THE SMALLVILLE FILES SEASON 6
Score: 7 / 10 
19: The Explodiest Smallville Ever!
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.
It's a beautiful morning to be wandering through a previously unmentioned underground labyrinth of tunnels hidden beneath Smallville and so, naturally enough, that's what Sinead and Porthos are doing.
As you'd expect, they combine their walk with their usual mutual underplayed sniping and lies. For example, Porthos takes a shot at Sinead becoming, y'know, an out of control crazed supervillain. In retaliation, Sinead claims he's building a water purification system. So we all have a laugh about that.
But the laughs are soon halted by the appearance of a crazy woman, who is welding without Sinead's approval.
"What are you doing down here, welding without my approval?" roars Sinead.
"I'm setting up a series of bombs that will make this the Explodiest Smallville Ever!" she claims.
And before either Porthos or Sinead can even begin to ponder whether that's what loyal viewers actually want, Crazy Explodin' Woman sets off one bomb, which blows up in the vicinity of Porthos, isolating him from the other two.
And then she clubs Sinead over the head and orders the opening credit to roll. Which they do, in typical toe-tapping fashion.
We emerge from them to find Senator Boring Old Ma and Superlad, who have been summoned to the tunnel by concerned ambulance officers and undecided voters.
Senator Boring Old Ma rushes over to Porthos, who is on both a stretcher and oxygen. "Senator Boring Old Ma," he says. "Sinead is trapped in the tunnel and is being held hostage by a crazy woman." He turns to Superlad. "You, Cheekbones--
"Superlad."
Porthos dismisses this with a wave of his hand. There is no time to waste on remembering people's names. "You have to rescue Sinead. He is working on some nefarious scheme down there."
"'Engh,' says Superlad, who had some serious barn moping planned."
"Engh," says Superlad, who had some serious barn moping planned.
"The crazy woman promises it will be the Explodiest Smallville Ever!"
"Then count me in!"
Down in the tunnels, Sinead has been bored to tears by the Crazy Woman telling him about her dreamy husband. "He's so awesome and Green Beret-y," she says. "And apparently kidnapped by Luthorcorp."
To which, Sinead lies about Luthorcorp's interests in human trafficking. More laughs for the viewers at home, but Crazy Woman doesn't find it quite so funny. She finds it even less funny when Sinead escapes from his handcuffs and tackles her to the ground, 'accidentally' shooting her in the process.
Out of spite, she sets off a whole heap of bombs to go off in twenty minutes. She could have set them off now, but that would have made for a short episode. So she just sets off one now, blowing herself to smithereens (well, some of her made it to Smithereens. Other parts of her ended up in different small towns across the country).
In the process of scattering herself across small-town America, the explosion also sends a whole heap of kryptonite flying about, which is bad news for Superlad, who'd shown up just at that precise moment (after stopping off for a doughnut on the way).
Back at the hospital, and Lana's shown up to make sure the hideous new wallpaper in her ward has been taken down. Senator Boring Old Ma confronts her.
"I'm so glad you're here. It'll mean so much to Porthos that you came to see him."
"Oh," says Lana. "Um, sure."
And Senator Boring Old Ma goes on to explain how if she (Senator Boring Old Ma) marries Porthos, then that will make Lana her step-daughter-in-law, which will make her and Superlad step-siblings-in-law and Superlad and Sinead step-brothers.
Lana, creeped out to the max by all this, decides to go talk to Porthos.
"Did you know about the fake pregnancy that Sinead inflicted on me?"
"Yes and no," says Porthos, playing for time.
Lana goes on to claim that, with Sinead trapped in the tunnel, she's now in charge of Porthos's medical decisions. Given that Porthos is both conscious and lucid, this seems an extraordinary miscalculation from the great man.
Medical staff come in and wheel Porthos away for surgery, so Lana heads out and claims a briefcase which had been found in Sinead's Porsche.
Back in the tunnels, and Superlad is helping Sinead out from beneath a pile of debris.
"What are you doing here?" says Sinead.
"I could ask you the same question," says Superlad.
"But you didn't."
"Toupee."
"That's touche, you dumb lunk," says Sinead. "This whole tunnel system is set to detonate in fourteen minutes."
"Well, that sucks."
Back at the mansion, Lana has returned with the briefcase. She puts on a CD (Music To Shoot Briefcases By) and shoots it to pieces.
Take that, you stupid briefcase!
In the tunnels, it turns out Superlad's bleeding from a shrapnel hit. Sinead finds this troubling.
"How come you're bleeding from this shrapnel?" he says. "I find this troubling. When I stabbed you with a chisel a few episodes back, it damn well ruined the thing."
"Bo always bought cheap chisels," says Superlad. "Penny wise, chisel foolish. That was our Bo."
Then the pair of them bicker about their past. Sinead's pissed about Superlad hiding secrets from him. How Superlad never trusted him. How nothing Sinead ever did was good enough for him.
Superlad's pissed because Sinead's building an army of kryptovillains.
So they both have legitimate points of view.
And, of course, trapped in a tunnel with bombs set to detonate in less than ten minutes is the best time to sort out such issues. Focuses the mind, y'see.
Sinead crawls through a space to another section of the tunnel with much better lighting as things collapse and explode all over the place. Superlad hesitates because there's kryptonite everywhere. But after sufficient taunting from the bald fella, he clambers through.
They then stop to discuss another recent episode, the wedding one.
"Lana was, like, totally going to leave you at the altar, dude," says Superlad.
"Nuh-uh."
"What'd you do to make her go through with it?"
"I don't know," says Sinead. "The answer must have gotten lost in that dark abyss you call my soul."
He turns to the writers and glares at them. Nobody should be forced to deliver lines that bad.
They chat some more about friendships and whether or not they were ever friends. "Somewhere along the line," says Sinead. "You turned your back on me." And he demonstrates by turning his back on Superlad.
Superlad is immediately crushed by exploding debris. Sinead decides that's a fitting conclusion to this awful scene. He wanders off.
"Don't leave me here!" says Superlad. "I hate bad writing too!!"
By now, Lana has popped a CD she found in the dead briefcase into her CD player. When that didn't work, she put it in the computer and found that it contained footage of a woman being butchered by a Phantom Zone monster. She immediately calls TIAC so she can help her upload it to YouTube.
TIAC has, of course, read the script and discovered that there's kryptonite all through the tunnels. So when Lana's all 'hey, it's Superlad' overconfident about the likelihood of Sinead and Superlad escaping, TIAC puts her in her place.
"I don't know what you think you know about Superlad," she says. "But he's not invincible. He has weaknesses. And he will die if we don't find a way in soon."
"Okay," says Lana, and she logs onto Sinead's computer and prints out a map of the tunnels.
"Exactly when did you learn how to pole-vault over Sinead's firewall?" asks TIAC.
"Wedding night," says Lana.
TIAC looks at the printouts. "Aw, come on, Lana. You were sitting on the holy grail all morning, and you didn't tell anyone!"
"I thought it was a hemorrhoid."
"I thought it was a hemorrhoid."
By now, Sinead has returned to rescue Superlad from the remnants of the previous awful scene. He's brought a rescuing stick and a fresh guilt trip about how Superlad doesn't know him at all. But there's no time for more chit-chat. With things exploding all around them, they run through the tunnels, up a ladder, past some ninja turtles and, despite a half-assed fall from Sinead, out the tunnel as everything goes kablooey!
Ambulances show up, along with some lazy Smallville cops. Lana runs to Superlad and hugs him, before Sinead coughs and points to the marriage certificate tattooed on the base of her spine.
And there we have it. If not the Explodiest Smallville Ever, then certainly top five. There's still a bit of closure to go through. Porthos takes Lana aside and explains to her about how Sinead is totally evil and planning something terrible to bring down Superlad in the season finale, so she has to stick close to Sinead to help him (Superlad).
Lana and Sinead then have it out about, y'know, the whole wedding day jitters thing. Lana spews forth an overly elaborate lie about her imaginary pregnancy. It's far too intelligent a move to spring from Lana's fool mind, so it's fair to assume Porthos coached her.
And Superlad comes to the conclusion that he's been too harsh on Sinead and how the tunnels probably were a water purification plant all along. Senator Boring Old Ma snorts with derision at his naivete. Superlad doesn't understand. (Superlad: "But haven't you given Porthos a second chance??" Senator Boring Old Ma: "I wouldn't trust Porthos with a ten-inch pole." Superlad: "Don't you mean a ten foot pole?" Senator Boring Old Ma: "I know what I mean.")
Next time: Back to the '40s. Because, y'know, last time they did an episode set in the past, it worked out beautifully.
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Begone,
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