(Lots of) Sleeping With the Enemy

Throughout the history of Smallville, the writers have chosen to give us a fairly sympathetic view into the pathology of Lex Luthor. He didn’t just pop out of the womb a crazed killer and mortal enemy to Superman. Thanks to his father, he had a pretty difficult home life, ranging from being blamed for his mother’s death to being committed to a mental institution for knowing too much information. The meteor shower turned him into a hairless freak, and he helped secure a conviction for his father when he found out his father killed his grandparents. Oh, did I mention that his father also tried to kill him as well? To top it all off, dear old dad was prepared to switch bodies and have his son spend the time in prison dying of a diseased liver. I think you get the point.To Lex’s credit, he has at least tried to separate himself from his father’s legacy. He has been very generous to the town of Smallville and its residents. Still, I wouldn’t actually call him all that well adjusted. Lex is always paranoid and thinks people are out to get him. His best friend is a boy from the high school, although that boy did save his life, but I would have to guess that he lives a lonely existence. A fairly young bachelor with at the helm of a Fortune 500 company, what does he do in his spare time?

Some of that spare time is spent in Metropolis where he attends various black tie affairs, like the one used for the opening of this last episode. Everybody is dressed is in their tuxes and evening gowns, but the one girl that attracts Lex’s eye is somebody wearing a red dress. In this kind of setting, that can mean only one thing to me – prostitute. Everybody is dressed similarly, but one woman stands out among the crowd with her eyes on the richest guy in the place? It’s like walking into a Vegas casino at three in the morning. Everybody in the place is a happily pulling away at slot machines, or hitting the blackjack tables, happily spending their retirement money or their kids’ college fund. But then you notice some woman in a blue sequined miniskirt, then about an hour later, you see her at another casino. You just know something is out of place. So when Lex started ambling towards this woman in a red dress, I figured that this girl would get him in trouble somehow.

Well, things started out OK, Lex met the girl and she said that “names don’t matter”. I was thinking that she had to be a Platinum Escort, but what kind of escort brings an mp3 player along with her and listens to British club music on the job? Lex got this girl to his hotel, enjoyed a little nookie in the elevator, and then a whole lot more nookie once they were in his hotel room. Seemed like a great evening, and in the morning we saw the aftermath where the woman’s dress was still on the floor, and Lex was sleeping in the bed. But when housekeeping came, and the maid screamed, we pan over to a bloody body lying next to Lex. Now the lesson of the story for all of you kids out there is that when you decide to bring a stranger home to your hotel, leave the little “Do Not Disturb” sign hanging on the outside. That way, you won’t be caught in a compromising position (like reverse cowgirl) or with a dead woman in your bed.

Lex has the best lawyer money can buy, so he gets out on $5 million dollars bail, and returns to his mansion in Smallville. The lawyer, Corinne Hartford, is apparently a badass, and tells him the generic lawyer for any rich person accused of murder in a television show. We know the person isn’t guilty but the lawyer is always like “I’m not here because I think you are innocent, but I will get you off the hook”. Lex may have the best lawyer money can buy, but he also has Clark Kent on the case, so if he is guilty, there is no way he is staying out of jail. Clark listens to Lex tell the story of how he didn’t know the woman, but that these one night stands weren’t a common occurrence.

Although Clark seemed to believe Lex’s story, he goes to see another person to ask some questions about the case. That person is not Chloe, or his parents, but Lionel Luthor, he of the switched bodies and the trying to kill everybody all the time Luthors. Lionel tries to tell Clark that he is a changed man, that he woke up in the middle of a prison riot with a changed perspective and a healed liver. He shows no signs of remembering the body switch, but Clark takes no chances by refusing to shake his hand lest any more body switching artifacts are hidden anywhere. He tells Clark that Lex has patterns, and that he would never drive the woman to his hotel, but would always have the girl drive herself. Therefore, he can avoid a lot of messy conversation driving the woman home the next day, which sounds like a great idea when you think of the logistics. It would also mean that the police might be searching the wrong place for the woman’s car, and would miss her identity.

With this information, Clark does a search for the woman at the Torch offices. He is having problems searching for the DMV information, but luckily Chloe walks in to help. Clark mentions how he thinks Lionel has changed, and Chloe reminds him that he can’t be trusted. She should know, since she had to fake her own death just to be able to testify against him. Chloe also shows Clark a newspaper story about the many conquests of Lex Luthor. Apparently, Lex has a penchant for one night stands, and then leaving the woman with nothing to show. They find the name of the woman is Eve Andrews, and so Clark heads to Metropolis to check her out. When Clark gets to the house, he sees Eve has been stalking Lex, with pictures and newspaper clippings all over the place. While that adds some intrigue to the story, it’s nothing compared to seeing Lex burning the evidence in the sink. Just as they are about to have that awkward “why are you burning evidence” discussion, we hear sirens and Lex begs Clark to get him out of there. Clark helps him out of his little problem, but is now very skeptical of Lex. Lex lied to him about all the women he had sex with, and was trying to destroy evidence, how can Clark trust him?

Back at the Torch, Chloe shows Clark some security videotape from the night of the murder. The video shows that Lex is getting it on with a woman and she appears to only have one earring on. This is strange, because the woman found dead in Lex’s bed had two earrings on. This, along with the fact that the cops didn’t find the mp3 player the woman had at the opera in Lex’s hotel room would lead one to believe that he had sex with one woman, but a different one ended up in his bed. Since he apparently humps any warm body that he can find, he wasn’t able to tell the difference between the two. Chloe and Clark then go to the hotel and start looking inside the elevator. Chloe, doing her best Crossing Jordan impersonation, says that they should re-enact the scene where Clark and the other girl were in the elevator. They slam up against one side, and then the other, and this closeness has them looking at each other for a long time. Just as they are about to kiss, the door opens and a woman and her two kids are just sitting there and watching, instantly killing all the sexual tension.

With their focus back on the earring, Chloe says that perhaps it fell down through the seam on the elevator floor. Clark uses his x-ray vision to look down forty flights or so, and as one might expect, the earring is in fact there. Clark takes the earring back to Lionel, and he tells Clark that the woman must be an ex-lover. When he was younger and he slept with a woman, Lionel said he used a courier to deliver a pair of diamond earrings to the woman the next day so the person wouldn’t call. Lex picked up on this, and must be doing the same with all of the women he meets.

Meanwhile, Lex is having some issues with his lawyer. She admonishes him for trying to destroy evidence, and he begins to piece things together about what has been going on. The press was leaked a file about Lex’s past women, and they police were tipped off about Lex when he was at Eve Andrews’ house, a tip Lex received from Corinne’s law firm. It turns out that Corinne is not only his lawyer, but also a former lover that he pulled the earring trick on. Lex accuses Corinne of leaking the evidence, and perhaps even framing him for the murder. Corinne says she is going to remove herself as council, leaving Lex to find another lawyer. What did he think would happen? This isn’t Kevin Hill, you don’t just have sex with your lawyer and then expect good things to happen when you ask them to defend you.

Lex soon gets a call from Corinne, and she wants to see him in her office. He goes there, only to find Corinne dead (of course). He calls 911, but it is busy, and he hangs up when he notices that the familar mp3 player is lying around playing that familiar British club music. The killer it turns out was not Corinne, but Corinne’s assistant, another woman Lex has had sex with. Apparently, she wasn’t happy with being another notch on the bedpost, and decided to get her revenge. She takes Lex back to his mansion, and is just about to take delight as he is engulfed in flames, when Clark rushes in does a little lasso move with his shirt, and dissipates the fire, coming and going before anybody sees, and knocking the crazed assistant out in the process. How did Clark show up just in time? Lionel had given him the number of the jeweler he uses, this jeweler sent them the serial numbers for the earrings Lex had bought, and Chloe and Clark matched the missing earring to one Shannon Bell, the deadly assistant.

Clark saves the day, but his relationship with Lex has obviously taken a turn for the worse. Lex comes to visit him in the loft later that evening, and they start talking. Clark says that he can’t believe what Lex did to those woman, that he didn’t care how he hurt their feelings. He mentioned that it felt strange feeling he was able to trust Lionel more than Lex, and that he felt like mortal enemies. Lex said he knows it was wrong, but he is not sure what he can do to stop it. Clark says he saw “a side of you I didn’t know about”, as if Clark himself hasn’t been hiding something for a long time as well.

So the producers have given us another insight into the pathology of Lex and is another step in the direction of Clark and Lex as mortal enemies. Last year Clark an Indian artifact gave him a hint about Lex’s true intentions, and his behavior this year seems to back it up. Now, I don’t want to defend Lex for his actions, but they mentioned that he has been doing this for about eighteen months. Well, subtract eighteen months in Smallville time, and that is right about when Lex’s wife Helen plotted to kill him by planning a plane crash. I guess you could say that was when his women problem started. If there was any excuse for Lex’s actions, you would think attempted murder would have been high on that list.

This episode also had a nice little side story. Apparently, Lana has been having nightmares since she had been possessed by a 17th century witch. One of the nightmares, she sees a woman just as she is burned at the stake. This woman is another witch (played by Jane Seymour), as evidenced by the strange color her eyes become as she casts a spell. Much to Lana’s surprise, she meets this woman the next day, and it turns out to be Jason’s mother. Yes, you heard me, Jane Seymour plays Jason’s mother, and we don’t have the slightest hint why Jason’t mom has a British accent. It turns out Jason is estranged from his mother, and she wanted to meet the girl that Jason flew halfway across the world for. Lana tells Jason that his mother visited, and that she also saw his mother in her dreams. Jason meets his mom in the back of her car, and we come to learn why he stays away from his mom so often. Jason has had girlfriends in the past, and his mom had interfered in the past. She says that she likes Lana, and Jason remembers Lana’s talk about the dream and asks if his meeting Lana was an accident. Although his mom denies everything, she has the look and accusatory tone of somebody who is lying, and we clearly haven’t seen the end of her. Now wouldn’t it be great if we had a Margot Kidder vs. Jane Seymour deathmatch for the three stones of power? I thought so.