THE SMALLVILLE FILES SEASON 1
Score: 7.6 / 10 
20: Kidnap-o-Rama!
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.
The kidnap-o-rama continues from where it left off the previous episode. We open, rationally enough, with Lana and Whit riding horses through the forest.
Suddenly (or 'All of a sudden' as they say in South Africa), an explosion rings out. The explosion startles Lana's horse, which is rather odd - you would think that all living creatures in Smallville would take explosions and car accidents and miscellaneous violence in their majestic strides.
But I digress. Whit and Lana go to check out the explosion and, of course there is a gas leak or something and things explode again and Lana is flung through the air and wakes up in hospital.
Oh yeah, and Lana has been showered with Kryptonite fragments which have given her the ability to see through the eyes of a kidnapper. No sane explanation was offered for this at all, especially when we remember that Lana spent the first handful of episodes wearing a Kryptonecklace that at no point (as far as I'm aware) gave her the ability to piggyback on others' ocular facilities.
But we'll ignore that because Lana has used her unjustifiable visionary powers to witness TIAC being kidnapped.
Meanwhile, the reporter that Sinead made his bitch many, many episodes back has come up with some further information, namely a drunken hooch-snootin' ex-crop-duster who claims to have seen a rocket land the day of the meteorites.
"Yeah, right," says Sinead and then takes the punk reporter back to the mansion for a beating. "How dare you waste my valuable time," he screams. "I rescheduled my scalp massage for this!"
After the beating he wanders over to the Kents and gives Bo a cheque for several million dollars to reimburse him for the cows that had radioactive porridge poured over them last episode.
"Well, thanks, Sinead," says Bo. "But I'm not sure I can accept this..."
Boring Old Ma shakes her head, ruefully. What is it with Bo and his poverty addiction?
Superlad drifts off to visit Lana at her cafe thing. After some meaningless chit-chat, Lana asks Superlad if he's heard from TIAC.
"Nope," says Superlad (because he hasn't and there was nothing to gain from lying about this fact).
And then Lana suddenly has one of her 'seeing through the eyes of the kidnapper' attacks and drops her tray of homemade toffee.
Superlad humours her and calls the Lazy Smallville Cops out who nod patiently at Lana's story. "Yes, Lana," they say. "Of course we believe you." They wink at one another, smirking like idiots.
Then TIAC's dad runs in and says that they've found TIAC's car abandoned in the bushes, possibly by a kidnapper!!
"Yes, TIAC's Dad. Of course we believe you." And more smirking and winking.
"Sinead has ... bought the land where the alleged spacecraft landed and is now scouring it with a team of land-scourers."
Meanwhile, Sinead has changed his mind about the crop-dustin' wino's story and bought the land where the alleged spacecraft landed and is now scouring it with a team of land-scourers.
Bo and Superlad pull up.
"Whatcha doin', Sinead?" asks Superlad.
"Oh!" says Sinead, startled. "Just, um, panning for gold."
"Cool," says Superlad, but Bo is less convinced by this explanation.
"Wait a second," says Bo. "There's no gold here. There's no river here! You're not panning at all."
"Did I say 'panning for gold'?" says Sinead. "Hahahahahhahahaha. Hahaha. I meant, um, 'pining for God'"
Bo still doesn't buy it and tells Sinead that to teach Sinead a lesson he (Bo) won't bank his (Sinead's) million-dollar cheque. Yep, that'll teach him, Bo. Good thinkin'.
That night, Lana wanders over to visit Superlad and Superlad rather oddly starts to reminisce about TIAC.
"I remember the first day I met her," says Superlad. "We were 8 and she was new to Smallville and she came onto me and kissed me. I found her a little annoying, and every day since I've found her just that little bit more annoying."
"True," agrees Lana. "And she's not quite as cute as me either."
"True," agrees Superlad. "Still, I hope she's not dead."
Lana shrugs in more or less agreement and then has another vision of the kidnapper burying TIAC alive. Superlad dashes off to the rescue, pulling TIAC to safety.
"Oh, Superlad," says TIAC. "I knew you'd save me."
"But of course," says Superlad, smiling modestly.
"It said so right here on page 34 of the script. See? 'Superlad saves TIAC'."
And Superlad has to agree that it does, indeed, say that.
So you'd think the show would be over but there's still a good twenty minutes to go! So the kidnapper (who, upon closer examination of TIAC's script, is revealed to be one of Smallville's lazy cops!) kidnaps Lana instead.
"'Oh no,' says Whit. 'He wasn't in the Korean War. He just won these during the war. At a local carnival, I believe.'"
(Oh yeah, almost forgot! Before this happened Whit showed up and had a chat with Lana and showed her the medals that his dad had won during the Korean War. "I didn't know your dad was in the Korean War," says Lana. "Oh no," says Whit. "He wasn't in the Korean War. He just won these during the war. At a local carnival, I believe.")
And, of course, this local carnival is where the Lazy Smallville Cop Kidnapper has taken Lana, so Superlad dashes over there.
The Lazy Smallville Cop Kidnapper is meanwhile explaining to Lana that he was never going to hurt anybody, he just wanted to be a hero and come to the rescue and save TIAC and thereby skip all the tedium normally associated with solving crimes and stuff.
"Boy," says Lana. "You Smallville Cops are lazy!"
"We're just time-efficient!" screams LSCK, furiously.
Around about now Superlad shows up and there's a bit of biffo before LSCK shoots Superlad a few times. Superlad just lets the bullets hit him, which is somewhat of a bad sign for LSCK, because everybody who sees Superlad use his powers pretty much winds up dead.
And so it proves for LSCK. The other Lazy Smallville Cops show up and shoot him for having thought up such a good idea and not sharing it with them.
And that's almost it. Superlad asks TIAC to the prom. And finally Sinead's wily old scientist dude shows up with a piece of spaceship they found at the crash site.
"Sinead," he says dramatically, omniously and, indeed, slowly. "There is nothing like this alloy on this planet."
"What about that one?" says Sinead, pointing.
The scientist sighs. "Apart from this one, obviously. That was kind of the point, Sinead."
"Oh, I see."
Fade to black! Ominousness abounds... and so I give it a very solid A+.
Next Week: Season Finale Time!! The promos would have you believe that the secret is out! But is it?? (I'm guessing no, seeing as there's a series 2... but hey, don't want to ruin it for you.) Tune in next week to see how Superlad gets out of this pickle. I'm hoping that he kisses everybody and causes them to lose their memory like at the end of Superman 2
Begone,
This here item has so far scored 7.6 / 10 on the patented Astonishing Tales Funny-o-meter.
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