THE SMALLVILLE FILES SEASON 1
Score: 7.4 / 10 
14: Sinead Revokes His Decree
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.
Apparently Sinead has rewatched last week's episode and seen the very funny scene where the Intangiburglars threw Whit in front of a truck. Obviously, this put rather the smile on the bald one's dial (as it would) and inspired him to revoke his 'Drive Safely' decree.
I say all this, because within the opening seconds of the episode we have some strange man driving insanely through the outskirts of Smallville. So insane is this man that he is driving and talking on the phone at the same time! Madness.
Oblivious to this psychopath is Bo Duke, who is simply driving along in his truck, listening to Radio WDKH - All Dukes, All The Time. In a rather neat touch, Bo is listening to the old Dukes of Hazzard theme song, which is on high rotation at WDKH but still raised a smile of recognition for me. It is moments like these when I'm glad that I'm such a tragic television junkie with essentially no life.
Anyhoo, Maniac Driver tailgates Bo and there's a bit of swerving and horn-honking and then a glorious crash as the Maniac Driver rolls the car triumphantly. Bo dashes out and goes to the rescue pullng out Maniac Driver, who is apparently not only a maniac but also a florist! For he has a flower in his car that Bo sensibly sniffs.
Word gets back to Sinead about this. "The revocation of your decree is now fully operational," reports a henchman, who elaborates on the details of the car crash.
"Excellent," says Sinead and heads off to visit Bo to congratulate him on upstaging the efforts of his showpony son.
Bo is in the kitchen, feeling rather horny and trying to remove Boring Old Ma Kent's panties right then and there in the kitchen. Well, this kind of behaviour is far too interesting for Boring Old Ma so she resists strongly.
Then Sinead shows up. "Kudos, Bo, on finally beating your son to a car crash rescue."
"'Kudos'!?!?" says Bo, suddenly irrationally full of hate towards Sinead. "What kind of talk is that for a young, balding billionaire? I hate you, Sinead. I hate your father. I hate your friendship with my son and I hate your second album - I find it derivative and self-indulgent. So there!" And then he belches in Sinead's face.
"Now, just hold on a minute there," says Superlad, springing to Sinead's defence. "I thought his second album was a beautiful, personal testimony to the power of love."
"Thank you, Superlad," says Sinead.
"Or was that Huey Lewis?"
Sinead sighs and departs.
So, anyway, Superlad heads off to school and tells Good Ol' Pete about how his dad dissed Sinead. At this point Good Ol' Pete reveals that he doesn't particularly like Sinead (nor his second album) either!
Good Ol' Pete. Way to develop a second dimension.
So then TIAC shows up. She is conducting an absurd survey about everybody's most potent desires. This shameless plot device has Good Ol' Pete revealing that his most potent desire is to become a spiritually rich and complete human being or, alternatively, shag the girl that just walked past him. "Ideally, both," he adds, before running off after the bimbo.
Lana pops her head around the corner and says "My most potent desire it to climb to the top of a windmill." Huh????!?
She wanders off. "So, Superlad, what's your most potent desire?" asks TIAC.
Superlad ignores her, as he is gazing worshipfully after Lana. "I think that's a great desire, Lana!" he says. "Windmills are awesome!!" he hesitantly but enthusiastically adds. He turns back to TIAC. "I'm sorry, what was the question?"
"Never mind," says TIAC. And then starts mumbling to herself about '...why doesn't this Superlad open his stupid... can't he see that I yearn for... what does she have that I... grumble, grumble, grumble'
Superlad ignores her and heads off to the shops where he sees Bo come roaring around the corner in his truck (known as The Private Lee), scaring pedestrians and almost waking the Lazy Smallville Cops. He eventually pulls up and whips out his handy-dandy shotgun and starts marching toward the bank.
"Whooooooooooa there," says Superlad and nicks the shotgun off him.
"Clark Superlad Kent!! You give that back, young man or there'll be a whuppin'."
Superlad hesitates (nobody wants a whuppin'!) but suddenly Bo collapses and is dragged off to hospital.
Sinead comes to the hospital and promises to heal both Maniac Drivin' Florist and Bo with his very touch. When this doesn't work, he instead suggests that he will get his team of, like, doctors, working on a cure in Metropolis.
(It turns out that Maniac Drivin' Florist was working for the weird professor who Sinead hired so many episodes back I can barely remember it happening. Sinead hired him to investigate the whole Kryptonite thing, so he (obviously) cloned an extinct plant and irradiated it with Kryptonite. So now we have an extinct plant that makes people fulfil their most potent desires (a big round of applause for TIAC and her plot device, if you please) and then sends them into a coma and kills them. So Sinead's a bit cross with his weird professor dude.)
TIAC pulls out another rip-snortin' notion to help move the plot along (sometimes it's really handy to have access to the script) when she inexplicably befriends Lana and drags her along to the crash site to help her look for clues.
Lana finds the flower, takes a big whiff and then we begin the second half of the show.
INTERMISSION
"Jaws drop. Eyes bulge. Throats gulp. And that was just in my living room."
We open the second half of the show in spectacular style with Lana showing up to school, clad in boots and a short skirt and a variety of sexy paraphernalia.
Jaws drop. Eyes bulge. Throats gulp. And that was just in my living room.
She goes up to Whit and sexily asks him to cut class and go do the wild thing with her. Whit, idiot that he is, says 'um, no. I need to study.' So Lana dumps him. "Ever since your dad started to die, you've been no fun at all! I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!"
So, stupidly, she moves on to another boy whose dad is dying, Superlad.
"Hey, Superlad," she purrs. "Sorry to hear your dad's in hospital about to croak. But do you want to come frolic with me?"
Superlad springs to attention and follows her into the school swimming pool. Lana does a slow striptease on the diving board before jumping in. "Won't you join me, Superlad?"
Superlad begins to go a bit Whit on us all and he says "No, I don't think so." So Lana kisses him and then pushes him in the pool and then somehow Superlad is busted for this by his wily principal.
Lana dashes off, tracks down Sinead, whose father isn't dying, and comes onto him also. Once again, she is rebuffed.
"What is wrong with you people??!? Look at me! I'm hot!!"
Sinead shrugs.
Lana dashes out and steals his car and drives off to a windmill. Superlad chases her and tries to talk sense into her but, nope, she's climbing up that windmill. But of course she gets about halfway, collapses, falls and Superlad catches and saves her.
So now we have three victims of this deadly flower in the hospital. Or, actually, we don't, because Maniac Drivin' Florist has died. So he's now in the morgue. This has reduced Boring Old Ma Kent to tears (which is odd. I didn't even know she knew Maniac Drivin' Florist) and she starts to bore Superlad with a story about how she originally seduced Bo.
"...Superlad is for once pleased to see TIAC come and interrupt."
Stifling his yawns, Superlad is for once pleased to see TIAC come and interrupt.
"What's up, TIAC?" he says.
"Well," says TIAC. "Good Ol' Pete and I broke into that Weird Professor's lab and Good Ol' Pete sniffed the flower and went a bit crazy and found a gun and now he's off to kill Sinead."
TIAC. Always moving the plot along.
Superlad dashes off to Luthor Mansion.
Before he gets there, Sinead is talking to the weird professor. They've found a cure! Huzzah! They mambo in triumph.
But Good Ol' Pete shows up, wielding his gun. "I'm going to kill you, Sinead. Your second album stunk!"
Before he can shoot, though, Weird Professor pummels him with a metal bar that happened to be laying around.
"Go, Professor," cheers Sinead. "Club that gun-wielding flower-sniffer!"
'Gun-wielding??' thinks Weird Professor, and drops the bar and heads for the hills.
"Shit," says Sinead.
"Now I'm gonna kill you," says Good Ol' Pete.
"Now, Good Ol' Pete," says Sinead. "I know you're frustrated and angry at being so one-dimensional. And I know you're looking for a second dimension. But this isn't the way to go about it."
Round about now, Superlad shows up and begs to differ.
"Of course it is, Good Ol' Pete!" says Superlad. "Nothing looks better in characterisation terms than a brutal murder of a billionaire. In fact," he continues. "I might just kill Sinead myself."
And he goes up and knocks Sinead out. And then turns around and knocks Good Ol' Pete out. And then wakes up Sinead and winks.
"You idiot," says Sinead. "You're supposed to wink before you attack your friends! Sheesh! What am I going to do with you?"
And so they dash off to the hospital and cure everybody. And Sinead moves Weird Professor to Metropolis to continue his work on Kryptonite radiation and we end the show with Superlad and Lana atop the bloody windmill.
Superlad is covering her eyes. "Surprise," he says, as he removes his hands. "We're on top of the windmill." Which does kind of raise the question as to how one carries somebody up a ladder to the top of a windmill, covering their eyes the whole time, without somehow giving it all away.
But before this question can be asked, U2's Beautiful Day commences and the question is lost beneath the Edge's power chords.
A fantastic episode. The car crashes are back and nobody could be happier than me. Except possibly Sinead.
Next week: A creepy kid shows up who can read people's minds and he starts to reveal all kinds of secrets, including the most important one of them all - that Boring Old Ma Kent dyes her hair to remove the grey!
Tags: smallville
Begone,
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