THE SMALLVILLE FILES SEASON 2
Score: 7.5 / 10 
9: Just Another Manic MUNDL
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.
So we open with Superlad showing off a really swell 'S' that he has crafted out of metal for his metalwork class. He places it against his chest.
"What's this?" says his metalwork teacher.
"It's a funky metal S," explains Superlad and rolls his eyes at Good Ol' Pete. Duh!
"Well, I wouldn't know about that," says Mr Metalwork. "I'm not interested in any of that book-learnin'. I'm a metalwork teacher, not a homosexual."
But trouble is brewing because there's a kid who is upset about getting a 'C' in Metalwork. (At least, it might be a 'C'. There's a random looking squiggle, but if it's a 'C' to the metalwork teacher, then it's a 'C' to me.)
This is not good enough for the kid, whose name is Messed-Up Naked Doppleganger Lad, for reasons that will become clear in later, more literate paragraphs. Messed-Up Naked Doppleganger Lad is also the son of Tim 'The Toolman' Taylor (hence his ineptitude in smithery) and he's worked his way up the academic ladder with verve and gusto.
Oh, he also murders teachers who give him bad marks. Which, combined with verve and gusto can take a former child sitcom star a long way.
So he murders his metalwork teacher and we head into the credits.
Over to Sinead who is being given a parking ticket for parking in a rich and bald fashion. Sinead loses it completely and in a totally out of character way. The master of all that is slick and controlled and cool pulls out a golf club and smashes a car to pieces. Yeah, pshaw!
"Aha!" one thinks. "Some kind of fake Sinead. I wonder how this will fit into the ongoing plot... Some unusual blackmail attempt, perhaps?"
And we patiently wait.
TIAC's place and Lana is being moved in. Superlad is doing most of the heavy work, which is fair enough as a shrug of his shoulders can move a planet. But after he's done all the work he asks the girls if they'd like to hang out for a bit.
They fob him off with some implausible excuses.
"Well," says Superlad. "When you two are scheduled to take a breath, let me know."
They ignore him.
"Or a tickle fight in your nighties," adds Superlad. "I'd like to know about that as well." He winks idiotically.
But by now Bo has dropped a truck on his foot. Not exactly sure why he did this but he ends up in hospital after Superlad diagnoses him with Achy-Breaky Leg.
Luckily he's being looked after by Doctor TotalBabe, who kisses the break better. This doesn't actually make it better, but heck, it doesn't hurt either, does it? Superlad searches in vain for a broken bone in his body that Dr TotalBabe could look after. Damn my invulnerable hide, he scowls to himself.
Then Interesting Old Ma Kent shows up at the hospital. She's feeling slightly guilty because she was busy hanging out with Porthos while Bo was smashing his leg to bits.
"Slightly guilty??" says Bo. He decides to crank that 'slightly' up to 'near-suicidally' with a series of barbed remarks. Good ol' Bo.
Oh, and Sinead has come in and told Dr TotalBabe that he knows much better doctors than her and he can get any of them in to help Bo at a moment's notice. This does not endear him, but d'you think Sinead will let that stop him? Of course not.
"... the fake Sinead that smashed up the car was not a fake Sinead at all!!"
Also it is revealed that the fake Sinead that smashed up the car was not a fake Sinead at all!! Instead, it was a poorly written Sinead. So that sucks.
By this stage, TIAC is out with Messed-Up Naked Doppleganger Lad. She is ostensibly interviewing him (at one point TIAC says "colour me journalistically intrigued", which is not only unusually forced dialogue, but chromatically faulty). While TIAC is off collecting the last minute alterations to the script, MUNDL takes the opportunity to whisk up a 'simultaneous equations' study date with Lana.
This peeves Superlad tremendously. He can't believe that MUNDL would so shamelessly two-time TIAC and Lana. That is, after all, his job.
But we soon see that Messed-Up Naked Doppleganger Lad is far more suited to the duties because he ducks out the back of The Death Claw strips down to the raw and splits in two! Ha!! Match that, Superlad! You mono-body.
So he dates the two of them but cleverly implores each of them to not tell the other. Oh MUNDL. You are a wily little splitter. And of course TIAC and Lana don't tell one another, because where would the plot be in that? Hmmm??
Bo also refuses to sit down on the couch with his broken leg and watch his 'stories'. Instead he's determined to grease his tractor. Interesting Old Ma assumes this is some peculiar euphemism and takes offense. Ol' Bo, cranking up the guilt.
Back at school and Lana is thanking MUNDL for helping her understand 'double angle functions'. She thanks him with an open mouth kiss which Superlad thinks is a bit rich. After all, he was supposed to be teaching her simultaneous equations, remember? Still, why make one 'two for the price of one' mathematical reference, when you can make two? It is, after all, only intra-episode continuity.
Superlad then runs off to TIAC to dob.
"Well, Superlad," says TIAC. "Just for the record, MUNDL told me that he and Lana are just good friends and that the open mouth kissing is just to prevent her feelings from being hurt."
"And you believed that?" asks Superlad, snorting.
"You really can't imagine anybody choosing me over Lana, can you?" says TIAC.
Superlad can't answer because he's laughing so hard. After a couple of minutes he pulls himself together. "Oh, TIAC, you do make me laugh."
"If the girls are hot for MUNDL then he (MUNDL) is clearly a murderer."
So Superlad has had enough of this. If the girls are hot for MUNDL then he (MUNDL) is clearly a murderer. So he and Good Ol' Pete check out the metalwork room. Superlad can't be bothered using his X-Ray vision so instead Good Ol' Pete dramatically finds the dead metalwork teacher. Then MUNDL sets the room on fire.
Superlad heads over to TIAC's place to consult the script and discovers that MUNDL has the perfect alibi! He's been sticking his tongue down TIAC's throat for the last three hours. How could he possibly have tried to set Superlad and Good Ol' Pete on fire?
Well, it's all so totally obvious that even dopey old Superlad can figure it out. "If," he reasons, "MUNDL spends three hours swapping spittle with TIAC and simultaneously sets metalwork rooms on fire, there must therefore be two of him!"
"Yes," says Good Ol' Pete. "Also, his name is Messed-Up Naked Doppleganger Lad."
"Right," says Superlad. The two of them shake hands in an elaborate and pointless fashion and then trail the two MUNDLs with an equally elaborate and pointless plan involving use of pagers and mobile phones. And prove, for a second time, that there are two MUNDLs. Because in this particular episode, there's no point in doing anything just the one time when you can do it twice.
Back at school and TIAC and Lana have vowed to no longer double-date MUNDL because of his two-timedness. He comes in and they tell him this.
"Well, can you blame me?" says MUNDL. "It's not every day a guy gets to date the two smartest, prettiest girls in the school."
"Smartest??" says TIAC, looking at Lana.
"Prettiest??" says Lana, equi-sneering.
And then the two MUNDLs kidnap TIAC and Lana and threaten to throw them off a bridge to avoid them 'ruining his life'. Yes, because mass-murder never does so, does it? MUNDL is truly living up to his 'Messed-Up' monicker. For somebody purportedly intelligent, not one skerrick of his plan has made any sense whatsoever.
Still, Superlad can top him, for after MUNDL throws TIAC off a bridge, Superlad leaps off too and falls faster than TIAC. Yep, you read right. Superlad fell past TIAC and then after he hit the ground, got up and caught her. Apparently this is a new superpower heretofore unseen: Super-Newtonian Gravitational Effects.
Then he ran back and confronted the MUNDL attacking Lana. No doubt something really cool happened then, because Channel Nine performed one of their patented edits and we cut to Lana hanging off the bridge. Superlad pulled her to safety. So that was a little easier rescue, and a far less flagrant abuse of the fundamental gravitational constant, G.
And there we are. It remains unclear what happened to MUNDL during the edit but I'd like to think that Wilson emerged from behind his fence and took him to prison to live with Tim Allen.
Oh, and also the cause of Sinead's poorly written opening scene is revealed. Namely, it was some plot device to get Sinead into an anger management class with Dr TotalBabe. Where they flirt outrageously. This is good to see, but I see no reason why the writers needed to malign Sinead's good name to get this happening.
We close with Superlad, TIAC and Lana squabbling. Superlad picks up on Bo's recent guilt trips and tries to lay one on the ladies.
"The truth is," he says. "That I expected more from the two of you. I am saddened that you believed MUNDL ahead of me."
But Superlad is no Bo in the wielding of the guilt stakes. The girls don't take the guilt on board.
"Well, we expected more from you," says Lana. "So there!" And she pokes her tongue out.
"Also, MUNDL was the voice of The Lion King. So there also!!" adds TIAC.
Superlad storms out and we end on that strangely cranky note.
Weird. Perhaps the strangest episode of Smallville I've seen. MUNDL made no sense whatsoever, nor did much of the plot, nor the portrayal of Sinead. I have no choice but to give this particular episode a C and hope that it doesn't respond by murdering me (as today's modern doppleganger youngsters are so prone to do).
Next week: Superlad is revealed to be the long lost son of... well, somebody that's for sure.
Begone,
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