THE SMALLVILLE FILES SEASON 6
Score: 7 / 10 
20: You Still Can't Spell Smallville Without 'Vile'
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.
If you, as a drug-addled Smallville fan, have been clamouring for some kind of black and white dream sequence featuring Jimmy-James Olsen as a gritty 1940s detective, trying to unravel a vexing mystery that features noirish versions of all our favourite Smallville characters (plus Lana), then this is the episode for you.
The rest of us will, of course, just have to muddle on through.
We begin in the present, with Jimmy-James and TIAC settling in for a night of watching old movies deep in the bowels of Daily Planet Rebel Headquarters.
TIAC claims, ludicrously, that Jimmy-James is the best boyfriend a girl could have.
Jimmy's response is to claim that TIAC is also the best boyfriend a girl could have.
So nobody's thought this through one iota.
Their viewing of the movie is suddenly interrupted by a gunshot.
"Blast and bother!" exclaims Jimmy-James. He'd been enjoying the movie, lip-synching where appropriate (ie in the scenes with Milli Vanilli).
"Enough of your cussing, Jimmy-James," says TIAC, who'd been enjoying the movie somewhat less (ie due to the scenes with Milli Vanilli). "There's gunplay afoot."
They run to the elevator to find Lana there. She is unconscious and has been shot in the shoulder (ouch!).
"Lana can never die"
Is she dead? Ha ha ha! You naive young fool of a reader. Of course she's not dead. She's Lana. Lana can never die.
As proof of this, she's shipped straight off to the Lana Ward shortly after the opening credits. Superlad comes scurrying in past the assorted emergency medicos and beauticians. TIAC whisks him away.
Jimmy-James is taking photos of the scene. Just because he can.
Meanwhile, Porthos and Sinead discuss Lana's shooting. Turns out Porthos had taken Lana to the opera.
"Lana doesn't like the opera," says Sinead. "She gets a headache from all the Italian."
"Ciao calvo," says Porthos, and scurries off.
Lois is also there. She's doing her usual thing, flirting with police officers, tampering with a crime scene, flashing dimples both willy and nilly. She also steals Lana's cigarette case. Awesome! She'd had her eye on that for ages.
TIAC, Jimmy-James and Superlad have meanwhile sprung into action (after getting a sandwich). "You. Shorty," says TIAC, pointing at Jimmy-James. "You go download the photos from your camera. There may be a clue there. I'll do something geeky on a computer."
"What about me?" says Superlad.
"You do that thing you do where you run around, looking incredibly buff."
"Rightey-o!" says Superlad. And off he shoots. TIAC gazes wistfully at him as he runs off like an idiot.
Jimmy-James has by now had his photo-downloading interrupted with a thwack on the scone by some miscreant. Needless to say, he wakes up in the 1940s. Kryptonite's probably to blame for this, somehow.
So we have the previously discussed dream sequence. Jimmy-James is a star reporter, trying to solve, with the 'assistance' of TIAC, the mystery of Lana Luthor's impending murder, but, in the process, accidentally shooting Sinead in the rain (ouch!), because he'd been having an affair with Lois, who was some god-awful singer at a bar owned by Porthos, which was frequented by Superlad who had, in turn, been having an affair with Lana, which was why Sinead was going to murder her, except he was, in fact, merely going to divorce her, until Jimmy-James shot him for the hell of it, which was exactly what Lana wanted in the first place.
This is clearly Unparodyable.
So let's pick back up after we come out of that sequence, yeah?
TIAC rouses Jimmy-James from his noir slumber. His dream has given him the clue to unravel the mystery of Lana being shot in the present (ouch!)
"What if Lana's not as innocent as she seems?" says Jimmy-James.
"Well, she was guilty of some godawful acting in that dream sequence you just had," says TIAC.
"No. What if she's... a smoker!" And he reveals the photo of her cigarette case.
TIAC sets him straight. Lana's not a smoker. The cigarette case clearly contains some vital clue instead.
"Right," says Jimmy-James, not missing a beat. "She must have come here to visit some other reporter and he must have shot her because he wanted a cigarette."
"Sure," says TIAC. Whatever. "The elevators in this building have a memory, so it can tell us what floor it was on before Lana was shot."
"A memory and vocal cords," muses Jimmy-James. "Modern technology is awesome!"
TIAC is now totally ignoring him. She hacks into allworldelevators.com and finds where that particular elevator was on the night of the shooting. The pair of them head down to confront the only reporter who was on the floor at the time of the murder (thanks to allworldreporters.com).
"We believe Lana was with you last night when she was shot."
"I've never met her," says Suspicious Reporter.
"Oh!" says Jimmy-James. "Then ten thousand apologies to you and your heirs." He bows and goes to leave. But TIAC is not so easily swayed by Suspicious Reporter's smooth tonguework. She rattles off a litany of other evidence against Suspicious Reporter which cast extreme doubt over his claims. "Yeah!" says Jimmy-James, suddenly full of impudence and tequila.
Suspicious Reporter agrees that yes, he did knock Jimmy-James unconscious, but no, he didn't shoot Lana and no, he had no idea that his blow to Jimmy-James' head would render half the episode a moronic dream sequence. "I would never have done that if I'd known."
But it's too late. The confession of his part in the dream sequence has pissed off somebody. Both big-time and old-school. They shoot him through the window (ouch!).
"I'll get him!" says Jimmy-James, with drunken bravado. He races after the gunman. "Call 911!" he yells back.
911? thinks TIAC. Prrftt. That's not Superlad's number.
By now, Jimmy-James is out with the gunman who appears to have taken a vow of anti-gunmanship in the last two minutes and who, as a result, is now locked in a brawl with Jimmy-James.
TIAC tries to help, but this is man-fighting, so she's immediately knocked down a well. No, not a well. The other one. A staircase. She plummets in slo-mo until Superlad catches her.
Jimmy-James runs down to her. Superlad scarpers before he shows. "Oh my god!" says Jimmy-James. "Why aren't you dead? You just fell thirty feet!"
"She kisses him and pushes her breasts against his chest"
"Ha ha ha ha!" says TIAC. She kisses him and pushes her breasts against his chest, so that's the end of questions on that score.
Back at Lois's apartment, Porthos has made himself comfortable, sitting on a couch in the dark. He confronts Lois when she returns and demands Lana's cigarette case back.
"Smoking is a health hazard!" he admonishes. He opens the case to find a USB drive inside. "Well, well, well," he says. "You can't smoke these. Believe me, I've tried." He chuckles with fond reminiscence about his days as a 'stoner'.
"There's nothing on it," says Lois. "I've looked."
"You have to plug it into a computer," says Porthos, and demonstrates with a convenient laptop.
"Ah," says Lois.
They watch it together. It's video footage of Sinead foreshadowing the season finale with some tedious Senator. Porthos fumes. There's only one Luthor intimately involved with a tedious Senator on this show. And that's him. He makes some passing threat to Lois as he leaves, because that's how Luthors bid farewell.
And that's about it. We check in on the Lana Ward just to confirm Lana's still alive. She is. She's hesitant to reveal to TIAC what's going on. (Lana: "It's complicated" TIAC: "I'm a quick learner" Lana: "I'm working with Porthos to protect Superlad" TIAC: "I don't understand" Lana: "Oh, for fuck's sake")
Easily one of the all-time stupidest episodes of Smallville. I have no idea why they thought this was a good idea. Wasn't Jor-El shagging Lana's aunt while hand-jiving at the sockhop that time enough for all the Smallville-watching history buffs?
Next time: Sinead's building a super-soldier. I sure hope it's Captain America.
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Begone,
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