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Because the show is fond of forced parallels, we have Tess, Lois and Clark all dealing with issues of abandonment and their flawed parents. To start with, Tess receives a musical ballerina figurine that has featured in her nightmares. She and Clark track the figurine's origin to an orphanage run by Granny Goodness. Everything seems fine on the surface, but Granny's been wiping her girls' memories and training them to become powerful fighters. Tess was once one of her orphans, but her real parents forced Granny to send her to another home. The parents were so powerful that even Granny couldn't refuse them. Now that Tess is back, Granny doesn't want to let her go and vows to train her for an upcoming war. Clark tries to rescue her, but Granny's fightin' Furies subdue him with K-tinged weapons. Eventually, they get away and Tess finds out that her "powerful parents" were the Luthors and that her real name was Lutessa. Lutessa! Bet she's glad she forgot that.
Meanwhile, Lois confronts the memories of her mother's death by watching VHS tapes Ella Lane (Teri Hatcher) made on her deathbed. Ella tells Lois that she can never fully commit to a relationship until she comes to term with the mommy-shaped hole left in her heart. This convinces Lois that she needs to patch up Clark's relationship with Jor-El so that he can fully commit, too. She meddles her way to the Fortress, but he would rather trap her in an energy beam than talk to her. Clark catches up to her once he's done with the Tess plot and frees her. Somehow, a playback is triggered, showing Clark his parents right before they sent him to Earth. They're proud of him, they love him, and so on. Clark feels so peachy that he invites Lois out for a night of karaoke so that he can propose to her. But the outcome of that will have to wait for a future episode.
At the end of this episode, Granny, Godfrey and DeSaad gather, calling themselves Darkseid's "unholy trinity." It's mildly interesting and moderately confusing. More to come in the full recap.
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Want more? The full recap starts right below!It's a dark and stormy night outside the Luthor mansion. Tess sleeps fitfully in her bed as thunder rumbles and lightning makes shadows jerk and sway across her face. She breathes hard, tosses and turns. In black and white, she dreams about being a little girl, lying in a simple iron bed, still wearing her school uniform. It's storming in her memory, too. She holds a musical ballerina figuring that spins and plays "Dance of the Sugarplum Fairy." She hears footsteps approaching and grips the ballerina to stop her dancing and silence the music. Little Tess hops up from bed, grabs a pillowcase and stashes the figurine inside. The footsteps walk past her door, casting shadows through the crack. Little Tess hurries to a secret panel in the floor and pulls out a key. It looks like she made it herself out of a small spoon. She uses it to unlock the door, then secrets it back under the panel. Tess, with pillowcase in hand, runs bare-footed down the hall of what looks like a Dickensian mansion. She runs down a wide staircase, through a grand foyer and comes to the front door. It's locked. A woman's shadow rises from another staircase, this one leading up from a lower level of the house. Little Tess runs down another hallway, her movements occasionally sped up to lend an air of surreality. She tries more doors, but they're all locked, so she hides in an armoire. The ballerina figurine begins to play again. Little Tess grabs it, silencing it, but her cover is blown. The doors of the armoire open and a woman's hand grabs her by the throat. Little Tess is dragged across the floor by her ankle. She claws at the side of the armoire, her nails gouging the wood. She cries for help. All the while, the ballerina dances.
In the present day, Tess wakes up gasping for breath. For a moment, all she can hear is her own breathing, then, faintly tinny music coming from somewhere inside the Luthor mansion. She follows the sound to the library. The ballerina figurine twirls on a table in front of the fireplace. Tess takes a few shaky steps forward and picks it up. She stares at it in horror. Somebody save her from creepy figurines!
I think that was the shortest teaser ever. It was suspenseful and creepy! I want to know what happens ! But that will have to wait, because after the opening credits we stop by the Kent farm for a visit. Strangely, it's not stormy there at all. Lois is in her jammies in the kitchen, opening a large cardboard box. Whatever is inside gives her pause. She crosses her arms and looks away, closed off. Clark comes down the stairs. "You know, if you'd just admit that you've moved in with me, you wouldn't have to sneak down here in the middle of the night and unpack your things." Lois puts on a smile to face him. She explains they're not really her things, except that they are. "What is it?" Clark asks. "Something I've been avoiding for 15 years," she says. Her father sent it to her after his visit. It was in the back of her old closet but she's never opened it. "It's the keepsakes my mom gave me after she found out she had cancer," she says. Clark reaches into the box and pulls out a blue glass bird. Lois instantly tears up at the sight of "Old Blue." Her mother kept the figurine in the kitchen window. "I haven't seen it since she -- " She can't say the last word. She confesses that she never visited her mother in the hospital. "What kind of kid refuses to visit their sick mom?" "A really scared one," Clark says. But Lois doesn't let herself off the hook. Her mother was there for five weeks, and Lois didn't say goodbye to her. Erica Durance is really good at crying scenes; she's not afraid to get red and snotty. Clark looks pained, but he doesn't know what to say. Lois turns her attention back to the box and pulls out the first of several VHS tapes her mother recorded while in the hospital. "Clark, what if she's angry that I didn't go see her?" she asks. Okay, only Joan Crawford would be angry at a small child for not visiting her in the hospital. Wasn't Lois supposed to be, like, five when her mom died? Lois doesn't think she can face it, so Clark tells her she shouldn't feel guilty. Lois wonders if Clark has felt like something was missing since he cut ties with his dad. He reminds her that Jor-El isn't really his dad. "He's a machine," he says. "It's different." Lois says Jor-El must have cared if he sent Clark to Earth, not making the distinction between real Jor-El and crazy psycho unpredictable machine Jor-El. Clark doesn't seem to want to get into all that, so he decides to go out on patrol instead. Then he remembers he's a boyfriend now, and he's like, "I can stay if you need me to." She gives Clark the go-ahead to leave, so he super-zips out of there before more emotions happen.
Watchtower. Clark walks into the hub to find Tess sitting at her desk, looking through a photo album. When Tess gets up, you can see buttcrack. I didn't go looking for it, but I just happened to pause the screen there. Ladies, hipster pants are flattering, but they do require a certain measure of caution. Tess is surprised he's there; she didn't expect to see him until the day at work. But since he's there... "Someone broke into the mansion and left this with a gift tag," Tess says, handing him the ballerina. "It said 'Happy birthday, Tess.'" Clark looks confused, so Tess tells him it's not her birthday. I like how nobody acts even a little surprised when someone breaks into the mansion now. Tess, visibly shaken, tells him about the nightmare and waking up to find the ballerina in the library. Clark turns it on, and Tess immediately silences it. She shows him the photo album (with actual snaps of a young Cassidy Freeman), hoping she'd find a picture of the music box. "But this just reminds me why I don't like going home for Christmas," she says, her expression pained. Clark turns the figurine over and peels off the birthday tag. Underneath, there's another tag, torn faded letters. Clark scans the tag into the computer, enhances it, and comes up with "Property of St. Louise's Orph[anage]." It doesn't ring a bell for Tess, so Clark uses his Google-Fu and pulls up an article about the article and the woman who runs it. "She's like the Mother Teresa of needy children," Clark says. "They call her Granny Goodness." Wasn't Mother Teresa the Mother Teresa of needy children?
In the dark, dusty bowels of St. Louise's Orphanage, a little girl has been strapped into a rusty wheelchair. "Try to relax, dear," an older woman says. "You just trust Granny and you'll leave your past behind." She brushes the little girl's hair before fastening a leather strap around her head. The girl cries that she doesn't want to forget, but Granny tells her that her memories are holding her back. Except for being creepy as hell, Granny is an attractive woman in a matronly sort of way, quite different from other incarnations of the character. She promises that the little girl will thank her some day. She holds her hand over the girl's head. Red light glows from her palm. The girl screams.
Kent Farm. The sun is shining as Lois puts one of her mom's tapes into the VCR. Lois curls up on the couch, wraps herself up in a plaid blanket and starts the video. Teri Hatcher appears on the TV screen as Ella Lane. She greets Lois, her little girl. "I've asked that you girls not be brought to visit me at the hospital," she says. "I know you don't like being what to do, but I want you to have happy memories of me." Lois cries. Her mom goes on to say that "the Colonel" packed a bag for her. Nightgown, favorite sweater. She's touched that her husband noticed. "He even managed to slip in Blue," she says. He got it for her when they found out she was pregnant with Lois. "We were stationed in Russia; there, this is considered a symbol of hope." Ella is sure that her husband will do a wonderful job raising the girls. She and Lois both tear up. Ella is making the tapes so that she can be there for her daughters in some way, when they need her. I hope she made tapes for Lucy, too. "Play the tapes, think of me," Ella says. "Because losing a parent, it can create a hole in a person's heart." Ella says one day Lois will meet someone special, and, knowing her, it will be "someone tall, dark and handsome." (At first I thought it was odd for a child that young to have a "type," but then I remembered that when I was five, I was madly in love with Superman.) Lois exhales sharply, simultaneously crying and smiling at her mother's prescience. But Ella goes on: "...and you can't commit to that person fully if you think that there's a love that you're missing from some old memory, like me." Ella's voice cracks. She pleads with her daughter, "You can't let someone leaving you stop your future with someone else." Lois and Ella wipe tears off their cheeks at the same time. "I will always be your mother, Lois, and I will always love you." With that, the tape ends. Lois weeps openly, curling into the couch, clutching the blanket for comfort.
It's a well-acted scene, and not badly written. It's just sort of weird in context. What if Lois had watched those tapes when she was still little? Relationships and commitment and such would probably not have been at the forefront of a child's priorities.
St. Louise's Orphanarium. Clark and Tess stand in front of the imposing building. Tess holds up a picture of herself with her adoptive parents standing on the steps of the orphanage. She compares the photo with the real thing but doesn't remember ever being there. Clark says someone broke into her house to remind her. With grim looks of determination, they head towards the building Granny greets them on the steps with a big smile. "You must be the reporters who called! Welcome!" She shakes their hands and all but offers them ribbon candy. She gushes about how excited her girls are at the thought of being featured in the Daily Planet. The girls, clad in gray pinafores and starched white shirts, assemble on the steps to serenade the big city reporters with "Amazing Grace." Clark's super-hearing picks up another girl's voice, this one farther away and calling for help. Pretending he's forgotten his notebook, Clark excuses himself and follows the voice to St. Louise's dusty bowels. He finds a girl, different from the one we saw earlier, but bound to the same wheelchair. He starts untying her bonds. "Hurry before Granny comes back," the girl cries. Use your super-speed, man! He continues freeing her at a frustratingly human pace. The girl says that Granny was going to make her forget her recently dead parents. Clark takes her by the hand and starts to lead her out, but they hear the distant clanging of metal against metal. "That's what Granny turns us into," says the girl. Clark stashes the girl in another room and tells her to wait for him.
He follows the clanging and comes upon a group of young women clad in black leather, fighting each other with various metal weapons. As he nears them, he gets that familiar sinking feeling that signifies the presence of green kryptonite. He glances around, wondering how his conveniently inconvenient weakness has manifested itself this time, and sees a woman forging weaponry in green-tinged fire. The women attack him. One of them trips him with her bull whip and he crashes to the floor. "I'm here to help you!" he protests. A woman stands over him, her boot-clad foot on his chest. "No one here needs saving," she says. "Except you." She's wearing a Freddy Kreuger glove on one hand. Clark doesn't argue.
Granny escorts Tess into the orphanage. Hopefully the little singing urchins have run for their freedom. Granny beams with pride. "You know," she says, "I've always been able to tell an abandoned soul when I see one." She says it's a gift. Tess doesn't remark on how creepy that sounds and instead asks if the girls come here as babies. Granny says they come at any age. It's difficult to find them permanent homes. "Truth is, by the time I get my hands on the lost souls, they no longer have the cute baby scent that childless couples yearn for." Babies make a lot of "scents" and very few of them are "cute." I would totally rather have a kid who's already been potty-trained. Maybe the orphanage could try that as a selling point. Tess, taking notes all the while, is aghast at the thought of the kids spending their whole lives there. Granny laughs. It's not like she's punishing the girls, for heaven's sake! She's just turning them into efficient killers! Granny leads Tess down a hallway decorated with portraits of the orphanage's illustrious alumni. Oh, holy crap. One of the portraits seen in passing is of a sad-faced clown in a puffy red wig. It is horrific. "I've been training my girls for decades," Granny explains. "Not to blend into society, but to conquer it." Most of the other portraits seem to be of young businesswomen. Tess pauses when she catches sight of the armoire from her nightmare. She walks toward it, drawn like a magnet. Granny is still talking: "My girls know I'll always be there for them, and I know they'll never desert me." Tess peers around the side of the armoire and sees the marks where she clawed at the wood. Tess turns slowly to face Granny. "I do hope you enjoyed the birthday present," Granny says. She knew it would bring Tess back to her. As Granny steps to one side, Tess sees a portrait on the wall that had up till then been hidden. Her own face stares back at her.
Kent Farm. Lois is in the loft, looking through Clark's books, including the Krypto-Diary he'd given her a few weeks ago. Something whimpers behind her. She turns to find Shelby panting at her. "Don't look at me like that," Lois says. She tells the dog that she realizes now that she and Clark can't move forward until "he deals with the super-sized hole his dad left in his heart." Shelby whimpers some more. He's like, "Lady, I was yanked away from my mother when I was six weeks old and forced to live a life of crime! Do you hear me yapping on about it? No! Now feed me!" Lois goes on about her relationship with Clark while Shelby whines and licks his lips. How about a Snausage? A Milk Bone? Alas, Lois keeps reading the diary and gets an idea. She rummages through Clark's desk and comes up with a handy map of the Kawatche caves showing where the portal room is. She rummages some more and finds where Clark has hidden the key behind a bookshelf, on a ledge to the barn wall where it could easily slip through the half-inch spaces between the boards. These people really need to learn how to hide their super-secret alien shit better. Lois stares at the octagon in wonder. "No goin' back now," she says. Shelby's like, "Bring me back a seal carcass, would ya?"
Orphanage. Tess is still following Granny around on a grand tour instead of running the hell away. Perhaps she's too busy putting the pieces together: "In my photo album, there are no photos of me before I was five." Because she was here at the orphanage, Granny tells her. Tess realizes the nightmare was a memory. "You were chasing me," she says angrily. "You were hurting me!" Granny denies ever being able to hurt her, but Tess doesn't buy it. She demands to know the truth about who she is. Granny tells Tess about how she was training her and didn't want to let her go, but then her birth parents found her a home and forced Granny to send her away. Tess wants to know who they were, but Granny only says they were powerful people. "They would have closed us down if I fought back," she says. Granny tearfully says she's always watched over Tess. She's the one who found her in the hospital, after Zod barbecued half her face. Tess realizes Granny was the one who brought her to Cadmus. Granny beams with pride. "The scientists did a remarkable job," she says. "You can't even see the scars." She runs her fingers over Tess's face. For a moment, Tess is too lost in thought to stop her. Then she swats her hand away, angry. Granny's smile fades. She leads Tess further into the orphanage, talking bitterly about the cycle of abuse and how hard it is to break, even for strong women. "But nothing can break you," she says. She says Tess is the strongest girl she's ever chosen, her favorite. Tess keeps following her, wanting to know why she doesn't remember her birth parents. Granny waves aside such unimportant matters. "With your powers, we'll accomplish great things," Granny says. She says lines will be drawn and Tess will be on her side. Oh dear crap, they've stopped to another hobo clown painting. I'll be fighting on whatever side doesn't have scary clowns, thanks. Granny wishes Tess had just come alone, but her "girls" will take care of Clark. Tess rushes off to find Clark, but Granny uses some telekinetic mojo and flings Tess to the floor. Tess scrambles to her feet and runs. She finds an old rotary phone and tries to call for help, but it takes eons. Granny advances on her, waving the phone out of her hands. Granny follows her to an empty bedroom. "None of my girls ever leave me," she says cheerfully. With a gesture of her hand, the shutters slam against the windows. She has plans for Tess: "You will be my most valuable soldier in the coming war, whether you want to be or not." With a cherubic smile, Granny leaves and closes the door behind her. "Nighty night!" she calls out. "It's so good to have you home, back in your old room!" She laughs maniacally. Tess leans against the wall, defeated. The words "somebody save me" have been scratched into the paint. Tess should totally sue Remy Zero when she gets out of there.
In the multipurpose dungeon/training room/blacksmith shop, Clark has been stripped of his shirt. Granny's girls chain his wrists and hoist his arms up over his head. Why does every episode of everything I recap have a torture scene in it? Since the green kryptonite fires are still weakening him, Clark tries to talk his way out of the situation. He just wants to help the little girls find good homes. The young woman with the Freddy Kreuger glove and the Teresa Giudice hairline tells him that nobody could love them more than Granny. Clark tries to explain the difference between love and control, but the distinction is lost on them. Freddy rakes her claws over the wall, the metal sparking green. She extols Granny's virtues, like her being "smarter than any human." She runs her claws down Clark's chest, drawing blood. "Just as these green fire rocks temper our weapons, making them stronger, she makes us stronger." Oy, this dialog. "Soon, a great fury will consume this world and no one will be able to stop us." She waves her claws in Clark's face, until Granny's voice scolds her: "Harriet! I told you to look after our lost lamb, not slaughter him." Well, that's what you get when you put insane people in charge of your welcoming committee. Granny sends the Furies to their rooms so she can deal with Clark. She tenderly caresses his face and promises that taking away his memories will make everything better.
In her old room, Tess remembers the makeshift key from her nightmare/memory. It's still waiting for her, stashed away under the floorboards. She unlocks the door but runs into Harriet at the bottom of the stairs. "Move it or lose it, sister," Tess says. Harriet attacks her. Tess throws her through a glass partition, then kicks her in the face for good measure. Just when things are starting to look up for Tess, Lashina snares her throat with the length of her whip. She jerks the whip and Tess crashes to the floor.
We cut away from that exciting fight to join Lois at the Fortress of Solitude. Lois, strangely enough, doesn't introduce herself, but says to the silent Fortress that she's there to talk about Clark. Er... Kal-El. "Look, I know that as a parent you had to make the hardest decision ever to save your son and send him here alone." Actually, it was probably a pretty easy decision. Let baby Kal-El die on Krypton or send him to Earth so that he could survive. Lois doesn't get a response, so she tries to draw a parallel for Jor-El by telling him that her dying mother tried to protect her by keeping her away, but it was the wrong thing to do. Jor-El can still be there for his son, she says. You know, as much as a crazy computer program can be. "Your son needs a father who believes in him," Lois says. "I wish knowing that I loved him was enough, but Clark can't fully hear it with the ghost of your disappointment haunting him." Again, this Jor-El is a computer program, and a pretty inconsistent one at that. Nonetheless, Lois is angry that Jor-El doesn't respond. "He's lucky to be rid of you!" she calls out. The Fortress finally reacts, by immobilizing her in a beam of light. It lifts her off the ground. She hangs in midair, her monologue blessedly silenced.
We rejoin Clark at St. Louise's. Granny straps him into the wheelchair and promises to take away his pain. He tries to tell her he doesn't have any pain (minus his raked torso and krypto-queasiness) but she calls him an "abandoned soul" whose parents didn't want him. She's going to take that all away from him. Clark reaches deep into Pa Kent's treasury of platitudes to offer this as a protest: "Challenges are what make us who we are." He tells her he wouldn't be the same without the people he's lost. She's still insistent on taking his memories away. Why couldn't she have shown up at the height of his Lana obsession? Granny says her girls would agree that she's the most compassionate person they know. Instead of rolling his eyes, Clark conserves what little strength he has to muster up a thin stream of freeze-breath. He blows at the chains holding up the metal cover above the forge. The chains ice over and creak. Granny either doesn't notice or doesn't think it's a concern. She holds her hand over Clark's head. Red light emanates from her palm, baking his scalp like meatloaf under a high school cafeteria heat lamp. He groans and slumps against the chair. The frozen chain snaps. The metal cover drops and smothers the green flame. Clark breaks free of his bonds, but Granny is nowhere to be seen.
He super-zips away from the dungeon and gets dressed faster than the human eye can see. He finds Tess suspended from the stairwell, the bull whip wrapped around her neck. He uses his heat-vision to burn through the whip and then speeds over to catch Tess before she hits the ground. Lashina appears at the top of the steps, cracking a whip in each hand. Instead of wasting our time on a fight, we just hear Clark zipping over to her and then see him standing over her bound and prone body. He walks back over to Tess, giving her a hand up. "Thanks," she says. "I thought I could handle that on my own... I'm so used to looking after myself." Clark smiles at her. "You're part of my team now; I wasn't gonna abandon you."
He zips back to the farm. He's wearing totally different clothes now, for some reason. He speeds up the hayloft and finds all his various and sundry Kryptonian artifacts spread out on the table, just waiting for any old body to find. Why does no one bother hiding any of this crap? And yet, they insist on acting like THE SECRET is a super-big, mega-huge deal. Plot-wise, I guess Lois had to leave it all over the place so that Clark could put the pieces together and figure out what she was up to. Still, though: dumb. The final piece falls into place when he sees that his mega-secret key is gone from its super-hiding place behind the bookshelf.
He rushes off to the Fortress. Lois is still hanging around in her tube of light. Clark demands that Jor-El let her go. "I may not have lived up to your expectations, but if you hurt her, you will have failed all of mine!" Lois drops from midair and Clark zips over to catch her. Lois resumes her attempts to get Jor-El talking to Clark again, but Clark is pissed at Jor-El for trapping Lois. Well, she was trespassing. Lois is insistent that they try one more time: "I love you too much to let you and your father give up on each other." She asks him to try one more time. Somehow, for some reason, a holographic playback is triggered. Clark is suddenly facing the image of his parents, Lara (Helen Slater) and and Jor-El (Julian Sands). As the recording plays, there are occasional interruptions in the playback and sounds of explosions in the background as Krypton is destroyed. Little Kal-El is just a few weeks old at the time of the recording, but Lara says she can already see he has his father's "independent spirit." Jor-El adds that he also has his mother's bravery and compassion. He was one hell of a precocious infant. Clark reaches out to touch her image. Lara, near tears, tries to talk up Earth as a pretty awesome place to send a baby in a spaceship. She wants him to live a full and wonderful life there. "But I need you to know," she says, "that you were born of a great love." Jor-El explains that they can't come with him because the ship only holds one Kryptonian. (Well, plus baby Doomsday.) Plus: "To do so would only burden your innocent soul with our frailties and failures." Dude, you should have left it at "your space crib was too small for us." Now you're just depressing him. Jor-El says Clark will have all his knowledge, without the ego or regrets. "Whatever trials I put you through, I will never lose faith in you," he says. Lara reminds him he needs to be wrapping this up. "We are confident you will become Earth's greatest savior, and never doubt that just as you are a part of us, we will always be a part of you." They say their farewells and the playback ends with a flash of light. Clark and Lois look at each other, stunned. Supermanly horns play us out of the scene.
St. Louise's. Granny has ditched her matronly outfit for fashionable all-black attire, including a spiffy leather vest. This is, after all, the CW, so even little old ladies gotta look hot. She walks through a darkened, empty room toward a door where a young man is just entering. She pauses, looking at him without recognition. "Hello, Granny," he says in a British accent. "DeSaad?" she asks. When he raises her hand to his lips for a kiss, she rolls her eyes, finally recognizing him. Joining them now is Godfrey, last seen barfing up smog birds in DeSaad's S&M club. "Our dark lord has anointed him," DeSaad explains, "made him like us -- a prophet." DeSaad is super cute. I feel cheated that we didn't get an intro episode for him. He calls Godfrey "Darkseid's third minion," which seems to come as a pleasant surprise to Godfrey. Granny is not impressed, and tells them so. "Our unholy trinity is complete," DeSaad says. "I bind their bodies, Godfrey breaks their spirit, and you, my beloved friend, you clear their minds, preparing the way for Lord Darkseid." They give each other knowing (but unholy) looks.
Kent Farm. A crescent moon hangs in the sky. Lois places the blue glass bird in the kitchen window. "Yes and no," Clark says behind her. She turns to give him a quizzical look. He explains: "Yes, I think your mother is still watching over you, and no, I don't think you're crazy." Can you read my mind? No? Then quit putting words in my mouth! Lois tearfully says her mother was afraid to look weak in front of her, that she felt she'd failed. "Clark, she's the bravest person I know," Lois says, hugging him. They talk about their all-too-human (or Kryptonian) parents not wanting to burden their children with their mistakes. Maybe they were the ones who couldn't handle saying goodbye. He realizes now that Jor-El blamed himself for losing their home. "All the weight I thought I had on my shoulders... he was carrying something so much heavier." "And he didn't want you to carry it with him," Lois says. Uh.. what? I think there's some kind of pronoun oopsie there. Clark looks sad for a while, but he's glad that Lois got to see Jor-El. He thanks her for that. Lois gives her mom the credit. Also thanks to her mom, she's moving in with Clark. She shows him her toothbrush as proof. Clark offers to take her out for a night of karaoke... which is kind of random. When he leaves the room to get their coats, Lois puts away the last of her mother's keepsakes, pausing when she sees a note that reads "For your wedding day." She hides it from Clark when he returns. Lois, eager to get her Whitesnake groove on, heads out the door. Clark lags behind a moment. He pulls a diamond engagement ring from his coat pocket and gives it an admiring ogle. "Hurry up, Clark," Lois calls from outside. "It's gonna start soon!" "Sooner than you think, Lois," he says. This probably means we're going to have to deal with bridezilla Lois at some point in the season, right?
Luthor Mansion. The moon is suddenly full. Has a lot of time passed, or did someone fall asleep in the editing room? Tess sits in her library office. Once again, a storm rages outside. The thunder and lightning always like to show up for a dramatic moment. Tess has a folder from the orphanage. In it is her birth certificate. As she reads it, she flashes back to the (stormy) night she was left on the steps of St. Louise's. A man leads little Tess from a limo to Granny Goodness's waiting hands. He caresses the top of little Tess's head before returning to his car. Although we don't see his face, we get a glimpse of his leonine mane. Little Tess calls after her father, but he drives away. The last thing she sees is the license plate that reads... "LUTHOR." In the present day, Tess learns from her birth certificate that Lionel was her father and Pamela Jenkins was her mother. She also learns that her birth parents were especially cruel, as they thought "Lutessa" was a perfectly sane name to give her. Tess, overwhelmed, runs to the window. "Happy birthday," she says to herself, adding her insane real name with a note of bitterness.
So there's our episode this week. Only Tess's parental plot seems germane to the rest of the season. It ties in with her story with Li'l Lex and how she was saved in the season opener. It also showed what Darkseid and his "Unholy Trinity" are up to. Clark and Lois's stories felt like afterthoughts, which is odd, since they're the main characters. Until this episode, there hasn't been any indication that Clark and Lois were holding back from a commitment because of their parental issues. Clark does have unresolved issues with Jor-El, but not in his capacity as a parent. Jor-El is a computer program that doesn't seem much like his birth father. He already knows from meeting Jor-El last year that his birth father is proud of him, doesn't he? As welcome a sight as Teri Hatcher was, I don't think she was especially well utilized in the story. But at least we got some forward momentum on Darkseid's plot. I was starting to think he was hanging out with Shelby and other forgotten creatures.
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