Smallville "Conspiracy"

Okay. Let me start off by saying that I have been enjoying season nine of Smallville and I am hoping for a season ten to close out Smallville with a classy exit. However, “Conspiracy” was a bit below par, and mostly because of stupid mistakes.

Basically, the gist of the story is that a crazy man has abducted three Kandorians because he himself was experimented on by them. He’s grizzly, but I easily understand his frustration. (Of course they’ve done crazy kidnapper at least a hundred times already, but hey! It’s Smallville!) Clark and Zod are working separately to try and save the Kandorians before it’s too late.

Now there was something that I think everyone should realize: Clark should just wait around with Lois. Why? Because the story always runs into Lois. She either stumbles into it or she herself is forced into it. In this particular episode, she was kidnaped so she would be forced to write the story about how the earth was invaded by aliens. She did some butt kicking, but was taken out by the bad guy by of course, a blow to the head. She was knocked unconscious so Clark can keep his identity a secret while he saves everyone without a convincing disguise.

Zod is pretty smart with his investigation. He goes through the Daily Planet, because of course a desperate, crazy alien spouter would have tried to contact the newspaper before stealing a news reporter. Zod finds letters in the crazy pile and finds the hideout. He helps Lois and then is shot.

Clark takes the long route while playing reporter. He learns some facts about Zod and sees him as a nicer person. Clark is a sap in the comic books, so it doesn’t bother me when he does stupid things like trusting everyone who smiles at him friendly.

When he finally figures everything out, he pushes the alien kidnapper hard in a way that probably should have injured him. It was considerably harder than what knocked out Lois, but whatever. The bad guy gets up, holds his chain saw in the air, and gets electrocuted. That was lame. That was very, very lame. Him being knocked out after the super push would have been sufficient. It is every other episode.

Clark doesn’t want Zod to die, but he surprisingly does. But, Clark doesn’t want it to end like that so he finds the random kryptonite infected placed material in the room and cuts his hand. He drops some of his blood on Zod and it heals him. Clark’s blood is so fantastic that it wipes away all of the blood that was on Zod. There was a glow and sparkle and then Zod was clean and healed. The random, unplanned act has worked. Hizzah!

Zod ends up telling Clark that they’ll work together and Zod pretends to still be hurt. But as the sun rises while he’s alone on the roof of the Daily Planet, he soaks it all in and flies away.

The moral of the episode is this: Clark is an idiot. But we didn’t learn anything new. Now did we?

The director of this episodes wanted to play with the slow motion button a little too much. Maybe once or twice, but three of four times is overkill, especially when it’s not for anything cool like super powers.

Clark and Lois didn’t experience much romance in this episode. They did both acknowledge that they both have professional secrets that they have to keep from each other. That was that. There was no fuss. They were very mature about it. It was much more evolved than “I need you to trust me, Clark!” Lana issues.

Chloe and Oliver had some screen time together. Apparently, they’re sexual partners, not very romantic. It’s hard to be romantic with Chloe stealing Oliver’s money. At least it’s for something cool, like kryptonite weapons, in case the Kandorians get their powers...or in case the Kandorians decide to use it against Clark. I’m sure one of the two will happen.

Oliver ends up taking the weapons and putting them in a safe place. He keeps the location to himself, which Chloe doesn’t like. Chloe is becoming the new keeper of secrets and expects others to spill their guts to her. It’s very Lanaish and I don’t like it. Not one bit. (Don’t get mad at me, Lana fans. She did it all the time!) At least Oliver called her out on her hypocrisy. It feels good when the character in the television screen listens to what you have to say.

At least Oliver thinks they should tell Clark the truth about the weapons...when it’s the right time...whenever that might be.

Some positives of this episode was Zod’s acknowledgment of Lois. He understands why Clark likes her so much, and I’m assuming Zod will have more face time with her. I also like how Smallville is including Amanda Waller. She’s very sneaky, very clever, and has a bit of a twisted idea on how to save the world. I think Smallville is hinting at doing great things with her character. I hope they don’t mess it up.

I would say that this is a solid episode (on the Smallville meter anyway), but it’s one of my least favorite of the season so far. I expect Clark to do dumb things, but the villain’s death was lame, the glowy blood was cheesy, and I don’t like what the writers are doing with Chloe.

And for the record, I think Clark was doing the right thing with trying to assimilate the Kandorians into society to live like humans. It was driving a wedge between Zod and his people and they were seeing Clark has their hero. It was just dumb and random to bleed on Zod. I can even understand Clark wanting to save Zod, as his father asked him to, but when I see people hurt, my first reaction isn’t to bleed on them. Clark’s blood by itself doesn’t heal. He didn’t know it would. I’m not sure why it even crossed his mind to do that.

Oh well. Here’s to an interesting follow up episode!