Dan Liebke’s Astonishing Tales

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 season finale (or ‘finally’ for some of you who don’t spell all that carefully - hi search engines) time and that means by the end of this episode everybody’s going to be in a dire pickle indeed. But we’ll get to that in the last paragraph, as tradition befits. Until then, let’s pad this out with the usual nonsense.

We open at the mansion, with Sinead and Lana slumbering in a post-coital, clothed fashion. Sinead wakes up with a monster headache. Rather than simply take a Tylenol, he instead leaps into his Porsche and drives off.

[Sinead's] learned something from the seventeen car crashes he’s been in since the series began.

Lana follows and tries to call him to get him to pick up some milk while he’s out. Sinead ignores her calls. He doesn’t have a hands free set and he’s learned something from the seventeen car crashes he’s been in since the series began.

Sinead pulls up and runs into a field where he is sucked up by the giant black spaceship. Lana screams “No!”, a task usually reserved for Boring Old Ma, but one she has since delegated since taking on her senatorial duties.

Back at the barn, Porthos has come calling on the aforementioned senator. He’s here to offer her and Lois a flight on the Luthorcorp jet to get them to Washington in time for a crucial summit on fifth dimensional imps. Because somehow (and let’s not point any fingers) their bookings on a more commercial, less tainted with Luthor evil, flight have been mysteriously deleted.

TIAC has by now been informed of Sinead’s abduction and has immediately gone to tell Superlad.

“Hey, Pecs,” she says. “Zod’s coming.”

“Dagnabbit,” says Superlad and shakes his fist in mild pugnaciousness.

“I thought Zod was trapped in that phantom prison interdimension thing.”

“Yes,” says Superlad. “But The Phantom Prison Interdimension Thing can be opened. And that’s clearly Spike-iac’s plan.” He rubs his superchin in the mistaken belief it makes him look wiser than usual. “Maybe I should have listened to the SS Jor-El.”

“But every time you listen to the SS Jor-El, the Kryptonian shit really hits the fan.”

“You both make good points,” says Superlad, a little confused now. He heads off to the Fortress of Solitude.

“Hey, Supes,” says the SS Jor-El. “Wassup?”

Superlad explains his problem. The SS Jor-El, in turn, explains that, like himself, Zod is part Kryptonian essence-part spaceship. The SS Zod will be released from The Phantom Prison Interdimension Thing unless Superlad kills the SS Zod’s proposed human host.

And he gives Superlad an awesome Kryptonian crystal knife to keep the murder stylish.

So it’s back for a chinwag with TIAC.

“I’m not killing nobody,” says Superlad.

“You should listen to the SS Jor-El,” says TIAC.

“Weren’t you telling me not to listen to him before?” says Superlad.

“Weren’t you telling me to listen to him?”

“Whatever.” He dismisses her with a streetwise wave of his hand. “But if Sinead’s the SS Zod’s vessel, I do get to kill him.”

Silver lining.

Porthos shows up at the barn to accentuate the point with his own unique brand of serpentine lies. “The true test of a hero is to sometimes butcher their enemies when the situation calls for it.”

That’s the true test of a hero? thinks Superlad. I thought it had something to do with wearing a cape with panache.

“What if it’s Sinead?” says Superlad.

“Engh,” says Porthos, and bites nonchalantly into an apple.

Still, Porthos heads off and finds Sinead. He’s been returned to the field. Porthos tries to talk sense into him, but Sinead’s all overcome with Kryptonian powers and hurls Porthos into a windscreen. Luckily, it’s a car windscreen, so he’s able to drive himself off to hospital.

Sinead then zips over to visit Lana. He tells her about his powers in a typically understated way - namely, by shooting himself in the hand. “No!” screams Lana. But then when she sees he’s unharmed, she’s all ‘Ew! You’re a freak’-ey.

“Despite your immense powers,” says Lana. “I’m still worried. I overheard Superlad and TIAC talking about killing you. He may just be a farmboy, but what if he brings a pitchfork??”

Sinead ignores her. “If you still love me, despite my freakish powers, meet me at the top of Luthorcorp Tower tonight.”

And off he zooms.

Superlad bursts into the mansion. Sinead’s obviously not there, but Lana is. And she gives Superlad a stern piece of her mind - a dangerous ploy.

“Why do you want to kill Sinead?” says Lana. “If you’ve ever really cared about me, tell me what’s happening to him.”

“‘Cared’ is such a strong word, Lana. I just thought you were really, really pretty in a computer-generated inhuman kind of way.”

“Fine,” says Lana, and storms off to the mirror room.

Now Spike-iac shows up in the mansion, somehow also getting past that renowned Luthor Mansion security. He presses a button on Sinead’s laptop. This causes technology to break down all over the world. Oh, Sinead, if only you’d invested in a network firewall.

Of course, with technology failing, riots break out all over the world. “We don’t have television!!” say the masses. “Let’s steal stuff and club one another.”

And they do.

Superlad zooms over to TIAC at Daily Planet Rebel Headquarters. “Can you fix this?” he says.

“Alas, no,” says TIAC. For her internet service provider has just cut her off. Some gibberish about being 390 Gig over her download limit.

Because it’s the season finale and the writers are feeling nostalgic about the good ol’ days of vehicular mayhem, a car now smashes through the window. Superlad whirls around and stops it with one hand.

“Maybe you should go kill Sinead,” says TIAC, taking Superlad’s car-catching in a standard stride.

“‘kay.”

And TIAC sends him off with a massive burst of face-suckage.

To save time, Sinead then calls him up on the one working phone booth in Metropolis. “Let’s get ready to rumble!!” he says.

Before the fight begins, however, we cut back to Lois and Senator Boring Old Ma on the jet.

“What’s the time?” says Lois.

“9:11:25 pm,” says Senator Boring Old Ma, without even checking her watch.

“Shouldn’t we have landed by now?” says Lois, always up on flight times.

‘I lost track of the time,’ she adds, despite clear contrary evidence in her previous sentence.

“You’re right,” says Senator Boring Old Ma. “I lost track of the time,” she adds, despite clear contrary evidence in her previous sentence.

Lois ignores her lies and looks out the window. They’re going the wrong way. Also, one of the Spike-iacs is the pilot and they’re losing pressure. So they fall down unconscious to save time later.

Okay, time now for the featured fight. Sinead gives a lengthy, supervillainy soliloquy about how Superlad’s always been such a liar but at least now Sinead has his woman. Or some damn thing.

They throw one another around for a bit, until Superlad pins Sinead with a knife at his throat. But rather than kill him, he hurls it at yet another Spike-iac who’d shown up to referee. This, however, releases the SS Zod.

“What have I done?” says Superlad, less rhetorically than you might have hoped. “I thought that–” He scratches his head and flips through the script while SFX blast all around him. “Ohhhh,” he finally says.

“Hello Kal-El,” says Sinead, now possessed by the SS Zod. “Your father banished me to The Phantom Prison Interdimension Thing. Now I shall kill all the humans as revenge.”

“How does that work again?”

“Never you mind. Come, join me. It’s fun. We can heat-vision their ankles and make them dance.”

“I’ll never join you,” says Superlad.

So The SS Zod/Sinead imprisons him in The Phantom Prison Interdimension Thing. (”That was just my opening position,” says Superlad, disappointed with how awry the negotiation went. The SS Zod/Sinead ignores him.)

Because they haven’t been placed in peril yet, Porthos and TIAC are dragged from the Porthosmobile by an enraged crowd. “My ipod doesn’t work!!” scream the rioting masses. “My Smart Playlists don’t update themselves!!!” yell others. So there is chaos everywhere.

Despite the riots, Lana’s still made her way to the top of Luthorcorp building. She may be a vacuous CGI character, but boy is she punctual. She prattles on about how much she loves Sinead and how reliable she is and how she’ll never abandon him even if he is possessed by a Kryptonian mass-murderer.

“Shut up a tick,” says The SS Zod/Sinead and kisses her (with tongue!), as we pull out to space to close on Superlad floating off into space in the cube-like confines of The Phantom Prison Interdimension Thing.

Pow! That’s a season finale for you. Let’s hope Superlad spends his time in The Naughty Phantom Prison Interdimension Thing wisely until next season, when this entire mess will no doubt be effortlessly undone by the all-powerful Smallville writing stuff.

Discuss this episode at Kryptonsite

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