Alicia Lets Chloe In On A Little Secret

So it looks like the writers of Smallville have decided to take us on a little bit of a Superman hiatus. Early on in the season, it looked as if we were doing to be deep into Krypton mythology for a long time to come. We had ancient stones, ancient maps, ancient 17th century relatives who were reincarnated, and even an ancient actress trying to make a little bit of a comeback (hello Margot Kidder). All of that has been put off a little bit and we have been recently focusing more on the lives of our Smallville characters outside of their involvement in ancient prophecies. It might not be the direction the comic book folks would have like the show to turn, but if you like your high school melodrama, you are in luck.Clark is a pretty forgiving guy, but you would think there would be some limits to how forgiving somebody would be. For instance, if you were drugged and taken to Vegas to get married, you would think you would be a little apprehensive about starting a relationship with that person. Maybe the sight of Alicia in her wedding night lingerie told Clark he should try and stick around a little longer, because there was nobody who thought that Clark should be with Alicia, except perhaps Clark and Alicia. And really, aren’t they the only one who matter?

Yes and no. It is perfectly fine for Clark to believe that Alicia is changed, but you know that it is going to take a little getting used to for some others in Smallville. You could argue that Lana might have trouble coming to terms with the idea that the guy she thought she loved had no problems going out with an attempted murderer. Especially when you consider that the attempted murderer had tried to kill Lana. Oblivious to the notion this might cause problem, Clark waltzed into karaoke night at the Talon with Alicia in tow. There was that awful silence, broken only by a wisecrack from Lois (who had been singing “I Love Rock and Roll” with Chloe). Jason’s not happy, Lana is *really* not happy, and even though Alicia attempts to apologize, I think the possibility of double dates in the near future are remote.

If you are sick of me talking about how hot Kristin Kreuk is, you are not going to be happy with this week’s show. Jason and Lana are back on speaking terms and they return to her apartment after the run-in with Alicia. Lana is taking a shower (and we get two very nice views of her through the shower curtain), when somebody comes in and tries to suffocate her using her shower curtain. Jason breaks down the door just in time to save her from death.

Now I am not sure who wrote this episode, but this scene has to be better planned. Lana and Jason don’t sleep together, but they’ve seen each other naked. I have a hard time thinking Lana would lock the door when she is taking a shower. The only reason why Lana locks the door is so that somebody has to sneak inside the bathroom while the door is locked. Perhaps somebody who can teleport! Instantly we think of Alicia. And I know Lana has all of those tea lights left over from when she was trying to get Jason in the sack, but do you think she really lights twenty candles before she takes every shower. Is this a normal thing?

At the hospital, everybody is speculating that Alicia did it. We’ve had a lot of incidents over the years of people who were affected by the meteor rock, many of them turn homicidal, and more than a few of them have gone after Lana. Alicia is the first of those people to have been released, so you see why people might think that she was involved. Clark doesn’t want to believe any of it, and even claims that he was with Alicia when the attack happened. And even if he wasn’t with Alicia, the lead wristband is enough to keep her from teleporting, rigtht? Nobody believes him, including his parents and that idiot sheriff. Does that sheriff get anything done? I am starting to believe that she knows more than we are led to believe, like the government knows strange shit happens in Smallville and sent this sheriff in to report back, not unlike that big-eared principal from BtVS.

I do like the writing and the characters on this show, but sometimes it is a little too obvious who is going to be affecting the story and what the big twist will be. So when Lois and Chloe are doing their thing at karaoke and Lois goes up to some random guy and shakes it, I start to wonder. When Lois and Chloe are back at Smallville High the next day and the same random guy happens to bump into them and ask Lois out, you know that he isn’t there to be a future love interest for Lois. Even Lois’ presence is strange enough, since she is no longer enrolled and is supposed to be in college. We learn that she is no fan of the drunken fraternity types (there goes my dreams), and she went to hang out with Chloe during Greek Week. OK, so you are a GDI and it’s Greek Week, you have to enter a whole other level of lame to leave the entire campus and hang out with your cousin who is in high school. But whatever, when this random guy says that he saw Alicia near the scene of the crime, there is almost no suspense left. This jab is going to be involved whether we like it or not.

Clark still believes Alicia had nothing to do with the attack, but some of the evidence is starting to get a little more shaky. When he sees her later that night (with that hot hot hot plaid skirt/cashmere sweater combo) he learns that Alicia has not been using her wristband, meaning she technically could have done the crime. She tells Clark that she doesn’t need and she doesn’t want to hurt his friends, but that she can’t live without using her abilities. Alicia says it’s not fair to ask her not to use her abilities when he uses his all the time.

While Clark thinks about that, he goes to pick up his mom at the Talon. Lana and Jason are there, and Jason has been afraid to leave ever since the first attack happened. Then again, he is enrolled in college and does have to study. Smallville is in some serious need of distance learning, I think. Martha says that she and Clark will look after Lana until Jason gets back, and he lives with that. As Jason is in his car, somebody begins to choke him. He can’t shot, but manages to honk the horn. Clark hears it, and is able to reach the car and stop the attacker before Jason is hurt badly. The attacker isn’t there, but Clark sees that the person used a scarf to choke Jason, and the scarf is exactly like the one Alicia wears.

Jason isn’t hurt, but does spend a little time in the hospital meaning we get another wonderful appearance by Jane Seymour. I am not really sure what she does or why she is so loaded, but I’m sure we’ll find out soon. They soon start talking about Lana, and how Jason thinks that his mom arranged their meeting. Lana walks in and Jason’s mom asks her what she thinks about the theory. There is kind of an awkward laugh followed by awkward silence. With Lionel Luthor out of the picture(for now) as a villian, Jane Seymour is doing quite a nice job making us all feel creepy.

Things get even more creepy when she goes to visit Lex and proposes that he help her with keeping an eye and Jason and Lana. Lex insists he doesn’t want to interfere in “affairs of the heart”, which we know is bull because he does want Jason out of the picture so he can obsess with Lana. They agree to work together and we think that is the end of that, but when Lex talks to Jason about a job, and offers him one that pays six figures, he sees right through it. He knows his mom put Lex up to it, and says he doesn’t trust her. Lex says he doesn’t trust her either, and going by the old “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” principle, decides that they should work together against her. Who’s playing whom? I guess we’ll have to wait a few weeks and find out.

You can imagine how freaked out Clark was to see Alicia’s scarf. Normally this is when any normal guy is going to say “What the hell am I doing?”. It’s possible for people to change, but not when she’s a psychobitch. Clark is different though, and goes to his father’s tackle box, finds all of the lead weights, and starts molding them into another bracelet for Alicia. When she sees him doing this, I think that she is over quite a bit considering how much the other Kents don’t want to see her. She says that the bracelet won’t work because the lead has to be released into the bloodstream, which, considering the side effects, makes you wonder just how bad it is to have a girl teleporting all around? Clark wants her to turn herself in, and Alicia wants Clark to admit to other people that he has abilities. If people knew about Clark, maybe they would leave her alone a little and they would be free to actually have a relationship.

Clark was very happy that Alicia kept his secret, but he can’t let her get away with anything, so he goes to the sheriff. When he says that he found Alicia’s scarf at the scene, she says thanks, but no thanks. It turns out Alicia was under interrogation at the time of the second attack and couldn’t have pulled it off. Oops! That’s quite the big matzoh ball Clark left hanging there.

It’s been obvious that Alicia has been released, and it’s even more obvious that she isn’t exactly cured. She still obsesses about Clark and wants to be with him so much that she decides that maybe protecting his secret isn’t so important any more. What better person to start with than Chloe, who has compiled the “wall of weird” about all of the strange people in Smallville. How would Chloe react when she learned that her best friend Clark was one of the freaks? Would she be so intent on tracking down people, or so quick to judge people when she knows they have abilities?

To test her theory, Alicia kidnaps Chloe and they teleport into a car. The car starts speeding, and Chloe has the look on her face that she is about to die. Alicia phones Clark to say that she is in trouble and needs his help. Chloe has no idea what is going on, but just as the car hits a ramp and is about to flip, Alicia and Chloe teleport out of the car and off to the side. Chloe still has no idea what’s going on, but the look on her face as she sees Clark run in front of the car, catch it in mid-air, and then lay it down without any effort tells the whole story. It would be a similar reaction to what I would have had if I had seen Rick Fox in an All-star game – you are either crazy, drugged, or on a different planet.

Chloe is back at the torch contemplating what just happened, and if you think she had a strange experience, it might have to take a back seat to what Lois just experienced on her “date”. The random guy who asked her out turned out to be a huge history buff. He seemed much less interested in Lois than talking about Smallville circa 1950. In fact, you can say that his whole thinking was stuck in the 50s. When the topic of Jason and Lana comes up, he effectively says that they got what they deserved and that they were ruining the town with their fornicating (or thoughts of fornicating as it were). They were just another example of how the morals of the people in town had degraded and they deserved to be punished. OK, so if there was any doubt that this was the guy who attacked Lana and Jason, we can put that to rest, especially when he disintegrates into a cloud of dust and whooshes off to someplace unknown.

That unknown place turns out to be Alicia’s house. Obviously this guy used his knowledge of Alicia’s abilities to frame her. He is looking for some more material to link her to future crimes when she walks in and interrupts him. Now that he knows her scheme, he has to do something with her. Before she can teleport away, he drugs her and she falls asleep.

At that moment, Clark arrives at Alicia’s farm. He found out from Lois about random guy and raced to warn Alicia. Unfortunately, he is a little late. Turns out the random guy was a stone cold killer, and didn’t simply want Alicia knocked out or locked up. He hung her from the rafters of the barn, and that is how Clark finds her. Clark is so emotional, maybe more emotional than he has ever been with anybody before, including Lana. It was the closest thing he had found to a soulmate. She knew his secrets and didn’t run away.

Clark is so upset, he finds random guy, but before he has a chance to do anything, the guy turns into his dust cloud (this was a very unoriginal villain, btw), and begins to swarm around Clark, choking him from oxygen. What is with this guy and asphyxiation? Was he locked in a box when he was younger or something? Clark uses his heat vision to burn the guy, which causes him to turn back to human form. Clark then proceeds to choke him, but before he gets a chance to do a little asphyxiation of his own, Lois gets there and stops him.

I have to say, I wasn’t really ready for Alicia to die. The entire episode was fairly predictable, but when she was swinging from the roof, I was really surprised. Suddenly, the burden of Clark’s secret rests on Chloe. Only this time, Clark doesn’t know that she knows, which makes it very interesting. Chloe asks Lois about this hypothetical situation and she says that she wouldn’t tell the person she knows the secret, and that it would be better to be a friend and get that person to open up on their own, so that is exactly what Chloe does. Will she be able to keep the secret? Alicia died protecting it, and Pete ran away from the knowledge. Whatever the knowledge, it obviously gives her a lot more insight on Clark Kent, and the way he has been acting over the last four years.