Episode Report Card Omar G: B- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Dirty Pool
By Omar G | Season 6 | Episode 10 | Aired on 01.10.2007
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.So, let's get the elephant in the room out of the way first: Tori! Tori! Tori! Yes, faithful readers, the late Aaron Spelling's darling disinherited ungulate guest-stars this evening as a somewhat wall-eyed, and definitely cow-faced, harridan of a gossip columnist at The Daily Planet, possessed of the rather unusual ability to turn herself into a distressingly gelatinous puddle of clear goo at a moment's notice. This "Linda Lake" -- get it? -- primarily deploys her power in search of scandalous scoop for the rag, but also manages to drown Metropolis's version of Barry Bonds in all of about two inches of water. In bigger news -- because the goings-on in Lana's uterus naturally trump minor matters like manslaughter -- Lake breaks the news of Lex's proposal to his squirrelly paramour in the paper, which leads of course to much photogenic tearing of hair and rending of clothes and gnashing of teeth from everyone involved. Well, not Lex so much with the tearing of the hair, but you know what I mean. Lana, who confided her doubts about the situation to Chloe while Linda lurked in a nearby water cooler, huffily accuses Chloe of snitching, or whatever, but the two quickly reconcile in order to expose Linda Lake for the Kryptofreak she truly is. This leads to a fairly awesome catfight between Linda and Chloe -- with a nail gun, even! -- that ends when Lana conveniently rams her SUV into the watery wretch just as the latter's about to poke through Chloe's jugular with a spike. Linda seeps away into the city sewer system, though, so she might be back some day. Elsewhere, fifty-three-year-old Lois Lane teams up with a surprisingly delightful Jimmy to unmask The Green Arrow as her boy toy, but Clark and The Queen pull a frisky little switcheroo at the last instant to throw Lois off the trail. Oh, and a knocked-up Lana agrees to have Lex make an honest woman of her, despite the fact that she's still in love with Clark. Don't worry about that, Lana -- so's your husband-to-be! Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Hey, everybody. Did you have a nice holiday? It's a whole new year! My New Year's resolution: I'm bringing the sexy back. Not mine. Just random sexy. Hey, clean thongs! Seeeexy.
The (sexy) new episode begins with a pretty hot nighttime view of the Metropolis bay-line. Oh yeah. This is smokin', people. An elevator door opens, and a woman wearing a pair of sexy black boots walks out. She strides silkily down the halls of the Daily Planet. I like where this is going! Too sexy! We get other views of the woman. She's wearing a long white-and-black coat and carrying a stack of folders. She's a blonde. Hey, that's all pretty sexy so far. Jaunty music plays. The woman throws down the folders in front of (sexy) Chloe's desk and says that she needs eleven copies of each before her macchiato goes arctic. We finally see her face. NOOOOO! It's Tori Spelling! The sexy has died! So quickly! My New Year's resolution! Finished! Ah, well. I didn't think there was any way I could keep this going once Lois appears later, anyway. Tori Damned Unsexy Spelling whispers under her breath that assistants just don't have the stamina they used to. Chloe goes around her desk to stand up and tell "Ms. Lake" that she's not an assistant. She's a reporter. Tori turns her evil head and bears down on Chloe. She says, "Unfortunately..." and then looks down at the "Chloe Sullivan" nameplate on the desk. She snidely calls Chloe "Sullivan," and tells her that what matters is that she can see Gotham from her new office and that Chloe is below sea level. Chloe sighs that she'd rather snorkel for the rest of her life than destroy a man's life based on a rumor. She holds up an ugly high school newspaper-looking Section B front page that reads, "The Daily Dish with Linda Lake." It features a photo of a young man and the word "STEROIDS" with the "I" in the shape of a needle. This is really, really bad page design. A guy I know from work, G.W., would throw up if he saw this. Tori grabs the paper and throws it on the desk. She says that she only prints the truth, and that it's on the front page of section B every week. I don't know of a lot of major newspapers that would print a gossip column on a B section front. Even the New York Post puts their stuff inside, Page Six. Tori storms out. The camera zooms in on the photo of the athlete.
Outside, Tori is walking down the street and telling someone on the phone that she knows the guy is a "juicer" and that she can smell the fresh ink of tomorrow's paper. I guess what Chloe was holding was an early print run copy, then. Tori tells the person on the phone that they wanted her to have her finger on the pulse of the city; she just hit an artery. This town needs a proctologist! A man walks up to Tori as she finishes her conversation. It's the athlete from the newspaper story. "Well if it isn't the steroid stallion," says Tori, unsympathetically. She stands under an umbrella as he, all wet, stands miserable in the rain. She asks if he doesn't have some muscle cocktail mixing to do. "You ruined my life!" he bellows. She makes an annoyed kissy face. The Sexy just rolled over in its red silk-lined grave. The athlete notes that Tori doesn't even care. She "Oh, puh-leeze,"-es him, and says that if he didn't want to get "red-rovered" by the media, he shouldn't have stuck that needle in his tush. This lady talks dumb. There's an extreme close-up on the guy's pale face as he says she's so quick to get high and mighty. She's destroyed enough lives and he's not going to let her destroy any more. Before he so much as extends a pinky, Tori drops her umbrella and runs. The guy just watches her coldly and follows her. Very slowly.