THE SMALLVILLE FILES SEASON 5
Score: 7.7 / 10 
11: Panic Room
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.
Sinead's in the mansion, glowering magnificently over the latest polls which show that while he has a slight lead overall, Bo's popularity among superpowered teens is off the chart! Boy, thinks Sinead. It's a damn good thing none of them vote.
Suddenly, a pair of Lazy Smallville Cops burst in and inform Sinead there's been a bomb threat.
"My security didn't say anything about a bomb threat," says Sinead. Everyone has a hearty laugh.
"But seriously," say the cops. "We have to get you out of here."
"Is this bomb threat for today? Or is it something you're just following up on from half a season ago?"
Suddenly, the cops start shooting and Sinead's campaign manager sacrifices himself like the idiotic underling he is, buying Sinead time to jump into his panic room, as made popular by Jodie Foster in the film of the same name (Time To Jump).
They start talking about stand-offs and how Sinead can't contact anybody outside and how the bad guys can't get in. Bad Cop #1 demands to know about the whereabouts of the space ship that landed back in Episode One of this season. Sinead denies having even seen that episode. This makes Bad Cop #1 angry ("We all had to sit through it!!") and he shoots the cameraman.
Back at the barn, Superlad and Lana are studying. Lana's got the irrits, because Superlad is actually studying.
"Why don't you just start wearing glasses, you total nerd!"
"Why don't you just start wearing glasses, you total nerd!" she sneers. "Kiss me."
Superlad gives her a chaste kiss, still wary of the power of his super-weiner.
"What the freak was that??" Lana pseudo-swears. "Am I your stinking cousin? Kiss me properly you enormous hick douchebag."
Lana, trashmouth.
Oh, sure, thinks Superlad. Because having a shrill harpy wail on him is the way to get him full of the romance. Still, he obliges, and then breaks off to go muck out the pig trough.
Lana stops him by 'accidentally' spilling detailed blueprints of the spaceship in front of him.
"Yes," says Lana. "Sinead and I have been hanging out for several episodes now, studying spaceships together."
"Well, if you wanted to study spaceships, you should have just said so! I've got a Klingon BattleCruisers 101 exam next week!" And he cracks open the books again. But Lana's already stormed off. Superlad shakes his head. "Chicks!" he says, to nobody in particular.
Over at the mansion, Sinead and Bad Cop #1 are still debating spaceships. Sinead is in awesome denial mode. Bad Cop #1 was actually in the episode and saw the ship and saw the Kryptonians destroy his platoon and had his hand burned to pieces by their heat vision and saw Sinead drive up with a boat trailer and take the ship away.
Sinead denies all of this. He even denies that Bad Cop #1 has hands.
By now, Superlad's having a whinge to Boring Old Ma. "Lana is such a liar!" he says.
Boring Old Ma has a coughing fit, interspersed with such words as 'pot' and 'kettle' and 'black' and 'secret Kryptonian heritage'.
"Why don't you just tell Lana about your inhuman secret?" suggests Ma. "Good Ol' Pete found out. TIAC found out. And they accepted your alienness."
"Lana is much more shallow," says Superlad. "You know that."
"Well, if you can't tell her, maybe you're destined to be with somebody else," she says, as Lois pulls up. Boring Old Ma nods Superlad towards Lois's norgs and raises her eyebrows.
By now, Lana has been pulled over by Bad Cop #2, who brings her back to the mansion to use as bait to get Sinead out of his panic room. This works an absolute treat for almost a full ten seconds.
Sinead comes out and, despite the two cops being armed, he somehow gets Lana away from them and back into the panic room with him. Sure, they manage to wing him on the way back in, but it's still incompetence of a kind rarely seen outside of Federal government.
Lana goes into a dither because Sinead has been shot.
"Dude," says Sinead. "I get shot every other week these days. Just chill out."
Superlad has decided to bug TIAC about the whole Lana sex life thing, because he knows how much she enjoys talking about it.
"Can you spy on Lana for me, tell me what she's doing at all times?" says Superlad.
"I can't do that," says TIAC. "You're my friend. But Lana's my friend, also."
"Stop mucking about," says Superlad. "I'm serious. Can you spy on her for me?"
"There's no way I'm getting in the middle of you two."
This triggers a thought in Superlad's horny little mind but, thankfully, before he can enunciate it, TIAC gets a phone call from Sheriff Whatsername, saying Lana's car has been found deserted by the side of the road, and therefore she's been kidnapped.
Superlad runs over to the scene and immediately finds a GPS attached to the bottom of her car, impressing Sheriff Whatsername no end.
"You should come see me about becoming a police cadet, Mr Kent," she says. "Assuming I'm not killed before the end of this episode."
Superlad ignores this senseless foreshadowing and runs off. Back in the mansion, Lana is trying to talk Sinead into giving up the location of the spaceship in exchange for access to some anti-bullet lotion. Sinead won't hear of it, mostly because he's lost the spaceship.
"What?" says Lana.
"It might be right at the back of my wig shelf ..."
"It might be right at the back of my wig shelf," he says. "But I rarely go in there any more."
He then starts babbling at random, about Superlad's hair and mighty pecs and how lucky Superlad was to have a super-wiener that he's scared to use on Lana and how the episode a few weeks ago where he had the Christmas dream was really very unsatisfying and, hoo boy, how about Superlad's hair again, isn't that dreamy?
Lana's had enough of this and she comes out of the panic room and makes a deal with the cops that she'll tell them where the spaceship is if they get some kind of sedative that will shut Sinead up. Also, if they could shoot Sheriff Whatsername in the back, that would be awesome, because she's always hated that bitch.
"Deal," says Bad Cop #1. Lana takes them off to the warehouse.
Meanwhile, Superlad and TIAC have gone the long way round, dropping into Daily Planet Rebel Headquarters and the local nuthouse and finally heading off to the mansion where they pick up Sinead, who caresses Superlad's hair lovingly and tells him that Lana's in the warehouse.
TIAC consults her script. "Hey, yeah. So she is."
So Superlad runs over there. Somehow Lana's got herself trapped under steel piping and there's a bomb about to go off. And, y'know, no spaceship.
The bomb explodes. Superlad runs in and pulls Lana out and there you have it.
There was a whole other subplot with Bo finding out that Lois took Porthos's money for the election campaign ('How are you funding Bo For Senator cheerleaders on every street corner in the state?' he'd say. 'Don't you worry your pretty Duke head about that,' Lois would say. But he would worry, dammit!) Boring Old Ma eventually told the truth about Porthos, interestingly making the revelation while Bo was sharpening an axe, which didn't seem the wisest time to do so, given Bo's renowned temper and axemanship. This looked like being a problem that would tear the campaign apart until Bo vowed to pay Porthos back by selling vast tracts of land he owned and which had never been previously mentioned any of the other thirteen hundred times the Kents had money troubles. ("No!!" said Boring Old Ma, because she hadn't said it yet this episode.)
And then Lana went on and on and on about how Sinead saved her by taking a bullet.
"Are you a goldfish?" said Superlad. "I pulled you out of a bomb blast tonight. I've leapt into tornados for you. I've fought off untold numbers of kryptomaniacs, zombies and cloned little girls for you. I helped save you from being possessed by a witch and murdered by Kryptonians. I--"
"Sinead is so dreamy," said Lana.
"Oh, for Krypton's sake," said Superlad.
Next Week: The 100th Episode. Somebody dies (in a car accident no less!! How fitting). Please be Lana, please be Lana, please be Lana...
Discuss this episode at Kryptonsite
Begone,
blog comments powered by Disqus
This here item has so far scored 7.7 / 10 on the patented Astonishing Tales Funny-o-meter.
If it should be higher, click the green arrow:
And if you think it should be lower, try the red one:
To receive this kind of stuff via a convenient regular email, visit the subscription page
Or don't. I'm not the boss of you.
