Smallville TV Show - Metallo - Smallville Recaps, Smallville Reviews, Smallville Episodes | TWoP

Recapped by Tippi Blevins · Aired 2009-10-02

We open on the Kent farm at night. Crickets chirp. It's dark inside the house where many a yummy baked good was baked back when the show cared a little about the home life of these characters. Lois enters, calling out to see if Clark is there. She sighs when she realizes the place is empty. "Guess not," she says to no one in particular. Sad, dramatic music plays, sounding like it belongs in the background of an '80s TV movie about babies switched at birth or something. Lois runs her fingers over the dusty countertops, noting that Martha wouldn't approve. She wanders around the house some more and then Chewbacca starts whimpering plaintively off-screen. But wait! It's actually Shelby! Clark's golden retriever trots up to Lois, tail wagging. She greets him with a hug (not allergic anymore, I guess) and thinks that Clark has "ditched" Shelby, too. "Smallville isn't the same without Smallville, is it?" she asks. Smallville without Smallville is a lot like this mirthless Metropo-centric show we have now, actually. Lois notices Shelby's food and water dishes are full and wonders who's been feeding him if Clark is supposed to be away. I want to know who's been walking him and playing with him and giving him tummy rubs! Poor sad, lonely dog. Lois's phone rings.

John Corben is on the other end, greeting her with a cheesy, "Hey, beautiful." Lois asks if he's still at the office. He's walking down some grungy street in Metropolis. "Sitting at a desk just isn't the same without your pretty brown eyes glaring at me." God, I hate playful banter that just isn't. Besides which, what's the unemployed Lois doing at any desk at the paper at this point? John says that since Lois turned him down for dinner, he decided to search out some news. As he talks, there's a cop in the background trying to free a gang of hoodlums out of some iron fencing that's been wrapped around them. "Your favorite freak's been at it again," John says. That's super freak to you, bub. He's going to write a story about the Blur all by himself. Lois doesn't try to horn her way in. "I never thought you'd share the Blur," John says, surprised. Lois says there are plenty of headlines to go around, plus the Blur is out there catching the bad guys. John calls him a vigilante. Lois, back at the farm, draws the Superman symbol in some dust. She manages to refrain from scribbling "Lois + Blur = TRULUV 4EVAH!!!" underneath that. She's not pleased with John dogging her hero. Behind him, there's a burned S on the outside of a phone booth. Lois thinks the Blur is cleaning up the city, but John's worried about him screwing up: "How do you hold him accountable?" Lois thinks John is a cynic; he thinks Lois is suffering from "soft-hearted hero worship." "At least I have a heart," Lois foreshadows. John looks down at his notebook. He's holding a careworn picture of a pretty young brunette. John darkly says he's going to expose the Blur and hangs up. Lois looks at her phone like, "Whatever, crazy person."

By Tippi Blevins

At that moment, a gust of wind snatches the picture from John's hand. John looks around and sees it lying in the street. Forgetting the all-important lesson to look both ways, he walks into the street and is immediately slammed by a speeding truck. Glass and metal crunch. The sound of his heartbeat echoes. John lies broken and bloody in the street. And I mean really bloody. He's slathered in it, lying in a pool of it. It burbles out of his mouth. Shots of his crushed body are intercut with shots of total blackness. He reaches for the picture, lying a few inches away. Brian Austin Green is doing a pretty good job of portraying a guy whose body's been turned into a bag of chalk and marrow. In the darkness, he sees flashes of an out-of-focus light overhead. There are absolutely disgusting sounds of body parts squelching and shifting around. In a flash, he wakes up on a grungy table. The overhead light was apparently a surgical lamp, now in focus. His chest and left arm are covered with bloodied bandages. "Hello?" he calls out in a strained voice. No one answers. With great effort and much grunting, he gets up. He rips the bandage off his arm, exposing a metallic and hydraulic elbow joint. There's a leaking plastic tube of green goo instead of a vein. He touches the goo in horror. He makes his way over to a filth-streaked mirror, steels himself, and peels off the chest bandage. A green glow rises up and we see what he sees: a ten-legged metallic contraption embedded in his chest, a pulsing kryptonite glob in its center. Eww. Somebody save him!

The Daily Planet rooftop. It's dusk or dawn, with the sky all layered in molten reds and blues. You know Clark's about to be in the shot because it's such a pretty backdrop that he can't resist standing in front of it while wearing his long black coat. And there he is! He super-eavesdrops on the sounds of the city. Most of the chatter is of mundane stuff, like a mother singing lullabies, a father telling his kids to wear their jackets, laughter, a man proposing to a woman. He frowns slightly; humans are so boring! Or maybe he's frowning at the sound of police sirens that are filtering through the chatter. A female dispatcher announces on the police radio that a ""211" is in progress. Clark zips off.

By Tippi Blevins

Back in Smallville, Lois is asleep at the Talon apartment, having dreams of the future. The main difference from last week's vision is that this time, she sees the Blur's tattered black coat or shirt waving like a flag. She wakes to Shelby's concerned whimpering. She sits up, looking at an assortment of newspapers, glad that the Blur is making the world a safer place. Chloe walks into the apartment, surprised to be greeted by Shelby. She's confused that Clark's dog is welcoming her home. I'm confused that she's calling this her home. What about her warehouse-sized apartment in the big city? And does Lois know that Jimmy is dead? Way to skip over quiet-yet-important character moments, show. Lois wonders why Shelby was at the farm with "her" food if Clark isn't around. Wait a minute. Has Shelby always been a girl? I should stop asking questions or I'll never get through this recap. Chloe says that she, not Clark, is the one who's been feeding Shelby. Clark isn't back yet from visiting family, she says. Chloe teases her cousin that she misses Clark. Lois offers up a feeble protest: she just can't stand the new guy at his desk. He's a hero-hater, she says, and who could possibly hate the Blur? Lois remarks that she can hear the loneliness in the Blur's voice lately. Stop talking, Lois. You just promised the guy last week you weren't going to blab anymore! Chloe looks stunned. "His voice? Did he call you again?" For a second, it looks like Lois realizes her mistake and is trying to play it off as a work-related thing, but then she just goes on about how sometimes they just chat and she's the only person he can turn to. Naturally, Chloe looks like she's trying to swallow eight years of lemons and jagged rocks, but she just says, "Wow. That's incredible." Finally Lois drops it, because she has to "step back into the ring with a certain CEO." At this point, I seriously expected the show to put Lois and Tess into a literal ring, possibly surrounding a vat of mud. Would anyone really be surprised? Chloe watches after Lois and chokes down a few more lemons.

By Tippi Blevins

Kent farm. Clark whooshes inside, calling for his dog. He's still wearing his Blur ensemble. Shelby trots up to him, all wagging tail and kisses. Chloe's not far behind, although she seems considerably less happy to see Clark. She tells him she covered for him with Lois about the dog food, but that Clark is now on Lois's "radar." Once upon a time, it was a fabulous radar that beeped out Kylie Minogue dance beats and glittered with rainbows. Sadly, those days are long gone. Clark thanks her and says he'll be more careful time. "Dressed like that?" Chloe asks. Clark just looks at her. "What if I was Lois?" She thinks Lois would take one look at him and realize Clark is the Blur. I think Lois would think Clark was dressed up for Halloween. Clark lies about how there's no more Clark Kent and Chloe calls him on it: "Coming back to feed the dog is about as human as it gets." Clark doesn't have a response to that. Chloe asks him if he's still reaching out to Lois as the Blur. "She told you?" Clark asks, visibly surprised. In other shocking news, grass is green, the sky is blue, and Krispy Kreme was invented by the devil. Chloe reminds him that he's supposed to be training with Jor-El. Does he know that Clark is talking to Lois? Clark says daddy doesn't need to know, sounding like he's twelve and he's been sneaking out to the naughty movies. Chloe gets pissed off about Clark only leaving behind his human attachments when it suits him. Clark, having apparently never argued with a woman before, tells her she's taking it too personally. Oh, man. Cover your alien 'nads, Clark. He brings up her anger over Jimmy. Chloe, in a rare show of piss and vinegar, practically spits at him: "We both sacrificed a lot so that you could become the hero you're meant to be." She tells him to quit back-peddling and commit to what he started before someone else gets hurt. She glares at him before storming out. He watches after her blandly. Maybe he's supposed to be deep in thought, but it's so deep that it hasn't reached his face yet.

We move now to the emergency room at Metropolis General. John is being wheeled in on a gurney, begging for someone to "please get it out of me." He's grunting and panting and groaning huskily but the shrill, panicky music keeps it from sounding too porny. A white-coated Emil is there and promptly takes over the situation because, I guess, he's suddenly also an ER doc. He wants a trauma panel and a bunch of other medical technobabble that I won't transcribe. Emil introduces himself, "I'm Dr. Hamilton. And you are?" John grits out that he's in a nightmare. Emil pulls back the sheet that's been covering John's torso and reveals the gross machinery that's been implanted in his chest. It looks like it's comprised of one part old-fangled submarine, one part crustacean, and one part lime Jell-O shooter. Ten curved metal pipes dig into John's flesh. Emil frowns and there's a nice shot of the green glow of John's krypto-heart reflected in his glasses. John, still frantic, asks, "What is all this?" Emil calmly diagnoses that someone's "surgically implanted a bionic matrix" in him and it's powered by "meteor rock." John wants to know if it can be taken out. Emil says it can't, because John's heart has been removed and the "apparatus" is the only thing keeping him alive. John doesn't take the news well. He starts to get up, all panicky grunting and gasping for breath. An orderly tries to hold him down but John's new bionic arm tosses him into a nearby glass partition. Emil tries to sedate him and is thrown into a supply cart for his troubles. John seems surprised and disturbed by his own strength. He gets the hell out of there.

By Tippi Blevins

Down Luthor mansion way, Tess is in Lex's old office, beating a heavy bag with a long stick in a martial arts workout kind of way. Lois walks in and snarks, "What is it with you and the physical violence?" Tess turns to face Lois, all glowing and sweaty and practically purrs at her: "The last time we saw each other, things did get a little... physical. Didn't they?" That... was a weird way to say things. Tess is referring to their fight in the finale, but she makes it sound like they went at it like horny mountain goats. She even wiggles her shoulders suggestively for emphasis. Lois wants to know what happened after the fight, because she thinks Tess knocked her out and held her somewhere. Tess keeps it up with the innuendo: "'Held' you? That's wishful thinking, Lane." I don't think she meant that kind of holding, Tess. Tess says when she woke up, Lois was already gone. "We never did get to finish what we started. Little rematch?" Tess asks, and eyes Lois like a side of barbecue brisket in heels. Lois turns her down. "I just came to tell you I'm not leaving the Daily Planet." Tess points out she wasn't leaving -- she was fired. Lois conversationally blackmails Tess into giving her her job back. She has friends at the Inquisitor who would love to run a story about Tess's plans for a "hostile alien takeover." Tess chuckles because no one would believe Lois. Lois agrees that's a possibility, but thinks Tess wouldn't want the attention anyway. Only if it's coming from you, Lois. Tess doesn't say anything. Lois: "I'll see you at the office." Tess watches her go with a smile. Those two are totally going to pick out china patterns together before the end of the season.

By Tippi Blevins

On her way out, Lois passes a youngish guy with a computer pad, and snarks, "Shouldn't you be in school?" OK, he's not that young, girl. He remarks to Tess that Lois has a "little fire" in her. It's an ember, tops. Tess calls him "Stuart" and asks what he has for her. He seems to suddenly remember why he's there: "It's about your missing Kryptonians." He shows her the pad with a red indicator atop a grid layout of Metropolis; he thinks he knows where they are. Tess looks even happier than if Lois had accepted her invitation to a sweaty tussle.

Back at the all-too familiar Metropolis General ER, Emil is parting ways with a uniformed cop. He goes to a darkened office. A whoosh closes the door, startling him. He turns around to see Clark. "I understand it took Chloe years to get used to your... 'entrances'." Why does everything in this episode sound so dirty? Is it me? Clark gets down to business. He heard about what happened on the police scanner. "Was it a meteor freak?" They prefer to be called Meteor-Mutated Americans, Clark. Emil says it's a cyborg, which he thinks is something more disturbing. He was built against his will. Clark remembers Lex working on projects like this before. "Not like this," Emil says, slapping an X-ray of John's chest onto the lighted display. Ominous music plays. Emil explains for Clark what the rest of us already saw in the episode, adding that the new meteorite power source is boosting the cyborg's adrenaline levels and thus intensifying his emotions. Emil is afraid that the longer the "rock" stays in his body, the more it will poison his mind. Yeah, Whitney Houston can tell you all about the evils of messing with rock for too long. Emil thinks the cyborg could turn homicidal. Clark starts to leave to go track down this mystery cyborg, but Emil calls him back to give him the only clue he has: a globe keychain. "He must have dropped it out of his pocket," Emil says. Convenient! Clark recognizes it as the keychain all Daily Planet employees are given. "He must work at the paper." Emil thinks he'll be easy to find, because "a green glow is hard to miss." Clark looks like he's just now remembers that kryptonite is bad for him. "Emil, I need a favor."

By Tippi Blevins

Out on the windy streets of Metropolis, John is stumbling along barefooted and clutching an oversized coat around his body. He's all, "Aaah!" and "Unngh!" and panting so you know he's struggling with the pain and horror of it all. He passes the makeshift fence cage from earlier in the episode. His earlier conversation with Lois about the Blur echoes through his thoughts. He sees the pretty brunette's picture lying in the street where he'd lost it the night before. "Becca," he says. He falls to the ground to pick it up and the wipe water and debris from it. He looks up and sees the S burned into the phonebooth. He looks like he's about to cry.

Some time later, he stumbles into what I thought at first was the same grungy warehouse of his horrific surgery. This place seems slightly less grungy, though, and there's a furnace burning. It looks sort of basementy. You can hear a slightly mechanical-sounding heartbeat through most of his scenes, by the way. He makes his way over to a piece of chain link fence, talking to Becca's picture. He doesn't know how this happened to him or who did it, but now he thinks it's a gift. He affixes her photo to the fence. "I thought I just wanted to unmask the Blur, but now I know what I've wanted to do all along is kill him." By the green glow of his Jell-O pump, we see that along with Becca's picture there are dozens of articles about the Blur. "And now I can do it with my own two hands." He smiles to himself. The dischordant music tells us he's gone full-on loopy now.

Daily Planet offices. Lois is tap-tap-tapping at her old computer. The city editor from that Tori Spelling episode comes up and drops a set of papers on her desk. "I don't know how you did it, Lane, but H.R. just made it official. Welcome back." Lois looks very pleased with herself because she's a super blackmailer! The editor asks where Corben has gone. Lois thinks he's out stalking the Blur, so the editor assigns her to the ER rampage story that was supposed to be his. Lois is miffed at getting John's "leftovers." The phone on her desk rings and she answers, "Lois Lane, your first choice in reporting." Except when you're the second choice because your deskmate has been turned into a cyborg, that is. Clark's mechanically altered voice says he needs information. Lois turns into a puddle of goo. "It's you!" Clark tells her about the incident at Metropolis General and Lois is suddenly very proud to tell him she's covering the story. "Got any leads?" Clark says he thinks the man works at the Daily Planet, judging by his keys. Lois is excited: "Hey, you want me to find out who's missing their keys?" Clark says no, he just wants to know if she's noticed -- she interrupts with an enthused, "I am so on it!" Clark warns her that this man is a dangerous cyborg and he doesn't want her to get hurt. Lois gushes that he really does care about her. Clark tries to make her to focus. She swears she'll just keep her eyes open. "I'll call you at our phonebooth at seven," he says. She's sighs, "You think of it as 'our phonebooth' too?" Clark tells her to be there at seven and smiles dopily to himself. Impending death and destruction is so romantic.

By Tippi Blevins

So, naturally, Lois sets about doing what she said she wouldn't, which is go up to various male employees with lame stories about how she needs their keys to get into the archives or how you can tell a lot about a person by their keys, in order to find out who doesn't have his keys with him. Back at Lois's desk, Chloe is scanning through her computer and comes across spyware. She frowns and copies the information to her own drive. (The spyware would probably know she was doing that, right?) When Lois catches her, Chloe quickly says she was just checking her email. Chloe says she'd like to take Lois to lunch to celebrate Lois getting her old job back. "I'd love to, but I'm kind of already on a job," Lois says. "I'm working for you-know-who." Lois really needs to look up "confidante" in the dictionary some day. Chloe is worried and gets even more worried when Lois says she's "hunting down a real life Terminator." Chloe angrily wonders why the Blur isn't doing that himself. Lois says sometimes heroes need sidekicks and then bundles her into an awaiting elevator. Chloe looks aghast at being dismissed.

By Tippi Blevins

Down at the grungy warehouse of medical horrors, Tess and Stuart have found one of the alien soldiers' dog tags, as well as various items that have been pilfered from LuthorCorp labs. Stuart snarks at what a "shocker" it is that the security system was hacked. Don't make fun of your own contrived writing if you're not gonna fix it, show. Stuart is very pleased with himself for tracking down a GPS device on one of the containers. Tess does not give him biscuits or tummy rubs. She looks over bloody surgical equipment and miscellaneous devices. "This technology was meant for several unrelated projects," Tess says. She wonders what they were building. Stuart says, "Maybe it was Frankenstein's monster." He shows her a computer display of John's X-rays, which he hacked into from the hospital. Tess marvels that LuthorCorp's top scientists never thought to put these particular pieces together. Tess thinks it would be impossible to put all this equipment into one person because of the need for a massive power source. Stuart wonders why they would have given someone a "major power-up and then just let them go." Tess looks down at some schematics that have been smeared with green goo and wonders if it wasn't a test, "To see if it would work." It dawns on her that Zod might still be monitoring their test subject. "They're one step closer to getting their powers," Tess guesses. Which, granted, is a pretty cool twist on the Metallo origin story, but I wish they'd shown more of Zod's efforts leading up to it. Being told in exposition just doesn't seem to have the same umph as seeing it for yourself.

Back at the basement office where people can never do what they're told or keep themselves out of harm's way, Lois seems to have had a long day of asking people about their keys. That's what I would guess from the shot of the clock behind her and the weary sigh she gives. She sees John at his desk looking like death warmed over and asks what happened. "You try to shave in your sleep?" Yeah, with a cotton gin. He's all pale and sweaty and obviously battered but it's the tiny cut on his face that she notices. He's wearing his coat as he huddles over his computer screen. He asks why the records only go back a year. Lois reminds him there's supposed to be "banter, banter, banter." He snaps at her that he needs the records. She tells him it's a new system and he'll have to get the hard copies from the archives. "What are you looking for?" "The Blur," he says. "He didn't come out of nowhere, Lois. There must be some kind of origin story." There used to be, but I think they're just making it up as they go along, now. He heads for the archives, but says he needs to borrow Lois's keys because he lost his. That's polite of him to want to use keys instead of just busting down the doors like most villains-of-the-week would. Lois realizes what this means. She hands him the keys with a stiff smile and tells him to keep them. The Psycho music of impending doom is really distracting. Lois beats a hasty retreat for the door. John looks after her with that "I know that you know what I know you know" look in his eyes.

By Tippi Blevins

Lois runs for the phone booth, chanting, "Please call, please call." The phone rings. Lois answers and says the man from the hospital is John Corben. Clark, standing on a rooftop somewhere, says he asked her not to-- She cuts him off and says he should be careful, because John has a "super-sized grudge" against him. The phone booth starts to glow green and the tell-tale heart starts beating. Clark wants Lois to promise him she's on her way home and not back to the office. Her muffled cries answer him. He listens to her struggling for about five seconds, asking, "Lois? Lois? Lois!" instead of immediately zipping down there. He does eventually get to the phone booth, though, and finds it empty. There's a handprint in green goo on the phone. He stands around looking perturbed.

Gigantic Watchtower pad. Chloe is at one of her fifty thousand computer screens when Clark whooshes in. "Lois has been kidnapped. I need your help," he says. Chloe says, "Tell me this isn't because you let her chase down the sinister cyborg all by herself." Clark protests that he told her not to! Chloe's like, "What did you think was going to happen?" I don't think Clark thinks, Chloe. She tells Clark that Lois is referring to herself as the Blur's sidekick now. Clark realizes he shouldn't have called her, but he's got to save her now. Chloe says Emil told her about the kryptonite heart; Clark won't be able to get near him. (There's a picture of Henry/Jimmy on Chloe's desk, by the way. I wonder if Aaron Ashmore gets paid for that? He should.) Clark shows her the "EMP grenade" that Emil gave him. It looks like the Tin Man's wiener. It's supposed to emit an electromagnetic pulse that stops any electronic device within 50 yards. Chloe wonders if it will work against meteor rock. I would think not, since it's not an electronic device. Clark says it's a chance he's willing to take. He gives Chloe John's name and she gets to work looking him up. "I wish you'd come to me in the first place," she says. "Lois doesn't have any experience dealing with these things." Clark admits it's because things have been easy with Lois lately. "Talking to her just felt right." Yeah, it's not as much fun talking to your grieving widow best friend, I guess. Chloe looks hurt, but keeps working. She pulls up some video mail Corben recorded while in Afghanistan. He thanks his "sis" for the DVDs and notes she sent in his care package. He's in a tent and there's gunfire in the background. He keeps recording and tells his sister to keep practicing her foosball so they can play when he gets home. He closes by telling her to be careful in the city, because "it's not like home," and he loves her. Clark and Chloe watch sadly. Chloe punches in some more information and finds out that his sister Rebecca was murdered in her apartment three months earlier while John was overseas. She also sees that he bought the building just a few weeks ago and thinks he may have taken Lois there. She tells Clark to be careful as he zips away.

By Tippi Blevins

So it turns out the place with the furnace and the chain fence of obsession is in the basement of this building. Lois is trying to joke her way out of the situation by saying, "H.R. frowns on this sort of thing." In this economy? It's cheaper than paying a severance package. John quietly says that he heard Lois talking to the Blur. "Just tell me who he is and I'll let you go." He sort of sounds like he means it, but Lois doesn't have the information he wants. She looks at the pulsing green glow under his coat and wonders what happened to him. He takes off his jacket and shows her. She takes one look and decides she wants him to put it back on. I don't know, it's still a pretty nice looking upper body even with the gross crabby Jell-O machine. John keeps asking, very quietly and desperately, for the Blur's identity. Lois backs up and picks up a heavy wrench. Now John shouts at her: "Who is he!" She whacks him with the wrench but it does no damage. John backhands her and she goes flying into some pipes. She falls to the ground, unconscious.

By Tippi Blevins

Clark whooshes in to the basement. (I wonder if he was standing just outside the whole time, waiting for Lois to get knocked out before going in?) "Get away from her!" he shouts. He advances on John, but stops short when he gets near the kryptonite. He takes a few steps back. "It's you, the Blur," John says. Clark says he doesn't want to hurt him, but John says he already has: "My sister is dead because of you." Clark looks confused, so John explains about how a prison bus crashed and Clark saved all the men inside from certain death. "In the confusion, a cold-blooded killer escaped." Clark realizes the escaped con murdered John's sister. John struggles to get out the words: "What gives you... the right... to interfere with our lives and to change our fates!" It's such a meaty and profound question on a show about a hero with godlike powers, but it's sort of wasted like a throw-away. I wish John had stayed around a while as a regular human reporter to challenge Clark/the Blur. But he probably would have ended up in a crap love triangle with jealousy as a motive, so I guess it's better things wound up this way. Clark says he's sorry for John's tragic loss. To his credit, he really does look kind of torn up about it. His voice even cracks a little. He says John needs to get control of himself, because the meteor rock is affecting him. John thinks it's easy for the Blur to have control, watching from the shadows. "You stand apart from the world, but the rest of us live in it. Even when it breaks your heart." Behind his back, Clark activates the EMP grenade. John advances on him and Clark crumples to his knees, weak from the kryptonite. He throws the grenade.

John watches it curiously. Gooey-looking lightning seeps out of it. This cocoon of energy very, very slowly starts to fill the room. John watches it with a frown instead of bolting. The pulse shatters a lightbulb in slo-mo. Then another lightbulb. And eventually another. John raises his arms as the light envelops him. His krypto-implant shorts out and he falls backward with a groan of pain. His eyes are open and glassy. He looks dead. Clark spares him a glance then makes his way over to the still-unconscious Lois. He brushes aside her hair a little and says her name. The sound of a heartbeat and a sinister green glow fill the room. Clark starts twitching and groaning. John, who is not dead after all, grabs Clark and throws him across the room. John says, "Now I'm going to show you what it's like to lose somebody you love." Yes, show, we get it. Clark-n-Lois 4-EVA! Just let it happen without characters announcing it, OK? It would be less forced that way. John turns toward Lois. "Lead," Clark's inner thoughts say out loud for us. He picks up a metal panel with the words "METROPOLIS LEAD CO" stamped on it. Sounds like where Wile E. Coyote would buy his metal goods if ACME was back-ordered. Clark blasts the panel with his heat vision until it glows red-hot. John just... watches this going on. The racing music makes it sound like this is an awesome fight scene, but the ponderously slow action disagrees. Clark slaps the molten plate onto John's chest as he superzips by. There's an audible sizzle of flesh. Hope he didn't need what was left of his nipples. John knocks on the metal and taunts Clark: "A little meteor rock got you down? Who knew the mighty Goliath could be taken down by a simple stone?" Well, anyone who's read the Old Testament, for starters. John peels the metal plate off his chest, and Clark's all "NO!", but John realizes too late that he's also peeled out his artificial heart. John stares down at the gaping, mechanical wound for a few moments before collapsing to the ground. He crawls forward on his hands and knees, then stills.

By Tippi Blevins

Clark goes back to Lois. He pets her hair some more and tells her she's safe now. She starts to wake up, but by the time her eyes open, he's across the room. She looks over to where he's standing silhouetted against the furnace fire. "It's you," she sighs. "You saved me." She says she doesn't know what to say to him. She asks to see his face. It makes me wish Clark looked not like Tom Welling, but like ... I dunno... David Caruso with extra pock marks and a bubble of snot perpetually heaving in and out of one nostril and a big, pink hairy mole on his chin that jiggles like a fishing lure when he talks. Would Lois still be so smitten if the Blur showed her a face like that? Clark takes a step toward her, getting her hopes up, but then zips away.

At the Watchtower some time later, Chloe's on the phone with Lois, telling her she's glad she's safe and will be home soon. She goes down the spiral staircase and finds Clark standing in front of the circular stained glass window. The view put things in perspective, he says. "Jimmy knew exactly what he was doing when he bought this place." Meaning, I think, that he must have known he was about to die and wouldn't have to worry about paying the obscene mortgage on it. Chloe joins Clark and says she misses Jimmy. Clark admits he took the easy way out. "I should have been there when you needed me. I'm sorry." Chloe understands that burying everyone he loves in his past isn't easy. Clark says he hasn't done a good job of that. "I've been trying to fill the void by hanging out on rooftops, eavesdropping on people." He thinks he can't completely stay away. Chloe: "Stay away from her, you mean." She thinks Lois means "something more" to him. She looks sad or resigned or tired, or all three, and the music sounds about the same. Clark stares at her in response. Chloe asks, "So does this mean that Clark Kent is coming back for an encore?" He doesn't know, he says, but he can't let that life get in the way of his training. Chloe thinks that pining for his old life isn't exactly helping him be a hero, either. She tells him, "Kal-El needs his human disguise more than ever." Clark wonders why. Chloe tells him about going to Lois's computer earlier. "Tess loaded it up with serious spyware." Clark seems surprised that Tess didn't hire Lois out of the goodness of her heart. Clark and Chloe worry about Tess finding out that Lois went to the future. Chloe says they can't let Tess get to Lois's memories before Clark does. I don't think it's Lois's memory Tess wants to get into.

By Tippi Blevins

Daily Planet. It's all sunny and bright outside. Inside, it's kind of dim. Oh, wait. That's just Lois. She picks up John's nameplate off his desk and chucks it in the trash. "Heartless bastard," she says. OK, so he kidnapped you and tried to kill you, but the heartless part wasn't his fault. She opens her desk drawer and pulls out Clark's nameplate. She sighs. Clark is watching her from across the room, unbeknownst to her. "I'm going to be needing that," he says. She turns around with a big grin and runs into his arms. "Clark Kent, you're back! I was beginning to think your family lived on some distant planet." Nah, the planet's gone now. Clark teases her about missing him. She pulls away from him. "Only because the guy at your desk was a certifiable psychopath." "Missed you, too, Lois," he says. Clark takes his spot at his old desk and asks if anything exciting's been happening. Lois says she helped the Blur catch "a homicidal maniac." Clark, just eating this up, says he would love to hear all about it. Lois scampers over to sit on the edge of Clark's desk and gleefully recounts the story. Lighthearted, romantic music plays. So, no one's sympathetic for John, whose life was taken from him and turned him into a monstrous killing machine against his will? No? All right, then.

By Tippi Blevins

Luthor mansion. Tess is studying John's now-defunct kryptonite heart. She asks a well-dressed minion, "Can he be revived?" "The subject's operation has left him more machine than man," says the minion. A trumpet blast in the soundtrack at this point is supposed to sound dramatic but I swear it sounds exactly like an indignant elephant. "His vital signs have simply gone offline." Tess just smiles. Stuart walks in just as the well-dressed minion is packing up the krypto-heart. "You have the coolest stuff!" Stuart gushes. Tess lashes out at him about him needing to knock before he enters. Stuart looks like he just pooped himself a little but manages to nod. Tess asks him if he's found the Kandorians. He hands her his computer pad and shows her symbols that showed up all over the world the night Zod and soldiers arrived. They look similar to Kryptonian symbols for blood, nobility, and family. Tess glances over at the Veritas symbol in the stained glass window. "Like a family crest," she says. She thinks it means more of Zod's people are out there. "How many of these did you find?" Stuart says there are hundreds of the symbols, one of which Tess might recognize. He touches the pad and pulls up an image of the Superman S logo burned into a desertous-looking landscape. But wait, there's more! A close-up of the image reveals a man's twisted body at its center. He looks naked and sort of skeletonized. Doomsday? Jor-El? Lex? Jimmy Hoffa! Tess looks stunned, whoever it is.

week: Zombieland comes to Smallville.

If Tippi Blevins were turned into a cyborg against her will, her object of revenge would be people who hawk loogies on the sidewalk or take up two parking spaces. You can reach her for questions or comments at b_tippi@yahoo.com.