THE SMALLVILLE FILES SEASON 5
Score: 8.7 / 10 
15: Porthos Plays It Perfectly
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.
Inevitably, there are cyborgs in laboratories. This is true in the real world, and it is equally true in downtown Metropolis. But only in Metropolis do you have damn fool doctors releasing the cyborgs from captivity and setting them loose to run around like indestructible chickens with their heads cut off and replaced by robotic equivalents.
So the cyborg's running free, crashing through doors, jumping off balconies and (inevitably) running head first into Lana's car. The car crumples around him and Lana gets a head scrape which (as always, these days) is disappointingly non-fatal. Still, kudos for the attempt, C-Man.
He drops Lana off in the hospital, where Lana's all like "I hit you with my car. Why didn't you die?" and the C-Man's all mysterious and brooding and angsty and "It's not the first time I've been hit by a car and not died" which is a bit wordy to be effective.
But talking to Lana is the last thing he, or anybody else, wants to do. "Sayonara, babe," he says, and runs off. So Lana dobs on him. She calls Superlad and tells him there's an emergency and he needs to get his buff bod over there.
Zip! He's there in a flash. "How did you get here so quickly?" demands Lana, like the nagging sow she is.
"Public transport," says Superlad, who'd come prepared for such a question. "It's fast and it's eco-friendly." He turns to the camera and gives a cheesy thumbs up.
Lana's bored with that topic now. "Stop wasting time," she says. "I hit a man with my car."
"Was he sexually harrassing you?" asks Superlad.
"No," says Lana, then rubs her chin. Or was he?
"... you want me to destroy the corpse?"
"And you want me to destroy the corpse?" says Superlad.
"What? No! He survived the impact."
"You want me to finish him off before he goes to the cops?"
"No! Look. Just find him and get this plot moving."
"Yes, sir," says Superlad, voice dripping with sarcasm and the remnants of an ice cream cone.
He runs off to look for the C-Man. Guess what? He's still just hanging outside the hospital, dithering as the plot demands. He and Superlad recognise one another from their football playing days and bond instantly. There's a bit of mutual admiration - 'boy, you were a great player' 'and so were you' - until some pseudo-macho chest-beating leads to Superlad being thrown twenty feet into a wall.
He gets up, unharmed. "Awesome, you're superstrong!" says C-Man.
"I was just going to ask you the same question!" responds Superlad, not really being a good listener.
Anyhoo, they're now bestest buddies, just like Superlad was with the Flash kiddie and the Aqua-tool. Oh, DC Universe, how delightful to watch you congeal before our very eyes.
They head off to a bar to continue their bonding. "This is my girlfriend," says C-Man, pulling out a photo from his pocket.
"She's hot!" says Superlad. "What does she think about you being, like, a total robot?"
"She doesn't know. How could I tell her about this and not have her loathe me for being a freak?"
"I hear you, bro!" says Superlad. "Chicks," he adds, shaking his head furiously. He tries to give a high five, but merely knocks a tray out of a passing beer wench's hands.
"So you haven't told your girlfriend either?" says C-Man, ignoring the carnage of Superlad's clumsiness.
"Prrrffft," says Superlad, and orders another round.
"But you told me," points out C-Man.
"Sure, but you're just here for the one episode," says Superlad. "And then you're totally goneski!!"
C-Man doesn't like the sound of that so he sends Superlad off to speak to Sinead about it.
"Yo, Sinead," says Superlad, storming into the mansion. "Why can't the C-Man stay on the show for more than one episode?"
"Oh, Superlad," says Sinead. "Your entrances have really gone downhill. No small talk. No banter. No little 'hello' kiss on the cheek. What happened to us?"
Superlad ignores him. Best not to dwell on the past. "Look. I know one of your companies turned the C-Man into a cyborg instead of letting him die. How can you be so heartless?"
Ignoring the idiotic premise of the question, Sinead jumps straight to his point. "Lookie here, Superlad. Luthorcorp acquired over 300,000 small companies in the past hour alone. I can't be expected to keep track of every affiliate that's turning footballers into robots! I'm running a multinational company here."
"Alone? In your mansion?? In some tiny country town in the middle of Kansas?"
"Sure. I have broadband."
The plot becomes a bit addled at this point, but the evil scientist in charge of Eviltronics, who evilly turned C-Man into a robot rather than let him die, continues to be evil and shoots C-Man in the shoulder with an evil ray that starts to evilly suck the power cells from C-Man's body.
"Boy," says Superlad. "You're gonna die from a shoulder wound. That's kinda pussy. What kind of invulnerable superhero are you?"
So, before C-Man dies like a total lamo, Superlad heads off to find the scientist who freed the C-Man in the first place, so he (the scientist) can repair him (C-Man). But it turns out he (the scientist) is dead. So that's even weaker, according to Superlad. Also, Sinead's probably to blame and those two squabble again, with Superlad refusing to even look at the beautiful forgiveness bracelet Sinead offers.
Then while Lana's off checking her eye-liner, C-Man is captured by Sinead and the evil head of Eviltronics. They take him back to the lab and strap him down and offer to place a chip in his brain that will give him wireless net access straight to his brain! Sadly, it's an outdated protocol, so Superlad bursts in at the last second, just as Dr Eviltronics is about to drill a hole straight in C-Man's melon. He beats everybody up and he and C-Man run off to freedom.
"We cut away before we can see her vomitous reaction ..."
C-Man ends the episode by telling his girlfriend all about his cyborgy nature. We cut away before we can see her vomitous reaction, but Lana still gives Superlad the usual grief about his secret-keepin' and thus-such. And then Superlad pops over to visit Sinead who denies all kinds of stuff about experimentation and head-hole-drilling. "I deny your denials!" says Superlad, angrily. "Yeah, well I'm rubber. You're glue," shoots back Sinead.
Stalemate!
So that's a perfectly passable main plotline. Stupidity and car crashes and people throwing one another into walls. Fine stuff. But this episode was enlivened approximately nine thousand percent by the subplot, which went as follows.
Boring Old Ma (the new official Widow Senator of Kansas) gets a package left at her front door. It's a kickin' portable DVD player. "Hell, yeah!" she says. She turns it on and finds it comes with a DVD. "Ace-tastic!" she thinks, hoping it might be a bootleg copy of the new Bryan Singer movie. But no, it's footage of Superlad rescuin' stupid old Lana from some explosion or other and not being harmed one iota.
Enter Porthos Luthor, showing up to accompany Boring Old Ma to some meeting he's concocted. He sees Boring Old Ma's concerned look and tells her, even though she's cancelled this meeting, that any time she 'wants to take a ride', he's always available. Oh, Porthos, you and your saucy entendres.
Boring Old Ma decides to meet up with the DVD-supplier and pay the blackmail he demands. Before she can do so, however, Porthos interrupts her and gives her a stern dressing down about giving in to blackmailers. " Once you start, it never ends," he says. "Leave this to me." He gives her calf a secret little caress and disappears into the alley smoke.
Next thing we know, Porthos pops into the Kent farm and tells Boring Old Ma that she will never be bothered by the Netflix blackmailer again. Before Boring Old Ma can probe further, Porthos then unleashes a stunning play, the 'Now You're A Senator, You Probably Shouldn't Be Seen With Me' Ploy. "Porthos," says Boring Old Ma. "I'm not the kind of woman who abandons her friends just because I've become the Widow Senator of Kansas." "You are a remarkable woman, Boring Old Ma," says Porthos, taking one last glimpse of her heaving bosom before he departs.
So Boring Old Ma burns the DVD (but not the DVD player - she's a Widow Senator, not a durn fool) in the fireplace, while Porthos leans back in his comfy-chair at the Porthos-Cave and watches the copy he's procured from the Netflix blackmailer. He sees Superlad pick up Lana and run through the explosive cloud of fire. He rubs his beard in glorious triumph. "Your secret's safe with me, Kal-El."
And that, my friends, is the way to work a subplot. Three hundred percent!
Next Week: The return of super-hypnosis!
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