THE SMALLVILLE FILES SEASON 5
Score: 7.2 / 10 
6: Lois As A Stripper!
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.
Riddle me this: How can an episode of Smallville that contains no Lana, no Boring Old Ma, a Duke brother reunion and Lois as a stripper go wrong?
Answer: This very episode.
Sorry to come over all Riddler there on y'all, but I feel it was the only accurate way to express my disappointment at this episode. (Also, note to Smallville writers: Superlad vs The Riddler! Get on it.)
Anyway. Let's see what happened.
TIAC and Lois are playing Doom at Rebel Headquarters at The Daily Planet. Suddenly TIAC gets a call from a dying stripper.
"Please help me," says the stripper. "He's going to run me over in a car."
"Rightey-o," think Lois and TIAC and after they finish their current level and set a restore point, they head off to meet the stripper who is run over by a car, which drives off dangerously.
We segue neatly to a dangerously driven car driving up to the Kent Farm. Could this be the same car that killed the dead stripper? No. It is, in fact, the car of Senator Luke Duke, Bo's cousin.
Senator Luke Duke and Farmer Bo tease one another with affection for a bit, then without affection and finally indulge in a manly fist fight.
"Hey, son," says Bo. "Why don't you run off to Metropolis for the weekend? Senator Luke and I want to relive our wild youth, maybe jump some hookers and sleep with bridges that are out."
"But Lana is busy this weekend studying astrophysics."
Bo gives Superlad a whuppin' for lying in such an overt fashion. "At least make it plausible, son!" but then permits him to stay and listen to his Uncle Senator Luke tell him about how Sinead is running for Senate and is therefore framing Senator Luke for hanging out with strippers and running them down in cars.
"No harm in running people down in cars," says Bo. "We used to do it all the time!"
"Yeah, but I'm a Senator now," says Senator Luke Duke. "The party frowns upon such things."
"This is why the two-party political system doesn't work!!"
"This is why the two-party political system doesn't work!!" exclaims Superlad.
"Enough of your political lip, son," says Bo, and makes Superlad fetch another beer for him and Luke and also the Metropolis policeperson who has just shown up at the door to show everybody a photograph of Senator Luke hanging out with a 20 year old stripper.
"This is clearly Photoshopped!!" says Bo, savvy in such matter from his hours at the computer morphing Boring Old Ma's head onto Lois's body. And, indeed, vice versa. "You tell Sinead to shove this %##!-ing photograph up his @$#@-ing **#@-hole."
Bo, very drunk now.
So Superlad pops over to visit Sinead before the old man gets out the Kryptonite.
"Have you seen this photo?" he says. "And are you also running for Senator? And also are you using this photo to sling mud at my Uncle Senator Luke Duke?"
"Woo!" says Sinead. "She's hot. And yes. And no."
This three-pronged answer is too much for Superlad, so Sinead instead gives him a pass to a Metropolis strip club where he can give his brain a rest.
Well, okay. Perhaps friendship renewed.
Meanwhile, of course, it goes without saying that Lois and TIAC have muddled their own way into the strip club and also that Lois has (ha ha ha!) been confused for a stripper and therefore must go out and pole dance.
She does so. Superlad sees her and looks away, embarrassed by her inability to dance. Also, his enormous erection. This continues for a few rating points and then the police bust in and arrest everybody. Somehow in the confusion Lois is taken away by an evil foreign diplomat.
Back at the farm, Senator Luke Duke and Bo have gotten sufficiently drunk to go for a drive over to Boss Hogg's house (now 94, blind and riddled with kryptonite poisoning - Boss Hogg, that is, not his house) and perform donuts on his front garden.
As they drive, Senator Luke starts telling Bo about his mid-life crisis and how he no longer loves his wife but instead a 20 year old stripper.
"Can't say I blame you," says Bo. "Why do you think I've insisted that Lois chick sleep under our roof for whichever plots call for it?"
They laugh and chug moonshine. Senator Luke goes all serious.
"But no, I'm serious," he says. "I love her. And now she's dead. And now I'm being framed for it and probably will no longer be a Senator."
"Hey, can you still climb in through the car window without opening the door?"
"Sure can," says Senator Luke, and demonstrates.
"Kick-oo!" says Bo.
And so forth.
Sinead has now intervened with the massively corrupt Metropolis police force and managed to get Superlad and TIAC off their 'hanging out at a strip club' rap.
"Hey," says TIAC. "We need to find Lois."
"We sure do," says Superlad, thinking back to her skimpy Stars and Stripes stripper outfit.
Lois has been taken back to her mysterious rescuer's apartment and invited to slip into something less slutty - ie one of several hundred identical slinky red dresses.
"Pay no attention to the shoe box containing pictures of the recently murdered stripper"
"Pay no attention to the shoe box containing pictures of the recently murdered stripper," he says.
"Okay," says Lois.
She slips on the red dress. He takes a photo of her. "You're awesomely hotter than all the rest of the strippers I've kidnapped and murdered," he says.
"Thanks," says Lois, blushing and dimple-flashing.
"You can't dance, but who cares?"
"What?!?" says Lois, exploding in fury and kicking him in the head with some of the patented Smallville Chick Kung Fu.
After beating him to a bloody pulp, she's then zapped by his bodyguard (who'd been previously occupied reading the latest issue of Cattle Prod Monthly) and taken to the roof and thrown in a helicopter.
Superlad and TIAC aren't far behind. That is to say, Superlad isn't far behind and TIAC's back at the Daily Planet functioning as the brains of the operation.
She goes to www.helipads.net and finds out that Lois is in the helicopter and tells Superlad to tackle the helicopter to the ground and beat everybody up. He does so. TIAC smiles and rubs her hands in puppeteering fashion. But then Lois's kidnapper is set free by the police because of that accursed diplomatic immunity. Damn diplomacy! Damn the lawlessness that international embassies provide!!
That's essentially it. Senator Luke Duke tells Bo that he's not going to run for Senate again. "You should do it, Bo," he says, slurring his words and urinating all over himself. "This state needs a man who has integrity, and honour and a regular role on the show."
"Also, a superpowered son," says Bo. He realises his mistake. "I mean, also years of experience in shooting a crossbow from the open window of a moving car."
"Exactly," says Senator Luke. He throws up and passes out. Bo giggles and goes for another drive to moon Uncle Jesse.
Superlad helps Lois (who has now put her clothes back on) move out of the farm and into Lana's old apartment above The Death Claw. TIAC writes a tiny story for The Daily Planet about why diplomacy doesn't work and why black ops CIA will always be needed and Sinead takes back his strip club card before giving Superlad a snooty lecture about heroics and why King David was actually a right bastard with too much hair for Sinead's liking.
A very bad episode. I still haven't quite figured out where, exactly, the writers went wrong. I think they got all the elements together (no Lana, no Boring Old Ma, a Duke brother reunion and Lois as a stripper) and then nobody actually got around to writing a story. Let that be a lesson to us all. Of, if not us all, at least the writers.
Next Week: Silver Kryptonite, anyone? Also, Lois does a Playboy shoot.
Begone,
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