Even with last week's resolutions of several Season 6 crises, there's plenty of story material left - Lex is in jail, his mysterious rescuer is scaring Air Traffic, Lionel is missing, what is Lana up to in Shanghai?moreless
8.5
"Great"
Out near Reeve dam, Clark and Lois come across a small spacecraft - Clark can't approach so it must be kryptonian. He tries to downplay it, but Lois barges right in and gets shocked when she touches it, and is thrown aside. The mysterious blonde (Laura Vandervoort) is suddenly there and warns them to leave, crushing Lois's cell phone first and whacking Clark.
Back in town, Clark tries to get Lois off the spaceship story, but her reporter instinct is in full swing, and she's off to do the story of the century for the Inquisitor.
When Lex hears from his attorney that another man has confessed to Lana's murder, he doesn't believe it, shocking even us with the statement that Lana may be alive. How did he come to this belief?
When Clark returns to the spaceship locale, it's gone - and it's now a crime scene with two dead park rangers. I have to wonder why he didn't pick up the remains of the cell phone. Won't Lois have a hard time explaining to the police why it was there? Even crushed, it could be traced to her.
Lex uses his get-out-of-jail-free card, suspecting that Lionel set up the confessor to Lana's murder, as he tells Chloe. He also tells her of his belief that Lana may be alive; Chloe describes DNA evidence that confirmed her death. But we know better, since we watched "Bizarro" and saw Lana strolling around in Shanghai. Tough dialog here - Lex says to Chloe, "Tell me everything you know." Her stinging reply: "Here's everything I know, Lex. You need some serious psychiatry."
At the DP, Chloe tells Clark that "your little Kryptonian gal-pal has been showing up all over Lowell County." Reports of a blonde woman visiting child care centers gets Clark going, and it is indeed Kara questioning little kids about their names. Clark zips her down the road for some serious interrogation, and after a nifty scene of her attempted flight stopped by Clark, he spots her El family bracelet. She's surprised at his power, and reveals the name of the person she's seeking - "Kal-El." You're looking at him!
Chloe tries to talk Lois out of doing a story on a spaceship - but she's insistent. Now we meet the new editor of the DP, Grant Gabriel (Michael Cassidy), personable, charming, driven, and even wears suspenders, so we know he's an editor. He'll take the story from Lois if it's printable, and offers a job with it.
Kara doesn't believe Clark is Kal-El; I can't believe her Earth wardrobe is a tank top and hip hugging shorts - but she's an attractive young lady and the youth market awaits. Kara left Krypton immediately after Clark, past 23 galaxies enroute to Earth, but she now hears that her home planet has been destroyed, and she was in stasis for 18 years, finally freed when the dam broke. Her meta-learning programs weren't up to all this. Her father was Zor-El, brother of Jor-El. They're cousins! From a dysfunctional family. And her ship is missing, but an attempt to open it, well, that's a self-destruct sequence and a Big Bang.
Who has her ship? For once, it's not Lex. It's the Government, which has the ship in a warehouse, with rock-concert lighting, an array of steaming vapor-pipes, floor-mounted lighting to cast dark shadows on the actors' faces - the whole over-done set decoration scheme. The Guy in Tie says, "Open it." "It" looks just like the ship Lex once had (Brainiac's module) but this one is red. Same prop, somewhat F-117-shaped. The dialog gets silly here too, the Guy intoning "Prepare extraction protocol and prepare to evacuate." This stuff was good back in the 1951 era of "Day the Earth Stood Still," but we've moved on. They manage to get something going on the ship's surface, but they don't know what they're doing. Back at the DP, Mr. Gabriel gets a quick visit by Lois, who pushes for Chloe to do the spaceship story, but he's pretty critical of her. He accuses her of using high moral ground to bail out of a sinking ship...spaceship that is. Lois may have met her match! He challenges her - to become Lois Lane, star reporter.
Lex has his forces trying to locate Lana through any communications device she may be using. They find her. Lex better put extra fuel on that business jet, because she's in Shanghai.
Meanwhile, Kara is challenging Clark's slow pace - now why is it that he can't fly? Is this the season for this to start? The fans have been waiting. She's still calling him Kal-El, no dialog yet about the importance of his secret identity, and even she's not sure of her purpose now that Krypton is gone. Chloe has located radio interference in Granville - it could be Kara's ship. Of course it is. But now it's time for Clark to coach Kara - on super-hearing. She attunes herself - and hears her ship alarm.
Lois has now found Kara's ship - how? Can't think of a single clue she may have had, but there she is, brash and careless. And the Government Guys have conveniently departed, but left on all the superfluous strobes, rotating beacons, and warning horns. I am weighed down by the sheer force of all these production gee-gaws. Clark and Kara arrive about two seconds later, just after Lois touches the ship and gets zapped, surely enough for a temporary memory loss. Kara stops the destruct sequence with her own self, but vaporizes the ship in the process. Welcome to Earth.
Enroute to Shanghai, Lex obsessively listens to his recorded last conversation with Lana - "what are you going to do, kill me?" Amazing GPS - he walks right in on her, but she has a gun. She laid out the bread crumbs for him to find her, she says. He claims to seek her forgiveness, even inviting her to do away with him. Wow! He cloned her, she was Model 503! It was never alive, but he realized that Lana placed the clone in the Jeep before the car bomb was set off. He invites her to shoot. It's easier for him - he knows she's too good to do it. He's apologizes, offering her a chance to return to Smallville. Is he sincere? Or does he just know everyone well enough to continue his manipulations? So this clarifies his early belief about her survival - he had the crew looking for Model 503 - when it did not turn up, he could suspect she used it as her personal dummy. Nice thought, but geez, wouldn't the lab crew do an occasional inventory of all the clones?
Lois tells Chloe about her near-earth-shattering story on the spaceship - and Gabriel loves her prose, but it's not substantiated with photos. But she still gets the job. Welcome to the Daily Planet, Lois!
Kara is coming to grips with her new life, still wondering about Krypton, as she and Clark watch the setting sun straight out the loft door - so that's generally west, but it's inconsistent with numerous scenes of the farm with the sun high in the sky and that barn side apparently facing south. This sunset was merely another production value. Kara misses home, and her memory is hazy - all those years in the ship. But she does remember Lara, Clark's mother, and it pleases him to hear her name and of her love for him as a baby. Clark invites Kara to stay at the farm - he's now her family.
But Kara still feels she has failed her mission, losing a crystal in the ship which her father Zor-El told her to guard with her life. It contained all of her directives and the power to help her along the way, and it wasn't destroyed, it survived somewhere, but it's power can be lethal on Earth. This sets up the next mystery and dilemma.
The crystal is revealed immediately - at a Government lab in D.C., our mysterious agent has a cylinder with a blue crystal, at the "US Dept. of Domestic Security," a stand-in for the DHS.
Clark returns to the Fortress to talk to Jor-El about Kara - Jor-El knows nothing of her arrival. Jor-El's voice says the daughter of Zor-El cannot be trusted, and poses a greater threat than Clark believes. This plot twist immediately deters us from believing that Clark and Kara will form a crime-busting partnership.
Finally Lex continues gazing at a sketch of his blonde saviour - and sends his staff on a search for her. In "Kara," several more story lines are established, and they sound intriguing. One question is unanswered - will Lex reveal to anyone that Lana lives? Her secret revealed, will she return to the US of A? Well, they have us guessing, and the development of Lois into a full-time reporter for the DP is a significant event in the Smallville universe. Other than the excessive lighting and set decoration, and some silly portrayals of government activity, this is a good production and essential viewing if one intends to keep up with a major new character and Clark's celestial history. Re-run rating B.moreless
