THE SMALLVILLE FILES SEASON 7
Score: 7.5 / 10 
6: Kara Crash!
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 have been terrible episodes of Smallville before. You know it. I know it. The whole freakin' planet knows it (even people in places that have never seen Smallville. That's how bad they've been). But I fear there has never been an episode as skull-bustingly dull as the one most recently foisted upon us.
"But how, Indy?" you cry. "Doesn't this episode feature guest star Ms Helen Slater, the star of 1984's Supergirl: The Movie?" How can her interaction with the current incarnation of Supergirl, aka Smallville's very own Super Blonde Hottie, be anything but riveting television of Emmy™-award winning quality?"
To which I reply, "Did any of you see Supergirl: The Movie? Or did you just stand in the video store, smiling goofily at the pretty girl on the poster?"
I digress. Let's stifle our yawns and get into this episode. It opens in, I dunno, Kandor, which is crumbling around Zor-El and SBH. They speak in stilted, expositionary dialogue, filling in new viewers with SBH's Story So Far (ie sent to Earth to rescue Baby Superlad, frozen in a lake (just like Gene Wilder!), freed from the lake only to find Superlad grown up and handsome as all get-out, vows to fly around the world looking for a crystal and showing off her midriff).
We are jolted awake by SBH, back in the present day, bumping into a plane in mid-air before flying off into the opening credits.
We rub our eyes and move into the episode. TIAC brings Superlad up to speed on SBH's collision with the plane. The pair of them look concerned and squabble about whether or not Superlad should be responsible for bringing her back to Smallville.
Suddenly, Jimmy-James Olsen rocks up. "Hey, either of you two seen SBH? Boy, is that girl scrumptious!" Which is insensitive and oafish even for a TIAC ex-boyfriend.
"... Superlad's Kryptonian glance gets much the better of the exchange rate ..."
Superlad and TIAC exchange glances (thanks to the falling US dollar, Superlad's Kryptonian glance gets much the better of the exchange rate).
"What's the matter?" says Jimmy-James. "You guys look weird."
Superlad snorts. "I don't look weird. I look buff." He flexes a bicep as he points to TIAC. "She looks a little weird, yes."
TIAC ignores Superlad's latest cruelty and explains to Jimmy-James that SBH is in Washington. Jimmy-James opines that she may well be doing 'the tourist thing'.
"Nobody does tourist's things on my watch," says Superlad.
"You don't even wear a watch," points out Jimmy-James.
"Wait a second," says TIAC. She stares at Jimmy-James. "You know something," she says, despite the evidence of the previous minute and a half of dialogue.
So Jimmy-James lets it be known that SBH is off to Washington to find the crystal that was stolen from her spaceship. Jimmy-James goes on to explain how he knows this, by recounting most of episode five in laborious detail.
We doze off for a bit and wake up to find Superlad and Porthos embracing awkwardly. Superlad lies to Porthos about which side of the family SBH comes from (he says she comes from the left-hand side of the family). Porthos responds with some hastily concocted lies of his own (some gibberish about protecting Superlad from the government).
We cut to a government lab where government scientists are studying SBH's crystal. Head Nerd Scientist reports on the chemical structure of the crystal.
"It contains beryllium, aluminium sulphate, traces of cocaine, recycled cardboard and... seven percent unknown."
"Well, that's ominous," says The Special Federal Agent In Charge Of Examining Extra-Terrestrial Crystals Recovered From Spaceships.
Before Head Nerd Scientist can explain to TSFAICOEETCRFS that the seven percent unknown portion of the crystal was due to him losing interest in analysing it, Sinead bursts in. He makes some ludicrous threats to TSFAICOEETCRFS (something about getting an easier to remember nickname) before storming back out again.
The whistle blows. "Yabba dabba doo!" shouts HNS, and he heads off to the pub to get wasted. SBH is waiting for him and effortlessly fogs up his glasses with her smoulderingly subtle seductive wiles.
"Want to do the nasty?" says SBH.
HNS nods like an idiot.
"Then tell me everything about any crystals you may have been examining in the past few days," says SBH. "I find that so hot."
And HNS spills everything (including his mid-strength beer!). SBH leaves him in the lurch, zipping off to his lab, where the crystal is missing!
Just when it seems we might stir into full wakefulness, Lana and TIAC have a scene together, where they discuss the fact that Lana's opened up a 'Shelter For Meteor Freaks And Assorted Superpowered Weirdos'. They discuss endlessly whether or not Lana should tell Superlad about the shelter. One is hard-pressed to understand why she would bother, given that Kryptonians don't need to sleep.
"Back for some more horn-rimmed lovin'?"
We wake back up to find SBH confronting the Head Nerd Scientist again. "Hey baby," he says, showing off to his friends. "Back for some more horn-rimmed lovin'?" He giggles like an idiot and high-fives another dork.
"Where's the crystal?" demands SBH, lifting him up against the wall.
"She's so hot for me," shouts HNS back to his friends. One of them runs over and low-fives him.
Before this scene can degenerate any further, Superlad shows up and insists that SBH put him down and come outside to squabble about the crystal and Zor-El and the Martian Manhunter and that plane she almost ran into before the credits and family bonds and at what point one should conceal one's navel.
When we wake up, it seems that SBH's flown away and got herself captured by TSFAICOEETCRFS, who wields kryptonite handcuffs for just such an occasion.
He straps her into that remembering machine from Season Three. Remember that? No? Well, you need to settle into the remembering machine and take a trip back.
She starts remembering a time she came to Earth back in Season Negative Two, and bumped into Superlad's Mum (The SS Lara, played by the previously discussed Helen Slater). Our eyelids grow heavier, heavier, heavier with every passing second of this scene until finally... we're fast asleep.
And by the time we wake up, the episode's all over. Some fragments of the episode tantalise us at the edge of our dreams. Zor-El trying to seduce the SS Lara (ew, creepy), the SS Lara hiding a Polaroid™ of herself behind a photo of Boring Old Ma (ew, tedious) for reasons that aren't at all clear and Porthos showing up to save the day by shooting the bejeezus out of TSFAICOEETCRFS with a sawn-off shotgun (take that, ya overly-long acronym).
But that's about it, really. I assume Jimmy-James continued to taunt TIAC by overtly flirting with SBH, because, heck, why would you ignore such comedy gold. And I vaguely recall Sinead and Porthos having one of their understated threat-a-thons, with all the unmitigated evil that invariably brings. Sinead reveals that the much-ballyhooed writer's strike that may end the season early is all part of his plan to leave the show ASAP.
And, of course, it turns out that Superlad's stolen the crystal because it has the SS Lara's DNA inside it, which makes it a collector's item! He pops it in a mylar bag.
Boring, boring episode. I give it multiple Z's and try to summon sufficient energy for...
Next week: Captain Caffeine!
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Begone,
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