THE SMALLVILLE FILES SEASON 4
Score: 7 / 10 
18: TIAC, Queen Of The Prom
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.
We open, as so many modern day storylines do, at the end. TIAC is running around, crowned Queen of the Prom. She's muttering to herself about 'showing them all', pulls out a convenient prom axe, pours convenient prom fuel all over some curtains, stokes the prom fireplace with a prom mop and then throws the prom mop towards the opening credits.
Of course, any sane Smallville viewer would by now have turned the episode off and settled in for a night of Strip Yahtzee with a significant other of some description, because we know how it ends. We have, after all, seen Carrie. The prom burns down, killing hundreds of idiot teenagers and TIAC is finally, finally taken seriously as a mass murderer.
But no, like the mind-controlled drones we are, we obediently watch on to see what, in particular, pushed TIAC's unhinged mind finally and completely over the edge.
So we go back to a day before the prom. TIAC has written a scathing editorial about how, I dunno, voting for prom royalty gives you cancer or something. Lana is giving her minor grief about this.
"Oh, don't tell me you want to be Prom Queen," says TIAC.
"As if," says Lana. "I'm so prettily beyond your pitiful High School rituals that I'm not even going to the prom. I will instead be home admiring my mirror collection."
"Not going to the prom!!" repeats TIAC, astonished. But before she can push any further, the three most popular girls in school come up, a la Heathers, Jawbreaker, or any other teen social hierarchy flick you might want to think of (see also Mean Girls and The Postman).
Head Mean Girl gives TIAC grief about her editorial and mispronounces 'hypocrite' to flag for us, the more worldly viewer, that Head Mean Girl is poorly educated. No surprises there - this is, after all, Smallville High.
Just when you think a catfight is about to erupt, Head Mean Girl points to a prom poster behind TIAC which announces that TIAC is also a nominee for Prom Queen - ha ha ha, this is apparently yet another of Superlad's monstrously insensitive jokes.
Also, Superlad's not going to the prom either. Some gibberish about chores.
Oh, also some more, Head Mean Girl has been dumped by her boyfriend the day before the prom!! Oh. My. God. So she's scurrying through the yearbook while driving, trying to find a replacement stud. She stumbles across our Kryptonian friend but before she can call and seduce him she, of course, tumbles off Mount Smallville and dies.
"Luckily for her, however, she's died among a chasm full of kryptonite ..."
Luckily for her, however, she's died among a chasm full of kryptonite which, as 93% of all morticians will remind you (and, startlingly, 84% of all milliners), is guaranteed to turn you into a ghost. This is a standard biological fact.
So Head Mean Girl's Ghost climbs back up Mount Smallville and tries to flag down Boring Old Ma who, as usual, is out driving the General Schwarzkopf in the middle of the night.
Boring Old Ma naturally tries to run Head Mean Girl's Ghost down (we are supposed to infer that Boring Old Ma doesn't actually see HMGG, but really... who are we kidding? Boring Old Ma's pathological hatred of the undead is well established). She doesn't really succeed because of, y'know, the intangibility and so now Boring Old Ma is possessed by HMGG.
Let the hijinks ensue.
Superlad gets home to find Boring Old Ma (+HMGG) eating ice cream directly out of the carton.
"What's for dinner?" says Superlad, mind, as always, on only one of two things.
"Oh, yeah, that's right, I'm your mother," says Boring Old Ma (+HMGG). "Here, have some ice cream."
She hands it over, but Superlad is watching his weight and so politely declines. Also, it's Kryptonite Chip Ice Cream.
"Are you going to the prom?" says Boring Old Ma (+HMGG).
"Nope."
"Oh, what?!?? You've gotta go. Come on, Superlad. You can go with me."
Before Superlad can explore this Oedipal option further, Lois deigns to wander down the stairs, all buxom and magnificent. Boring Old Ma (+HMGG) comprehends.
"Oh I see," she says. "You just want to stay at home and try and work your way into the Lois funbags, don't you??"
There is a pause.
"Oh, I'm sorry," says Superlad. "I thought that was rhetorical."
"There is no way on Earth," announces Lois. "There is no set of circumstances foreseeable to even the insanest writer of television shows that could get me to the prom with a certain Superlad Kent."
Anyway, Boring Old Ma (+HMGG) heads off to The Death Claw to tell Lana what a tragically boring soulless automaton of a character she is.
"I don't have to take this," says Lana. "I'm pretty."
But then Boring Old Ma (+HMGG) touches Lana on the shoulder and HMGG is transferred into Lana's body. Oh no!!
Boring Old Ma can't remember anything that happened while she was possessed, a fact that she confirms to Superlad, who, of course, immediately assumes she's been into the cooking tequila again.
Lana (+HMGG) asks Superlad to the prom. He agrees, because his mind is weak.
Then Lana (+HMGG) heads off to help with prom decorations and murder HMGG's ex-boyfriend. She succeeds with the former but is undone in the latter by Superlad who puts an end to all locker room electrocutin'.
HMGG then leaves Lana's body and wanders through a few more before disappearing into Deputy Mean Girl's Body.
Superlad, TIAC and Lana work out what's going on surprisingly quickly, thanks to TIAC having several copies of the script and a highlighter pen. They head off to see Head Mean Girl in hospital, because it turns out she's not dead at all, but just in a coma.
But then Deputy Mean Girl (+HMGG) sees how disfigured Head Mean Girl is and kills her anyway. (There is a 'Code Blue' sent throughout the hospital which is ER-speak for 'a ghost has murdered her own body. Stat!') So, turns out she is dead again. Good-o.
Through a convoluted set of circumstances involving Krypto the Superdog, sinus medication and a faulty sports bra, Lois is eventually possessed by HMGG and tells Superlad that he is to take her to the prom (it goes without saying, of course, that once Lana was unpossessed, she went all 'ewww!' at the notion of going to the prom with Superlad).
Since Lois (+HMGG) is (barely) wearing a kick-ass prom outfit, Superlad is left with no choice but to nod, open-mouthed and slack-jawed, run up to his bedroom where Bo and Boring Old Ma have left the official spare, just-in-case Superlad tuxedo (y'know, the one they acquired with their enormous Kent Farm reserves of cash) and accompany Miss Lane to the prom.
So this is all well and good. TIAC is crowned Queen of the Prom. The writers don't even bother trying to explain how this could conceivably happen, but instead ask us to suspend ouf disbelief. With strength bordering on the superhuman, we do so and before TIAC goes up for the coronation, HMGG jumps from Lois into TIAC's body.
TIAC (+HMGG) makes a touching speech about how this was all she ever wanted. "If there's one person who deserves it more than me, though, it's Head Mean Girl. Such a shame she was disfigured and murdered for your sins." TIAC is booed off stage, because the students of Smallville can't abide showing respect for the dead.
And then we're back to the opening paragraph with TIAC (+HMGG) preparing to murder everybody. I forgot to mention earlier that she gives Bo (a chaperone, don'tcha know) a good old slam to the jaw with the axe handle and his stuntman rolls down the stairs to much acclaim.
Superlad runs up. "You okay, Bo?"
"Luckily she hit me in the head.
"Sure am," says Bo. "Luckily she hit me in the head. She went thataway." And he points in the wrong direction. Because while he is hard-headed as a mule, he's got the directional sense of a mule, as well.
Doesn't matter. Superlad tracks TIAC (+HMGG) down and catches the flaming mop in mid-flight. There's some nonsense shouting back and forth before TIAC suddenly possesses Superlad!!
Let us pause for a moment to ponder. There are, as we know, phrases that we all associate with the Man of Steel. "Look, up in the sky!" for example. Or "Up, up and away!". Tonight, at this moment, a new phrase will forever be enshrined as part of the Superman canon. That phrase?
"Crown's mine, bitch."
Superlad (+HMGG) utters this immortal phrase, claims the crown and super-pushes TIAC down. Luckily, Bo comes in with one of his spare pieces of whuppin' kryptonite and tells HMGG to stop possessing Superlad or else he'll keep using kryptonite on him.
"Whatever!" says HMGG and floats away. TIAC was witness to all this, but pretends she wasn't, because, y'know, once you start hanging with the Kents, lying and denial becomes an essential part of your life.
And that's that. While all this was going on, Porthos had the good sense to take the week off. Sinead was not so lucky and found himself covering up a murder in his backyard for the apparent benefit of WM2 and Dr Quinn. So nothing new or surprising there.
Oh, and Lana showed up at the end and Lois encouraged Superlad to dance with her. Not clear why, perhaps it was something to do with Lois's desire not to have her feet crushed by Superlad's notorious two-left-footedness.
Superlad agreed, despite Lois's norgs, and we ended with WM2 poking his head around the corner and witnessing this. So I'm sure we can assume that next week's episode will be filled with jealousy or, alternatively, another body for Sinead's backyard collection.
Next week: Lana is murdered by WM2 for her two-timing sluttery with Superlad. Or, y'know, something like that. I don't actually remember.
Begone,
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