Episode Report Card Omar G: C+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Club Dead
By Omar G | Season 6 | Episode 17 | Aired on 03.21.2007
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.You know, I used to really dread those villain-of-the-week episodes, but now I crave them like high-calorie candy to cut through all the liverwurst we've been getting lately. And it helps when the villain is a hulking mass of hurtin' for our hero. Clark and Chloe (with Oliver's offscreen help) find an online fight club that broadcasts Kryptofreak fights that go to the death. The snuffy site is locked up behind proxy servers, but they manage to track it down to a guy at Belle Reve who's funneling fighters to compete in cage matches that utilize their powers. Clark figures out that one of the fighters, a Mr. Titan formerly of the Phantom Zone, is competing in the blood sport. Clark finds a way to get himself into the ring, but is surprised to find Lois there. Leading up to that moment, Lois finds a crumpled of piece of paper from Chloe's files, follows the tip, and red-latex-jumpsuits her way into the broadcast. (Though the fact that she has no powers leads one to wonder why they let her in.) Titan enters the fight, and he and Clark have a pretty awesome mano-a-homo, breaking walls and such and bloodying each other up but good. Titan impales himself on his own body's steel spike and says, "Good fight!" which is, all things considered, pretty cool. Clark whines to MamaKent about killing the guy, but she tells him that the fact that he's feeling bad at all shows that he's human. Still, the whole Lana marriage thing is making Clark mean and angry! GrrrClark! Speaking of that whole distasteful Lex/Lana arrangement: Lana mopes about and gives Lex the cheek when he tries to kiss her. Then she loses the baby. Then she sits in the nursery all day and gets suspicious because she's found out Dr. Langston died on her wedding day. While these would be bombshells on most any show, why does it just feel like tying up loose ends and pushing a fruitless storyline along on this one? Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Let's set aside (most of) the angst, shall we? Let's see superpowered people beat the crap out of each other! What do you say? You in? Of course you are! Let's go!
We open on a nondescript flat building we've never seen before. It looks like a detention facility, really, or a sad, sad barracks. Can I put this down as the most boring establishing shot ever? And this is a show that regularly features corn fields and cows. We cut to something which does not follow: the inside of what looks like a giant concrete-floored wrestling arena. There's a spotlight, one of those big boxing microphones hanging from the ceiling, and a very flashy guy (no, not that Flashy guy) doing a mad jig as he enters. Sound of huge applause from an audience we can't see. The announcer, wearing mad sequins and a shiny hat, does a crazy elf kick and pumps his arm as he runs to the mike. This is a lot of energy expended for very little effect. This guy's no Bruce Campbell, I will tell you that. The dude, who is the Mouth of the North, has a tiny slimy moustache and sunglasses, and yells, "Are you READY?!" I suppose that I am, friend. Please. Proceed. Someone in a control booth turns up the volume on a sound board. We hear an invisible crowd applaud loudly. A techie nearby wearing a headset writes something down and prepares to sound a large bell. Let me get this straight: they've got this huge sound system with effects, but they still need a real boxing bell? The Mouth of the South With Sequins says that tonight's undercard is a special twin matchup: he's introducing two new combatants.
Cut to a dressing area. A large, blinking red light is illuminated; a handwritten sign above it reads, "TRANSMITTING." A blonde woman in a white towel emerges from a very steamy room. We hear the voice of the announcer off in the distance, calling out the name "VIXEN!" A man in boots walks down some stairs in the same room with the towel-clad lady, and watches her as she hits the lockers. He's a big, Scandinavian-looking fellow. And he likes what he sees. The camera ogles the woman as she takes off her towel. We pan down her body in a pretty artless way. If you're going to try to titillate us with T&A, at least get the T and the A parts right. They don't stand for "towel" and "ankles." The guy watches the woman's ass. She puts on the tiniest of skirts, and we do see the bottom of her butt-cheeks, which is a bit better. She's lit like it's a Whitesnake video. We hear the announcer boom, "The All-Powerful, The All-American Man of Steel!" But you're really not paying attention, because of close-ups on the skirt and then the woman's prodigious rack as she puts on a tiny white Daisy Duke shirt-tie that barely covers her black bra. The man smokes as he keeps watching. The woman puts on black stockings. "You're paid to keep an eye on the fights, not me," the woman tells him. She's cute, but what the hell is that ring in her bottom lip? Yeeks: she's Ashley from WWE Smackdown. The guy says that the view in there is a lot better. Indeed. Ashley sits on a bench with her legs spread right open like she's about to give birth to a tiny Macho Man Savage, her tiny skirt barely covering her vaging-jong. The guy notes, with just a few nanospecs of charm, that she's a security guard by day and Catholic schoolgirl by night. He also says that "Athena" (we'll call her Ashley) is a woman of many talents. I know you'll be absolutely shocked by this, but one of those talents led to her posing in Playboy. I know. I was surprised, too. Ashley says that she's a woman of many desires, but that, unfortunately, none of those desires include this swarthy, patchy mustached guy. He looks just a tiny bit embarrassed by that, but not angry.