Lower Decks

For a while, I thought this episode was going to be a waste of time.  It all seemed so generic – random bad guy goes insane and kidnaps the love interest.  Random character is injured but Clark saves the day.  And while the villain was mildly interesting and the B-story was intriguing, that’s what it looked like we were going to get.  Then the final act came, and the episode completely redeemed itself.  And while Smallville goes into a one-month hibernation, we have a lot to chew on.

Clark has made a lot of bad decisions in the name of “doing the right thing,” and he does it again in this episode.  It’s a bit disturbing because I thought that was the whole point of last season – Clark looking too deep for the goodness in people and realizing that some people can’t be saved.  And it seems like Clark is doing the exact same thing here with Zod.

And, like I said last week, I’m not entirely sure why Clark is so loyal to his father.  He knows that Zod is evil, and he’s already fought/destroyed him in another incarnation.  And yet a clone of his father, who Clark never even met (and hasn’t really even gotten along with for most of his life), tells Clark to “save Zod” and Clark risks the world to do so?  It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me.

Because you have to think Clark considered the idea that Zod would get his powers from his blood?  After all, Clark knows virtually nothing about the Kandorians, their DNA, or their powers, and he has no idea what would activate or de-activate them.  And as soon as Clark used his blood to heal Zod’s wound, I knew what it would end with.

But maybe that’s the Man of Steel’s greatest weakness – that he has too much faith in the good in people.  And maybe it’s a weakness that he can’t overcome – maybe even one that he shouldn’t overcome in fear that Superman would no longer be the unstoppable force for good.  It just sucks that, in the context of this character, we don’t really see him overcoming his past mistakes.

Particularly in this case, where unleashing a powered Zod on the world could, literally, destroy it.

But it certainly sets up the final quarter of the season pretty nicely.  We have two powered Kryptonians with a collection of groups on the side with varying loyalties.  Let’s examine a couple of them before we move on.

Let’s start with the Kandorians.  We know that most of them are (or have been) loyal to Zod.  He led them on Krypton, helped save them from death, and has been leading them on Earth.  Due to Clark’s role as a protector / emissary on Earth, some of the Kandorians have jumped ship to Clark.  But knowing Zod’s masterful ability to manipulate those around him, you have to think Zod can reclaim any or all of them. 

Especially when you consider that Zod can now present the “anything Clark can do, I can do better” argument.  Zod has military-level fighting skills, military-level strategic skills, and considering his flight ability, a greater control of his Kryptonian powers.  If the Kandorians are simply looking for the more powerful protector, Clark doesn’t really stand a chance anymore.

But in some kind of battle royale, the Kandorians are probably just innocent bystanders (like regular humans).  It will be interesting to see if Zod tries to get the rest of his people their powers, or if he was simply interested in getting powers for himself.  Now that he knows that Kal-El’s blood is the key, we’ll see if he tries to use that chip.  If the Kandorians all get re-powered, all bets are off.

Then there’s Chloe and Oliver.  We confirm that the two of them are in some sort of relationship, but it’s done awkwardly again.  Two episodes ago, Chloe and Oliver had a moment, but Oliver had been drinking at the time.  Then we have a love-based episode where Chloe is by herself on Valentine’s Day, making us wonder if something is actually happening.  Then we get some flirtation from Chloe, while Oliver is simply interested in finding out what happened to his money.  And they spend the episode in some kind of battle over power/control.

So are they in a relationship or not?  We’ve never seen them kiss, and Oliver really doesn’t show a whole lot of interest.  They openly disagree with each other, openly lie to each other, and they display a lack of trust in each other.  If they’re in a relationship, it doesn’t seem to have a strong foundation.

Anyway, Chloe tells Oliver that she’s been shifting money from his estate (borrowing, she says, not stealing) to create a cache of kryptonite-based weapons (like we saw in the dark future).  By the end, Oliver hides the weapons from Chloe, and they both agree to keep it secret from Clark.

It’s a little disappointing that Chloe is back to not trusting Clark, especially after a few episodes where it seemed like things were getting better.  So either Chloe is manipulating Clark when it seems like things are good, or Chloe is simply being written inconsistently.  At this point, I think both are likely possibilities.

Although like I’ve said above, I can’t really blame her.  It does seem like Clark is favoring the Kandorians over humans, and he does show an odd preference of his own people over the people that raised him.

If some kind of big battle, we know that Chloe and Oliver would be against Zod (and probably also against the Kandorians).  But since they’re not letting Clark in on the plan, you can’t really say they’re siding with him either.  You have to think that the Justice League will side with Oliver over Clark, especially since they’ve already sided with Oliver once before.

Which is similar to Checkmate.  We know that Amanda Waller re-activated the Justice Society in preparation for some upcoming “apocalypse.”  It’s unknown what she knows about Zod, Clark, or the Kandorians, but now that she has a kryptonian blood sample, you have to think she knows now.  Waller’s “suicide squad” will likely also be against Zod and the Kandorians, but they’ll probably be their own group.  So probably separate from Clark and the Justice League.

Then there’s the Justice Society.  Just like with the Justice League, it’s unknown if they’ll be back, but Smallvillehas been pretty good in the past about getting people to come back later in the year if they’re needed.  Waller thought they’d be important, and maybe they will be.  We’d likely just see Hawkman and/or Star Girl, since they were the only two to survive the “Absolute Justice” two-parter, and they’d probably side with the Justice League as well.

If they could do some kind of battle royale, it’d be really cool.  I’m not sure how it’d work on TV (or if it’d simply be too many people to work), but I think it’d be really cool if we got the Justice League and Justice Society vs. powered Kandorians with Clark as the X-factor.  It sounds like a really cool series finale, but with rumors that Smallville will likely come back for a tenth season, that might not work out.

As far as the actual plot went, I thought the villain was pretty interesting, and I liked how they tied it all in with Metallo.  We already knew that the Kandorians were experimenting on humans to try and get their powers back, and it was a nice bit of continuity to have that come back and haunt them.

Although, again, I don’t really understand what was supposed to be happening in the final “fight”.  I realize that the doctor had absolutely zero chance to fight Clark, but the last fight was extremely awkward.  Was the doctor intentionally killing himself, or did he accidentally electrocute himself?  It was another strange ending to an episode, and it brings up the question on when the last time Clark actually fought someone one-on-one.  It feels like it’s been a really long time.

The last thing I wanted to talk about was Zod and Lois.  It seems like Zod has gotten into Lois’ head, and it will be interesting to see what his endgame with her is.  Is he simply trying to get into Clark’s head, or does he actually want to take Lois for himself.  It happened when Zod came the first time, when LexZod took Lana for himself.

You have to think that it would be the ultimate revenge on Clark to have Zod controlling the world with Lois by his side, whether or not Zod actually cares for her at all.

So now we have a month off before Smallville returns in early April.  Just a few episodes remain, and things are setting up for an interesting end to the year.