play some kinky sex games. She decides instead that he should sneak into the White House (clearly using standard Luthor Security these days). He eavesdrops on Sinead and SBH, who are strutting through the corridors like refugees from The West Wing.

“I didn’t rescue you from Smallville and hide your alien nature from the cowardly press so you could allow Lois Lane to escape,” scowls Sinead, scalp glowering furiously.

“I’m just a blonde!!” screams SBH by way of explanation. She regains her composure and hands him a piece of paper. “I confiscated this memo from Lois’s office. It’s evidence that the United States has no enemies and hence there’s no need to nuke the rest of the world.”

Let’s get nuking! I’m gonna start with Chile!

Sinead burns the memo. “You’re talking crazy!” he says. “How dare you question my balding judgement? Now come on. Let’s get nuking! I’m gonna start with Chile!” For he hates Chile, chili and being chilly.

He leaves, which gives Superlad an opportunity to woo SBH over to his side. “Listen to me, SBH,” says Superlad. “Dr Milton Spike-iac’s secret identity is Spike-iac, the killer robot from Krypton.”

“Of course,” says SBH, staggered that she could miss something so obvious. The pair of them head off to confront Sinead and Spike-iac.

“Look here,” says Superlad to Sinead. “There’s no need to blow up the world. As far as diabolical plans go, it’s all kinds of crazy.”

“It’s not crazy!” says Sinead. “It’s cinematic genius! Haven’t you ever seen Dr Strangelove?”

Superlad shrugs. Wasn’t that the name of Bo’s homemade farm animal porn? He casts his mind back, but, mid-cast, Sinead shoots him and SBH with a kryptonite bullet or two. And off he goes with Spike-iac to launch nukes.

So that’s not the greatest of all possible alternate realities. Superlad therefore returns to the present where he tells TIAC that he’s changed his mind – he will go back in time and stop Spike-iac from killing him as a baby.

Which he does. Oh, sure, Spike-iac puts up a bit of a fight. But it’s surprisingly half-hearted, considering Superlad and SBH are powerless under the red sun and all. Eventually, just as Spike-iac is about to stab baby Kal-El through the heart, SBH sneaks up and stabs him with a convenient stake.

“Buffy?” says Spike-iac. And down he goes.

Superlad and SBH return to the present, as baby Kal-El begins rocketing away from the exploded planet.

And that’s that. SBH tries to convince Superlad to help her use the time portal to keep travelling back to Krypton until they can work out a way to alter the timeline so that the planet doesn’t explode and everybody they ever loved will live again.

“Engh,” says Superlad. Sounds like a lot of hard work to him.

Instead he chats with Sinead. “I have the best doctors in the galaxy,” says Sinead. “Tell me everything you know about Lana Mannequin’s condition and we’ll do everything in our power to make her better.”

“No,” says Superlad, willing to cut off Lana Mannequin’s nose to spite his face. Although not literally. Not yet.

“Fine,” says Sinead. He heads back to his calendar and puts another X through it. Two to go. Two to go.

Oh, and back at the Daily Planet, Lois hits on Superlad again with another beer-buying offer. No mention of the ‘shagging like spotted hyenas’ though. Superlad curses her prudery in this reality.He’s still doing better than SBH, however, who has collapsed in the kitchen, spilling milk everywhere, crying about it and then being possessed by Spike-iac.

Next time: We’re winding into the season finale. Which is just as well, because Season Eight is just around the corner.

Discuss this episode at KryptonSite

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