And Baby Makes Three

I have to say, the fourth season of Smallville has really left me underwhelmed. As we push on towards the last three or four episodes of the season, I am going to admit that I am not as eagerly anticipating what will happen at the end of this season as compared with the first three. As a reader e-mailed to me, I even let the television calendar lap me by not getting this recap up before a new episode aired. So please forgive me, as I never intended to adopt a Television Without Pity update schedule, it just happened. Anyway, on to the recap.As the episode starts, we see two teenagers speeding down the road in a vintage muscle car. The girl in the car is pregnant, and the guy driving her looks absolutely lost. There is a little bit of a problem with the pregnancy, and he is on the phone with 9-1-1 saying that he needs help. As many of the problems in Smallville, the trouble they are about to have is something that you really can’t fix in a hospital or by calling the police.

Taking another look at the young woman, her stomach is starting to move around like there is something big in there. Don’t laugh, I know she is pregnant, but this baby doesn’t look like it is just going to be a tough labor, it’s trying to break out of mama like something out of Species II. When the guy sees that this is happening, he pulls off to the side of the road, and like any responsible father-to-be decides to leave the mother of his baby alone while she deals with the pregnancy. I am going to take a wild guess and say that he really wasn’t that excited about being a father.

Just as our model parent is running off, the baby decides it is coming out, and it must have been one hell of a labor, because instead of a little crying, there was instead a huge explosion of energy. Needless to say, it looks like the mom did not make it. The explosion was so powerful, it sent a bunch of debris onto the road nearby, just as Clark and Lana were driving by. I am not sure where these two were going. Last episode we were led to believe that maybe they would try a relationship again, but wherever they went it look like they were driving Lois’ GMC Envoy and not the Jeep Liberty Lois has had since last season. Actually, it looks like an Envoy in the color of Lana’s Liberty from last season. Consistency writers, consistency.

As they go to investigate the scene, Clark and Lana find the baby, and see that nobody else is around. Let’s see. Baby? Check. Explosion? Check. Crater in the ground? Check. Clark is gathering the evidence and to him it looks like it might be another baby from Krypton. Even though Lana says “Babies just don’t fall out of the sky”, Clark knows better. They take the baby to the hospital, and it seems fine, but since there is no sign of the mother, the Kent’s decide to take the baby home with them so it won’t have to spend it’s time in a foster home.

Since Lana and Clark are both foster children, they seem to have a particular attachment to the new baby. In a bit of a surprise, Clark really takes to parenting. He’s feeding, burping, changing diapers, the whole nine yards. The two of them name him Evan, since he was found in Evans Field. I bet the boy was glad he wasn’t found in Big Pussy Field or on the side of Herpes Avenue, those names would have sucked. They are both enjoying the baby, but Clark is concerned about how attached they are getting and that Evan’s real father is out there somewhere. Lana says that maybe the maybe the father is not around, and they should get used to having Evan around.

As much fun as a baby was, they didn’t get to keep him that long. No, there wasn’t any luck in finding who his father or other relatives may be, but something strange happened to the baby. When he was born, he came into the world with a sort of energy pulse, obviously caused by some sort of kryptonie something or other happening. Just after Clark laid him in his bed, another sort of energy discharge happened. It didn’t hurt Lana or Clark, but when they looked over, Evan was no longer a baby, he was a seven year old boy.

So clearly, something very strange is going on. We have a kid who is growing at an alarming rate, and whenever he gets older, he is accompanied by an explosion. And whatever happened to him gave him more than just accelerated aging. Even though he has been on the earth for around 36 hours, he speaks perfectly and knows how to read. And even though he has been with Lana and Clark for less than a day, he is calling them mom and dad. Being orphans themselves, Clark and Lana want to tell Evan the truth, that they aren’t his mom and dad, but that they love him very much and they are also very concerned with his safety. They don’t know what is going to happen, and they can’t simply go to the hospital, because nobody is going to believe them that this boy all of a sudden grew 7 years with a flash of light.

There is only one person who has done enough experiments on the effects of Kryptonite to be of any help – Lex Luthor. He has been experimenting on people, dogs, plants, and just about anything else with a chromosome in order to see what would happen. Although it hurts them to have Evan be subject to experiments, he is not going to live a very long life if they can’t stop the growth process.

Lex has a lot on his mind, but he agrees to see Evan. Lionel is back to his old tricks, and Lex has had to be very careful. And I know that Lionel is supposed to be back to his old self. You know, he’s not humble, he drinks again, and he is letting his hair grow, but god damn! Could they not have found a better way for him to grow his hair long? Perhaps some cornrows or something? Right now, his hair hasn’t reached the length where it is even manageable. It looks like he has this giant pubic hair Q-tip growing out of his scalp. It’s quite ridiculous.

Anyway, Lionel recently came to Lex in order to warn him about Genevieve Teague. It turns out that Genevieve was the one that pulled the strings to get Lionel released from prison, and she wants to collect on her favor. She asks Lionel to get the sacred stone, or “element” as she called it, from Lex, because she believes that he brought it back from China. Lionel tells her that Jason has it, but Genevieve says that he is not smart enough to pull off such a deception, and warns Lionel that bad things will happen to Lex if he doesn’t cooperate.

Lionel informs Lex that Genevieve is dangerous, and that he should watch out, but Lex doesn’t believe him. He is still wary of his father, and knows there has to be an ulterior motive. Even after Lionel says that Genevieve had Brigette Crosby, Lex is still skeptical. Lex just can’t believe that Lionel is doing this because he loves his son. Despite his son’s lack of faith Lionel really is interested in protecting Lex. He goes back to see Genevieve, and gives him a strong warning of his own. She better leave Lex alone because he will make sure she pays for anything that happens to him. For good measure, Lionel poisons her drink to show her he means business. He has the antidote, but to save herself, she is going to have to give up the stones that she has. This guy drives a hard bargain, don’t you think?

But let’s get back to the experiments. The Luthorcorp scientists are doing a bunch of experiments, and Evan looks pretty scared, but it turns out there may be some hope. After a few rounds of preliminary tests, the scientists have found some answers. It looks like Evan’s body stores energy until it reaches some uncertain capacity. At that moment, it triggers a process of accelerated cell growth, and energy is released. He thinks they can slow down the process through a bone marrow transplant, but because of Evan’s unique biology, the transplant will have to come from one of his parents. Since his mother is dead, that means they are going to have to try even harder to find his father. At that moment, there is another huge explosion. Evan has changed again, and it looks like he is now about fourteen years old. What a tough way to have to go through puberty.

In order to find Evan’s father, Chloe had been working on tracking down the 9-1-1 call to the cell phone used to make the call. Through her contact at the phone company, Chloe found out that it belonged to a girl who was a senior in at Smallville, and Chloe even had reports of some strange things happening when she went into rooms, like lights blowing out, and stuff like that. Obviously, we can see that Evan took after his mom. She didn’t have a boyfriend, but she did go to a party, and somebody there had accidentally ran into her and another guy sucking face that night. He didn’t go to the high school, but since the party planner used e-vite to send the invitations (also the TVgasm preferred method for party invitations), they were able to track down the list of everybody who was there. They narrowed down the list, and Clark started asking questions.

Eventually, Clark’s search found him at a auto repair shop talking to somebody named Tanner Sutherland. Tanner immediately denied having been at the party, but when pressed for more info, started telling his story. He did hook up with the girl, and she called the next day saying she was pregnant. He was kind of freaked out, but didn’t say anything, but a week later, she looked nine months pregnant, and when the trouble started happening in the car on the way to the hospital, he just bailed. Clark tells him that he has a son, but Tanner’s mind can’t quite comprehend what happened. He thinks that whatever it is, it’s “some kind of monster”, and he doesn’t want anything to do with it, including that bone marrow transplant.

Evan, now in his early teens, is quite the teenager. He overhears Clark telling what happened with Tanner to Lana, Jonathan, and Martha. They had been hiding what had happened in order to protect Evan, thinking that if he knew what his dad thought about him, it would hurt him too much. Evan gets upset and yells at Clark, he ends up running away. In the mean time, Lex has some more information about Evan. The next time his body goes through a transformation, the energy released will probably kill anybody who is nearby, the have to find out where he went.

When Evan went off, he was very angry. He goes to see his dad at the repair shop, but the experience is not quite what he was expecting. Tanner wants nothing to do with him, even though Evan just wants him to acknowledge him and say that he cares about him. That’s not going to happen, and Tanner grabs a hold of Evan’s shirt. Evan pushes him away, Tanner stumbles back, and impales himself on a piece of machinery that was in the shop. Tanner is dead, and his son just killed him.

Lex and Clark make it to the garage soon afterwards. They see Tanner is dead, and Clark notices a piece of Evan’s shirt on the ground (Tanner had ripped a piece off when Evan pushed him away). With his father dead, any sort of hope to stop Evan’s metabolic process is now over. The only thing they can do now is contain him so he won’t hurt anybody else. They need to find Evan but don’t know how. Clark goes to see Chloe to see if she can help with anything. Since Evan is much like his mom and disrupts electrical fields, they use the grid from the Smallville power company to tract any problems in the area. There were a number of disturbances mentioned, with the latest one being somewhere on the edge of town, a place where there really aren’t any buildings. Chloe doesn’t know why Evan would be there, but Clark does have an idea.

When Evan was just a young kid, you know, yesterday, he liked to read. Lana told him about all of the places that he could see, and in particular, he was interested in a windmill. After he accidentally killed his father, Evan went to seek comfort from the one person that he knew would always be there for him, his “mother” Lana. He can feel that another power surge is coming, and begs her to to take him to see a windmill. She take him to the outskirts of town, and to him, it’s the greatest thing he can imagine. Well shit, he’s only been on earth two days, so I guess a windmill does seem fairly impressive. He is just about to have his energy discharge when Clark comes racing up the ladder of the windmill. He tells Lana that she needs to go, but he stays with Evan. He is scared, but Clark says he is never going to leave him. Evan then tells him that although he never knew his parents, he was happy that Clark and Lana found him.

The energy discharge comes, and there is a huge explosion. We know that Clark will be OK, and Lana made it to her car and used it to shield her from the explosion. Clark comes out of the rubble, saying he made it out just before the explosion, but tells Lana that Evan didn’t make it. When I was watching this, I thought Lana might pick up on something about Clark. Sure she has seen some strange things with him around, but she didn’t find it at all unusual that he was able to come up the ladder without her hearing him, and he was able to shield himself from the blast when she had to use her car. I guess he’s through asking questions.

Everybody is sad about Evan’s death, but because of all the experiments they were able to do Lex says that it will help people in the fields of cancer and disease research to learn about his condition. His body went through changes that would have taken years of research, but he was able to receive findings in only a couple of hours. Lex tells Clark that he is going to release the results to any researcher who wants them, convincing Clark that Evan will indeed have a legacy beyond his three days on earth. I am sure Lex meant well, but we learned not thirty seconds after Clark left that Lex wasn’t going to release them right away. There was some more things that he could learn about first.

The three days with Evan was hard on everybody, but as Lana said, it does make people appreciate the time they have and not take things for granted. Always nice to have cliché life lessons in your prime-time sci-fi soap operas. It might have been much more to Clark. As we learned, he took to parenting quite well. As he confessed to his parents, he doesn’t know if he will ever be able to have children of his own (try having sex first Clark). They tell him that although they couldn’t bear children, they were still able to have a son to love as their own, and that he never knows what the future will bring him. Any guesses on us meeting a wonder woman character sometime next season?

Overall, I was happy with the episode. So many clichés, and there is no explanation for why Lois just disappeared, but we did learn a little bit more about our little sacred stone/element story line. Genevieve wanted Lionel out of prison for some reason, and she believes that her son is her ally, although she doesn’t know he is hiding the stone from China. Lionel does seem to care about his son, or at least cares about him enough that he doesn’t want anything to happen to him before all of the stones are found. We still don’t quite know what is going on in Jason’s head, but he may actually be his own independent thinker, and still have thoughts of Lana on his mind.