Episode Report Card Tippi Blevins: B- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Let's Put on a Show!
By Tippi Blevins | Season 9 | Episode 11 | Aired on 02.05.2010
Clark is just showing up at the Sandman's apartment. The place is a wreck. Clark calls out for Mr. Dodds and receives no reply. He notices a splash of blood on the screen of an ancient TV, then catches sight of Dodds lying dead on the floor, his chest and abdomen riddled with bloody wounds and bits of ice. The dead man's outstretched arm leads to an overturned table, where he scrawled the letters "JSA" in his own blood. Clark frowns. Commercials.
Returning to the hospital, Chloe meets up with Dr. Emil Hamilton in the morgue. He's got the late Wesley Dodds on the slab. "No bullets, just residual ice again," Emil tells her. Chloe realizes Dodds and Sylvester were killed by the same kind of ice weapon. Emil says the ice has human DNA in it, meaning the attacker is a meta-human. (Formerly known as Freak of the Week.) "Well, that explains my arctic ride in the dumpster of doom," Chloe says. Almost Shakespearean, isn't it? Oy. Chloe thinks for a moment, frowning, then goes over to the desk where the Sandman's gas mask has been placed in a plastic evidence bag. She fishes it out, getting her prints all over it and contaminating the evidence, but whatever. She studies the mask for a while. Emil says behind her that Clark told him about the letters left at the last crime scene. Does Chloe have any idea what "JSA" stands for? She wonders if it's some kind of calling card, because the killer seems to have some kind of score to settle. [Except the letters were written by the victim, so it can't be a calling card. - Z] She goes off to find Clark and do some digging.
We go next to a heretofore unseen location. There's a black-and-white checkered floor, overhead fluorescent lighting, and no furnishings to speak of. A man in black with a platinum fauxhawk sits in the middle of the room, laying out the mugshots of various men and one photograph of Courtney from her yearbook. He smiles as he takes a knife and draws an "X" through the faces on some of the photographs, starting with Sylvester, then Dodds, and finally picks up Courtney's picture. He has white glittery skin. He looks like if Clint Howard had been an aspiring club kid. Now as the camera moves around him, we see a symbol painted on one wall, showing a knight chess piece inside a target with cross hairs, surrounded on two sides by a checkerboard pattern. Welcome to Checkmate, bitches!
Daily Planet. Clark and Chloe are in the archives, looking through old boxes of news reports. Clark grumps about having to dig so deep, but Chloe says there wasn't anything online but Sylvester Pemberton's rap sheet. "Maybe they didn't want anyone else finding it," he says, plucking a file out of one of the boxes. Chloe comes over for a look. The file has the mugshots we've seen before, along with other papers. Clark says Pemberton worked with 12 other known criminals, including Dodds. "He mentioned bringing a team back together," Chloe says. Clark, stating the obvious, says that if they're being brought together, it means at some point they broke apart. Chloe digs around in the box some more and finds an old-timey film reel. They set up a projector and have a look. Clark, looking at the file, says they were systematically caught and brought down, but the crimes don't seem to match who they are. There's footage of a slightly younger Pemberton being led away in handcuffs. Next up is Wesley Dodds, who had no criminal record before being arrested at a violent student demonstration. The next man shown being arrested is Al Pratt, a physics professor. A boxer named Ted Grant is shown being dragged away by cops. The rest of the file shows men like Jay Garrick and Alan Scott, the latter of whom is shown in the film wearing his Green Lantern ring. Even a grandmotherly old woman is shown being arrested. The arrests didn't stick, though, because each one of them tried to take the fall for the other. "I guess during the Golden Age of robbery and racketeering, there was honor among thieves," Chloe says. Clark thinks it goes beyond honor. Chloe thinks it sounds like Clark admires them. "I admire their loyalty," Clark says. Chloe raises an eyebrow and smiles. She tells him she'll stay behind to finish the research, but he needs to go find Carter Hall, who's the next name on Sylvester's call list. They glance back up at the film in time to see the aforementioned Mr. Hall being violently taken down by cops. Aw, it's Michael Shanks! Welcome back to my TV, Mr. Shanks! Chloe wonders aloud, "What kind of a team was this?" Heroic music soars. Clark frowns ever so slightly, thinking... possibly about his grocery list? It's hard to say.
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