THE SMALLVILLE FILES SEASON 3
Score: 7.2 / 10 
12: Every Death You Take
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.
Pan past a group of Smallville students doing their mandatory run through the creeks and mountains of Smallville, Kansas. They jog with purpose and determination, but are effortlessly overtaken by the Skinny New Kid, who surges onto the Smallville athletic track, does a final lap and then wanders off for some Gatorade.
Lana is serving the Gatorade, of course, as she has made quite a name for herself in the beverage-serving arena in recent times. Skinny New Kid takes one and accidentally touches Lana's hand as he does so.
This is bad news, because it turns out that Skinny New Kid, like most modern long distance champions, has the curious ability to see the circumstances of the future demise of anybody he touches.
So he sees a vision of Lana on her deathbed, about 130 years old, cackling like a crazy woman about how she used to date Superman, while all her great-grandchildren nod and say 'yeah, right, Nanna, you're thinking of Lois Lane'.
And Old Lana gets so frustrated by the disbelief of her descendants that she croaks to teach them all a lesson.
Sweet.
Less good occurs when Skinny New Kid is grabbed by Coach Griefstricken.
"You should join the long distance running team, son!" he says.
"Perhaps," says Skinny New Kid. "But you're not going to care because you're about to jump in front of a car later today."
Hmmm... thinks Coach Griefstricken.
So of course he does jump in front of a car, and who should knock him out of the way but whatsisname, the super-powered one.
"Inconceivable!!" says Skinny New Kid.
"You damn fool!" says Coach Griefstricken.
"Up, up and away!" says Superlad.
Coach Griefstricken is taken off to hospital where Lana bumps into Superlad and explains why Coach Griefstricken was so determined to kill himself.
"Last year, a friend who I've never previously mentioned or interacted with and I were having a sleepover with Coach Griefstricken's daughter--"
"J-Lo Griefstricken?" says Superlad.
"... we'd just finished doing one another's hair and having a tickle fight ..."
"Yes. Anyway, we'd just finished doing one another's hair and having a tickle fight in our pyjamas when J-Lo decided to go get some more cookies and porn films. We shouldn't have let her get behind the wheel, she'd consumed an awful lot of Guinness, but we did and... well, y'know..."
"She drove to Hollywood and got involved with Ben Affleck," says Superlad.
Lana nods. A tragic tale indeed.
"Sometimes I blame myself for letting her go--"
"I can see why," says Superlad.
"--and then I come to my senses and realise I shouldn't," concludes Lana, and gives him a withering glare.
Superlad is now completely bored with all this exposition and lack of elaboration on the tickle fight. He heads off to visit Skinny New Kid, because he (Superlad) is his (Skinny New Kid's) assigned Superbuddy.
"I assume by now you've figured out that every time I touch somebody I see how they die," says Skinny New Kid.
"Um... yes," lies Superlad.
"But nobody's ever had their foreseen death turn out differently. How did you save Coach Griefstricken from his predestined demise?"
Superlad looks shiftily from side-to-side. "It was a combination of pluck and a can-do attitude," he eventually says.
Then Skinny New Kid stumbles over a rock and 'accidentally' bumps into Superlad. He sees a burst of red and yellow and a mighty pentagon-enclosed S flying around the world.
"What did you see?" says Superlad, nosey as always.
"It seems as if you're never going to die!!"
"Hahahaha!!" says Superlad. "Get outta here, you crazy kid! Hahahaha!!!" He takes a deep breath, notices Skinny New Kid still looking at him. "Hahahahaha!!" he continues.
Meanwhile, TIAC has become deeply suspicious of Creepy Physiotherapist and heads over to the Luthor mansion to inexplicably talk to Sinead about it.
"I think he doesn't work at all," confides TIAC. "Not as a prospective love interest for Lana. Not as a potential future Batman. Heck, not even as a mysterious creep."
"I understand," says Sinead. "I shall invite him over to play the piano for me and insist he lift his game."
"Understood."
Back at school, and Skinny New Kid is on the staircase being jostled by sundry and all and therefore seeing how everybody is going to die. Despite an extraordinary preponderance of butcherings in the Smallville Laser Chainsaw Massacre of 2021, nothing seems out of the ordinary. And yet he still cringes in pain each time he witnesses a death.
"Maybe my father was right and I should never have come to school," says Skinny New Kid.
"That's the spirit," says Superlad. "Down with skool!"
"No, I want to go to school," says Skinny New Kid. "I'm sick of being educated at home."
"You want to go to school?!" says Superlad, doing a 'cuckoo' hand gesture. "Boy, you're weird!" He laughs at Skinny New Kid's idiocy for a few more seconds, then sparks back up. "Hey, tell me more about my immortality."
Skinny New Kid sighs.
Back to the Luthor Mansion and Sinead is having that chat with Creepy Physiotherapist, who is, indeed, playing for him the hardest piece of music in the world on the piano - the theme from The Sting.
"Don't you even have some kind of nefarious scheme that you're working on??"
"Look here, Creepo," says Sinead. "Nobody's particularly happy with your run on the show. You're dull and creepy and rumour has it that you made a ruckus down at The Death Claw. Don't you even have some kind of nefarious scheme that you're working on??"
"Not really," confesses Creepy Physiotherapist.
"Well, get one," says Sinead. "Or we're done with you." He snaps his fingers and Creepy Physiotherapist is ushered off set, while Sinead enjoys a soothing beverage provided to him by a crew member of some description.
Anyhoo, it turns out that Skinny New Kid foresaw Lana's bimbo friend dying in a fire. He and Superlad try to solve this, but predictably without much success, but when Skinny New Kid 'accidentally' touches Lana a bit later he sees that she's also going to die in the fire.
"Now, that's peculiar," says Skinny New Kid. "A couple of days ago Lana was living to the overly ripe old age of 130 and now she's dying in a fire like a common secondary character."
"How could her future have changed?" says Superlad.
The pair of them sit there and ponder for seven to eight minutes of screen time. Then we go to a commercial and come back to see the pair of them still sitting there.
"Oh, for the love of--" says TIAC, storming into the barn. "Coach Griefstricken overheard Lana about how she was responsible for the tragedy of his daughter and is now taking revenge on her and the other bimbo, a revenge only possible because Superlad changed his future the other day. And you, Skinny New Kid, you were born the day of the meteor shower, hence your gifts. Now go rescue the girls, I'm off to tell Lana that Creepy Physiotherapist is injecting himself with mysterious drugs."
And she storms off. Superlad and Skinny New Kid take TIAC's tip and go to the rescue of Lana and the other one. There's a fire and a fight and a great big explosion and at the end of it, everybody's okay and Skinny New Kid has lost his powers and can therefore go to school.
"Sucked in!" says Superlad.
"I want to go to school," says Skinny New Kid.
Superlad ignores him and heads home, where Boring Old Ma is baking a batch of her 'special' cookies.
"I think I've learned a valuable lesson about being immortal and how my actions can change the future of humanity and how this burdens me with great responsibility," says Superlad.
"That's nice, dear," says Boring Old Ma. "Go take your Pa some happy cookies."
He does so, but Bo doesn't want any. Why? you might ask. Well, because he's collapsed on the ground from a heart attack, I might well answer. Superlad drops the cookies in slo-mo and we call that a wrap.
Startlingly good stuff. Especially that dramatic final scene where a dozen perfectly good magic Tim Tams go to waste thanks to Superlad's infernal clumsiness. Oh, yes, and I almost forgot to mention - Creepy Physiotherapist? When Skinny New Kid touched him it turned out that he'd already died. So there.
Next Week: The aftermath of Bo's heart attack. Also, Good Ol' Pete's become a streetcar racer, of course.
Begone,
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