Believe your X-rays! It’s our first “Smallville” review since the pilot! Listen to what Dmann says:
It would seem that there is a shape shifter as this week’s villain near the Kansas hellmout…errr town of Smallville. Yes, it’s Smallville, it has no slayer, it has a Super man, it's not in California, it's in Kansas, they even have different letter jackets...err wait.
So, just as the shape shifter commits her first crime (in the guise of Lex Luthor), young Clark Kent discovers that he has x-ray vision. Thankfully the fake Lex has the wrong fingerprints, and signature. Lex drops by the Summers…err Kent house to make sure Clark believes him.
The x-ray vision is fun, at least when he looks through the wall of the girls locker room to watch Lana change clothes. We always knew Superman used his X ray vision to see chicks naked….didn’t we?
Lana’s angst is continuing, as Tina (the shape shifter) reveals a “Single White Female” side to her. After killing her mother. Then again, a shape shifter can have her mom show when she needs to. She’s learning about her past, about her parents everything is changing for her, and too much of it hurts. Her mother yearned to leave Smallville, like Lana, and hated being the golden girl cheerleader, just like Lana. It's the best thing in the episode, by a mile. Watch for her scene with Chloe, it's great.
Lex’s past gives a little development to his character as well. Turns out it wasn’t just leadership training that sent him to Smallville. There was a bit of party problems as a young guy for Lex. He’s showing that he is the future “Master of the Universe” that he will be in the future. Not quite sinister yet, but don’t mess with Lex Luthor, or you will have BIG problems. Ask the reporter who tried to print dirt on him. We also get the hint that Lex may have a little more than friendship at interest in our friend Clark.
It all comes together, when Clark realizes that when he uses his X ray eyes to see through the shape shifter, she has a weird green glowy thing in her. Of course he doesn’t figure this out right away. Everyone in this episode is stupid, they can’t figure out that people are showing up at two places at once. I HATE when everyone in a show is dumber than me. (Ask any talkbacker or chat room person, they will tell you how dumb I am? Heh heh.)
Turns out Tina was on some experimental drugs for soft bones as a child, and those, combined with the hellmo,,,errr those drugs caused her somehow to become super changey face mimic girl.
Overall, Smallville has a great cast, and characters who are really unique. If only they could break the Buffy-ization of the show, the villain of the week, the running through the standard sci fi plots. I won’t even get into how every damn villain just HAPPENS to find a way to get some green kryptonite! WB, hear me, Buffy didn’t start to get REALLY good until the second year, when they got through the standard each week a new baddie plots, and got to the deeper, character based villains like Angelus, the Mayor…etc. Let Lex take over, or Brainiac, the living computer man, or any of a million “big bad’ villains.
Smallville could be good, it’s just not there yet.
DmannÃs rating for Smallville 1.4?
**1/2
The Hercules T. Strong Rating System:
< A HREF= mailto:hankbelly@yahoo.com>DMANN OUT!!!
SMALLVILLE airs at 8pm, 7 central on the WB network, right after the superb Gilmore Girls! H3>
