Episode Report Card Omar G: B | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Missile Command-Alt-Delete
By Omar G | Season 5 | Episode 3 | Aired on 10.12.2005
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Clark wakes up next to Lana in his own house (special guest commentary from Butthead: "They, like, did it. Huh huh...huh huh..."), which is a huge mistake, because everyone gets up at the butt-crack of dawn up in this recently destroyed, quickly renovated farmhouse. Sure enough, Clark and Lana are busted. Awkward sex talk ensues as Bo glares. It's interrupted by the usual shenanigans, though: a math genius has figured out a way to infiltrate a military silo where his colonel dad worked, and launch a nuclear missile at a strategic target. Namely? The town of Smallville. Seems the kid thinks the recent meteor shower will bring even more Kryptofreaks to the fore, and he thinks a nuclear blast will fix all that. He warns Chloe, his only friend, to get out of town, but instead, she and Clark find the kid and try to stop him. Unfortunately, Clark gets shot right in the chest, and being that he can't stop bullets with his flannel shirts anymore, he gets rushed to the hospital. And dies. No, really. He's dead. Buggered off. Finished. Kicked the farm bucket. He is an ex-Clark. But somehow he's whooshed away from his mortal-coil bed by Papa Luthor, who escapes the asylum while possessed by Clark's Krypton daddy Jarnelle. Jarnelle and Clark have a conversation at the Fortress of Solitude that goes like this: "I love you, son, but you're an idiot. Go back to town, take these superpowers back and, oh yeah, someone you love will die to replace the lifeforce that you so foolishly squandered for mortal nookie. Have a nice week, son!" Clark takes his powers and stops the nuclear missile in space. He returns home to some very shellshocked parents and Lana. And he knows that someone he loves will soon die. Start your bets. Meanwhile, Lex is still investigating Clark and the spaceship. He thinks Clark's resurrection just proves his case. Papa Luthor returns to the family mansion with no recollection of his Jarnelle body-swap, and seemingly back to normal. Chloe suggests that Clark tell Lana the truth but, dumb-ass that he is, he decides to continue keeping the secret from her. Most surprising? Three for three good episodes so far. I didn't think you had it in you, Smallville. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Ready for a fresh Smallville? How about a fresh recap? Slightly moldy? Five-day old? Slightly-stale-bagel fresh? I'll try to work my cooking skills to reconstitute it for you.
We open upon a zoom-out on the barrel of a gun from the bad end of the equation. We once got in trouble at a newspaper I worked for because we ran a large piece of art of a handgun pointing at the reader; the editor said he didn't want to wake up and see a gun pointed at him over breakfast. And then he was brutally gunned down in an alley later, so he was probably right.... This gun is being held nervously by a blond teen as dramatic music thunders. He tells someone to take out a key. The sweating hostage tells the kid he's out of his mind. We cut out to a wider shot of the kid pointing the gun at the guy. They're in a bunker of some sort. Why are the military installations in Smallville always dark and damp-looking? Do you know how much the military spends on fluorescent lighting every year? The kid tells the hostage that he wouldn't expect him to understand. Oh, I think the gun is a very good explainer. The kid pivots, revealing another military trooper sitting on the floor. The kid rips a key from around the guy's neck. He asks the standing trooper to take out his own key. "LL Bledsoe," as the guy's stitched-on name says, slowly takes it out from around his neck. "No!" the guy on the floor whines. "Do it!" Kid Terrorist yells. Kid Terrorist inserts one of the keys into a very shiny lit silver panel, and tells Bledsoe to do the same over on his side. Ah, the dual-key conundrum. Hasn't the military moved past this level of technology yet? "Don't do it, Tom!" the guy on the floor pleads. Wait. "LL Bledsoe"? "Tom?" Must be short for "LeTom." The guy on the flood keeps telling Tom not to do it, but this LL, Tom, whatever, is weak. He inserts the key and, on three, they both turn them. "Don't dooooo it!" screams the guy on the floor. "I'm sorry," the kid says, and shoots LeTom. Then he shoots the guy on the floor, right through the hand he uses to defend himself. Is this show still on the Family Channel? That is one violent family. Kid Terrorist types one-handed on a keyboard and gets an "Access Granted" message.
Chloe's red VW Bug has a "University of Metropolis: Home of the Bulldogs" bumper sticker on it. She emerges from the back door of The Talon, which is decorated with posters and leaflets. She carries a large container of coffee. Her convertible is loaded up with goods, including a very large red sombrero. Study hard, Chloe. She's answering the phone. It's Gabriel, or Kid Terrorist, as we'll find out. Chloe is impressed that M.I.T. is letting him make calls to pedestrian state university students so early. "You have to get out of town," Kid Terrorist warns her. Chloe, not picking up on the tension in KT's voice, says she's been trying. KT, still at the bunker, tells her it'll all be over soon. Chloe, still oblivious, says, in the words of Boyz II Men, that it's so hard to say goodbye. Chloe alludes to Kid Terrorist being the town's cyberwizard just as she's the star reporter. Not that she's into labels. Kid Terrorist says that Chloe's the only person who'll understand what he had to do and how it wasn't his choice. Chloe picks up on something serious happening. She asks what he's talking about. He asks rhetorically how much time he spent helping Chloe chase big stories at The Torch. Hmmm, let me look back in my recaps and see...mmm, that would be 0 hours, 0 minutes, 0 seconds. Kit Terrorist tells Chloe that, in one hour, the town's gonna get it. "What happens in an hour?" Chloe asks. KT: "Smallville's finally gonna be gone forever." And here I thought it was in the middle of a Season 5 comeback. Kid Terrorist puts down the phone and hits a button. It activates a one-hour launch sequence. The camera zooms past some laptops and computer terminals and toward a metal door opening. There's a giant missile in there steaming up. "U[star]A," it reads. Woo! U[star]A! U[star]A! Some lights on the missile light up. We cut to the opening credits.