Well, here we are. After five episodes, Superman & Lois has firmly cemented its place on the CW and this episode is our spring finale, closing things out before the show returns in May. As Summer turns to Fall (in the show, that is), Smallville gears up for it’s annual HarvestFest and the community of Smallville gets the spotlight on it in an episode that is otherwise not the show’s best outing.
We’ll dig into why and how that affects the episode over down below, but, as always, spoilers follow.
1. The Last Warm Moments Before The Cold
This was… a strange episode. Despite it being directed by one of the best working directors in television, Rachel Talalay of Doctor Who and Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare (a god tier film don’t @ me) fame, it felt a lot less focused than the previous four episodes. Without any singular plotline taking the forefront, this episode felt like a series of crisscrossing and interconnecting vignettes, with each story set up so far getting it’s own time to shine. It works, but a little haphazardly. This is likely due to the fact that this episode was originally written by Nadria Tucker, a writer who was fired from the show after attempting to discuss racism and sexism in the show’s writing in the writer’s room. The episode was then rewritten with Tucker getting a teleplay credit alongside Brent Fletcher. Now, was this episode always this jam packed full of stuff in Tucker’s original draft? Well, that’s impossible for me to know. But it is certainly a factor in how I view this episode.
What I did like about this episode was that it put the town of Smallville front and centre. Situating the episode around the fall’s HarvestFest put the community at the forefront, showing the ways in which they support themselves and each other, and that’s why, for all it’s otherwise rather disjointed plotting, this episode still isn’t a true stumble for the show. What has worked for it in prior episodes still works here, despite the shitshow behind the scenes, and there’s still so much for me to engage with and talk about here, but it would be a disservice not to also discuss it’s problems in production. Still, I can only hope someone at the CW is listening and these problems behind the scenes are addressed. It’s unlikely, but, hey, you never know.
2. The Brothers Kent
This episode was a rough one for Jordan and Jonathan, a lot of up and downs for both of them and I’ll try to break them down evenly, but that might be a tough job considering how much of their individual storylines are so tied into one another. Moving to Smallville changed everything for both brothers and while Jordan finally feels like he’s finding himself what with Sarah liking him and getting onto the football team, Jonathan has had the opposite experience. Going from the popular kid with a good girlfriend and being on track to being starting quarterback as a freshman to playing second fiddle on the Smallville High field to his fighting game playing, nü-metal listening weirdo brother? That’s been a tough pill to swallow, but I have appreciated both the show’s writing and, especially, Jordan Elsass’s performance in the way it highlights that, yes, this has been a struggle for Jonathan, but he’s still a good brother. He is still there for him when he needs to be, even if he needs as much support back.
This episode, things take a turn for the stressful as, to my complete lack of surprise, Eliza dumps Jonathan over the phone. I say lack of surprise only because Eliza has existed as an unspeaking face on a Skype call in the pilot and only mentioned by other characters since. I can’t say I didn’t see through the show unceremoniously dropping her like the plot point she was set up to be. Still, Elsass sells the teenage heartbreak well and the episode extrapolates from that break up a breaking point for Jonathan. We get to see more than a bit of his bad boy side for once, lashing out and drinking with his friends and ruining Jordan’s date. It all comes to a head between Jonathan and Clark as Jon lets the weight of losing his life in Metropolis get to him and he lashes out, ready to leave home for a taste of his former glory.
Continued belowIt’s an interesting angle to take the character, who has been the one suffering more socially in the wake of the move, and one that fleshes him out nicely as a good kid with a bad habit of propping himself up on his social laurels and taking it personally when he’s not the centre of attention. Jordan, meanwhile, is a bit left out of this episode. While his date with Sarah gets ruined and they move to just being friends, not much happens with him outside of the stinger in which Tag returns to kick his ass for turning him into a metahuman. It’s not the biggest complaint in the world, but Jordan was the character I engaged with the most in prior episodes and with a show with this many moving parts, I shouldn’t be too surprised that Superboy isn’t the centre of attention each week. Still, I love these brothers and I genuinely believe them to be the heart and soul of why this show works for me.
3. A Story Unfolding
You may remember a couple of weeks ago that I erroneously assumed that the big dude with superpowers who tried to kill Sharon Powell, got his ass beat by Superman and then his face heat visioned off by Larr was the missing Derek Powell. Turns out, he was just some goon! This week, the mystery behind Edge’s interest in Smallville’s mines and the Kryptonians(?) he has working for him deepens just a little bit more as Derek does, in fact, make a return. Now, I don’t want to spend my time theorycrafting what the X-Kryptonite does, what the chamber Derek was put in actually is, or where this show is going largely because I hate speculating. I would rather let the story unfold as it does and explore what the show is telling me now, in this episode, rather than trying to figure out the path it’s going on. That being said, I do like how this rather goofy, ripped from the pages of a comic plot about a coporate mogul using weird alien tech to, presumably, build some sort of army intersects with the reality of Smallville that the show has laid out so far.
I don’t necessarily care about Derek Powell’s deteriorating alien powers or whether or not Edge put a resurrected Kryptonian soul into the body of a human to disastrous effects (which is my current working theory as to what’s going on, even though I know I just said I hate speculation), but I do care about Smallville’s town centre being destroyed in a fire and the HarvestFest donations being lost. That’s a drama I can relate to and it buoys the silly, comic book nature of the cause with an effect that is genuinely resonant on a human level. That’s what I like about this show and while this episode may be, overall, quite janky for reasons established, there’s still that glimmer of what works in there.
4. A Luthor In Smallville
So. Captain Luthor. He’s a bit of an odd duck for an antagonist, ain’t he? First he shows up as a mysterious stranger in Doomguy power armour only for us to learn genuinely quite a lot about his backstory over the next four episodes. We know he’s a refugee from a seemingly destroyed world in which Kal-El was evil and we know he’s evil because he wears black and kills people. We know Luthor served alongside General Lane in the army opposing Superman and now we find out that this Luthor married Lois on his world. That’s a lot of twists to dole out in just five episodes, but I think it works because of the way they’ve positioned this Luthor in this show. He’s not really the active, hunting down Superman in power armour each episode kind of villain that the Pilot kind of set him up to be. No, he’s scrappier, more of a scavenger who’s willing to take the knock that is losing his ship and armour in quick succession just to get inside Superman’s head. Now Superman knows someone out there is coming for him, but has no idea who or why.
So the more we, the audience, actually know about Luthor while Clark, as a character, is left in the dark creates this sort of asymmetrical tension when seeing Luthor track down Clark through Lois. Not only is there the initial tension created by Luthor working with Lois under an assumed name, but now knowing that he has the history he does with her, there is the tension of waiting to see where this story goes. Will this Luthor succeed in turning this world against Superman? What will happen to Clark’s family if they learn about this Luthor and his past and also his connection to Lois? The more we find out about this Luthor, the more potential their future clashes have as we wait for these two titans to collide once more. I, for one, cannot wait to see it.
Continued belowAlso, I just loved that Luthor was able to trick out an RV to be a battle van to replace his ship. This is clearly a more function forward version of Luthor than the self-aggrandising business mogul he usually is. It’s a refreshing change of pace and a series of interesting twists on his relationship with Superman and not to mention the stellar acting by Wolé Parks, now that we actually get to see more him actually acting in scenes with other people, that makes this character genuinely compelling to me.
5. Clark’s Trip Down Memory Lane
Can I just say that Tyler Hoechlin has fast become my favourite live action Clark Kent? His Superman is still on its way to cementing its place in my heart, but his Clark is as perfect as can be. From the opening scene with his puppy dog excitement over the HarvestFest to his reminiscing over his childhood to his connection to Jonathan even when Jon rightfully deserves discipline is all solid gold. That being said, he does feel a bit disconnected from the rest of the goings on in this episode. Sure, Superman is directly involved in the stuff with Derek Powell, but Clark? Clark is off in a world of his own and while it does work overall, it’s a bit of a strange way to structure the episode.
That being said, I still love the flashbacks with Clark and Martha in the wake of Jonathan’s death. We’ve seen Clark leaving Smallville before, but never with this much drama. Leaving home is tough and teenagers in small towns feel trapped and lash out when they feel like they have little opportunity for the future, especially one who’s destined to become a Superman. We get to see what kind of crimes a young Clark tackles and it’s laughable how easily he’s able to walk right through them, even as a scrawny teenager. This is a town that’s too small for him and he needs to leave, but what most iterations of this story skip over is the human drama that is Martha losing her son to the world. It is only with the benefit of hindsight and experience as a father that Clark is able to relate his feelings as a teenager in Smallville to Jonathan’s in the end for a genuinely sweet moment. I love what this show is doing with Clark and I especially love the way it can use flashbacks like this to not only fill us in on this Clark’s specific backstory, but also to be able to tie that backstory into the current storyline and further his relationship with his kids. It’s gems like this that keep this episode from being mired in the weirdness of it’s structure and pacing.
Bonus Thought: Keeping Up With The Kushings
I’ve mentioned this before, so I will keep it brief here, but I love what this show is doing with the Kushings. They could have so easily gone for the most middle of the road option when it came to Lana Lang’s inclusion in this show, but giving her her own family dynamic and drama to juxtapose against the Kents is a stroke of genius. We’ve seen the bumps Lana and Kyle’s relationship has gone through of late and the work that must go in to reforming that bond, but what I love about it is that it doesn’t paint anyone in this family as a cartoon to show how otherwise perfect Lois and Clark are. Lana and Kyle are just people, people with their own problems that affect their family, and are looking for someone to reach down and save them. They see that person as Morgan Edge, but I sincerely hope that in time we see the Kents helping the Kushings as a community.
