THE SMALLVILLE FILES SEASON 6
Score: 8.1 / 10 
18: Ooh, And It Makes Me Wonder
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.
We start, somewhat bizarrely, twelve years ago, in Season, uh, Negative-Six. Lil' TIAC comes in to see her mother, Lynda 'Wonder Woman' Carter. TIAC, already quite annoying, is comforted by Wonder Woman, who tells her that she (Wonder Woman) has to go away to the madhouse for a while.
"When are you coming back?" asks Lil' TIAC.
"You fool child. People don't come back from the madhouse," replies Wonder Woman. "Now go play with my magic lasso."
That's enough madhouse nostalgia. Let's zip back to Season Six, where Sinead is driving along, without a care in the world, as if it's Season Two or something. He flips through the radio stations, searching desperately for a station playing Mambo Number Five, before giving up, annoyed.
But if he can't wallow in nostalgia one way, he's going to wallow in another. For suddenly he's run off the road by some crazed lunatic.
Oh, vehicular mayhem. How we've missed you. But who is responsible for running him off the road in such dangerous fashion? Why, TIAC, of course. She hits him with a stick, steals his portable hard drive and charges into the opening credits.
Next morning, TIAC wakes up to discover mud all over her freshly drycleaned floor. Superlad shows up.
"You're a grot, TIAC," he says.
"All I remember was doing the dishes, then the next thing I know I was waking up in bed."
"Nothing's gonna get that mud out now."
"Should have vacuumed first," suggests Superlad. He looks down and tsks. Nothing's gonna get that mud out now.
"This isn't the first time this has happened," continues TIAC. "The other day I was working on my computer and then, boom, I woke up the next morning."
"Mmmm?" says Superlad, too busy kneeling down and peering at the carpet to listen. "Do you have any white vinegar?"
But there's no time for Superlad's fermented racism. Instead, while TIAC drones on about how she's worried she might be manifesting kryptovillain tendencies, let's slip over to stately Luthor Mansion.
On second thoughts, let's not. It's just Lana being pitiful, demanding a complete checkup to find out why she's always miscarrying, and Sinead coming up with bogus explanations as to why he's got visible head wounds (he claims it's from a 'jousting mishap').
Superlad and TIAC have by now stopped off at the abandoned Sineadmobile. The Lazy Smallville Cops are investigating whether it might have been involved in a Season Four accident.
Superlad and TIAC get to work. And by that, of course, we mean that TIAC tells Superlad what to do with his immense array of super-abilities, and he does so, without any of his lip. First he listens in on a phone call and discovers that Sinead's fretting about his missing portable hard drive. Then, crucially, he discovers a button at the scene of the crime.
"That's my button," says TIAC, for she labels everything. "I must have been the one who ran Sinead off the road."
"That doesn't make sense," says Superlad, despite the fact it self-evidently does.
"Do the math, Superlad!" says TIAC, as we do a mid-sentence cut to a scene of them arriving back at her apartment. "The muddy boots, the button, my blankout..."
"What's that got to do with math?" says Superlad. And it's a reasonable question.
But TIAC finds the portable hard drive hidden under her bed.
"That doesn't prove a thing!" says Superlad, not breaking stride.
It's too late, though. For, TIAC's plugged it into her laptop and has already discovered that it's a file on a freak who can control all the other freaks and make them do her bidding. She (TIAC) surmises that this freak must have controlled her and forced her to run Sinead off the road and steal the portable hard drive. Also, the freak is her mother.
"I still don't see what this has to do with math," says Superlad.
Meanwhile, Sinead's confronting TIAC's mother, who is locked sensibly away in one of the Luthor Handi-Prisons at Level 33.1.
"You're a meteor freak who can control other meteor freaks," says Sinead.
"Nuh-uh," says Wonder Woman.
"Are too."
"Am not."
And so forth for several very long minutes.
TIAC and Superlad have now made their way to Wonder Woman's madhouse for a visit.
"Hi, I'm TIAC. I'm here to see Wonder Woman."
"I thought I told you yesterday that you were never to return here," says the snooty maitre'd (who is so snooty that he refuses to explain why a madhouse even has a maitre'd).
"That's where you're wrong," says Superlad. "TIAC hasn't bothered visiting her mother for months. Do the math!"
"Your friend came here yesterday and caused a ruckus."
"Ruckus?" says TIAC.
"A hullabulloo."
"In that case," says Superlad. "I bid you good day, sir." And they leave, but not before Superlad steals some video footage at superspeed.
The pair of them watch it and see that the maitre'd was not fibbing in any sense. TIAC did create one enormous hullabulloo, ruckusing up the place, bitch-slapping doctors, knocking over bottles of pills and forging prescriptions like a total miscreant.
"Wow," says Superlad. "They're never going to take your mother back after all that."
TIAC just raises an eyebrow. Her mother believes she has an invisible freakin' jet. She gets a free pass back to the madhouse any time they feel like rescuing and returning her.
By now, of course, Sinead's managed to manoeuvre Wonder Woman into a situation where a kryptofreak is hurling metallic furniture at her. "I suggest you control him and make him stop," says Sinead.
"Good thinking, " says Wonder Woman. She holds up a hand. "Stop!" she commands. He does so. "Sit!!" And he does so again. "Roll over." But no dice with this third command, because hey, even kryptofreaks have some dignity.
Sinead's seen enough, however. He asks Wonder Woman to control an escaped krypto-psychopath and order him back into the prison cell.
"Not gonna do it," says Wonder Woman, being contrary just for the hell of it.
"Please," says Sinead, for manners cost nothing.
"Okay," says Wonder Woman. But she gives the krypto-psychopath the special bonus mental command of not just returning home, but also killing Sinead when he gets there. So, probably not what the bald fella had in mind.
Still, crazy krypto-psychopath returns and bursts into the mansion, where he beats the snot out of Lana. He hadn't been ordered to do this, but, gee, it's hard to resist, isn't it? Superlad and TIAC show up. Superlad throws the krypto-psychopath against the wall, before taking Lana off to the hospital. They've put fresh wallpaper on her ward, so that's nice. TIAC stays behind to bond with the krypto-psychopath over being mentally controlled by Wonder Woman.
"He tells Wonder Woman that ... he's going to, like, totally wail on TIAC's butt, old school."
Sinead hears about Lana being attacked by the krypto-psychopath and is left with no choice but to feign husbandly concern. He tells Wonder Woman that, as a result of her infernal treachery, he's going to, like, totally wail on TIAC's butt, old school.
Wonder Woman is unsure what that means, so Sinead repeats it in 1970's slang.
Sinead, polyglot.
Superlad and TIAC have met back up at the barn. The krypto-psychopath has told TIAC the location of Wonder Woman and the rest of the kryptofreaks, but before the pair of them can head off to bust her out, Wonder Woman does some more of her blasted mental controlling, ordering TIAC to flee Smallville.
Superlad refuses to allow her. "You have a contract! You can't just leave the show," he says. "There are plot threads to tie up. Character arcs to conclude. Storylines to resolve in a satisfying manner! For Krypton's sake, TIAC, if you go, they'll bring back Pete!"
TIAC doesn't have time to deal with Superlad's panic over the future of the show. It's much too late to be worrying about satisfying conclusions to its run. Instead, she breaks into one of Bo's old kryptonite cupboards and knocks Superlad to the ground with it. "Sorry, Superlad," she says, and leaves, while he just wonders why they don't put a lock on that freakin' cupboard, already.
TIAC's attempts to abandon the show are circumvented, however, by a pair of lawyers at the edge of the set. They inform her that her contract is 100% binding and then knock her unconscious. This is standard Hollywood procedure.
She wakes up in a cell with her mother. They embrace and reminisce and the like. Wonder Woman tells us all about how she once made Lil' TIAC scrub her hands raw, presumably as punishment for being so very, very annoying. I have no idea why this was deemed in any sense relevant.
Despite this, they come up with a plan to break out. Namely, Wonder Woman will feign death and when the guards come to investigate, TIAC will grab an item of clothing from Metal Furniture Throwing Kid, throw it to Wonder Woman, who will then order him to knock out the guards and lead them to freedom with his enormous furniture-hurling might.
Meanwhile, Senator Boring Old Ma has returned home to find Superlad dying of kryptonite poisoning in the kitchen. "If I've told you once, Superlad Kent," she scolds. "I've told you a thousand times. The kryptonite cupboard is Out. Of. Bounds." She picks up the K and puts it back in the cupboard. "Now go play outside." And she shoos him off.
Needless to say, TIAC's escape plan is a shambles. Sure, it works for a bit. But then some other guards simply zap Metal Furniture Throwing Kid into unconsciousness. So that's less than ideal. TIAC runs off, as Wonder Woman orders her to 'do whatsoever she must in order to escape, be it via means both fair and foul'.
Somehow, TIAC takes this overly wordy mental command to mean she should shoot Sinead in the head. Fortunately, Superlad shows up at that precise moment and pushes Sinead out of the path of the bullet and whisks everybody to safety.
That's more or less where we end it. Wonder Woman slowly returns to a catatonic state (although this may just be Lynda Carter's acting), because Sinead's anti-catatonic drugs last only twenty-four hours. "I'll get the drugs from somewhere else," vows TIAC. "I have some pretty amazing resources at my disposal." And she looks meaningfully at Superlad. "Dude, I'm a super-powered love machine, not a research chemist," he says.
Oh, and Lana doesn't even thank the doctor for sprucing up her ward. So he retaliates by telling her she was never even pregnant. So there! Do the math!
Next time: Superlad and Sinead team up to save one another's lives. Just like the good old days.
Discuss this episode at Kryptonsite
Begone,
blog comments powered by Disqus
This here item has so far scored 8.1 / 10 on the patented Astonishing Tales Funny-o-meter.
If it should be higher, click the green arrow:
And if you think it should be lower, try the red one:
To receive this kind of stuff via a convenient regular email, visit the subscription page
Or don't. I'm not the boss of you.
