Sometimes Your Eyes Just Hypnotize Me

It’s been quite awhile since we have been graced with an episode of Smallville. It’s kind of too bad because I thought that things had become sort of interesting. Just in case you thought things were going to be going back to normal, we were thrown another little twist. In other news, we’re still trying to figure out what is happening with Clark and Lana. As repetitive romances go, theirs is among the most annoying. As much as I enjoy seeing Kristin Kreuk on screen (and I am sure the ladies can say the same for Tom Welling), the chemistry these two displayed on camera did not exactly steam up the set. Martha Kent is a Senator and Lionel Luthor finally has some evidence of Clark’s extraordinary abilities. We didn’t get to everything this week, but it was a start.So you’re not dying in anticipation, I am going to give you the big twist without creating too much anticipation. Professor Milton Fine is not dead. He may have impaled himself on Clark’s crystals in the Fortress of Solitude, but apparently we were wrong. As the episode opens with a couple of guys in the jungle, talking about an evacuation order and sporting biohazard suits. Your day is already sucking pretty badly when you have to run around the rainforest taking blood samples, but you never expected you were going to come face to face with a Krypton killer who wants to kill you for a vial of some of that tainted blood. Couldn’t he have just asked? Did he have to stick that finger through your eye and incinerate the place? It all seems a little harsh for me.

As much as I can’t stand Lana, at least she is trying to get their relationship going. After a night of dancing, she is feeling a little horny. It’s been a long time since she has had her strapping Kansas farm boy injection and Chloe is pulling an all-nighter at the Daily Planet, so why not have a little bit of fun? Clark desperately wants to be with Lana, but doesn’t want to hurt her either. He can’t tell her that he isn’t sure if his super sperm will hurt her, and there is no kryptonite condom out there, so he has to come up with another excuse. Hey, maybe they can’t have sex, but even a little HJ goes a long way, and his tongue hasn’t killed anybody yet, so why not get a little creative? Instead, Clark says that he needs to put up some tarps. The mood? Officially killed, but Lana says that she will be waiting for him, no matter how long it takes.

As soon as Lana leaves the Talon, a girl comes up to Clark, and is looking to get some action. Clark is still in love with Lana, so he politely refuses her advances, but she has some sort of pendant and uses it to hypnotize Clark. I am not sure what was in the pendant, but it looked like red Kryptonite, and the effect it had on Clark was similar to red kryptonite, because it wasn’t long before he had this girl, Simone, outside and up against the fence like they were at the intermission of a White Snake concert. I thought for sure that Lana would catch them, but instead it was Lois, and while she’s looking for some answers, Clark tells her that Simone is his new girlfriend.

‘Til the Cops Come Knockin’

Before Lana went back to her dorm room, she stopped off at Lex’s mansion after he had called her. Since she had been working with him on the spaceship, he thought it would be good if she knew that he was going to be out chasing Milton Fine in Honduras. He can’t tell her anything other than his jet leaves in an hour and he will tell her all about it. By the time Lana returns to her dorm room, she overhears Lois and Chloe talking about Clark. Chloe didn’t believe it when her cousin said that Clark is with another girl, while Lois was trying to explain that Clark is just like every other red-blooded male, meaning the brain in his head wasn’t the “commanding officer”, even if he likes to call it “Captain Clark”. Personally, I think Lois is just jealous that Clark hasn’t thrown any advances her way. Anyway, Lois walks in and hears that they are trying to keep a secret, but she gets a call, this time from Clark, who says that it is an emergency and he needs to see her right away.

So, what was that emergency? Simone and Clark grew very, very close in a short amount of time. He was so intent on pleasing her, he unintentionally used his powers in front of her in order to get some champagne and chocolate-covered strawberries. Amazingly, Clark brought home everything she needed; he is so inept at romance, I for sure thought he would screw up. If Lana asked for the same thing, he would have brought back some Twizzlers, Nutella, and Alizé. Seeing what Clark could do gave Simone the idea that she, well, wanted to have sex. While they were having sex, why not kill two birds with one stone and have Clark break up with Lana at the same time? If Lana walks in on them doing a little heavy petting, she won’t be bothering them for much longer.

After getting Clark in the barn, Simone asks if Clark has any special skills. I am not sure if there was a crystal in the Fortress of Solitude that was the equivalent of the Krypton Karma Sutra, and so Clark is still worried that he might hurt Simone. I would like to describe the next few minutes of television, but this being a family establishment and the WB looking like Cinemax for a few moments, I will have to let you use your imagination. Right as Simone was pouring hot wax on Clark, oh, sorry wrong fantasy there. Right as they were on the couch and Clark was about to hit that home run, Lana walks in on them. She is, of course, devastated, and Clark disengages himself from Simone to go over and tell Lana that it was all over and he had fallen in loved with somebody else.

Now we know that such things happen all the time in Smallville, but if you were like me, you were wondering what it was about Clark that had Simone so interested. Well, it’s explained in two words: Lex Luthor. After she sent Lana home in tears, Simone went to the Luthor mansion. Lex was videoconferencing from his plane, but the point was very clear. He hired Simone to help put some space in between Lana and Clark, and while she was at it, learn some more about Clark. Now although Clark had displayed his speed and super strength, Simone didn’t make any mention of it. She thought of Clark as her knight in shining armor, so I guess she didn’t want to ruin the relationship.

I am really surprised at how hard Chloe works at keeping Lana and Clark together. To see the man of your dreams with your best friend and not attempt a double-homicide is asking a lot, but I guess she isn’t the violent type. She knows that something must have happened to Clark because, as we know, people possessing another person’s body or kryptonite something or other forcing people to go against their will are frequent occurrences in this town. She tries to convince Clark that he is being manipulated, and when Clark tells Chloe that he told Simone about his powers, Chloe KNOWS that something is up. She walks into the Kent’s house, and after avoiding Simone (who was fresh out of the shower, probably because she had been working up a nice sweat earlier on due to all the humping she was doing in the barn) manages to grab some identification material so she can investigate further.

Meanwhile, in Honduras, Lex has found Dr. Fine, and Milton is none too happy about it. As Lex is about to tell him that he knows that he isn’t a professor, Dr. Fine is preparing that stabbing finger of his. But Lex’s background check didn’t reveal any krypton secrets, but instead revealed that Dr. Fine was working for a secret branch of the State Department. When he sees that Lex is way off, Dr. Fine backs down and explains that he is working on project that had to do with the possibility of extra-terrestrial life. They had tracked a spaceship in the meteor shower, but somebody go to it first. Now Professor Fine things the spaceship is in Honduras.

As Dr. Fine explains it, the alien race is a grave threat to the entire planet, which is partly true because Clark is not a great threat to anybody unless they are watching him dance and are worried of dying of laughter. Milton even says that he could use Lex’s help in developing a weapon, and after agreeing to give Lex access to all of his documents, the two of them strike a deal.

Chloe and Lois dig up a little bit about Simone’s past, and it’s not all good. Her father was a researcher who used hypnosis to cure his clients of all sorts of ailments, but he was killed and an ancient family heirloom was taken from him. This heirloom is the same one that Simone wears, which as you may have guessed, is the reason why she is able to hypnotize people so well. It’s almost too gruesome to say, but if Simone has that pendant, it probably means that she killed her own father.

Lois makes it over to the Kent’s where she sees that Clark is about to leave with Simone to California, perhaps to catch the Castroville Artichoke Festival. Unfortunately, she is no match for Clark, who knocks her out with one little tap to the shoulder. Simone realizes that she might have some trouble keeping Clark to herself, so she tells Clark that they have one more mission – kill Lex Luthor.

Simone left Martha Kent with Lois to make sure that she didn’t move, and Mrs. Kent decided that subtlety was overrated and simply kept a shotgun pointed at her head, which is plenty to keep most people from moving. Luckily, Chloe came home and was able to knock Martha out. She left Lois there to make sure Martha Kent doesn’t start getting visions of double-aught dancing through her head.

I would expect Lex to start making his own fortress of solitude when you consider how awful his security is. I mean, I know they wouldn’t have been able to take out a homicidal Clark, but they might have been able to at least take out Simone. As soon as he walks in, Lex tries to explain that Clark is being hypnotized buy a cold-blooded murderer. Clark never really asked how Lex knew that, but instead went about his business. Once gain, Chloe comes in to save somebody about to be killed by a Kent under mind control. She brought with her some Kryptonite to stop Clark, but she has nothing to stop Simone, who then commands Lex to kill Chloe and then shoot himself.

Chloe is not much for adventure, but she manages to get to Lex before a shot is fired, and in the struggle, the gun goes off, and amazingly the shot is fired directly at Simone, conveniently destroying the necklace, and therefore everybody under its control, not to mention killing Simone as well. I’ve seen some ridiculous ways to end standoffs on this show, but I have to say this one might take the cake. We can believe that Clark can pull such things off with precision, but this felt like they were just trying to finish things up so they could get on to other business.

Purple Nurple!

That other business was the resolution of Clark and Lana’s relationship. After it was all over, Clark admitted that he didn’t remember anything except he knew that the look of pain on Lana’s face was very real, and he never wanted that to happen ever again. He wondered how often he could break somebody’s heart before it crumbled to pieces, much like we wondered how often he could break her heart before we started to pull all of our hair out. It was time to say goodbye forever, and that is exactly what he did.

Did you ever notice when Clark needs to say something important to Lana, he always waits until the sun is setting in through the opening in the barn? I know he is going to be a superhero, but MUST he be so dramatic? Anyway, Clark tells Lana that the truth is that his feelings for her has changed. Lana doesn’t want to believe it, but she wants Clark to look her in the eye and tell her that he is not in love with her. Clark looks her in the eye, repeats the statement, and although I think Lana believed that it was just another one of Clark’s lies, she told him that this meant goodbye…forever.

We are all assuming that Clark said what he did to protect Lana, but when he talks it over with his mom, she wonders if the words came out because somewhere, deep down, he believed that she was not the one. Whatever the case may be, Lana know has a pretty good reason to hate Clark, although if she takes after her roommate, it will turn into a low simmer and then later a long-distance infatuation. As for now, Lana turns to the one person that she believes she can trust: Lex Luthor. I never would have imagined it only a month ago, but maybe they’ll have a relationship. And if they have a relationship, maybe Lana will die after all? OK, I am a little too enthusiastic, but it is a possibility.

Although we didn’t touch on Lionel Luthor or Martha’s term in office, I thought that this was a good episode, and I didn’t even tell you the best part. Milton Fine is not only alive and well, but there is more than one copy of him. The spaceship that disappeared from Lex’s warehouse, or at least one that looked exactly like it, was in fact in the Honduran jungle, and multiple Milton Fine’s were running around getting more samples of what I can only imagine is the tainted blood. We have no idea what he might do with it, but I wonder if it is related to that weapon he wants to build with Lex.

What did you think of this episode? Is it really over for Clark and Lana? Who will Clark chase after now?