THE SMALLVILLE FILES SEASON 3
Score: 7.2 / 10 
11: Catfight!
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.
A quarter of an hour into this particular episode the cry of 'Catfight!' goes up and Smallville enters a new era.
TIAC and Lana begin hurling themselves at one another, scratching, kicking, clawing their way through the school halls eventually falling into the school Pit'o'Jelly where they continue their fight. Good Ol' Pete, always the entrepeneurial spirit begins to charge admission to their grasping and groping and all is right with the world.
Until Lana goes a bit far and aims an axe at TIAC's head. Somebody blows a whistle and Lana is suspended, TIAC declared the winner by default.
But how did such a pseudo-erotic imbroglio begin? Was it simple jealousy over the super-buff one? Was it the result of a cutting jibe about the other's earrings? Were the girls simply having 'rough days'?
Perhaps. I daren't speculate in some areas. But I'm sure it won't surprise regular Smallville watchers to know that this battle to the death was also the result of some super-powered implausibility that was both ludicrous and nonsensical.
Let's go back to the beginning, shall we, gentle readers.
It begins, as so many modern stories do, in the throbbing city of Metropolis, where TIAC has been fired from her job at The Daily Planet. She's packing her boxes, departing the scene, but still has some stories that she'd love to tell pseudonymically, 'cause that sounds like a zany bit of mischief. She also suggests that the editor use her cousin's name, because her cousin never wants to be a reporter anyway, so she won't care.
Her cousin? Lois Lane. Just saying, is all.
Also, Sinead is down in the nerd rooms of Luthorcorp, looking for the on call tech assistance. Oh Sinead, what part of the words 'on call' don't you understand?
"... in true Sinead style, he finds a babe down there."
Happily, and in true Sinead style, he finds a babe down there.
"I'm looking for the computer guy," says Sinead, entrenched in his sexist view of the world.
"You've found her," says Geek Girl.
Cue impressed eyebrow raise from Sinead.
"Would you rather have a Playstation addicted dork down here?" says Geek Girl.
Sinead is unsure. He had been looking for someone to play Grand Theft Auto with.
Anyway, Geek Girl gives Sinead a CD-ROM that will automatically cure any problem a computer might have and shoos him off while she downloads all the secrets from TIAC's Mac.
TIAC, meanwhile, is leaving school for the night when Superlad comes racing aroud the corner in the General Zod, trying to run her down.
Of course, once he fails to kill her, he can't remember why he was trying to do so. Convenient, one might think, but surely symptomatic of classic road rage.
Or, alternatively, of having been reprogrammed by an email sent to his inbox.
Yes, you read that correctly. Superlad was programmed to try and kill TIAC by an email that was sent to him by a mysterious GeekGirlPrinzess@aol.com.
TIAC helpfully explains the basis of the reprogramming. "They must be using the binary code in the email," she says. Um, yes, okay.
Oh Superlad, see what happens when you don't have adequate spam filters??
Anyhoo, Superlad and Lana's Creepy Physiotherapist bump into one another (not literally) at the hospital.
"I thought I would have seen you when you came to visit Lana as she recovered from her horse-itis," says Creepy Physiotherapist, pushing the knife in a tad.
"Yeah?" says Superlad. "Well, I thought I would have met you when... you... um... When you didn't... um... I mean... when the... um... y'know, I'm much better looking than you are."
Then we have the catfight - highlight of the season to date - which only ends when Creepy Physiotherapist leaps into the jelly, applies some 4th Dan Ju Jitsu (that he doesn't remember learning!) and breaks it all up. Boo, Creepy Physiotherapist! Spoilsport!!
So let's see, when it comes to attacks on TIAC's life through mind-controlling emails, one immediately thinks of a certain Mr Porthos Luthor.
Creepy Physiotherapist, in the show far too much this week for my liking, usurps TIAC's role as computer hacker nerd and uses his incredible computer genius (that he also doesn't remember learning) to track down the computer from which the emails were sent. And, indeed, it was TIAC's computer itself that Porthos confiscated before the show even began (such is his efficiency).
Superlad immediately pops down to visit Sinead to dob on Porthos.
"Y'know, Superlad," says Sinead. "Contrary to popular opinion, Porthos isn't necessarily behind every nefarious activity to take place in Smallville."
"Has Sinead been taking double dose naivety pills?"
Superlad looks as startled as the rest of us. Has Sinead been taking double dose naivety pills?
And yet, Sinead turns out to be correct! Oh, how could we have doubted. Turns out that Geek Girl is working for Dr BrainResearch, an expert in the field of neurowizardry. He was the one who dissected ESP Kid, back in the second season, so Superlad has a grudge.
Anyway, Superlad goes through a whole heap of the superpower routine to track down Geek Girl. He uses his new-found super-hearing to listen in on Dr BrainResearch and Geek Girl's conversation then bolts over to her apartment to confront her.
Sinead, meanwhile, has just used the White Pages, so is waiting there already.
"Hey, Superlad," says Sinead.
"Hey," says Superlad. "This the villain?"
"Yep."
"Cool."
Meanwhile, TIAC has been captured by the Kents who are apparently in the habit of sitting down every evening to read their emails together. Bo threatens to throttle TIAC with a metal chain, so perhaps he didn't see the email after all, as he's always threatening this kind of stuff after a few beers.
Regardless of whether Bo's being mind-controlled or not, Superlad decides it would be best to jog back to the barn and take them down. Which he does, but not before Bo gives him a right thrashing with some Kryptonite for having the temerity to question his father's drunken, murderous impulses.
Sinead, meanwhile, has taken care of Geek Girl. And, of course, by 'taken care of', we mean 'locked away for his own nefarious uses, perhaps to use as a bribe to make Dr BrainResearch recover Sinead's lost memories from his time in the nuthouse'.
Yes, and Lana and Creepy Physiotherapist continue their burgeoning love affair despite Lana's growing concern for the fact that CP seems to have all kinds of training and skills that he can't explain possessing. Pish-tosh, thinks Lana. No matter, and lets him live in her attic.
That's all. A perfectly ludicrous and fine episode. Seven out of nine and a valuable lesson for those of us on the net. Namely, never open email.
Next Week: Heck, somebody's foretelling the future. And they're predicting good times for Smallville Fans. Which works for me.
Begone,
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