THE SMALLVILLE FILES SEASON 2
Score: 7.6 / 10 
3: Ssssshhhh! It's a Secret!
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 always a very promising sign when there's a car crash before the opening credits, and so it is this week when, before you can say 'Great Caesar's Ghost!', Sinead has fired the professor dude who has been working for him since the middle of season one and the professor drives off furiously, causing a truck to spin off the road and crash amongst the wheat.
Good Ol' Pete is privy to the accident and goes to the rescue of the truck driver. But he is distracted, because what should be sitting beside the wreckage of the truck but the totally forgotten spaceship!
Cue the wailings of Remy Zero and the opening credits.
So next day Good Ol' Pete meets up with Superlad and they go off to the wheat field to steal the spaceship.
Happily, the Lazy Smallville Cops haven't bothered to check the accident site yet - I think we are supposed to assume that Good Ol' Pete managed to get the truck driver out of the truck and to safety all by himself, which is certainly plausible. I have nothing but the deepest admiration for Good Ol' Pete and his rescuin' nous.
So now we have Good Ol' Pete and Superlad checking out the spaceship.
"What do you think it is?" says Superlad, feigning ignorance.
"It's a spaceship!" says Good Ol' Pete. He runs his finger along the hull and then licks it. "Kryptonian if I'm not mistaken."
"Nahhhh," says Superlad. "It looks like, um, a weather satellite to me. Or maybe some form of shrub."
Good Ol' Pete laughs. "Come on, let's take it back to my place."
"Hey!" says Superlad. "I've got an idea! Why don't we take it back to my place and put it in the special spaceship cellar we have built!"
"Nuh-uhh. I found it. We're keepin' it at my place."
"Hey! I've got an idea! Why don't we take it back to my place!"
"No way, Superlad. It's mine."
"Hey! I've got an idea! Why--"
and so on for about ten minutes, before Superlad finally gives in and helps carry it off to Good Ol' Pete's good ol' shed.
Over to Lana's stupid cinema-cafe thing. (BTW, the name of the cinema-cafe thing is 'The Talon'. I've been meaning to comment on this for some time. The Talon?!? 'hey, do you wanna grab a latte?' 'sure - let's go to The Talon' 'sounds great, named after a razor-sharp death claw is it?' 'it sure is...' 'boy, I bet they make great coffee then'. Madness. But I digress...)
At The Death Claw, Lana is being repulsed by her Aunt Ricki who has apparently found a new man in her life and is demonstrating it with love-doviness of the highest order.
TIAC shows up and Aunt Ricki asks her if she and Lana had managed to study well last night. TIAC, being a bright little babelet, covers admirably.
Lana thanks her, and TIAC tells her that next time she (Lana) wants to escape from Aunt Ricki and Jerry's vomit-inducing romance, she can genuinely come over and stay. "Aw shucks, thanks," says Lana.
"... Is burgeoning lesbianism on the horizon for these two?"
Is burgeoning lesbianism on the horizon for these two? Rest assured, I shall keep my eyes soundly peeled.
Over at Castle Luthor, a man whose eyes have been very badly peeled - Porthos Luthor - shows up to visit Sinead.
"Oh, hello father," says Sinead. "What brings you here?"
"I'm sick of being blind in Metropolis," says Porthos. "So I thought I'd come to Smallville and be blind here instead."
"Rightey-o."
To the hospital and the truck driver has been tracked down by the crazy professor guy, who has been driven insane by working with kryptonite day in and day out (much like Mariah Carey). The truck driver, like a big dying weenie, spills the beans about the spaceship and how Good Ol' Pete must have taken it to his shed.
So crazy professor guy nips over to Good Ol' Pete's shed that night and nicks it. No explanation is offered for how he managed to do this - Good Ol' Pete needed Superlad to help him move the ship, yet crazy professor guy who is clearly sick and weak and dying just makes off with it. Perhaps his insanity gives him the strength of ten men (again, like Mariah Carey).
Anyways, he nicks the ship just before Bo and Superlad show up with similar intent. But as Bo and Superlad zoom off, defeated in their spaceship-stealin' stylings, Good Ol' Pete catches a glimpse of them in their truck.
So Good Ol' Pete shows up the next day, furious as a hill of beans. He gives Superlad quite the dressing down, inexplicably slipping into lame ghetto slang, calling Superlad an 'ofay' and not at all 'totally dope', before driving furiously off.
Superlad runs off after him and stops the car with the might of his super-biceps, thus pretty much letting Good Ol' Pete in on the secret.
This doesn't pacify Good Ol' Pete who immediately wants to know why Superlad didn't trust him with his 'phat secret' earlier, and, furthermore, what kind of 'whacked-up skeezer' is he?
"All right, enough already with the rap slang. You don't even know what you're saying any more."
"True," admits Good Ol' Pete.
Superlad spills his soul, saying how he hates having this secret and lying to everybody and how he's spent all his life just trying to blend in.
"Blend in??!? You're never gonna blend in. Look at you, you're a dreamy hunk of a man."
"True also," admits Superlad.
Back at Castle Luthor, the insane professor has shown up and made fun of Porthos' blindness, but still convinced him to come to his shed and check out his cool spaceship.
So he does, and yep, it surely is cool. Even a blind man can see that.
At school the next day, Good Ol' Pete's still mad at Superlad for, y'know, the not being an actual human thing.
TIAC shows up and asks Good Ol' Pete whether it was true that he saw a spaceship when he rescued the truck driver.
"I sure did," says Good Ol' Pete. Superlad squirms.
"Did you see aliens?" asks TIAC.
"I sure did." More squirming.
"What did they look like?"
"They looked like Superlad." Squirm, squirm, squirm.
And he storms off.
"What's wrong with him?" asks TIAC. "What did he mean by the aliens looking like you?"
"Hahahahahahahaha hahahahahahahaha hahahahahaha hahahahaha," laughs Superlad, manically.
Superlad heads home, where Sinead waits for him. Sinead complains about his father hanging about the mansion, making a nuisance of himself.
"I don't trust him," says Sinead.
"Perhaps you could forgive him," suggests Superlad.
"... his eyes and bald skull narrow meaningfully."
"You naive, pitiable fool! Once a person lies to me, I make it a point never to trust them ever again." And his eyes and bald skull narrow meaningfully.
"Hahahahahahahaha hahahahahahahaha!"
Superlad slowly losing it.
Meanwhile, crazy professor guy has kidnapped Good Ol' Pete and is torturing him into revealing Superlad's secret. But, because he's just innately stubborn, Good Ol' Pete resists.
Back at the barn, Lana pops in to visit. Superlad, like the big dumb lug that he is, decides to venture forth once more into secret identity territory.
"Hey, Lana," says Superlad. "Have you ever told somebody the truth and had them get all cranky with you?"
"Yep," says Lana. "When I told Whit that I was dumpin' him. Why do you ask?"
Superlad ignores her question, totally distracted by this new info. "You actually dumped Whit?"
"Yep. But what's this with you?"
"Dumped him, like dumped him for real? Like you're single, now? Like a guy could make a move on you?"
"Yes. But what's with you?"
"Never mind that. So..."
But before he can say any more, Lana cracks a mental, laying into Superlad about how he never opens up about anything personal and how he's always secretive and mysterious and how she's just about totally fed up with it. And she storms out too.
Superlad, putting the 'alien' back in 'alienation'.
Only TIAC's still talking to him, which is not much of a consolation, but at least she's mustered forth the script, so she tells him about Good Ol' Pete's kidnappin'.
So Superlad dashes off to the rescue. There's a traditional fight, with Superlad going down for a bit because of all the kryptonite juice, then Good Ol' Pete takes the opportunity to unleash his sociopath side, clubbing the crazy professor to death.
And that's about it. No need to bury the body. It'll take months for the Lazy Smallville Cops to get around to investigatin' it.
The pair of them head home and put the spaceship back in the cellar.
"Well," says Bo, as he and Ma and Superlad and Good Ol' Pete stand around. "I hope you've learned a lesson, young Pete Ross."
"I sure have, Mr Kent," says Good Ol' Pete. "Now that I know this secret, if I don't remain close friends with Superlad, I'm sure to be butchered to death in a bloody and senseless fashion."
"Now, you've got it," says Bo, and ruffles his hair.
"Hahahaha!"
And that's all. Kinda dumb episode, really. I'll give it a C+ and hope for better next week, when Superlad suddenly decides that if Good Ol' Pete knows, he might as well tell everybody. Oh, and also dress up in leather and become a biker. What's going on here?? Well, I'm sure I don't know. Just wait a week already, and see for yourself! Ya impatient sods!!
Begone,
This here item has so far scored 7.6 / 10 on the patented Astonishing Tales Funny-o-meter.
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