THE SMALLVILLE FILES SEASON 2
Score: 8 / 10 
7: The Secret Origin Of... Well... Just About Everybody
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.
And we're away again. We open with the entire Kent clan going through their morning rituals - heat vision toasting of bread, steamy sexual innuendo between Bo and Ma (any other combination would have been just plain creepy) and Superlad speeding off to school through the wheat, while Bo and Ma drive off in the General Grant.
Of course, nobody has thought to lock the door so some mad woman walks in, finds Superlad's photo, heads off to school, corners him by his locker and says 'Hey, Superlad, I'm your mum.'
Well, that's clearly nutty beyond comprehension - she seems to lack even the most rudimentary Kryptonian powers - so Superlad goes home and makes fun of her to Bo and Ma.
But Bo and Ma don't see the funny side (despite Superlad's laborious explanations). They meet with the woman and say 'Yo, crazy bitch, wassup?'
She explains that she put her son up for adoption in the Lone Star Adoption Clinic in Metropolis, which only handled one adoption, that of Superlad to the Kents. Ipso facto, Superlad is her son.
Bo can't abide any form of Socratic reasoning, so forbids Crazy Woman from talking to Superlad ever again.
Meanwhile, Lana's decided that it would be cool to have a new parent also. So she's revealed to Superlad that the dude nuzzling her mother's erogenous zones in the photo she found last week is, in fact, Jebediah Small, the founder of Smallville.
"Good-o," says Superlad, wondering why he's been burdened with this information. "I have to go read TIAC's private emails."
Which he does. TIAC comes in and catches him, but Superlad reveals an impressive new superpower by taking the moral high ground despite this gross invasion of privacy.
"You've an email here from Crazy Woman - you've led her and her craziness here to Smallville, where she's causing all kinds of mischief."
Okay, the viewer thinks. Now, TIAC, throw back the fact that Superlad has been reading your freaking email!!
But no.
"I'm really sorry, Superlad. But what if she is your mother?"
"She's not - and you're a total skank for stirring up this trouble."
Go on... Yes, but you had no right to read my email.
Nope. "I know I shouldn't have, but aren't you curious?"
"No." And then Superlad shamelessly cranks it up a notch. "If you're so interested in reuniting mothers, why don't you track down your own mother?"
Come on, TIAC!! Oh yeah, but at least I'm not an email snoop!!
Nope. Instead we get tears and running out into the corridors.
Superlad smirks victoriously, sits back down and starts reading TIAC's cyber-romance with Patrick Swayze. Boy, he thinks, she really did have the time of her life.
"... he's also Porthos's son as well. Y'know, because of the sex and stuff."
Meanwhile, Crazy Woman's off to visit Sinead where she spills the beans that Superlad is not only her son, he's also Porthos's son as well. Y'know, because of the sex and stuff.
Which still doesn't make any sense. Because Porthos has no superpowers either.
So Sinead makes fun of her until she leaves.
Meanwhile, Lana's just wandered into Jebediah Small's house and said 'Hey. You're my father.' 'Okay,' he says. But kicks her out, regardless, because she didn't wipe her feet at the front door and he's a stickler for environmental issues and a non-muddy carpet.
Back to the Kent barn, and Bo decides to tell us all about how it was that Porthos Luthor was the founder of his adoption clinic. (Porthos was the founder of the clinic - should have mentioned that earlier. As should have Bo...)
Bo takes us all the way back to Episode One, when the meteorites came down, causing (among other things) a really impressive car crash. Then he found Superlad and the spaceship, loaded them in a truck and drove home, hoping to trade the pair of them in for a new combine harvester.
Instead, Porthos comes bursting out and makes Bo head off to rescue Sinead. He does (but fails to rescue his hair) and Porthos tells Bo that if he ever needs any help in setting up an adoption clinic for just one child, then give him a call.
"Yeah, like that's ever gonna happen!" says Bo. "Get outta here, ya crazy venomous, multi-millionaire lunatic."
The Lazy Smallville Cops pull up. They're here to investigate something about some telekinetic guy killing the school principal.
"That was last year!" says Superlad.
"Well, then... if that's your attitude. I'll get some of your DNA for testing."
Checkmate! Oh those wily Smallville cops. They're slow and lazy. But they're cunning.
But not cunning enough, because Superlad and Good Ol' Pete head off to the DNA labs that night and replace Superlad's DNA sample with Good Ol' Pete's.
So Crazy Woman therefore decides that Good Ol' Pete is her son instead.
Nobody had thought of that, so Exciting Old Ma, slowly reverting to her more tedious ways, regales us all with her own little flashback scene of the day she lied to the Lazy Smallville Cops and told them that they'd adopted Superlad. (Yet to be investigated.)
Which completely ruins Bo's harvester trade-in plans. So he calls Porthos and the deed is done.
Then because nothing much has happened for a while, Crazy Woman kidnaps Sinead and tells him that unless Porthos calls a press conference and confesses to having an affair with her and being Good Ol' Pete's real father, she'll kill Sinead dead.
Sinead doesn't like this plan one iota. Why couldn't she have threatened to break his blind man glasses?? Or, y'know, anything the old man would actually care about.
Happily, however, Exciting Old Ma has been listening in on Porthos's phone conversation with Crazy Woman. So she tells Superlad what's going on.
So Superlad goes back to TIAC and says "Hey, sorry about making fun of the fact that your mother abandoned you."
"That's okay. It's just difficult to think that you're not good enough for somebody to love."
Superlad puts his hand on hers. "Don't think that."
She looks back and smiles at him.
"I mean, you're probably not quite good enough for me to love ..."
"I mean, you're probably not quite good enough for me to love," clarifies Superlad, hurriedly. "Y'know, not with Lana's ever-present form. But, hey, there must be some desperado for you out there. What about this Patrick Swayze character? He sounds filthily rhythmic."
This is close enough to affection for TIAC who looks up the script and tells Superlad where Sinead is being held hostage.
Just in time, too, because Porthos has made a television appearance, saying "Look here, Crazy Woman, you can kill my son all you like. See if I care. Just so long as I still have my shades."
Thanks a lot, Porthos, thinks Sinead. And knocks himself out in protest. Crazy Woman goes to club him to death but Superlad bursts through the wall and takes her down.
Back to the barn, where Bo reveals that Crazy Woman is telling everybody about Superlad's flagrant exhibition of superhumanity, but nobody believes her because she's got 'Crazy' stamped on her forehead.
"Hahaha," they all laugh.
"That'll teach her to want to find her child again!" says Superlad.
"It sure will, son," says Bo. "It sure will."
And then Bo brings the mood down by having another flashback scene where he reveals that Porthos blackmailed him (Bo) into letting him (Porthos) sneak into Smallville. He feels guilty about it, and refuses to let Superlad accept any blame for this. (Despite the fact that Superlad's troublesome existence was clearly responsible.)
But there's still fifteen minutes to go in the show, and nobody wants to end on Bo's bummed out note, so everybody gets together to have a town meeting and decide who, exactly, is the parent of whom.
Here's what they decided.
Bo and Exciting Old Ma are the adoptive parents of Superlad, but biological parents of the Lazy Smallville Cops!
Jebediah Small may or may not be Lana's father, but he's certainly Porthos's step-brother!
TIAC and Lana are Good Ol' Pete's parents, despite all manner of inherent chronological and biological impossibilities with this.
And Sinead is, in fact, the remnants of a long-lost cloning experiment and is the twin brother of Dolly the sheep, who is, in reality, Krypto the Superdog!
And that's essentially that. It may all seem convoluted, but rest assured that the family ties are all there. So, we therefore close with the entire gang singing the Family Ties theme song. And on that 'Bet we've been together for a million years' kinda note, I give this episode the same score a random set of my parents might give it and bid you all a fond 'Sit, Ubu, Sit. Good dog. (Woof!)'.
Next week: No next week. Channel Nine has taken it off the air to find a later timeslot so that we can see the onset of the new, ongoing 'Exciting Old Ma becomes a crack whore' subplot. We'll catch up when that happens.
Begone,
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