THE SMALLVILLE FILES SEASON 3
Score: 7.5 / 10 
1: Someone's Gettin' A Whuppin'
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.
Well, all manner of dark powers have come to my assistance and somehow (but don't ask me how, because I will admit to nothing) I now have access to the first few episodes of Season 3. So, the Smallville Files live!!
Also alive and well is Superlad. He's hanging out in Metropolis, breaking into ATMs with reckless abandon and then using the cash he finds therein to buy random sports cars. Because, why not? And, after all, nobody ever questions punk kids buying sports cars with cash, do they?
Certainly not the bimbette saleswoman. She sees a buff young man, with a Red K ring on his finger, buying a fancy-pants car with fresh ATM hundreds and decides to accompany him to the local Metropolis nightclub - The Nightly Planet.
Of course, once she's in there, Superlad (who is now going by the name 'Kal', which is either short for 'Kal-El' or 'Low Kal Diet') behaves like a total jerk, flicking her ears and pulling her hair. She eventually gets the irrits and leaves.
"Hey, Kal," says the bartender. "Every night for the past three months (oh yeah, forgot to mention, we're three months along from where we left off last episode) you come in here with a hot enchilada. And every night you go home alone. Wassup with that?"
"What's the point of starting something if it's just going to end badly?" replies Superlad, rather missing the point of the one night stand.
He heads outside and his chest starts to burn in an S shape, possibly from the burn put there by the Good Spaceship Jor-El, possibly from the bean dip. He calls Boring Old Ma and hangs up on her. Superlad, walking on the wild side...
Next day, there's a bank robbery by some idiots dressed in clown uniforms. Superlad bursts in, wearing some kind of balaclava and foils the crime! A-ha! we think. The birth of a superhero.
But, alas, not so much as he simply takes all the money for himself and wanders off past police shooting at him with their pitiful ineffectual bullets.
This kind of thing makes the papers even back in Smallville, displacing The Corn Crop Column!
"It can't possibly be Superlad," says Boring Old Ma.
"Yo, wassup Mrs K! Denial's a river in Egypt!!" says Good Ol' Pete. Bo smacks him around the head, but concedes his point.
"Oh, it's Superlad all right," says Bo. "And it's time I gave him a whuppin'. You come with me, Pete Ross." He starts to pack up the Corporal Lee.
"You can't go down there and force him to come back!" says Boring Old Ma.
"... I'm going to use Good Ol' Pete as a shield."
"Sure I can. I'm going to use Good Ol' Pete as a shield." He looks at Good Ol' Pete, packing the Corporal, who gives him some oblivious weird-ass street salute.
"He'll come home to us when he's ready," says Boring Old Ma, as always promoting inaction as the correct course. "We just have to have faith."
"Yes, but that doesn't help my whuppin' urges, does it?" says Bo. He looks up. "Pete Ross, go cut yourself a switch." Good Ol' Pete does so.
Meanwhile, Sinead's washed up ashore on a desert island. He's hanging out there with castaway Tom Hanks, who insists on calling him Volleyball Head. Sinead has no idea why. Yes, despite the baldness.
Tom Hanks doesn't want him to leave the island and tries to get him to stay by making disparaging remarks about Dr TotalBabe, calling her a bitch and 'Big Lips'.
"Look, Volleyball. Either Dr TotalBabe set you up, Porthos set you up or they both set you up! Why do you want to get back to a family that twisted?"
"They use personal hygiene products," replies Sinead, scathingly. He glowers off as Tom Hanks smells his armpits.
While this is going on, back in Metropolis the evil replicant Rutger Hauer comes in and enlists Superlad in his criminal underworld. He had several henchman shoot him before he did so, of course - that is how the underworld works, at least in the futuristic dystopia that is the Blade Runner Universe.
He performs a series of tests on Superlad, peering into his iris, agrees that he's certainly not human and then tells him to go steal something from Porthos.
"You got it!" says Superlad. Because ATM robberies only hold so much fun for the superstrong. That much is obvious.
Back in Smallville and Porthos is giving a speech at Sinead's funeral. It's only taken him three months to organise it, because he had other priorities - most notably, the judging of the Miss Teen Metropolis tournament and retiling the bathroom.
"Sinead was a wonderful singer and the kind of son that made me feel... well, feel thankful that I still have my hair, frankly. I could say many good things about Sinead... I suppose... but I think instead I will storm off while Dr TotalBabe grandstands for the papparazzi."
And he does. And she does. And then there is a later scene at the Luthor Mansion where they squabble with one another and trade murder accusations. Oh, the Luthors. What a delightful family unit they are, what with their inveterate tendencies towards unbridled evil.
"You murdered my son!" says Porthos, at one point. "I won't rest until I've brought your duplicity to light!"
"That's why she posed nude in Grieving Widow's Monthly."
Dr TotalBabe just smiles at this. She's not ashamed of her duplicity. In fact, she considers it one of the finer points of her anatomy. That's why she posed nude in Grieving Widow's Monthly.
Back at the desert island and a plane roars past. Stupid Old Tom Hanks doesn't even signal it, so Sinead is left with no choice but to lunge angrily at him. But Tom Hanks, well versed in Desert Island Beach Combat, merely steps aside and threatens to kill Sinead if he tries that again.
Well, okay, then. Tom Hanks, not always the nice guy he seems.
Back in Smallville and TIAC tells Lana where Superlad's been hanging out. Yeah, TIAC knows. Just couldn't be bothered telling anybody for three months apparently.
So Lana heads down to Metropolis and meets up with Superlad, hops on his chopper and they ride off to The Nightly Planet.
"Hey, what's up, Kal?" asks the bartender, as they walk in.
"Why are they calling you Kal?" asks Lana.
"It's Metropolis slang for 'Kooooool'," says Superlad.
Lana is experienced enough by now to ignore that idiotic comment. "Do you think we could ask them to turn the music down?" she says. When Superlad replies in the negative, Lana pouts, excuses herself and goes off to the bathroom to call the Kents and dob on Superlad.
Superlad catches her, because, y'know, the super-ears. "Who you talkin' to?" he says. He grabs the phone. "Who's this?"
"It's your Pa, Superlad. Now you get back to Smallville or there's gonna be a whuppin!"
Superlad snorts. "You're not my real parents," he yells, with sudden adopted fury. He smashes the phone.
That's enough for Bo. It's whuppin' time.
Meanwhile, Sinead and Tom Hanks have finally had enough of one another. Sinead has found Tom's Killing Fields, a swamp with a deflated volleyball in it.
"You don't understand," screams Tom Hanks. "He went on and on and on about Nicole Sanderson's butt! It drove me insane."
The two of them then scuffle, with Sinead inevitably emerging triumphant, pounding Tom Hanks into a bloodied pulp.
Or does he? Because a passing Jamaican sees Sinead, claims he has malaria and is fighting a figment of his own imagination. Which is disturbing enough, you might think, but it's even more disturbing to think that Sinead washed up on Jamaica and didn't even bother to explore further than one beach for the last three months.
Oh, malaria. Whatever would we hallucinate without ye!
By this stage, Bo has wandered down to the caves and had a chinwag with the spirit of the Good Spaceship Jor-El.
"Our boy needs a whuppin'!" says Bo. "And you're just the disembodied spirit of a Kryptonian spaceship. So it looks like it's up to me to hand out the parental justice!"
"I can help," says the Good Spaceship Jor-El. "Would you give up anything to save Superlad?"
"Well, yes," says Bo. But before he can add his 'within reason' rider, the spirit of the Good Spaceship Jor-El zaps him with random rays.
Over at Metropolis and Superlad has finally gotten around to doing the Replicant Rutger Hauer's bidding. He's broken into Porthos Headquarters, slapping his super-powered way past all the security. He grabs the metal box he's been hired to steal.
Suddenly, there is a clearing of the throat behind him. Superlad whirls around.
"Time for a whuppin'," says Bo. And he runs at superspeed into Superlad, tackling him through the window.
To be continued!!
We're back and the notion of Bo with superpowers is enough to excite anybody, surely. Boy, I wouldn't want to be in Superlad's underpants next episode. A big fat A+, written in the boldest Kryptonese font imaginable.
Next week: Superlad gets a whuppin'
Begone,
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