Deep in the Vancouver lair of the Smallville "creative" team, May 2004:
Al: I've got it!
Miles: Well, don't give it to anyone else.
Al: No, I mean I've got Season 4! In the bag, baby.
Miles: Bag, what, where?
Al: You know that desperation play we made in the last five minutes of last season? Where we tried to recapture everyone's attention after they'd gotten tired of us stretching out Season 3 like a cheap piece of taffy?
Miles: I was napping.
Al: We were all napping. I mean right after we woke up.
Miles: It sounds vaguely familiar. Was Lana in spandex?
Al: Shut up, shut up, shut up! Look, I figured it out: we're going to take all the things that people like about our show -- Lex having crazy adventures, obvious guest stars, Evil Clark, and sexy girls and mix 'em up! Look what I bought!
Miles: Is that...is that a blender?
Al: Not just any blender! It's the Blend-o-Tron 3550! It purees script elements and spits them out into slightly improved storylines! It even throws in CGI effects!
Miles: You're absolutely mad, Gough. Maaaad, I tell you! But goddammit, it just...might...work.
Welcome back, HoYay! playas and HoYay! playa-haters. It's the first episode of Season 4, and I already need a nap. Let's take deep breaths, adjust our memory foam pillows, and try not to get out boots too dirty as we wade through this.
Previously: I was having a margarita on South Padre Island. Then I came home to do this. Clark went bumblefuck and walked through a crevice in a wall. Papa Luthor got his head shaved. Chloe died, but not really.
Title card on a black screen: "Three Months Later." Chloe is speaking in voice-over from what sounds like a tinny TV set. She says she wants to provide some answers to what she's sure are the listener's many questions. "If you're watching this, it means I'm probably dead," Chloe says, as her fuzzy image appears on the screen of a familiar green flat-panel monitor. Chloe tells the listener that he or she is the one good thing in her life, and that she cares about the person more than he or she will ever know. We pull back from the Alienware monitor, housed in the offices of The Torch, to reveal a young woman with longish brown hair watching the video. "Please find out who did this, Clark," says DeadChloe. Wide shot of the newsroom as the young woman watches the screen. "You're the only one who can," says Chloe. Is it really such a good idea to put the onus of figuring out your own murder on Clark Kent? Dude can barely figure out how he feels in the morning. He's no Matlock, you know what I mean? The young woman looks conflicted. On screen, Chloe leans forward and shuts off the videocamera. It goes to static, which is absolute bullshit in this MiniDV camcorder age, but whatever.
“ Wait, what? You didn't see Lost? Because you were watching this show? Aw, dude. I'm sorry, man. Maybe you should look into one of those two- tuner TiVos. Or, you know, just watch Lost. ”
We cut to a car driving down a dark Smallville back road as lightning flashes in the sky behind it. As the SUV barrels down the road, the woman from the newsroom is leaning her head in what can't be an ergonomic manner, speaking into a cell phone as she drives. "K-E-N-T," she spells out, but I think she misspelled the curse word most commonly associated with Ann Coulter. She's calling directory assistance about a "Kent Farm" and, as she swigs some coffee from a huge travel mug, she asks if farms even have addresses. She interrupts her own sipping to tell the person on the phone that the last "super-genius" (Wile E.!) she spoke to got her lost. She turned right on Route 31 or took a wrong turn at Albuquerque or something, and now she's lost. Er, speaking of Lost, the show that airs directly opposite this one on Wednesday nights, did you see it? Holy crap, was that awesome or what? Wait, what? You didn't see it? Because you were watching this show? Aw, dude. I'm sorry, man. Maybe you should look into one of those two-tuner TiVos. Or, you know, just watch Lost. I'm just sayin'. The woman driving mentions something about a "billion stalks of corn" which is like a thousand points of light if you're Orville Redenbacher. Lightning flashes around the car, and somehow it causes the cell phone she's holding to give the woman a little shock on the cheek, before suddenly shutting off. It doesn't even take lightning to do that to my Sprint PCS phone. Sometimes, I'll just say the word "Hello?" and the phone spits toxic melted silicon at my face and calls my grandmother a whore. I'm not the most satisfied customer, is what I'm trying to say. The young woman (who for now we'll call, um, "Laura...Lake") does a "That's just great" take and then pulls a cigarette from her car visor and tells herself that she'll be self-hatin' if she smokes it. So, we've gathered that this woman is a tad neurotic and impatient in that TV show way that all people from a big city are supposed to be when they go to a small town. Very Doc Hollywood. Laura...Lake is leaning over to dig in her purse when a bolt of lightning strikes the road right in front of her SUV. She scream-swerves, veering off the road. Corn, corn, corn, corn, corn, corn! Then the SUV stops. Good thing there was all that corn. Laura rolls her eyes: "Great, now I gotta deal with this shit." She looks up at the sky. Three disparate lightning bolds converge to form...more lightning. It's even less exciting than it sounds. No, wait, it did do something. It created some sort of bastard Yu-Gi-Oh! ball of energy that's heading right for the woman's vehicle. Her eyes widen. A bolt shoots right at the car. Take that, city folk!