THE SMALLVILLE FILES SEASON 5
Score: 7.9 / 10 
19: Survivor: Smallville
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.
It's a morning like any other for Porthos. He's out in the limo, brokering deals, dismissing henchmen, growing his hair and having an attempt made on his life.
This morning, the latter has come in the form of a remotely controlled car-locking and stopping procedure on Ye Olde Smallville Train Tracks. In order for the doors to be unlocked, Porthos must defeat a man with a weird looking face and a distorted voice (possibly Clay Aiken) at a game of Hangman.
"Pish-tosh," says Porthos, for his skills at Hangman are legendary. He zooms through the vowels and common consonants, eventually limiting the options to one phrase. "'So hairy'!" he says. "The answer is 'so hairy'."
And he is released in what quantum physicists call the 'nick' of time.
He immediately heads off to confront Sinead. As always, when there is an attempt on a Luthor's life, the most obvious suspect is, y'know, the other one.
"So Sinead," says Porthos. "Do you think I'm 'so hairy'?" For there is no need to be upfront when one can have a circuitous, multi-layered conversation. That is the Luthor way.
"Gee Dad," says Sinead. "You're certainly hairier than me. But that's no reason for me to murder you. I feel there is a sane path between our two extremes."
"Hmmm... so perhaps you're not the one who tried to murder me today," says Porthos, astute as always at subtext-reading.
"To kill you in the prime of your nefariousness would be a ... mistake."
Sinead checks his diary. "Um, no. Besides, why would I kill you? You're one of the most astute deal-brokers Luthorcorp has. To kill you in the prime of your nefariousness would be a poorly thought out financial mistake."
"True, true," says Porthos. And he heads off to check his office for listening devices.
Actually, he doesn't do that. He gets a henchman to do that and threatens to eat his spleen if he does a poor job. This is bad news for the henchman because immediately after he declared the room 'spotlessly clean', Clay taunts Porthos electronically and then jabs something in his neck and takes him away.
Porthos wakes up to find he has several tasks he must complete to avoid being murdered. First he must fill some buckets with highly flammable liquid, walk along a fiery hallway and balance the buckets in such a way it opens a hatch. Then he must solve an anagram in time to avoid Senator Boring Old Ma from being drowned to death in a Vat O'Drowning. Once he succeeds at that, he and Senator Boring Old Ma must make their way to an elevator where one will be forced to shoot the other before the elevator cable explodes, killing them both.
This is, of course, a ripoff of one of the tamer immunity challenges on Survivor: Exile Island so perhaps we're not dealing with Clay Aiken after all, but rather a crazed Jeff Probst. Either way, there's no time for tomfoolery, because he raises his hand in the air. "Survivors ready!" He drops it. "Go!"
And Porthos is off.
So let's back up a bit because I've not yet discussed Senator Boring Old Ma and Superlad's discussion abot the fact Porthos now knows Superlad's secret. Nor have I mentioned Sinead and Lana's discussion aout the kiss they had last week. So let's rectify that, shall we?
After whining over it to TIAC, Superlad eventually tells Senator Boring Old Ma about Porthos knowing the secret.
"Well, this may be my fault," says Senator Boring Old Ma. "I got a DVD a few episodes back showing footage of you surviving one of your explosions. I gave it to Porthos to sort out for me."
"May be your fault??" says Superlad. "May be??" Sheesh! And they call him the stupid one.
Back at the mansion, Sinead's trying to teach Lana how to play Boggle.
"This is too hard!" says Lana. "When are we going to discuss our kiss?"
"Right now," says Sinead, checking his watch. "Lana, I know you think we should just be friends, but nothing less than a severe blow to the head is going to make me forget that kiss in a hurry."
"Awesome," says Lana, for she knows Sinead is struck down by amnesia every other episode. She skips off.
By now, of course, Porthos has completed the fire-walking portion of the immunity challenge and is on to the anagram-solving save-Senator-Boring-Old-Ma-from-drowning portion. Stupidly, Senator Boring Old Ma has been given an in-vat microphone to distract Porthos from his de-anagramifyin'.
"Hmmm..." says Porthos, moving letters around carefully.
"It's a word puzzle!" exclaims Senator Boring Old Ma.
While Porthos considers whether or not to let Senator Boring Old Ma drown, let's head back to the others.
Sinead and TIAC and Superlad have discovered both Porthos and Senator Boring Old Ma are missing. Rather than let them have some quality time together, the kids are determined to track them down and sort them out. Superlad smashes a vase for no clear reason.
It contains a listening device! TIAC picks it up. "This is home-made and incredibly well-designed." She sniffs it. "A 2002 model, if I'm not mistaken. I can probably track it back to its source using my laptop, that I have here on me, booted up, ready to track."
The others ignore her, as always. So much overcompensation.
Eventually she splutters out an address. Superlad goes to do the dashey offey superspeed thing, but Sinead stops him.
"Hey," he says. "Let's take my Porsche. It's faster than your truck."
Superlad sighs. He'd been so looking forward to some superspeed damn fool running around, too.
Back at the immunity challenge, Porthos has solved the anagram ('Nobody mention Season Four') and is now in the elevator with Senator Boring Old Ma trying to decide who shoots the other.
"Well," says Porthos. "I guess you've got-- Um, is this camera on?"
It is. TIAC has stupidly given Superlad and Sinead directions to the broadcast tower of Clay Probst, rather than the studio where filming is taking place. The upside to this is they can listen in on Senator Boring Old Ma and Porthos's conversation, while TIAC gets her act together and gets the right address.
"He winks like a fool."
"Anyway," says Porthos. "As I was saying. Superlad is a special young man. We both know that." He winks like a fool. "And I suppose he shouldn't be orphaned just yet, so what the hell, I'll top myself."
Superlad dashes off. Sinead has turned his back and that's the Kryptonian's cue for the damn fool runnin'.
Porthos pulls the trigger. But there's no bullet in there! Oh Clay Probst. You're such a trickster.
"Huh," says CP. "You really were going to kill yourself. That's kinda surprising and touching. As a reward, I shall reveal who I really am."
And he pulls off his mask to reveal he is, uh, Clay Probst.
"I don't know who you are," says Porthos, for he is not as up-to-date on popular culture as he should be since his Tivo broke down.
"Fine," says CP. And he blows up the elevator cable anyway.
Porthos and Senator Boring Old Ma plummet, Superlad crashes through a wall and catches them. Porthos clambers out.
"Very impressive, Superlad Kent," he says. "You are miraculous." And he just wanders off to meditate, change his shirt and gather his wits for the final Luthor verbal stoush.
"What do you know about Superlad?" says Sinead, initiating said stoush after driving across town.
"He is just a simple farmboy," says Porthos.
"One second he's standing beside me. The next second, he's clear across town. Your elevator falls and you don't die. And there's a giant Welling-sized hole in the wall."
"Simple, simple farmboy," says Porthos. "Simple."
"But why was he so special you'd kill yourself for him?"
"Because he's a man I'd be proud to call my son," says Porthos, suddenly moving from defence to offense. He then terminates the conversation, as victory is clearly his.
Then Superlad shows up to talk to him. Well, sorta. "You stay away from my Ma," he orders, before storming off.
Prrffrtt, thinks Porthos.
A great episode. I've said it before and I'll say it again - any episode featuring the senior Luthor immediately starts ten to twelve basis points higher than the Smallville average. Add in a ludicrous series of challenges and you've got the best episode of this season.
Next Week: Porthos and Senator Boring Old Ma join The Amazing Race.
Discuss this episode at Kryptonsite
Begone,
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