Lionel Luthor is in prison, with only a month to live. After exhausting all of his efforts to find a doctor to save him and his diseased liver, he also managed to get himself arrested for killing his own parents when he was much younger. He set a fire to their apartment building, and then used the insurance money to build Luthorcorp. If you are annoyed with your parents or feel you need space, don't you just go to college and start drinking heavily? Eventually, you will forget what it was about them that bothered you in the first place and everybody can go on with their lives. I guess going a little Menendez brothers on them was more his style. Nevertheless, he wanted to take one last chance to talk to Lex, even though his son was the one that facilitated his conviction and helped protect Chloe Sullivan, the prosecution's star witness.

As Lex was visiting his dad, I wondered a few things. First, Lionel had obviously been off of his workout regimen. He was seemingly doing that whole "Cape Fear" thing in earlier episodes, getting jacked in preparation for his release with all sorts of exercises, not to mention honing his mind with many books. Lionel, perhaps from disease, perhaps from the shiv he took in the shower, was looking quite thin and pale. Second, what kind of maximum security prison has an inmate and his visitor sit at a desk. Never having visited somebody in prison, I thought that they would use the old plexiglass divider connected with two phones type of setup. Doesn't an open room just invite some sort of contraband? Despite my reservations, Lionel seemed to have nothing but the most benign interests, and simply told Lex he was only sorry he never told him that he loved him.

Before you start getting all gushy, please note that Lionel did have an ulterior motive. Clark, who was earlier messing around in his backyard, dreaming of the ways he would lead his football team to victory, and had just found out from Jason that a recruiter from Metropolis University was going to watch him play, started to hear a loud screeching noise. The noise was similar to the one he heard in the season's first episode, which inspired him to fly, break into Lex's plane, and steal an artifact the younger Luthor had just picked up from Egypt. Hearing this same sound again, he abruptly left and ran to the source of the problem, which took him straight to Lionel Luthor. He arrived at the prison in just enough time to warn Lex, and pushed Lex out of the way just as his dad was about to hit him with an object he had concealed in his hand, a strange artifact with the same markings as the one on Lana's back. Instead of using it on Lex, Lionel used it on Clark, touching his hand, and started a process where their souls switched bodies.

A lot of you are thinking "Oh great, another episode where Clark is mean and tells people off and uses his power for evil". After all, they come up with one of these episodes at least once a year. But all of those times that Clark has had a change of heart, it was still Clark in his own body. This time, Lionel had control of Clark, and every single one of Clark's powers. It's sort of like some bastardization of Freaky Friday combined with Face Off. And it worked beautifully. (So you don't get confused, I am going to be talking about Clark and Lionel as their characters, and not the body they inhabit, until further notice)

Lex drives Lionel back to the Kent farm, and Lionel takes a great deal of pleasure in playing passive aggressive with Lex, questioning him about his dad, and didn't he feel like he betrayed him by sending him to prison. It looks like Lionel is going to get away with what he did. It's not like Clark is breaking out of prison, and people are used to Clark going off the deep end now and then, what would Lionel in his body be that much different? Well, it's different in that Lionel doesn't really know what exactly he has at his disposal. When Jonathan Kent asks him to pick up the tractor, he looks at him in disbelief, until he tries and realizes that he can actually pick up the tractor, and with relative ease. Something clicks in his head, as he realizes why it was that Clark seemed to be super human when it came to stopping Lionel's nefarious plots.

Posted by J-Unit on October 28, 2004 1:10 PM