Put Me In Coach

There was a time on Smallville when Clark Kent was content to live life on the sidelines. He was strung up like a scarecrow in a freshman hazing not a week after he arrived to Smallville High. Instead of joining the football or basketball team, he decided that his time would be best spent writing for the school newspaper. But you could always see there was a part of Clark that wanted to rebel from his geeky lifestyle and save the world side job. Every now and then (usually about once a year, just in time for sweeps) he would rebel against his normal lifestyle for something some would consider a little more selfish. Now a senior, it seems like Clark may have found a happy medium. His parents have let him play football, he has promised not to use his powers, and popularity is sure to follow.Although we all know that Clark has the greatest athletic prowess on the team, he still must earn his spot on the field. Since he is a backup quarterback with no experience going up against popular senior who has been on the team for four years, he has his work cut out for him. Barring some catastrophe, it looks like there isn’t going to be much play for Clark at all this year. Luckily for Clark, there is a group of people out there that are sick of seeing their boys beat their heads in on the field, and spend all of their time with their teammates off of the field. Yes, I am talking about the cheerleaders. Not content with cheering all day and having nothing to show for it besides some messy hair and a messy back seat, the cheerleaders have decided to do something to make sure their guys would always be as devoted as possible.

The first test of this new method is Danny, the quarterback of Smallville High, and the only person ahead of Clark on the depth chart. After Danny tells his girlfriend Mandy that he will be spending Saturday Night with the guys instead of her, she decides to do a little manipulation with the laws of attraction and slips him a drink of what looks to be any benign sports drink, but is instead some sort of kryptonite concoction that instantly transforms you into but a mere slave for the affections of your significant other. For Danny, it means that not only is he going to ignore the guys on Saturday night, but he is going to blow off football practice entirely, just so he can go shopping with Mandy. Jason, who the producers would like to have us believe is only an assistant coach yet remains the only coach we ever see, tells Danny he can’t leave practice or he won’t play the game that week. Danny is obviously too horny to heed his words, so Clark becomes the quarterback.

No harm, no foul, right? Well, not exactly. The problem with this new green potion (which now fills the water coolers of the football team and sports bottles everywhere else) is that sometimes the devotion it illicits goes a little too far. I know what many of you are saying out there. Didn’t they do this a year or two back? Yes, they did have an episode where people lost their inhibitions after inhaling a krypton-laced flower. The idea isn’t entirely new, but last time we got to see Lana dripping wet in some lingerie, so we don’t complain about these things. In this edition, Danny feels that Coach Teague is trying to get in between he and his girl and comes after him with a shotgun. Clark is there to save Jason just before some buck shot is about to take him down. Clark uses his heat vision on the gun to stop Danny from getting off any more shots.

As you can imagine, there is quite a bit of commotion about the whole thing the next day. This is the type of story that the people at the Torch usually eat up, but it looks like Chloe is a little short staffed. Lois is constantly trying to get out of high school, and Clark informs her that he will be spending more time with the football team. Chloe always had a thing for Clark and never really lost it, even after all of the issues with Lana. Through all of it, she was at least able to know he was always going to be a good friend and they spent a lot of time together at the Torch fighting crime and whatnot. Losing Clark to the football team after seeing him at least semi-hot for Lois was just another kick in the stomach.

As always, Clark is oblivious to all of the trouble he is causing the women in his life, and goes to football practice, where he finds that somebody has bought the team new jerseys. It turns out that Lex, in his never ending quest to make Clark his heterosexual lifemate, purchased new uniforms, shoes and helmets for the whole team. Clark sees it as the thinly veiled attempt at reconciliation that it is and lets Lex know it. But Clark has more important things to take care of, like football practice, and trying to convince his teammates that he is the right guy to lead him them into victory. While things are happening at practice, both Chloe and Jason take a little taste of the cheerleader’s special recipe. It prompts both of them to get far more aggressive with the people they have been trying to win over.

In Chloe’s case, she tells Lois she is quitting the Torch in order to get her priorities straight. If she is always there for Clark, he will eventually see that she is the right person for him. To show how much she wants to be there for Clark, she surprises him at his loft wearing nothing but his number “8″ jersey (he practiced in number 7, but wears 8 in the games. I guess the head writer likes Steve Young more than John Elway). I don’t see how this could be anything other than fabulous for all parties involved, but Clark started getting a little squeamish as Chloe proceeded to rub him down, straddle him, and rub him down a little more. She may be no Lana, but it looks like she has all the necessary parts in working order. Clark doesn’t move things along, but with no cure for the love potion, it looks like Chloe isn’t going to stop.

In Jason’s case, he takes bigger and bigger risks to get to spend time with Lana, even announcing over the intercom that she is to see him in his office. At another football practice, he sees Clark talking with Lana, knows a little bit of their history, and tells his defense not to let up on Clark. Normally our superhero in training would not give a damn about an onslaught of defensive players, but on this day, Clark took a little of the kryptonite potion, leaving him weak and feeling every single just like anybody else would. To make matters worse, Chloe comes onto the field in a cheerleading outfit, ready to motivate her man. Lois sees her and thinks it’s really strange, but Chloe is not to be stopped, and continues to cheer, even though Clark is having his ass handed to him.

Simply letting his teammate’s beat Clark’s ass is not enough for Jason, so he enters Clark’s loft later that night to do a little facial modification courtesy of his fist. He is putting on the beatdown of his life when Lex shows up and stops him. What is Lex doing there, you ask? He is trying to make amends to Clark by handing over what he says are all of the files he has on Clark. This exchange was interesting because Lex thinks Clark is invulnerable, but Jason left him a bloody mess. It would seem an uncanny piece of evidence that Clark should throw away all of his files. The problem is that the krypton seems to wear off and Clark heals in seconds, and when Lex takes a second look at him, he is skeptical once more.

Eventually, Clark catches up with Lois, who has learned that the cheerleaders made the potion as part of a science experiment, and they decide to go to the cheerleader run pool party in order to steal the formula back. This sounds benign, but it turns into a hilarious scene as Clark has to seduce Mandy in order to distract her enough for Lois to steal the formula from her Prada bag. Clark may be the starting quarterback but admits to Mandy that he is nervous because he has “never done what I think we are about to do”. For foreplay, Clark gives her such lines as “I will cook you dinner”, but eventually throws her up onto a desk and Lois gets the bag. As she is inspecting the bag in another room, Chloe comes at her with an axe. Since she was able to beat away commandos, nobody is worried as she easily dispatches Chloe, who burns her hand on a boiler as she is falling down. It turns out the heat is the antidote for the potion, which is great because they need as they rescue Clark from, uhh, lipstick smudges, and the three goons Mandy summons when she sees it is all a trap. Clark stealthily uses his heat vision to burst a steam pipe, which sedates the football players.

Another mystery solved, there is nothing left but the game. And with Smallville down by three with only seconds left to play, Clark huddles his teammates, throws the hail mary, and wins the game. Now, the show made it seem like the ball had to be in the endzone before the clock ran out, but in football, you only need to snap the ball before time runs out, and the whole play is legal. I hope the Smallville writers do a little more boning up on the sport if we are going to have more football sequences, because I don’t want to have to correct them every week. Anyway, his teammates respect him, all the girls adore him, but his dad is a little disappointed, knowing Clark didn’t hold back with his powers in order to make the final throw. To top it all off, Chloe admits that she still has feelings for him and always will. He doesn’t reciprocate, but is honest and tells her he can’t say the same, but they will always be friends and leaves her with a kiss on the cheek. I guess friends with benefits hasn’t entered his vernacular just yet. In a little bit of a surprise move, we learn that Lois finally heard from the dean of her university, and she was finally accepted. Lex Luthor pulled some strings on her behalf and so she is leaving high school. Clark was the one who asked Lex to pull the strings, but is a little sad to see her go, even though she says she will be back. Little does he know that they will be jocking on each other for another 20 -30 years or so.