THE SMALLVILLE FILES SEASON 5
Score: 7.6 / 10 
3: You'll Believe A Man Can Die
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.
So we begin with one of those rare emotionally troubled computer geeks. This one watched all of Season Four and did not enjoy it one bit. Magic stones? Lana as a witch?? A Porthos shower scene?!? Bleurgh. He's reacted to all this by breaking into a nuclear missile silo and priming the nuke to blow up all of Smallville in precisely one hour (44 minutes plus commercials).
Why wait an hour? Why not just send it off and blow Smallville to jonesereens without warning? Because he's got a thing for TIAC, that's why. So he calls her and says "Hey, TIAC. There's a nuke going to be landing in Smallville in an hour. I'd get out of there if I were you."
However (and here's the flaw in his plan) she's not him. So rather than, y'know, jumping in a car and driving off as far and as fast as she can, she instead heads over to visit Superlad. At 6:30am.
Superlad has woken up beside Lana. At the end of last week's episode, the two did the deed. Sacked Mrs Palmer. Landed a Kryptonian probe on Venus. Stopped being vampire fodder. You know what I'm talkin' about.
They wake up and panic. "Ew, ew, ew!" says Lana. "I have to get out of here." The two of them rush down the stairs and bump into Bo and Boring Old Ma.
"What are you doing here at 6:30am, Lana Lang?" says Boring Old Ma. Bo smoulders in the background.
"Before you get mad," says Lana. "I want you to know that this was a joint decision. If Superlad's going to get in trouble for deflowering me, then I should get in trouble too."
"Oh don't you worry about that," says Bo. "I've been whittling a whuppin' stick into the shape of your curvey butt for just this day."
Lana gulps. TIAC shows up. "There's a nuclear missile about to hit Smallville in forty-five minutes," she says.
"Oh, thank God," says Lana and gets out of there while everybody's distracted.
So then TIAC and Superlad and Bo and Boring Old Ma discuss their nuclear strategies.
"You and TIAC run around and try and stop this crazy geek," suggests Bo. "Your Ma and I will hide out in the bomb shelter."
"You do remember I no longer have powers, don't you?"
"You do remember I no longer have powers, don't you?" says Superlad.
"I've never had powers," points out TIAC.
"Well, perhaps you both should have thought of that before you had sex with Lana," scowls Bo. "Now, get to work. You have forty minutes." Bo and Boring Old Ma head off to the shelter.
"How are we going to stop this guy in forty minutes?" says TIAC. "Can't we just hide in the bomb shelter, too?"
"There is no bomb shelter," says Superlad. "There's just a half-assed hole with a tarpaulin over it."
Off they go. The problem is that there are approximately 1300 nuclear missile silos in the central business district of Smallville alone! Damn the cold war and associated arms race!
So they waste 20 minutes having a morning coffee, and come up with a new plan. TIAC will call the angry computer geek and pretend to have crashed her car (entirely plausible - this remains Smallville). He will come rescue her and then they'll know where he is (ie, with TIAC).
"Now," says TIAC. "Do you understand the plan? No matter what happens, you stay hidden and follow us back to the shelter then call the police who will put an end to this nuclear madness."
"Got it," says Superlad.
Geek comes roaring up. "Come on," he says. "Come back to the silo with me. You'll be safe there."
Superlad comes out. "Now listen here, young man. I don't know how you were raised but Bo taught me from a young age that dropping nuclear missiles on small towns is wrong. I don't care how poorly Season Four was executed. I don't care that you're tired of kryptovillains. I think you should take a step back and think about what you're doing. Is this--"
Geek has had enough and shoots Superlad in the lung. Even TIAC is forced to admit that this is fair enough.
There's now twenty minutes to nuclear explosions.
Within four minutes and despite nobody being in a position to report the shooting, Superlad has been scooped up and dumped into hospital. Bo and Boring Old Ma and Lana are all there.
"The bullet has pierced his lung," explains Dr Exposition.
"This is what happens when you have pre-marital sex like the filthy teenagers you are," says Bo to Lana.
Bo, puritan.
"One of the interns ... operates on Superlad and removes his appendix."
One of the interns at the hospital operates on Superlad and removes his appendix. She then wraps a bandage around him and advises him to drink plenty of fluids.
Lana comes in and lies to Superlad about how she's always loved him but always knew that one day he'd get shot by an enraged computer geek determined to drop a nuke on Smallville. And that was why she'd always resisted him. Superlad's seen the previous four seasons and knows these are just lies for the sake of it and so dies to teach her a lesson.
This somehow brings Porthos back to life. His eyes glow and he smashes out of the nuthouse and runs off at superspeed. And fair enough too.
Back at the hospital, Bo and Boring Old Ma and Lana are all crying about Superlad's death. "At least he died a man," says Lana, by way of consolation. Suddenly another doctor shows up and says that Superlad's body is missing.
"Yes, I thought it might be," says Bo, experienced in the Kansas health system.
Off to the Arctic where Porthos has taken Superlad. Superlad wakes up.
"Kal-El," says Porthos.
"How do you know that name?" says Superlad.
"Oh, I'm sorry," says Porthos. "I thought you were Nicolas Cage's kid."
So then there's inevitable confusion about reincarnation and bullet wounds and the plot of Con Air before Porthos sets things straight. Well, as straight as he can. Turns out Porthos is now possessed by the SS Jor-El. This was one of the SS Jor-El's thousands of back-up plans. Back on Krypton he used to sit around coming up with scenarios. ('Now, what if he's shot by a nuke-wielding geek while without superpowers?' Period of thought. 'In that scenario, I shall possess the father of his destined mortal enemy and return him to life. Yes, that works'. Scrawls notes.) People all over Krypton used to say 'Jor-El, dude. Can you stop with the contingency plans for a sec and just, y'know, put a stop to the whole planet exploding thing?' And he'd always fob them off and head off to Earth to shag Lana's great-aunt. But that's a completely different episode.
Anyhoo, short of the story is Superlad gets to live again, but to add artificial tension to this season somebody he loves will die in exchange. Porthos/SS Jor-El then tells him to go stop that nuke.
Because all of this has happened in less than forty minutes. Superlad runs back to Smallville, remembers he can fly, flies up to the nuke, remembers that he understands the mechanics of nuclear missiles, tears out the bomb and throws it out into space where it will undoubtedly smash free a Phantom Zone criminal or two. He then returns to the barn and gives a 'hey, guys, still alive' kinda salute to Bo and Boring Old Ma. Boring Old Ma hugs him tight while Bo heads off to get something to thrash him with. Everybody else may have forgotten in the face of the whole rebirth thing, but there was still sex in his house that Bo was not a part of, so there is still a whuppin' to be delivered.
"You got superpowers again, son?" says Bo.
"Yep."
Okay, back to the kryptonite whuppin' sticks then, thinks Bo.
And that's kinda that. An action-packed stupid episode. Flying and nukes and deaths and resurrections and post-coital whuppin's. What more can you ask for? A plot without loopholes?? Pshaw. Away with you. There's a few more scenes. Lana confronts Sinead. Tells him that Superlad's medical tests revealed him to be perfectly normal. So enough with your snooping, Mr Snoopy-Sinead. Sinead's response: *cough* Raised from the dead *cough*. Sinead and Porthos also do one of their lying scenes where they pretend to not know nothin' about nothin'. And Superlad's all morose about, y'know, the impending death of a loved one thing. I sure hope it's Good Ol' Pete, he thinks.
Next Week: Time for some Aquaman action! Y'know, if that's not a contradiction in terms.
Begone,
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