THE SMALLVILLE FILES SEASON 6
Score: 8.2 / 10 
17: Lois In A Red Leather Jumpsuit!
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.
There seems remarkably little to say about this particular episode. Even by Smallville standards, it was an episode displaying scant plot worth recounting.
But you're not here to listen to me bitch about the plotless nature of the show, are you? Of course not. You can do that yourself - you are, after all, not a child (unless you are. In which case, stay in school!)
So, here goes: the Kryptonian gets into a fight with a Phantom Zone wrestler. He beats the snot (and life) out of him (eventually). Lana loses the baby (she thinks she might have left it in the salon). Lois wears some kind of red leather jumpsuit thing. Hardly enough to pad out to forty-two minutes, I'd have thought. So let's pull back the curtain and see how they did it.
Firstly, rather than come up with a fresh pre-opening credits sequence, they simply stole a bit of footage from just before the 'climax' of the episode and plonked it straight in there. This adds an element of, whatchacallit, dramatic tension to the episode. We know what we've got coming (ie the shitfight between Superlad and the Phantom Zone Wrestler), let's see how we got there.
Also, three (3) minutes of padding.
After the credits, we go back in time two days to see how we got to this thrilling climax. Senator Boring Old Ma's giving Superlad grief about bringing criminals to justice in his spare time. "Don't you have chores?" seems to be the gist of her argument.
"Yep," says Superlad. "Done 'em. Now, enough lip from you. GA has given me a tip on more criminal goings-on. I'm off to rectify it."
"'GA's back?' says Senator Boring Old Ma, hips involuntarily swaying."
"GA's back?" says Senator Boring Old Ma, hips involuntarily swaying.
"No," says Superlad, dashing the hopes of female viewers everywhere.
Senator Boring Old Ma swears beneath her breath. "Fine then, let's talk about Lana and Sinead's wedding. I know that's really what's troubling you."
"Do you think people tune in to watch me whine endlessly about Lana?!" says Superlad, flicking a thumb to Camera Two. "No. They tune in to watch me fight wrestlers. So I'm off to the next scene."
The next scene has TIAC and Superlad watching a big, scary-looking wrestler (who, in real life, I believe, goes by the monicker of 'Kant' - take that intelligentsia!) beating the veritable criminy out of some poor schmo.
"A Fight Club-esque show on the internet?!" says TIAC. "Why doesn't anybody know about this?"
"It's password-protected," says Superlad. "GA gave it to me."
"GA's here?" says TIAC, head whirling around, cricking her neck badly.
"No," says Superlad.
"Oh," says TIAC. She turns back to the monitor. "I mean, sure, password protection and that. But you'd have thought somebody would have hacked the passwords, uploaded it to Youtube, and Dugg it to worldwide infamy."
"Only geeks use Digg, TIAC," says Superlad.
TIAC subtly minimises her browser. Meanwhile, Kant has defeated his foe. The screen begins to flash 'Live' or 'Die'. The web poll is only open for a few seconds, but that's enough for the votes to come in. The results? 'Die', of course. Kant kills him.
"Oh my god!" says TIAC.
Superlad smiles grimly. "I don't believe it."
"Yes," says TIAC. "This password truly is unbreakable. And it's also impossible to capture this streaming video to hard drive and store it anywhere. This is some security."
"Couldn't you just point, like, a video camera at the monitor?" says Superlad.
Before TIAC can rubbish this idea with her usual talk of 'frame rates' and 'digital rights management', we're off to Luthor Mansion.
Lana's being a snooty bitch. No surprises there. Sinead tries to cheer her up by drugging her and pointing out there is no escape from the loveless marriage in which they are embroiled.
Doesn't work.
We leave this marital bliss to go back to TIAC, who has finished droning on about the technological difficulties of recording the web video. Instead, she tells Superlad that the obvious connection to the Fight Club is some doctor from Belle Reve Mental Institution.
She gibbers some explanation for this plot point, but I didn't care enough to pay attention to it. Instead Lois comes in, claiming she needs a story for her newspaper, or else she's going to get downsized.
"Ouch!" says Superlad.
"Well, you can't have this one," says TIAC, covering the monitor with her hands. "It's mine. And don't go snooping in the bin where I threw vital printouts that will lead you straight to the Fight Club."
"I've got an idea," says Superlad. "Why don't you have a shower?"
Superlad, eyes on the ratings as always.
He and TIAC leave. Lois picks the vital printouts out of the bin. She heads straight to the Fight Club.
But, y'know, not before changing into that red leather jumpsuit thing we discussed earlier. Some woman with equally large snorkers (and by 'equally large', I mean 'as large as Lois's'. Y'know, rather than 'both her snorkers are as large as one another'. Although that's true also. I digress...), who we saw in the pre-opening credits sequence, stops her.
"Whatchu doing here, all clad in red leather?" says Snorkers.
"I'm a stripper," says Lois, without hesitation and despite her shambolic strip career in an earlier episode. "I just came in to get some water for my radiator."
"That must be some act," says Snorkers.
"Yeah, well... Hey! Let's make out!"
"Yeah, well... Hey! Let's make out!"
And they lean in for an inexplicable kiss. Which is aborted at the last second. So they fight instead. Lois eventually beats Snorkers, before some dude comes out with a gun and locks her in a cage.
Swear to god! That all happened.
Back at the mansion, Sinead logs into his security system, which covers Luthorcorp bases everywhere. One of them is 'compromised'.
"GA?" says Sinead, excitedly. He Alt-Tabs to the video footage for that base. He sees a masked dude with a crossbow shoot out the camera. He sighs. That could have been anybody.
He slams the laptop shut and checks his watch. Yep. Time for Lana to lose the baby. He finds her collapsed on the ground. So he whisks her off to the Lana Ward at the hospital where they confirm that, yep, that baby's been lost.
Which is weird, because a few episodes ago, Lana was falling through the freaking roof of the mansion, without any harm being done to the baby whatsoever. Frankly, I'm beginning to suspect there never was a baby, and that Lana maybe had some kind of tummy-ache.
Over to Belle Reve, and Superlad has managed to talk his way into joining the Fight Club. And, by 'talking', I mean, of course, he strangled the Fight Club recruiter dude and threw him against the wall.
When that still didn't work, he caught a bullet shot by the Fight Club dude - a trick he picked up from reading old Watchmen comics.
The Fight Club Dude, also a fan of the Watchmen, then immediately enlisted him into his portfolio of fighters via an absurd handshake.
First fight: Lois.
And we're back more or less where we began. Superlad and Lois circle one another for a bit, making with the trash talk. Eventually, Lois punches Superlad in the gut, breaking her hand in about thirty places. Superlad decides to just heat vision the bejeezus out of everything, which, naturally, gets Kant in the mood for some wrasslin'!
Kant breaks out of his cage, kills Fight Club Dude and starts brawling with Superlad. Lois, by this stage, has fallen conveniently unconscious.
Fight, fight, fight. Wrestle, wrestle, wrestle. Kick, kick, kick. Eventually, Superlad wins. "Good fight, Superlad," says Kant. And dies.
And there we have it. A few final minutes of padding remain. Sinead shreds and burns all of Lana's medical records in his convenient fireplace shredder. Superlad, meanwhile, mopes about all the Phantom Zone people he has no choice but to kill, which seems valid, but then he segues into yet another whine about Lana marrying Sinead. "Dude, give it up," says Senator Boring Old Ma. And for once she has a point.
Next time: Lynda 'Wonder Woman' Carter. Say. No. More.
Discuss this episode at Kryptonsite
Begone,
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