Don’t Get Her Mad

After last week’s episode of Smallville broke new ground for unoriginality and general lack of excitement, it almost seemed like the writers were just going to pack it in for the rest of the season, knowing that they are probably going to be picked up for next season since a new network is going to take the last season of a show that’s getting worse rather than taking a bet on what will be the next Pepper Dennis. This week, I they advertised the episode as Tom Welling’s directorial debut, and nothing says “jumping the shark” than having your actors start directing. That being said, I was really surprised at how much I enjoyed this episode. Perhaps Mr. Welling just had better material than some of the past episodes, but there was a great eery feel throughout most of the thing. I’m even looking forward to what will happen in the next episode.Throughout the history of the show, Smallville has been known for some gruesome deaths. There were way too many good ones to even begin mentioning, but I would count this latest episode as one of the best. After getting off the phone with Martha Kent, an unidentified woman is trying to get her daughter Maddie to come and eat dinner. Maddie bears a striking resemblance to Conchita Campbell, who plays Maia Rutledge on The 4400, in that they both have that “seven year old Matt Dillon with long blonde hair” look going for them. It takes about two seconds for use to realize that Maddie has the special ability to break glass, and it appears like it happens whenever she gets upset, and when her mom tells her that she has to put down her crayons and start eating vegetables, well, wouldn’t you be pissed off too?

So Maddie breaks glass, and then we soon learn that the woman is not her mother, but her foster mother. When this woman sees that Maddie is breaking glass, she starts to get freaked out and says she is going to call children’s services and have her taken away. Well, being put back into foster care is enough to really piss off anybody, and so Maddie starts breaking more glass, even though she is now upstairs hiding under her bed and doesn’t appear like she wants to hurt anybody.

I admit, it’s gotta suck to be a foster parent when your child can inadvertently kill you, but I don’t have a lot of sympathy for this woman. Maddie breaks some glass, which should freak you out, but hey, if you lose some of that shitty china you mother in law gave you for your birthday, who the hell cares? However, when your little girl conjures up enough energy to blow out all of the windows in the house, you either letter her draw during dinner or get the hell out of there.

Mystery woman sticks around, and considering she just got bombarded with hundreds of pieces of glass, she is doing pretty well. OK, that’s a lie. She was doing well until she heard that creepy sound people hear whenever somebody in a movie is about to break glass or kill somebody. At this point, she really should have just ran out of the house as fast as she could. Instead, she decides that she might as well stare at the last bit of glass in the house that is still unbroken, which just happens to be a huge glass mirror. The mirror breaks, and rips the woman to shreds, meaning there is one crazy unintentionally homicidal girl that needs to be taken care of, and what better people to take care of her than Martha and Clark Kent?

When a woman is found dead in her home nobody thinks that the killer is a ten year old that can break glass with her mind so Maddie is left with the Kents. Her foster mom, Naomi, was Martha’s chief of staff. Naomi was big on helping kids, which includes taking in Maddie, who hasn’t spoken since she was three years old. Clark may be afraid of having sex, but that’s not because he is afraid of kids. He actually does well with Maddie, and even gets her to speak a little bit when he mentions that he is also an orphan.

It seems like things are just starting to move along when Lois walks in. Martha thought that Clark would need some help with Maddie and decided to call in Lois, although I don’t know why because Lois’ home life wasn’t exactly stellar, and she doesn’t even get along with dogs that well. Lois barges in and starts suggesting that all of these great things that she and Maddie could do, even though Clark had already promised her a horseback ride. Suddenly, Maddie starts to get a little upset, and we know what happens when she gets upset. This time around, there weren’t any windows breaking, but a bunch of light bulbs did burst, which was sufficient to really freak out Lois. As for Clark, he was a little more understanding.

Clark identifies with an orphan, and now that he sees that Maddie has special powers, that connection is stronger. She runs into the house and Clark follows her, where she explains that she had the ability to break glass ever since she was little. When she’s mad, she can’t control it. Clark asks the obvious question about Naomi’s death. There was all of that broken glass around, so was she mad at Naomi? Maddie denies being upset with Naomi, instead saying that it couldn’t have been her because she is not able to do anything through walls. This explanation is good for Clark, but Lois doesn’t want to take any chances and says they should call family services. Instead, Clark convinces Lois to stay with Naomi while he goes to investigate.

While Clark heads to Metropolis to find Chloe, Lois decides that the safest place for her and Maddie would be far away from any sort of glass. Her plan is to head off into the field, but it’s only moments before Maddie manages to run away. Lois follows her into the barn before Maddie can get too upset, but some guy from Child’s Services comes and insists on taking Maddie away. Lois is worried that something might happen, but the man insists and puts Maddie in the back seat of his car. Right on cue, the glass starts shaking. Maddie protects herself by laying down on the floor in the back of that car, but Lois and the other guy get hit. Lois manages to survive, which is more than we can say about the other guy, but she is left with some painful looking pieces of glass sticking out of her back.

Clark and Chloe had learned that Maddie has had strange accidents throughout her history, including the death of her mother, which happened during a car accident, but not because of a crash. Investigators on the scene found that the front windshield had been broken somehow, and her mom died when those pieces hit her. I could believe that she killed Naomi on accident, and it looked like Lois had calmed her down before being taken away, but I can’t believe that she would kill her own mother. The background missing to this story was that Maddie has a father. We saw a strange man lingering about when the child services car windows blew out, but we didn’t know who he was.

Actually, I am sure most of us guessed this random guy was the father, and from that point on, the story went pretty much as planned. Her father, Tyler McKnight, had been working in a stained glass factory when the meteor shower hit, which is how he got his powers. He had been placed in Belle Reve after he was convicted of stealing diamonds from jewelry store, even though they never found the diamonds. Since he was in jail her whole life, Maddie never knew he existed, but he was recently let out for good behavior and the doctors said he had a clean bill of mental health.

Tyler’s idea is that he can grab his daughter, take the diamonds (which he hid in a safe place), and start a new life. Now, we were all probably able to figure out that it is Tyler that has been doing all of the random glass killing, and after that little scene where he blew the glass out of the car, Maddie has figured out that her dad killed her mom, making him the last person she wants to spend the rest of her life with.

So, where did Maddie’s dad hide the diamonds? In a piece of stained glass of course! And that stained glass window happens to be at the Talon, which is as good a place as any for a final show down. When he was researching Tyler, Clark found out his mother lived in Smallville. Searching that house, led him back to the talon where Maddie was in the process of rejecting her father’s attempt at buying back her love with some diamonds. Clark threw him to the side and then let Maddie know that nothing would ever hurt her again.

With another bad guy locked up for good, we might as well catch up with some of the other folks. Last week, we saw that Professor Fine and Lex sort of form an alliance to combat the dangers of extra-terrestrial life. Lex agreed to help Fine build a weapon, but it’s quite obvious that the two of them aren’t friends, and Lex has been working on tracking him. As we saw from last week, there is more than one Milton fine, so tracking him down is not easy, and Lex is getting reports from all over the world saying that he is nearby. He is just about to speculate some more when Chloe walks in.

Lex had taken Lana out the night before for some sushi and government grants. When they returned home, he even suggested that Lana hang onto some classified documents for him, just to show her how much he trusted her. As they talked about it, they were looking at each other and lingered for a few minutes, almost as if they were going to kiss, but Chloe walked in. Nothing happened, but Chloe decided it would be best to stop Lex before he got that chance; hence the random visit to the Luthor mansion.

So, Chloe barges in and throws the accusations, and Lex plays dumb like there wasn’t anything happening, but does take offense to Chloe saying that he is taking advantage of Lana. Chloe must have said something to bother her, however, because Lex’s comebacks were more than the usual “Lana and I are just friends” defense; he got personal. First he said that Chloe has no business discussing relationships because she has never been in a serious one herself, and then when Chloe threatens him by saying there will be consequences if you hurt my friend, Lex says that he is beginning to realize why she’s never had a boyfriend, which I think was his way of thinking maybe she’s a lesbian.

Maybe it was none of Chloe’s business, but you can’t blame her for trying to look out for her friend. Lana’s choices for men haven’t exactly been all that great, and although Lex has seen a happy life for himself and Lana during his coma, he can’t honestly expect anybody else to think it will end in anything but disaster, right? Anyway, Lex called Lana about Chloe and then Lana blew up on Chloe about Lex. She told Chloe to stop spreading rumors, and that nothing was happening, but it kind of sounded like she was saying it to convince herself and not because she actually believed it.

So, where were we? Oh, yes, Maddie. Child services thought it would be best for Maddie to live with her grandmother, who never knew her son had children. Oh, and Lois became Martha’s chief of staff. Everybody seemed so happy, I wondered what the hell they were going to do with the last twenty minutes of the episode.

Well, I thought that Clark had dispatched of Tyler a little too quickly, and I was right. Tyler decided to kill the officer who was escorting him to prison from the hospital, leaving him looking like Johnny Depp in the last part of Once Upon a Time in Mexico. The sheriff wore glasses and even though I haven’t seen a pair of lenses that weren’t made of plastic in many years, Tyler used them to kill the guy and run off. From there, it’s on to the Kent farm where Clark has just sat down to explain to Maddie that she will be living with her grandmother. It seems like Maddie is once again going to fly off the handle, but she is able to keep it under control.

That evening, before Maddie is sent to her grandmother’s, Clark comes downstairs to find the glass in the kitchen door has been broken. That can only mean one thing: Tyler is back to settle the score. Whenever something strange is happening at the Kent Farm, you must first see what is going on in the barn, and there they find Martha, with a huge piece of glass positioned at her neck with Tyler promising to slit her throat if he doesn’t hand over Maddie. Clark uses the fire he can shoot out of his head to knock the glass away from his mom’s throat. She runs off, setting up the ultimate battle between Clark and Tyler.

Tyler is ready, and takes all of the glass that is left in the barn and is about to send it flying into Clark. I was wondering what Tyler would do when he discovers that it has no affect on Clark, but instead, the glass flies back at Tyler. No, Clark didn’t learn a new trick, it is Maddie. She has gone from not being able to control what happens with the glass to being very powerful with it, and has four glass spikes ready to kill her dad. Of course Clark tries to stop her because, you know, if she kills him, she’ll be just like him and she’s a much better person than that.

It was a little suspenseful because it seemed like Maddie wanted to prevent him from hurting anybody else, but as Clark tells her, she doesn’t have to follow in the footsteps of her father; she can be better than him. And let’s be honest, he knows a thing or two about evil fathers. Maddie releases the glass, and this time Tyler isn’t coming back.

All in all, a pretty good episode, and while it did get predictable towards the end; I thought it overall had a nice creepy feeling with a bit of suspense. The craziest thing, however, happened at the end. Lex and Lana kissed, which is not crazy, because it has happened before, but this time, Lana was into it. She went over to his house to apologize for Chloe, and they both agreed that there was only friendship between them. But after one long stare, they kissed. It was awkward for a moment and Lana went to leave, but something pulled her back and this time she kissed him. While I don’t think this relationship can mean anything but heartbreak for everybody involved, it will be interesting to see where it goes.

What did you think of this episode? Will Lex and Lana last? Where is Professor Fine?