THE SMALLVILLE FILES SEASON 3
Score: 6.6 / 10 
15: Live And Let Liver
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, Bo's back in hospital.
"Didn't I already have a heart transplant??" he asks angrily.
"That was just a practice run," explains Dr Strident. "Now unless you do a proper one you could die before the end of this episode, or, indeed, at any other time the writers deemed it dramatically expedient."
"You don't scare me, doc," says Bo, for he feels he has the wood on the writers.
Eavesdropping on this conversation from the other end of the hospital is one Superlad Hieronymus Kent. His super eardrum work is interrupted by a troubled young teen whose brother is dying of Squalid Liver.
"What's up?" says Troubled Teen.
"My dad needs a heart transplant," says Superlad (for he sees no reason to lunge headfirst into one of his fib-a-thons at this stage).
"Yeah, well my brother needs a new liver," retorts TT, admirably one-upping Superlad.
"Yeah?? Well my dad's heart is giving out because he borrowed Kryptonian superpowers from the SS Jor-El!!"
"Huh?" says TT, because he hadn't really been listening.
"Never mind," says Superlad.
"I'm sure they'll both be all right," says TT.
Superlad snorts. "That doesn't sound particularly dramatically enticing at all..."
And he's right, because TT's brother immediately dies.
"See?" says Superlad, all smug like.
The credits open.
"Dr Zombie injects him with her patented LiveAgain™ juice and up he gets."
As they do, TT's brother is whisked into a helicopter, then through the backstreets of Metropolis, up a secret elevator shaft, past a bust of Shakespeare which, when lifted, reveals two poles that can be slid down, through a cave entrance covered with flora, past a school for the gifted, down into the subway, through a secret door and voila!! He's in Dr Zombie's lab. Dr Zombie injects him with her patented LiveAgain™ juice and up he gets. Good for him.
Meanwhile Superlad has had a man-to-Kryptonian chat with Bo.
"Bo," he says. "You should have the heart surgery."
"What have I told you about eavesdropping in on my conversations??" responds Bo furiously.
"Nothing!" says Superlad. "We've never had any conversation about misuse of my super-hearing."
"Don't you give me none of your lip, Superlad. Or I'll backhand you into next week."
"Not with that dodgy heart you won't," shoots back Superlad.
And Bo is verbally defeated. He vows to get that heart bypass and then give Superlad the 'biggest thrashing of his life'.
Also, Boring Old Ma has seen Troubled Teen wandering the hospital in some kind of troubled daze, decides he looks a little like the last urchin they stole ( Creepy Kid from Season One) and so whisks him home before anyone notices.
"You'll stay with us until somebody decides who is going to look after you," decrees Boring Old Ma.
"Dude," says Troubled Teen. "My uncle's a German Archduke."
"Pish-tosh," says Boring Old Ma. "That's no way for a troubled teen to grow up. Now go set up that fold-out sofa."
The sofa, in fact, doesn't fold out so much and Superlad's attempt to assist results in nothing more than a shrivelled mess of cushions and springs, so Troubled Teen is told to sleep in the pig trough.
He does so, but happily the next day his dead brother returns to the barn, beaming with joy (as one would when returned from the dead).
"Older Brother!!" says Troubled Teen. "You're alive!!"
"Damn straight!" says Older Brother.
"Well, this doesn't actually make sense," muses Superlad.
Superlad, Superlad, Superlad. Sense?? What town do you think you live in?
Anyway, Older Brother and Troubled Teen dance a bit of a jig but then the Zombie Bloodeye strikes and Older Brother is whisked back into hospital.
This in turn drives Troubled Teen totally off the deep end and he waltzes back into the hospital (no, literally waltzes) with a bomb strapped to his chest.
"Superlad simply dashes in and steals some of the LiveAgain™ serum ..."
While that previous paragraph was being played out, Superlad had been trying to track down Dr Zombie. Naturally enough, he'd succeeded, in much the same way that TIAC and Sinead (a new detective team apparentaly, a la Simon and Simon) also succeeded. So while Sinead is doing the stand-off powerplay thing with Dr Zombie, with the veiled threats and the hidden criminal innuendo, Superlad simply dashes in and steals some of the LiveAgain™ serum before dashing off again.
Anyway, back to the hospital where Boring Old Ma, TIAC and Good Ol' Pete are being held hostage along with thousands of other hospital visitors and inmates. The Lazy Smallville Cops have somehow managed to get their act together sufficiently to cordon off the area.
"What's going on?" says Superlad.
"Hmmm... Oh, nothing."
There is a pause.
"Oh, you mean this... Um, yes. Troubled Teen is holding everybody hostage until his brother is cured."
"But I have the cure," says Superlad, holding up the vial.
"Job well done then."
And Superlad turns hostage negotiator, agreeing to give Troubled Teen the cure if he lets the hostages go. Yes, thinks Troubled Teen, that'll work. And he agrees to the plan.
As Boring Old Ma, Good Ol' Pete and the rest run out, Boring Old Ma takes the opportunity to tell Superlad to look out because the bomb's made of kryptonite.
"Well, shhhhite," says Superlad. "Now you tell me." But he goes on in anyway and places the cure on the ground. Troubled Teen makes the doctor inject it into Older Brother but oh no!! The Kryptonite's ruined the LiveAgain™ Serum.
"Well, bloody damn bugger!!" says Troubled Teen. "I guess we'll just have to steal Bo's liver then."
"Que pasa?" says Superlad.
Happily, by now, the Lazy Smallville Cops have positioned a sniper. "Do you think you can shoot him dead while ensuring his finger remains on the trigger button?"
"I don't see why not," says the sniper. Oh Smallville, why is your police force such a bizarre combination of incompetence and overconfidence?
Anyhoo, he shoots, Troubled Teen dies, Superlad does some kind of superspeed dash to the Room'o'Lead of the hospital where he covers the bomb, then throws it into a passing gurney. And that's that.
Bo's operation continues as planned and is the kind of success that makes medical history. Sinead and Dr Zombie agree to work together to raise the profile of the undead everywhere. And Lana in this episode? Well, she prattled on at one point about Creepy Physiotherapist and how she'd seen the zombie bloodeye before, to which Superlad replied 'thanks for nothing'.
A rather stupid episode, really. I'm sick of the zombies. If I wanted to see soulless ghouls roaming around my television screen making total nuisances of themselves, I'd be watching repeats of Sex And The City.
Next Week: There's a phone call from the future. Let's hope it's the Legion of Superheroes!
Begone,
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