THE SMALLVILLE FILES SEASON 2
Score: 7.2 / 10 
13: Who Shot Porthos?
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.
We open with Porthos being shot by a mysterious gunman. He falls dramatically and blood spurts from his chest in a bullety kind of way. So that's no good for Porthos.
It's also no good for Bo, because he wakes up in the General MacArthur, covered in tequila, unshaven and with a pistol in his hand. All pretty commonplace you might think, but the Lazy Smallville Cops don't think so. They've managed to drag themselves out of bed and arrest Bo. At first he's charged with 'unlawful carnal knowledge of a firearm'. But then the Lazy Smallville Cops hear about Porthos and upgrade it to 'attempted murder of a villainous supporting character'.
Boring Old Ma and Superlad come to visit Bo in the slammer.
"What happened?" asks Boring Old Ma, as this is the kind of dialogue to which she has been reduced since she quit working for Porthos.
"I stopped off at The Exploding Planet for a drink and then as I was driving home I felt all dizzy and pulled over and when I woke up I was somehow framed for murder!!!"
"How much did you drink, Bo?"
"Just half a beer."
Superlad frowns in confusion. Who the hell only drinks half a beer? Something is clearly wrong here... he thinks some more and eventually deduces that this is not Bo at all, but rather Morph Lass... back from the dead!! He reaches in and tries to pull off her mask.
Bo shoos him off. "I'm not Morph Lass, you idiot," says Bo. "And if I was do you think I would be wearing a mask?? Think it through, lad."
Thinking? thinks Superlad. Damn and blast. Couldn't he just play to his strengths and run around really quickly like a lunatic and burn things with his eyes?
Over at the hospital and Porthos is in a grave condition. Sinead speaks to Porthos's number one henchman who adopts a shamefully anti-Sinead stance. Clearly, the man is bigoted towards the hairless. So much intolerance in the world of high finance. For shame.
Meanwhile, Superlad has taken Bo's dubious 'thinking' advice and is off playing detective with Good Ol' Pete. They've taken the PeteMobile out for a spin because all of the Generals are in the shop being worked upon. Superlad and Good Ol' Pete scour the area where Bo was picked up in the General MacArthur and he finds a bullet!
Superlad is very excited about this because it clearly proves Bo's innocence.
"How does that work again?" says Good Ol' Pete.
"Think about it, Pete," says Superlad. "If there's a bullet shot into the side of a barn then that clearly means that somebody must have drugged Bo while he was at the bar drinking half a beer and then followed him and placed a gun in his hand and shot into the side of a barn so that Bo would be covered by gunshot residue and that way whoever drugged Bo could shoot Porthos themselves, knowing that Bo would get the blame for it."
"Que?" says Good Ol' Pete. "I don't understand."
Superlad sighs. "It's very simple, Pete. The guy who's framing Bo simply--"
"Bo drank half a beer???"
"No," says Good Ol' Pete. "I get all that. I watch CSI too, you know. But... Bo drank half a beer???"
Then Superlad ducks over to The Death Claw to ask Lana to ask Jebediah Small whether he would defend Bo if the case goes to trial. Lana promises to try and this leads to a lame subplot about how Jebediah Small accidentally shot a small boy while in a courtroom and therefore can't bring himself to argue points of law with even the lowest justice of the peace. Or some damn thing. To be frank, my interest in Lana's relationship with her newly invented father is more than a little non-existent.
But in the middle of the conversation, Lana also lets it spill that she saw Bo over at Luthor Mansion earlier in the day having an argument with Porthos. Also that she felt she had no choice but to call the Lazy Smallville Cops and tell them about this.
"That's perfectly understandable," says Superlad.
"I also told them that Bo had screamed 'I'm going to kill you, Porthos! I am seriously going to get a gun and shoot you before the opening credits even start!!'"
"Ooooo-kay," says Superlad. "Did he say that?"
"It was very noisy," says Lana. "He said it with his eyes." She pauses and smiles prettily. "Also I told them that I saw Bo shoot Porthos in the heart."
"Okay. But you actually didn't see that," points out Superlad.
"No," admits Lana. "But I thought it would just save time if they had a witness of some kind."
"I see," says Superlad. "That's perfectly understandable."
Lana smiles some more. Superlad smiles goofily.
Then what happens?
"... if Sinead wanted to kill somebody, he'd do so with much more panache."
Porthos's Head Henchman accuses Sinead of being the real gunman. It turns out that Porthos had cunningly purchased Sinead's company from under him while he wasn't looking and that Sinead had become all cranky about this. PHH surmises that it was Sinead, rather than Bo, who shot Porthos. Which is just nutty, because if Sinead wanted to kill somebody, he'd do so with much more panache.
Sinead doesn't just sit there and take this. Nosirree, Bob. He accuses PHH of shooting Porthos because he (PHH) was worried that he (Porthos) was going to reinstate Sinead as Head Henchman. The scene degenerates into mindless 'you're the gunman' 'haw! you are!' 'says who?' 'says me!' 'nuh-uh' 'uh-uh' kind of name calling. Also, Sinead picks a fight with Superlad. Something to do with feudin' fathers trying to kill one another or some such triviality.
Good Ol' Pete's car is destroyed in a welcome return to the car-crashing antics of Series One. Boy, it's been ages since anybody has totalled a car in Smallville. Glad to see it's back. This time it came about thanks to Superlad and Good Ol' Pete interrogating some poor bartender about Bo's drinking habits ('did he really only drink half a beer?' asked Pete. 'Because that just doesn't make any sense, does it?'). Superlad and Good Ol' Pete's interrogation is rewarded with a semi-trailer running them off the road and then a bullet being shot into the PeteMobile's fuel tank. Good Ol' Pete surmises that this is just the over-zealous Bartender and Cocktail Waitress Union flexing its muscles. Superlad is of the opinion that it was just an innocent mistake. It takes Sinead to deduce that it was payback by the Porthos attempted murderer. 'But, of course!!' say Superlad and Good Ol' Pete, slapping their heads.
Finally, however, it is revealed that the real person who shot Porthos was the Head Lazy Smallville Cop. Some highly implausible explanation was offered for this but I've gotta admit that I was far too dumbstruck by the rampant corruption in the Smallville police force to pay attention and/or care one iota. Official motto of the Smallville Police Department: 'We're Lazy, But We're Evil'
So anyway, everybody's pretty much off the hook and as a reward Porthos returns to life and Superlad and Sinead have a philosophical discussion about the nature of evil and how one never knows when one's best friend will become a villain and/or some super-goody-two-shoes who wears a cape and zooms around, sniggering at people who can't fly.
"Boy," says Superlad, eventually. "A lot of people sure want to shoot your father."
"They sure do, Superlad. They sure do," replies Sinead.
"Hahahhahahaha!!"
An okay kind of episode. Not the best I've ever seen, but any episode of Smallville that has a car exploding has a solid foundation to work with. I give it 73.
Next week: Good Ol' Pete and TIAC get superpowers and join the Legion of Superheroes.
Begone,
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