THE SMALLVILLE FILES SEASON 6
Score: 8.1 / 10 
14: Look Who's Stalking
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.
For many seasons now we've put up with the world-class ineptitude of the Luthor security, who have shown themselves to be wholly incapable of preventing anybody from entering the mansion, be they meteor freak or Kryptonian or plain old pain in the asses like TIAC. But at last we get the chance to focus on the antics of this elite squad, thanks to the thrilling episode you have all over your hands.
We'll get to that in due course, of course. For now, we begin, disappointingly, with Lana. It's late night in the mansion and she's just run a brush through her hair one thousand times and examined Bo's old kryptonite chisel (from last episode) one hundred times. Suddenly, she receives an MMS on her phone. It's a picture of her, chisel in hand. "How delightfully self-referential," she thinks. "I can spend this whole episode watching this very episode on my phone. Won't that blow people's minds!?"
She runs out to tell Sinead about how self-referential this episode is going to be and how it will thrill fans of classical logic everywhere. "You fool bride!" exclaims Sinead. "There are no ratings in logic. I choose instead to believe you're being stalked by somebody who took a photo of you and sent it through."
"Well, I am insanely photogenic," says Lana, rubbing her beard in thought.
Sinead's not listening. He's summoned the security to investigate. A handful stumble up from their game of Hungry, Hungry Hippos™ and start running through the house, guns held idiotically at right angles.
"It's all clear," declares one of them, who goes by the name of Brady. I think it's safe to assume its Peter.
Despite this overly optimistic declaration, Sinead instantly spots the stalker's escape route, through an open window. "Check the roof!" he orders.
Peter Brady gulps. Climbing around on a roof in the dark? That's awfully dangerous.
He sends his underling (Bobby) to do it during the opening credits.
"It's all clear!" shouts Bobby, despite the fact he forgot a flashlight.
Sinead, buoyed by this, heads suddenly off to Rotterdam for no clear reason. TIAC and Lana agree to hang out at TIAC's place, where they discuss who the stalker might be. Lana also shows TIAC the picture of herself examining the kryptonite chisel. "I'm going to work out Superlad's secret by myself," she says.
TIAC completely fails to stifle her smirk. "You go, girl," she says.
"Your behaviour?" she says. "I query it."
Back at the barn, Superlad's doing his chores at something other than superspeed. Senator Boring Old Ma queries this behaviour. "Your behaviour?" she says. "I query it." So, once again, my filing accuracy is without peer.
Superlad explains how now that Lana and Sinead are getting married, the paparazzi will be out trying to photograph him.
"Son," says Senator Boring Old Ma. "I love you, but you really are obscenely full of yourself at times."
TIAC shows up and asks Superlad to call Jimmy-James to contact some sleazy photographer who she thinks took the photo of Lana. "I can't ask him myself because we broke up," she explains, despite nobody caring.
"Because of me, right?" says Superlad. He smiles. It's always all about him.
Back at TIAC's place, Lana's snooping around TIAC's laptop. She is stymied by TIAC's password, however, and gives up, because that's the quittin'-style for which she's renowned. Besides, it's time to be stalked again. This time, the stalker's left a gift. It's a beautiful padded sweatshirt. He's also left a card which says 'This is what I want you to wear... when I kill you'. Hallmark. Something for every occasion.
"Peter Brady!" she yells.
"It's all clear!" he declares.
Lana shows him the present. "Oh, I couldn't possibly accept this," he says. Lana clarifies where the present came from. Peter Brady checks out the box.
"It's all clear," he says.
They decide to move Lana to a safer location. They call Sinead for advice and he decrees that she be moved to the Armed Safe Room of his Secret Hideout, Beneath The Doughnut Shop, Luthorcorp Plaza, Metropolis. "No," says Lana. "That's just what they'll be expecting us to do. Let us instead move into the... Kent farm."
Because, y'know, nobody's going to suspect that.
Senator Boring Old Ma doesn't object to Lana showing up, commandeering her house and surrounding it with heavily armed, inept security guards. She may be a Senator, but she's still a doormat.
"It's all clear," says Peter Brady, having hastily checked the perimeter of the farm.
"Excellent," says Lana. "Now I'm going to take over Superlad's bedroom. Okay?"
"Uh, sure," says Senator Boring Old Ma. "If you don't mind the odour..."
Lana dismisses her with a wave of her hand, heads up to Superlad's room and commences a snoop-a-thon. She finds a photo of herself hidden at the bottom of a sock drawer. She picks it up, mistaking it for a mirror. I'm so pretty, she thinks.
She puts it back down and starts rifling through his cigar boxes. In there she finds that damned necklace she used to own. You can't smoke this, she thinks. That zany Superlad.
The phone rings. It's that bloody stalker again.
"Peter Brady!" she yells.
This time he doesn't rush in and declare everything to be all clear. That's because he's dead! Or dying. Or something. Rather than let the dead Peter Brady take centre stage of the scene, Lana falls down the stairs. She wakes up in her hospital bed.
Dr Dullard declares her to be in 'tip-top shape', despite her fall. He also declares her baby in 'top-tip shape'. Then he gives her a sedative. No reason. He just likes his patients asleep. As long as they're asleep there's none of that 'doctor, I'm in agony' or 'should you be doing that?' or 'where's your medical degree?' talk.
By now Jimmy-James and Superlad have found their way into some sleazy photographer's place. They check out his carefully filed stalker photo CDs, which show the snaps he's taken while stalking Lana. These photos reveal that Lana, in turn, has been stalking Superlad. No word yet on who Superlad is stalking, but if it's the sleazy photographer, that would be neatly circular.
So Superlad zips back to the hospital in time to beat up the sleazy photographer. Bobby Brady rushes in. He sees Superlad.
"What are you doing here?" he says.
"Your job," says Superlad. Zing! "It's all clear," he adds, as further proof.
"Bobby Brady, pissed, shoots the photographer off-camera"
Bobby Brady, pissed, shoots the photographer off-camera. He claims the sleazy photographer had a piece hidden on him.
"A piece of what?" says Superlad.
But Bobby Brady refuses to clarify. He takes Lana back to the mansion where he sends the rest of the staff home in a completely unsuspicious manner.
Then he tells Lana that she's, like, totally pretty. Lana has no choice but to agree. "I am pretty," she says, thinking back to the mirror Superlad kept in a photo frame.
Bobby goes on to declare Sinead a dud boyfriend, Superlad a troublemaker and Lana sweet and too good to be a Luthor. Then he decides to murder her. So his head's all over the place.
Lana fails to run to the Panic Room, despite the countless hours of training for this very situation. Instead she clambers up to the roof. But Bobby's not deterred. He pursues her up there. But Peter's earlier fears about the dangerous nature of the roof prove to be not without merit. The pair of them fall through one of those skylight trapdoors and plummet to their death.
Except Lana, of course. She can't die. We know that. So instead Superlad has learned about her peril somehow (something to do with photos of Senator Boring Old Ma shagging Porthos in Metropolis instead of Smallville? I don't know. I'd completely lost interest by this point) and he catches her.
There's not much more after that. TIAC and Jimmy-James Olsen get back together after Superlad explains how he's only interested in TIAC as a friend. ("I'm way out of her league!" he says. "Yeah? Well, not me," says Jimmy-James.)
And we close with Sinead popping into the barn to deliver Superlad a) world-class snark and sarcasm and b) an invitation to the wedding.
"Don't look so surprised, Superlad," says Sinead, despite Welling's indeterminate expression. "We know if we don't invite you, you'll just crash the place and kidnap the bride anyway. That's you all over. At least this way, we get to choose where you're seated. Besides, I need you to fill out the numbers at the bucks' party."
And that's all. A dumb kinda episode. Far too much Lana for my liking and only a smattering of Luthor snark. I give this episode a C minus and look forward to next week, where hopefully the Lana appearance:Sinead snark ratio will be completely reversed.
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