THE SMALLVILLE FILES SEASON 5
Score: 8 / 10 
21: Something Is Rotten In The State Of 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.
When your son's a big superpowered boofhead, there's a natural urge to, every now and then, want to make him cry. That's perfectly natural and nothing for a parent to be ashamed of. Bo used to do this by thrashing the lad with sticks of Kryptonite. Boring Old Ma, however, has chosen a more psychological route.
She's thrown him a surprise birthday party, and invited both his friends. Lois has baked him a cake, and it's a shambles. Ha ha ha! What a way to show how modern and cool she is. TIAC's present? She promises to not reveal his secret for another year.
Touching enough, to be sure. But Senator Boring Old Ma tops them both by presenting Superlad with a card she's pretending is from Bo. "See that handwriting?" she says. "That's Bo's handwriting."
"Is it?" says Superlad. For he's never put any store in this whole 'handwriting' nonsense. Sounds a little too much like book-learnin' to him. He ignores the little love heart dots on the i's and opens the card. It contains two tickets to an upcoming baseball game. "Can't wait to go with you," says the card, for it's one of those Hallmark Chatty Cards.
"Bo always loved baseball"
"Bo always loved baseball," says Superlad, and sheds a little tear.
"Football," says TIAC, for she is a stickler for continuity.
"Shhhh," says Senator Boring Old Ma. And they all settle in to watch the supertears.
But Superlad's headed outside to sob in peace. Who should he bump into there but The Ghost Of Bo.
"Yo, son," says Ghost of Bo. "I reckon you should kill Porthos. He's, like, really bad news. Way worse than we thought."
"In what way?" says Superlad. But The Ghost of Bo has already gone.
Superlad immediately tells Senator Boring Old Ma what has happened. The Senator doesn't buy a word of it. "Look," she says. "I know you hate Porthos, and I know you miss your father and I know ghosts are cool, but don't you think this is just bordering a little bit on the lunatic side?"
"If it's good enough for Romeo, it's good enough for me!" says Superlad, and off he dashes to talk to TIAC, who doesn't have the heart to correct his erroneous Shakespearean reference, and instead plays along.
"Superlad, Superlad, wherefore art thou, Superlad?" she says.
"I'm right here," he says. "Tcch." He shakes his head irritably.
Over to the mansion and Porthos has shown up to tell Sinead that he knows all about the thousands of viruses he (Sinead) has been gathering from all around the world. Which puts him one up on us, the loyal viewers.
"It's really dangerous!" says Porthos, unusually jittery.
"It's under control," says Sinead. "Spike-iac helped me collect them all."
"Well, that's okay, then," says Porthos. And rolls his eyes to indicate he doesn't think it's okay. Porthos, master of nuances.
Sinead ignores the eye roll. That's the kind of mood he's in today.
Over at the Death Claw, Lois has interrupted Lana.
"I see you have two coffees," she says. "And are therefore sleeping with Sinead. Despite the fact we barely ever interact on the show, why don't you and I discuss the ramifications of this?"
"Well, you are quite a bit taller than me," says Lana. "So okay."
By now, The Ghost of Bo has decided he should also bug his missus. "Hey, Boring Old Ma," he says. "Rumour has it you've got the hots for Porthos. I won't be having any of that."
Senator Boring Old Ma goes straight into denial. "I just consult with him on hairstyling techniques," she says.
"I call 'bullshit' on that," says The Ghost of Bo. "Look, don't forget who actually got all those votes that made you Senator and all concerned with 'hair' again. Besides, Porthos was the one who killed me. So put that in your pipe and smoke it."
"I don't sm--"
"Zip it," says The Ghost of Bo, and disappears.
But it's not The Ghost of Bo at all. It's Spike-iac, disguised as The Ghost of Bo, for reasons of his own that should be obvious. Or, if not obvious, then certainly very obscure indeed.
Lana's finally managed to escape from Lois's endless windbaggery and has returned to the mansion. "Sorry the coffee's cold," she says.
Sinead ignores this - after all, he had sent her off for iced coffee. "Look, I have something important to tell you. This here folder contains all kinds of secret information about the secret project I've been secretly working on with Spike-iac."
"I like the laminated cover," says Lana.
"I did that myself," says Sinead. He takes her to see his Laminating Machine and then off to the Lab'o'Viruses. "I've used this laboratory to build a vaccine against all Earthly diseases. We're going to need it to combat Spike-iac's plan to conquer the Earth." He shows her photographic evidence of Spike-iac's superspeed. "We have a defensive measure now, but we need something offensive. If only I knew their weakness."
"I know it," says Lana. "When Porthos was possessed by Kryptonian power in the season opener, he told me their weakness."
"Then off to the script vault!" declares Sinead. And they race to the scriptmobile and zoom off.
By now, of course, Senator Boring Old Ma has told Superlad about the whole 'Porthos killing Bo' thing. TIAC backs this up with her usual computer geek nonsense - she's hacked into the Kent barn webcam or some damn thing. "It's true," she says.
So Superlad meets up with Porthos at the barn and starts throttling him. The Ghost of Bo pops in to urge him on.
"That's good," says The Ghost of Bo. "Kill him!"
"Superlad," says Porthos, still thinking clearly, despite the Kryptonian hand at his windpipe. "Does that sound like something your father would say?"
Superlad listens again to The Ghost of Bo's bloodlust and decides Porthos has a (hairy) point. He turns and blasts the Ghost of Bo with his heat vision.
"You were always such a disobedient child," says Spike-iac/Ghost of Bo, not willing to break character. They start to fight, but then Porthos is possessed by Kryptonian magic (as he's been doing on and off throughout the episode) and touches Spike-iac, who disappears in a puff of nanotech.
Over to the Luthor mansion, where Sinead is confronting a different version of Spike-iac (there's several of them running around, but we all knew that, right?). "Where's your lab?" says Spike-iac.
"Why should I tell... you!!" says Sinead, whirling around with a piece of Kryptonite to punctuate his sentence!
"You should have known better than to get your 'intelligence' from Lana."
"That doesn't work on me," says Spike-iac, deflating the moment. He points one of his morphing hand-knives at Sinead's throat. "You should have known better than to get your 'intelligence' from Lana."
And Sinead sees, in retrospect, what a grave mistake that clearly was.
By now Porthos and Superlad (who are bestest buddies) have hooked up with TIAC and started investigating all the notebooks Porthos has been writing stuff in while possessed by the Kryptonian force inside his scone.
"Can you translate this?" says Superlad, to TIAC.
"Dude, you're the Kryptonian," points out TIAC.
"Yeah, but you have a computer. Now pop these notebooks into a scanner and get to work. I'm off to stalk Lana."
And he is. He breaks into her apartment to find out where Sinead's Lab'o'Viruses is located. Lana, of course, catches him in the act. "What do you think you're doing, Superlad Kent??"
"You're in immense danger," says Superlad, immediately going on the front foot. "If you care about Sinead at all, you'll tell me where to find him."
Pow! Checkmate! Lana is stymied. If she doesn't tell him, that means she doesn't care for Sinead. But if she does, she's betrayed Sinead. How incredibly wily of Superlad. One has to assume Porthos told him to say that.
Over at the lab, Sinead and Spike-iac discuss invasion plans and viruses and none of it really makes an awful lot of sense. Spike-iac stabs Sinead with a syringe and then smashes up the lab and runs off. Nobody knows why.
Superlad shows up and whisks Sinead to safety and that's that. Sinead has tests - his doc tells him he's passed with flying colours and, by the by, he's incredibly healthy. Sinead tells Superlad not to go breaking into Lana's apartment any more, because, seriously dude, that's not at all on. Lois tells Superlad to give up on Lana and pay more attention to her bodacious curves ("I'm at least four or five inches taller," she says. "Did you see that scene with both of us!"). Sinead and Lana agree to never mention Superlad again. "Done," says Sinead, and then jabs himself with a piece of glass and is (I think) possessed by Spike-iac. Not clear on that last point, but the episode is to be continued, so I'll clarify next week. And finally TIAC shows up with the results from her analysis of Portho's notebooks. One three character phrase has been repeated over and over again - what does it say? Superlad translates: "Christmas is coming!" He looks more closely at the first character and corrects himself. "Zod," he says. "Zod is coming."
All right, it's a convoluted kinda pre-season finale episode, so I don't think anybody really knows what's going on. But Schneider's reappearance is enough to score this episode a pass mark. Vengeance-urging ghosts. If they were good enough for Othello, they're good enough for me.
Next Week: The season finale! Zod! Spike-iac! Kryptonians! Viruses! And, um, so forth.
Discuss this episode at Kryptonsite
Begone,
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