Episode Report Card Omar G: D | 3 USERS: D+ YOU GRADE IT So Long, and Thanks for All the FAIL!
By Omar G | Season 8 | Episode 22 | Aired on 05.14.2009
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Smallville, Smallville, Smallville. Just when I think I've got you figured out, you get into the sugar bowl and go toddler-crazy for an hour until you exhaust yourself and sleep in a pile of your own broken toys, in what may be the show's worst-ever season finale. It starts with Clark being visited by a rocket-boot-flying Rokk from the Legion of Superheroes (circa 1,000 years from now). He warns Clark that getting rid of Brainiac set off a chain of events with Chloe that leads to Doomsday killing Clark. It's going to happen tomorrow, he says, but it was too much trouble to come back in time any earlier to give Clark more time to prepare. They charge you for time travel by the minute, apparently. He gives Clark a new Legion ring to send Doomsday to the future. He says they can deal with him there. Clark ignores all that noise and goes with his own plan: to separate Doomsday from Davis using black Kryptonite and to get help from Oliver's team to trap Doomsday in an underground tunnel related to the geothermal project they've been mentioning. He gets assistance from Black Canary and Impulse. When Oliver tries to help, Clark reveals that Oliver was the one who murdered Lex Luthor and tries to throw Ollie out of the Justice League. That doesn't work out so well. Oliver, Impulse and Black Canary subdue Clark with a Kryptonite dart and leave him lying in the street so they can go deal with Doomsday.
Tess, meanwhile, has had her Kryptonite orb stolen. Her vault has been broken from the inside. Lois tries to get the help of the Red-Blue Blur, but instead learns that he plans to leave the city via a goodbye letter Clark has written to the city. As she tries to investigate Chloe's disappearance with Jimmy's help, Lois is caught by Tess sneaking around her office. They fight all over a newsroom desk where there's no security in the building. Lois wins the fight and finds the Legion ring. She puts it on her finger and apparently ends up being shot to the future to annoy future generations.
The Justice Leaguers find Chloe and Davis with the help of Tess's tracking device. Chloe tries to calm Davis down, but he goes beastly and attacks. Chloe manages to stick him in the chest with the black Kryptonite, splitting Davis from Doomsday. Luckily for all of them, Doomsday is only a little mad and leaves all of them unconscious on the floor, but still alive.
Jimmy finds Clark and removes the Kryptonite dart. Clark, grateful, reveals to Jimmy his secret. Not that he's an alien, but that he's the Red-Blue Blur. Jimmy, no longer strung out on drugs, it seems, suddenly understands why Chloe's been acting the way she has. Clark goes and finds the Justice Leaguers and Chloe. Everyone is fine. Clark goes after Doomsday and finds him on a street terrorizing at least half a dozen citizens, including one scared little girl. Clark gets punched a few times, but then sails at Doomsday and propels him to a factory where explosives are waiting to be set off. The two of them disappear into the explosion. That... was it? The big climactic battle? That was not good.
Jimmy takes Chloe to a giant Metropolis home that he apparently bought as their wedding gift for Chloe and never gave up. Even when he was on drugs and was trying to steal or borrow any cent he could find. Chloe reveals that she was doing everything to save Clark. They kiss. Davis, who is there with them, goes into a jealous rage and impales Jimmy with a giant pipe. Jimmy manages to fight back and impales Davis right back. Jimmy dies in Chloe's arms. But… wait for it! At Jimmy's funeral, we learn that "Henry James Olsen" has a little brother (what?) we've never heard about. While Oliver sheds a tear, Chloe gives the boy Jimmy's camera and hopes he might follow in Jimmy's footsteps. So, the Jimmy we all knew the last few seasons? Not the real Jimmy Olsen. Instead, it's this kid who wasn't even at Chloe and Jimmy's wedding. Yeah, this part's pretty much complete bullshit.
Clark goes to visit Chloe at her new place, her new Watchtower headquarters that can be seen from the whole city. Clark takes on the guilt for killing Jimmy and determines that he made a huge mistake having faith in the human side of Davis/Doomsday. It was the human Davis that stuck the pipe in Jimmy. Therefore, Clark wants no part of this crazy human race. He tells Chloe that "Clark Kent" is dead. Couldn't he have died about three seasons ago and saved us a lot of pain? Clark walks out in angsty slow motion, leaving Chloe to curiously put her hands on her belly, right where a baby could possibly be growing should the writers deem that necessary next season.
Tess hears a noise in the night and goes to see what's up in the Luthor Manor. She finds the orb hovering outside. It blasts something into the ground. Tess looks and there's a naked man standing there. Is that Davis's body? Regardless, we get an idea of who's really in charge. A giant symbol burned into the ground around the man is that of our Kryptonian bad boy, General Zod. So, it looks like it'll be Season Nine: The Re-Zoddening.
Disjointed. Weird. Ret-conny. That was this episode. And that, kids, is how you don't put together a season finale.
Discuss this episode in our forums, then see what vlogger Sean Crespo thinks of Smallville when he has No Prior Knowledge! And check back next week for the full weecap!
Want more? The full recap starts right below!I had planned to save this for the last page of the recap, a kind of sneak announcement for the most dedicated recap readers to send you off into the summer sun with a bit of news. But then I saw this week's finale, "Doomsday," and realized that, wow, most of you aren't going to make it to the end of this recap. I don't know if I'm going to make it to the end of this recap. What an awful episode.
On the other hand, it's a great way to end my run as Smallville recapper. Thanks, show. Yes, it's true. This is my last recap of Smallville for Television Without Pity. [Nooooooo! - Zach] I'll go into more detail at the end of the recap, but for now, as I'm expecting most of you won't read that far, let me just say it here: thank you for reading. All of you, haters and supporters, fans and nitpickers alike. I would have never made it through eight years of this... thing without your eyeballs and your feedback. You have my gratitude. The Gayest Look of the Series, it turned out, was between you and me, as we stared into each others' queerly loving eyes and wished this show were better than it really was. I hope it was good for you, too. Baby.
We open on the Metropolis skyline at night. Tens of thousands of lights each tell a different tale of the city, and it will turn out they'll all be more competently told than the one we're about to witness. We hear a rocket approaching from the right. Is the helicopter shooting this footage about to be taken down by a rogue missile? Instead, the projectile flies in from the right of the frame and blasts forward. We see it streak across the sky, this time from left to right. Then we see the figure of a man flying up among the buildings. It looks like he's got a blue jetpack doubling as his footwear. Another cut and we see the figure streaking downward to get to the roof of the Daily Planet building. Our familiar hero of sorts, Clark Kent, is standing on the roof waiting. He's wearing a light blue dress shirt and a tie. The rocket man was Rokk, who is still wearing strange buckles on his black jacket. I guess in the future, that's a thing. He thanks Clark for meeting him. Clark says he's not the one who had to travel 1,000 years to get here. Hell, Clark didn't even have to travel outside of the building. Rokk says he hopes he's not too late. Too late for what? You're the one with the time travel. How can you be late for anything? "For what?" Clark asks. "The future," Rokk says. Oh, you asshole! You come back from the future to say you hope you're not too late for the future? You already are! Maybe. Actually, I'm already getting a headache thinking about it. I already watched the Lost finale and that was more than enough time traveling for one week, thanks. Clark is intrigued. He tilts his head as if he's about to say, "The future, Conan?" Rokk walks past Clark and says he knows that every time they travel back, they run the risk of disrupting fate. To be honest, he says, he might not have a future to go back to if he mucks around in this time period. Wouldn't you just disappear instantly, having never existed long enough to travel back here? ACK! Ice cream headache!