THE SMALLVILLE FILES SEASON 4
Score: 7 / 10 
16: Here's Lucy!
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.
Ski bunnies! If there's one quality that Smallville has lacked over the years, it has been comely women in tight-fitting snow-wear, ideally skiing down a mountain performing elaborate jumps and manoeuvres to avoid capture by a pursuing posse of evildoers.
This episode rectifies that oversight immediately and without fanfare.
It is then revealed that the ski bunny is Lucy Lane, sister of Lois, and if she (Lois) wouldn't mind awfully she'd (Lucy'd) like to drop in and live with the Kents' too.
Superlad saw the opening scene so he's very gung-ho about the prospect.
Bo is less sure. He's a farmer and former Duke brother, for Hogg's sake! He's not a hotelier nor youth hostel administrator.
It is left to Boring Old Ma to break the tie and she does so by voting Lucy can stay! This is convenient because she's standing in the door, tapping her foot impatiently wondering who is going to take her bags.
It is also revealed that Lois can't cook. This is Humorous. She had tried to make everybody bacon and eggs for breakfast but had got the recipe wrong and somehow given them all poached llama!
Bo scowls about the Lucy vote, pushes his leftover llama to one side, and wanders off to muck the chicken feed, muttering to himself as he goes - 'two hot teenage girls living under my roof... what the hell are they good for... just standing around prettying up the place... having mud fights... getting dirty... showering off...' - and then also drops by the bathroom and makes the secret hole in the wall a little bigger. Oh Bo, you do know your Porky's...
While all this is happening Lana and WM2 have returned to Lana's stupid room where she lives to find it has been ransacked! Upon further investigation, it appears the only thing missing is a boxed AD&D set and the stupid bloody stone they went all the way to China to get last episode and which has generally been an enormous pain in everybody's collective behind.
WM2 is furious! That stone had ended up costing him over 40 euros on ebay, and now somebody's just stolen it!? He heads straight over to Porthos to confront him.
"Porthos, I'm here to confront you ..."
"Porthos, I'm here to confront you," he says. "Why did you steal my stone?"
"No, no, no," says Porthos. "That's not how it's done. Where is the veiled innuendo, the hidden layers of meaning between the actual dialogue, the subtle threats..."
"I don't know nothin' about all that," says WM2. "I just want you to confess to stealing the stone."
"If you're not going to play this properly, I'm not going to tell you a thing, even if I did know where the stone was, which I don't."
"I know you took it! Give it back!!"
Porthos sighs. "Look, watch the next scene. You'll see how it's done."
And Porthos heads over to the mansion to visit Sinead, where they have a perfectly Luthorian chat about the stone, without ever coming out and making crass accusations of one another.
At the end, Porthos turns to WM2, who is standing off camera. "You see?" he says.
Enough of that. Back to the barn where Lois tells us Lucy's story, how she's the smartest and bestest student ever! She goes to a boarding school in Poland where she receives top marks for everything she does. Lois is deeply envious of her, despite the fact she (Lois) is approximately 30-35% cuter, with dimples that don't quit.
Also, Lois now works at The Death Claw. No idea why. Perhaps for scene transition purposes.
Because that's where she is in the next scene where Lucy meets Sinead.
"You're Sinead Luthor!" says Lucy.
"Indeed I am," smiles Sinead, suavely.
"I read about you in Bald Billionaire magazine. It said your favourite American Idol was Mendelssohn."
"That's true," says Sinead.
"Lucy is a musical genius!!" pipes in Lois. "She played Mendelssohn with the World Famous Polish Skiing Orchestra! She's fantastic and brilliant!"
Lucy tries to be falsely modest. "Well, I was offered the crown for my services to music..."
"That's great!" says Sinead. "You should come over to the mansion some time and we can jam! Do you know Smoke On The Water?"
Anyway, a little bit later, after everybody's asleep, Lucy sneaks back to The Death Claw and tries to rob it. Superlad catches her in the act.
"Whatchu doing?" he says.
"Just counting the money. Your mother asked me to make sure her accounting methods were up to snuff."
This almost fools Superlad, but not quite. "Wait a second!" he says. "Boring Old Ma doesn't even use accounting methods. She just has a big sack."
"Fine," says Lucy. "You got me." She then goes on to tell how she's spent a lot of money on the Polish nightclub scene and now owes a loan shark fifty grand.
"Is that all!" says Superlad. "Don't sweat it. We'll get Sinead to write you a personal cheque first thing tomorrow. Now come on, let's get you back home and back into bed."
Anyway, cutting to the chase, Sinead is perfectly happy to fund Lucy's ransom because a) the loan shark is a long time German enemy of Sinead's who is always trying to swoop into Poland and make a nuisance of himself and b) Lucy is hot.
"... he assumes the loan shark is as dumb as table salt."
"We'll also put a GPS locator in the briefcase!" he says, because he assumes the loan shark is as dumb as table salt.
Turns out he's not, for while Sinead, Lois and Lucy are off to pay the ransom, they are pulled over by a police officer who smashes Sinead with his gun and then takes the money and the girls hostage. At first, you think 'wow, Lazy Smallville Cops, you've really upped the ol' Corruptionometer there' but then you realise that it's probably Captain Loanshark disguised as a Lazy Smallville Cop.
And it is. So when Superlad shows up on the scene to comfort and embrace Sinead, they are left to wonder what to do next.
"And where the hell were you during that scene anyway??" demands Sinead.
"I was dropping off some clothes at the dry cleaners," retorts Superlad, because he's allowed a life, y'know.
Anyways, Lois and Lucy are in the back of semi-trailer truck thing. "I've always envied you," says Lois, in case we hadn't picked up the subtle clues about this earlier.
"Wow," says Lucy. "I've always envied you!!" And the one person in viewerland who didn't spot that coming reels back in his chair, startled.
They embrace and continue to wish they were the other. Even moreso on the Lois front when an offhand remark about tomatoes somehow reveals everything about this kidnapping was a scam and that Lucy is, in fact, in on everything!
"See," says Lois, to nobody in particular. "I told you she was brilliant!"
Somehow somebody at the dry cleaners must have been flicking ahead in the script because Superlad also knows Lucy's a bad egg. He responds in the only sane way. Namely, he runs off to a bridge and then leaps a hundred feet onto the back of the truck where he clambers to the front and punches out the driver, before steering the truck off the road and then dashing back to the farm to help with the fortnightly scarecrow restuffing.
Sinead is much more sensible. He simply rocks up to the scene with a zillion (real) cops and arrests everybody. Except Lucy, because she steals a car and roars off.
"Hahahahaha!!!" laughs everybody.
"Shouldn't we arrest her?" says Lois.
"No, let her go," say the Lazy Smallville Cops. "So she can get into more exciting adventures on the all-new Smallville spin-off I Love Lucy Lane!" And then we cut to a preview of this show, which shows Lucy getting into all manner of mischief in the Polish college orchestra scene, while solving crimes in her spare time. Looks good.
And that's that. A perfectly fine episode. We close with a strong message about how lucky Superlad is to have Bo and Boring Old Ma for a family, even if he is adopted. ("You wouldn't want to be part of my family," says Lois, at one point. "No," says Superlad. "Because that would make a lot of my fantasisin' really rather nasty.") Sinead also points out that Superlad is like a brother to him. ("The one you were accused of murdering and whose death drove you insane?" asks Superlad, insensitively. "Yes," confirms Sinead.) Also, it's revealed right at the end that Lana cunningly robbed herself so nobody else would know where the stone was. Also, for the insurance fraud. So that's all wise and almost certainly the cleverest and sneakiest thing Lana has ever done in her life (excluding the times she was possessed by kryptonite madness, 17th century witches or a lust for Superlad's bod, obviously). Good for her.
Next week: There is no next week. We take a brief hiatus while the show gears up for the big 'Sinead turns evil' final storyline. In the meantime, enjoy the adventures of Lucy Lane as she uncovers a budgie smuggling ring amid the street markets of Poland...
Begone,
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