Patriot Acting Up

S10E07

Thanksgiving has come to the town of Smallville, and so have General Sam Lane and daughter Lucy. They arrive on the steps of the Kent farm to grill a big turkey. That big turkey's name is Clark Kent. The General gives Clark a list of Herculean chores to complete, which he does without too much complaint, because Lois is eager for the General to like Clark. This means she remains mum when the General starts lauding the anti-vigilante bill he's trying to push through Congress. Clark tries, with all respect, to offer a counter view, but Lois doesn't back him up. Didn't she used to be a hellion who defied her daddy all the time? She does eventually stand up for her man, but it takes her a while.

Meanwhile, Tess is settling into her Watchtower role, which chafes Oliver, even though he invited her. It's a good thing she's there, though, because in the course of tending to his wounds, she discover's Rick Flag's Suicide Squad tracker embedded under Oliver's skin. Flag, while monitoring Clark's tracker, discovers that General Lane is at the Kent Farm. He's determined to eliminate the General before he can get the anti-vigilante bill passed. Pretending to be a military man, he gets Lucy to give pictures of Clark with cousin Kara to the General, as well as slip a tracker on him. Lucy is dumb, so she falls for it. Once the suspicious and angry Lanes are away from the Kent farm, Flag launches a missile at them, but, through a series of contrivances, it ends up hitting the Talon with Lois inside. Clark figures out what's going on just in time to super-zip in and save Lois, leaving his special Blur insignia behind. The General, thankful for his daughter's life, changes his tune about the vigilantes. Or at least he does when it comes to the Blur, who he totally realizes is Clark. He and Clark come to appreciate each other and Lois and Lucy come to appreciate each other, as the magic of television Thanksgiving dictates.

In the end, Oliver also comes to appreciate Tess for the work she's doing with Watchtower, but he realizes it's time for him to leave. Now that he's out to the public, it's only a matter of time before someone follows him to the Watchtower and the other heroes. Sadly, he doesn't even get a Thanksgiving dinner.

Read why a sequel series to Smallville might not be such a great idea.

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The episode opens with an aerial shot of Smallville, which looks a lot flatter and Kansan from up high than it does on land, what with the mountains and hilly forests that sometimes magically appear. A black van speeds down a country road. Inside, a youngish man studies an array of monitors. He's probably a bad guy, because he's wearing all black and has a goatee, which are two of the most widely accepted symbols of evil in fiction. "Our eyes on the ground report the target is in Smallville, sir," he says in what sounds like a vaguely Eastern European accent. (Which, given who the character is supposed to be, seems like an odd choice. But we'll get to that later.) As he moves to one side, our old friend and torture enthusiast Rick Flag comes into view. He studies the monitors, as well, noting that everything is on schedule.

At the Kent farm, Clark and Lois are just skipping down the stairs into the kitchen, looking mighty pleased with themselves and each other. Clark is in his jammies while Lois traipses about in one of his old football jerseys. She gazes appreciatively at his backside as he fishes around in the fridge for a pitcher of orange juice. They smile goofily at each other across the kitchen island, go "teehee!" for a bit and then sip their juice in silence. After some more goofy staring, Clark asks, "So what are you in the mood for?" She gives him the bedroom eyes. "Oh, I'm in the mood," she says, leaning across the island toward him. "Just not for breakfast." She walks toward the front door. Clark, ever the puritan, reminds her that the bedroom is upstairs. In turn, she reminds him that her intended destination -- the porch swing -- is out front. She tosses her hair over her shoulder and heads for the door. He super-zips to catch up with her, pressing her up against the door. They start making out.

Back in the black van, Goatee seems concerned that the "target" is headed for the Kent farm. The monitor shows a red blinking dot headed for the Suicide Squad's skull symbol, which marks Clark's location. (His location is about to be all up in Lois's business. She's peeling off his shirt and halfway to climbing up Mount Clarky.) "Target is closing in on farmhouse," Goatee says in the van. At the same time, Lois is pulling a shirtless Clark through the front door, porch swing prominent in her thoughts, when a man in full military dress arrives on their doorstep. "Daddy!" Lois greets him. "General Lane," Clark says. The General regards these two horny exhibitionists with such a withering look that Clark's goodies shrivel to raisin-like proportions. Man, I bet he's glad they weren't in the middle of doing it when he pulled up. He probably never would have gotten it up again. A young woman joins the General, much to Lois's surprise: "And Lucy!" It doesn't seem like especially pleasant surprise, even factoring out the coitus interruptus. "Happy turkey day, Sis!" Lucy says. "The whole Lane family is together for the holidays." Clark is sucking in his stomach so hard that his navel is going to reappear on his back. Somebody save us all from relatives who show up for surprise visits this holiday season!

By Tippi Blevins

Clark and Lois, now fully clothed, debate a bit in hushed tones as to why the General has come for a visit. Clark is sure he's there to spend time with his daughter, but Lois thinks he's there to do some "recon on the man dating his daughter." She hopes her father doesn't find Clark's silly leather jacket. (She's nicer about it than that, though.) Clark assures her he's taken care of everything. He remains remarkably calm for someone who nearly got caught mounting a man's daughter like a circus pony. Lois grows more panicked by the moment. "None of my other boyfriends have survived the General's assault," she says. She needs Clark to be perfect. "It is important to me that my dad likes you." Clark sweetly tells her that he just wants her to be happy. She just hopes her father doesn't find out Clark is a superhero. "He hates superheroes," she tells him, then flounces off to find Daddy Dearest, leaving Clark to soak in the stink of that particular dropped bomb.

Lois finds her father in the kitchen, poring over a scrapbook of all Clark's high school heroics. The General, having changed into his civvies, appears no less commanding. Clark joins them. "It's good to see you, sir," he says. The General gives him a brusque nod and takes a look around the kitchen, noting things haven't changed much. There's a gun hanging over the doorway. How... decorative. "Your mother still own the place?" he asks. "It is still in her name," Clark says. He's about to say something like "but I run the place," but the General cuts him off, dressing him down for living in his mother's home and working in a basement. Clark, still friendly, clarifies that the basement is the Daily Planet bullpen. "I work side by side with Lois," he adds, clearly hoping this will earn him some points. Instead, the General points out that Lois writes more articles than Clark does. "What exactly do you do with your time, Clark?" "Well, lately I've been doing your daughter," he doesn't say. Lois, who's been busying herself with kitchen prep up to this point, tells her pa that she and Clark write articles together, but that sometimes Clark lets her have the byline. He's lucky that Tess is his boss, because any other editor would write him off as a slacker. Clark tells the General that he and Lois look after each other. To that end, the General has a list of things around the farm that need to be "brought up to code" if his daughter is going to be staying there. "Like scrubbing the bathroom tile with a toothbrush?" Clark asks. He's joking, but then it turns out that particular chore is on the list, along with many, many others. He's expected to put up storm windows, put a new roof on the chicken coop, clean the stables and capture Cerberus. Clark is agog.

By Tippi Blevins

The General admits he felt a little uncomfortable "inspecting the enemy camps." "Your mother is my major opposition in the Senate," he says. "I'm the senior military advisor on a new bill -- the Vigilante Registration Act." Clark bristles slightly at this. He bristles further when the General denounces the vigilantes as masked anarchists. "They stop crime and protect people," Clark says, despite Lois's pleading look. The General calls them terrorists, citing the destruction of RAO tower in Metropolis as an example. The reason there was no evidence of explosives, he says, is that "one of them superfreaks did it." Lois stops her veggie chopping so that she can step between her menfolk. She suggests a break from work, this being a holiday and all. But the General goes on to lecture them about the real heroes out there, the men and women of the armed forces. They have to enlist and follow the rules, he says. "People start believing in these so-called superheroes, pretty soon the superheroes form cells, start taking the law into their own hands!" That horse left the barn a long, long time ago, sir. "I will not let them compromise our national security." Clark pleasantly asks Lois for her opinion. "I think we need some veggies with our starches," she says, thrusting the chore list back at Clark. Clark looks stunned and disappointed, but backs down without pointing out what a dick the General is being for spouting off like that in front of his daughter, as he must know from her articles that she's pro-superhero. Lois stands there looking helpless, clutching a pair of potatoes.

Watchtower. Wearing his full Green Arrow getup, Oliver staggers into Watchtower's hub, clutching his left elbow. He heads for a metal cabinet on the wall, disappointed to find only random office supplies. "You know," he calls out, "when you need first aid, you expect it to be in the first place you look." Tess, sitting at a new desk near the big stained glass window, gets up to find the supplies for him. His pain momentarily forgotten, he gets a look at the new stuff Tess has moved into Watchtower. He reacts like she's hung up a bunch of frilly curtains and dropped lacy pink pillows all over the place, but everything looks about 99% the same as before. He gripes at her for moving in even as he acknowledges that he said she could. "Take off your shirt," she says with a note of weariness. She scoffs when he hesitates. "Like I haven't seen it all before." Thus persuaded, he strips and reveals the cuts and scratches on his back and arms. His costume doesn't seem at all damaged, but I'm not going to try to logic my way out of a shirtless Oliver scene. He explains: "Somewhere between chasing the bad guy and dodging the press, I ran into someone who literally had an axe to grind." Tess dabs at his wounds with iodine, gives a chuckle, and remembers a time when his "cure-all was two raw eggs in a Belgian beer." Oh, man, that sounds atrocious. Oliver sounds disgusted, as well, but for different reasons: "I can do this whole nine-to-five thing with you, all right? But I draw the line at happy hour." Dick. Don't invite someone to your clubhouse and then act like an ass when they show up. Tess gives a wound on his forearm an extra hard poke. The blood bubbles up and makes angry fizzing noises. "How did you say you hurt yourself again?" Tess asks. "Just your typical axe-wielding maniac," Oliver says. Concerned that something under Oliver's skin is reacting with the iodine, Tess a hand-held scanner and waves it over the wound. The Suicide Squad symbol shows up on the screen. "It's a subdermal tattoo," she explains. She also explains about the Squad: "When I worked for Amanda Waller at Checkmate, there were certain dirty jobs a government agent couldn't do -- not even us -- and Waller would send in the Squad." She pulls up Rick Flag's file. Oliver immediately recognizes him as the man who tortured him. Tess is surprised, as she assumed he'd died when Checkmate was attacked. Oliver tells her that Flag is recruiting. Tess realizes that the tattooed tag means Flag is tracking Oliver. Oliver thinks he's not the only one.

By Tippi Blevins

Back at the Kent house, Lois is chopping veggies while the General watches football on TV. The game is interrupted by a news report of a burning refinery in Smallville. "Clark should see this," the General says. "Remind him what a real hero is." Clark walks through the door, arms laden with groceries, bearing news of a cranberry shortage at the store. He totally could have run up to a cranberry bog in Massachusetts for some. Lois subtly directs Clark's attention to the refinery fire report. As soon as the General looks away, he super-zips out the door, leaving Lois holding the groceries. She says Clark went upstairs for something. Of course, now the General thinks Clark has been less than a gentleman, because apparently even in 2010 men aren't supposed to let women carry groceries. It gives them muscular, manly arms or some shit like that. Lois just smiles helplessly instead of sticking up for her man. Behind them, the news is reporting that the fire is out, thanks to the Blur. Clark's S-shield has been emblazoned into the side of the refinery. The General is unimpressed. "Leave it to the Blur to turn a fire into a photo op." Clark suddenly returns with a bag of cranberries and soot on his face. Lois wipes off a smudge, but the General is instantly suspicious. They go through this whole sitcom thing of Clark supposedly being upstairs but reappearing through the kitchen door. It is as lame as it is annoying. Clark excuses himself to answer a phone call from Oliver. When he hears what Oliver has to say, he tells everyone he's off to chop some wood, as his chore list demands. This, like everything else, makes Lois's father suspicious. As soon as Clark as out of earshot, he makes a call of his own. "Get me a full workup on Clark Kent," he says, spelling out the name. "He's hiding something."

By Tippi Blevins

Clark meets Oliver in the hayloft for a full-body scan. It doesn't involve the further removal of clothing, though. Oliver just waves the little wand thing over Clark until he finds the tag under the skin of his left shoulder. He shows Clark the skull symbol. Oliver is surprised that Flag was able to tag Clark through his impermeable skin. Clark supposes he used blue Kryptonite. How would Flag know his various weaknesses? Is Martha falling down on her Red Queen duties? Oliver says Tess is doing research back at Watchtower, then whinges about how Tess is acting like she owns the building now. Dude, she got a new desk and some chairs. She didn't hang her bras in your bathroom, okay? "If it wasn't for her, we wouldn't know about these tattoos," Clark reminds him. Oliver pouts a little but stops bitching. Clark hears someone approaching. "You gotta go," he says. "What, out the window?" Oliver asks. "Are we sixteen?" He laughs, but Clark is serious. Oliver sighs and does a neat somersault out the window, landing in a pile of hay.

By Tippi Blevins

Clark, with chore list in hand, goes to the barn looking for the General. "List completed and accounted for, sir," he says to what seems like an empty barn. He notices an impromptu interrogation setup in the middle of the barn, with a chair and spotlight. General Lane emerges from the shadows, wearing fatigues. He plucks the list from Clark's hand and makes him sit. Sadly, it is not on a Judas Cradle. The spotlight focuses on Clark like he's a day-old wing at KFC. "Lois likes to date men of action," the General says. "Men who make the news." He disses Clark for only reporting the news. He can't see why his daughter would be interested in him. Clark suggests he ask Lois. The General did something even better and more psychotically inappropriate: "I asked somebody at the Pentagon, instead." The General says with equal parts disgust and suspicion that Clark's record is clean. He suggests that Clark's mother (a.k.a. Senator Kent) wiped it out.

Clark gets up from his chair. "Excuse me, sir, but what gives you the right to spy on us?" He manages to sound amazingly polite, given the complete lack of decency he's been shown. The General blusters about being a four-star general and a war hero. He knows when someone's hiding something. He points to Clark's list of chores, which no one could have completed without help. "You're looking for enemies where they don't exist," Clark says. "Just like your vigilante witch hunt." He turns to leave, but the General is intrigued that Clark brought up the vigilantes. He smiles like a reptile would smile, had it the requisite lip flexibility. He presents Clark with the envelope that Lucy "found" in Clark's loft. It contains pictures of Clark talking to Kara. For some reason, this is a smoking gun to the General, even though he should have already known that the two were cousins. "You're in league with them," the General says. "I'm not on trial, Sam," Clark says, dropping any titles of respect. "You want to protect the United States, but as soon as you're threatened, everyone's rights go out the window?" If this episode had been made a few years ago, that would have been quite the stinging commentary on the Patriot Act. Clark says Lois is afraid to be herself around the General, and with cause. They get into a shouting match that should be largely family to anyone who's ever dated anyone with hardass parents. "I love your daughter," Clark says with all the fervor he can muster. "And I don't want a day to go by where I'm not with her." Alas, Sam is not swayed: "Well, I hope you enjoyed today, because it's the last day you'll ever spend with her." He stomps off, leaving Clark to make sad faces all by himself.

By Tippi Blevins

In the Suicide Squad van, Goatee is running around like the proverbial headless chicken, trying to figure out how they managed to hit the building but not the target. Well, it's Smallville and you're bad guys. Luck is almost never going to be on your side. He pulls up surveillance of the alley outside the Talon where the Lanes are still hugging it out. Flag is not pleased that the General survived. He doesn't have long to fume, though, because a pair of grappling hooks shoot through the van's back doors. The van rolls over a few times and skids to a stop. Clark rips the door open. "It's over, Flag. We know you blew up that building." Oliver joins Clark's side. "Classy move attacking your own country," he says, his voice disguised even though everyone on the planet knows who he is now. Maybe he just likes the deeper voice. Flag, pulling himself up from the wreckage, says he did it for his country. "Kill Lane, kill a movement," he says. The concept of martyrs clearly escapes this man. Flag condemns the Registration Act as a way to profile and destroy them. He predicts that Oliver will be the government's "poster boy" for heroes coming forward. Plus, he's super-photogenic. "America's turnin' against us," Flag says. He exhorts them to fight back. They should be the country's leaders. Clark thinks that will just stir up anti-hero hysteria. "Violence isn't the answer," he says. Except when you want to stop a van full of baddies. "Violence is the only answer," Flag says. "More and more superheroes are coming over to my side." Goatee wakes up at this point, grabs Flag by the shoulder, and warps them both out of the van. So Goatee is Emil LaSalle, a.k.a. "Warp," who, despite being French, has a weird Spanish/Russian thing going on with his accent. Clark and Oliver are left staring at the inside of the empty van.

By Tippi Blevins

Kent Farm. Clark is in the barn, doing mechanical things to some piece of equipment when the General walks in. "I owe you an apology," he says. Clark agrees with his silence. The General says he appreciates Clark standing up to him. "Nobody's had the guts to talk to me like that since my wife passed away," he says. He misses her, but sees Ella in his daughters' faces. He gives Clark advice about enjoying the simple things in life, like your wife and family, when you're faced with war. He would have spent more time with them, if he'd had the chance. The General looks like the saddest little bulldog in the world. Clark reminds him that his daughters love him: "You're their hero." "But I think Lois has got herself a brand-new hero now," the General says. He gives Clark a knowingly bashful smile. Clark doesn't react. The General tries thanking the Blur to Clark's face, all but winking and nudging him. Clark makes a few confused expressions. "So, Lois being saved by a vigilante... that would change your mind on the bill?" The way he says "vigilante" is hilarious. Vigilahhhnte. He admits he does like his daughter having her own guardian angel, but not all vigilantes are like the Blur. Clark's afraid that people will use the law to destroy others, but the General thinks that America will do the right thing. "Kind of like Lois did the right thing by you tonight," he says. "For years, I've been giving her boyfriends an impossible list of chores to do -- not to test them." "To test Lois?" Clark asks, confused. The General chuckles. "Those poor bastards, I put them through hell, and Lois never said a thing," he says. "That's how I knew she didn't love them." Well, Lois didn't say anything about Clark's chores, either. Clark feels pretty good about himself, though. When the General turns to leave, Clark calls him back: "About Lois and I [sic]... there was a question I was hoping to ask you." The scene ends before we find out what he asks. It's pretty easy to guess, though.

Everyone sits down to dinner. They smile and pass the carrots and cranberries. It's all very Norman Rockwell, with the addition of a super-powered alien.

Some undetermined time later, Flag picks up a copy of the Daily Planet. The headline informs us that the Vigilante Registration Act has passed. (I liked the VRA better when it was on True Blood.) Flag and his unseen cohorts seem to be in some sort of bunker, but it's hard to tell. All that's visible is a big American flag suspended horizontally from the ceiling like a tent and a few photographs pinned to a board. Everything beyond is dark. "No more hiding in the shadows," Flag says. "That's a declaration of war." He picks up a two-way radio. "Go," he tells whoever is on the other end. LaSalle walks out of a building that's festooned with "Stop the Menace!" anti-vigilante signs. He clicks a button on a remote detonator as he warps from sight. The building explodes. An anti-Blur pin flies toward us. Credits roll.

By Tippi Blevins

Discuss this episode in our forums, then see what other superheroes need showrunners ! And see what our vlogger thinks about the show, below.

Tippi Blevins has lost her appetite for Thanksgiving. You can reach her at b_tippi@yahoo.com or http://twitter.com/tippib.