Wednesday October 22, 2003
176204
Clark is being pursued by a frightened young girl who needs his help. However, after he discovers she is actually a comatose neighbor who should have woken up years ago, he enlists Lana's help to uncover the truth – which puts Lana in grave danger. Meanwhile, Lionel demands that Lex undergo a full psychological evaluation before he hires him.
Read Full Recap » (warning: possible spoilers!)A mysterious young woman is pursued by a ghostly wraith, but only Clark can see her and attempt to learn how to defeat her attacker. Turns out much of it is a dream sequence. hide show
Clark and Lana meet at Crater Lake (how did those forested mountains get transplanted to the plains of Kansas?) for a provocative skinny-dip, just as a screaming young woman runs along the lake shore. Clark is there instantly (his hair now mysteriously dry) as the girl Sarah is pulled into the ground by a ghastly hand.
Jonathan and Martha present Clark with a new Ford 4wd pickup, then Clark encounters Sarah at school - she's terrified by a hooded apparition pursuing her. Chloe has retired the Wall of Wierd, "done chasing windmills." Lex asks Clark to the mansion, where he breaks a samurai sword on Clark's arm, and threatens to expose his secret. But Sarah has appeared at the Kent home, and names the apparition "the Traveler," and they disappear into the ground. Clark pursues them, then suddenly awakens from a 36-hour nap, so nothing in the preceding 15 minutes of this episode was real - no skinny-dip, no new pickup, no exposure of secrets by Lex, and the Wall of Wierd is still in place.
As Clark and Lana visit Sarah at her home, watched over by her uncle Nicholas (Christopher Shyer), they learn she has been in a coma for six years. Clark tries to stay awake to avoid another dream sequence, but in the moment he sleeps, he sees Sarah again. Lex gets some information on Sarah and her uncle, prompting another visit by Clark, and a quick theft of some of Sarah's medication so he can have it tested. Clark drops into sleep while driving home, sees Sarah again, and wrecks another red Dodge pickup - how many did they buy for this series?
Martha deflects Lana's probing about Clark's injuries, but while Clark is sleeping off the truck wreck, she naively confronts Nicholas, who quickly dispatches her with an injection of a blue drug (Why blue? No known injectable meds are blue). Clark and Sarah battle the Traveler in dreamland again, and this time Sarah has the strength to prevail. Clark awakes again and searches for Lana, who is about to be torched in her Jeep Liberty by Nicholas, but Clark quickly dispatches him.
In the subplot, Lex confronts Lionel about the restrictions on his Luthorcorp activity, sparring over a psychological profile and a security clearance, but finally agrees to submit to the mental tests insisted upon by Lionel. Some pretty good fantasy here, and a bit of resolution of the Lana-Clark relationship. Re-run rating C+.
Clark vs The Boogeyman hide show
Slumber-Clark is being pursued by a frightened young girl who needs his help. However, after he discovers she is actually a comatose neighbor who should have woken up years ago, he enlists Lana's help to uncover the truth – which puts Lana in grave danger. Meanwhile, Lionel demands that Lex undergo a full psychological evaluation before he hires him.
An entertaining yet great mystery episode that takes a pretty cliche storyline but is very effective. It was pretty obvious after the teaser that Clark was dreaming all along, especially when he and Lana go skinny dipping at the lake. Seriously, are we suppose to believe Lana would be so flirty with Clark after their relationship has been a bit shaky since he came back from Metropolis. The dream sequence is very entertaining like Chloe giving up on her wall of weird and people getting sucked underground. The best part would have to be Lex finding out Clark's secret and both their reactions to the truth. But at the same time the some parts of the dreams were a but corny like the Boogeyman-esqe figure stalking Sarah in her dreams. I commend the Smallville make -up crew and designers trying to create some new and demonic looking for the show, but the it came off looking out of place. Also it looked a lot like the Source, a villian from the show "Charmed". Rip-off? maybe? But I actually liked the concept of a psychic link between Sarah and Clark even though it's never really expland how Sarah got in Clark's mind in the first place. But the guest stars are good with Katharine Isabelle and Christopher Shyer as Sarah's twisted and sick uncle out to get his niece's inheritence. This episode also sees Lionel telling Lex he should go under psychological treatment. It's a great storyline as the writers begin to get into Lex's mind and begin to develop his character in an amazing way. All and All, not a perfet episode, but enough intrigue and developments that make for a great episode.
"Slumber" encapsulates why I, and a lot of others, HATE Smallville on occasion. Now, don't get me wrong, there are a couple of redeeming features to this episode, but only a few. The first one being…uhm…duh…a NAKED Lana Lang. HELLO!
After that…it's mostly clutching for straws.
It's a dream episode. There's enough rope there to really go wild and have a bit of fun -- something this show rarely finds the time for. But, no, what we get here is a waste of 10 minutes in a scenario so painfully obvious it hurt to watch - even if its obviousness was part of its intent, it still made me cringe - it's apparent that Clark is dreaming from the get. And, yes, his day becomes clearer to the fact he's actually in a dream. While there's one moment with Lex and Clark that strikes interest, the rest of it is hogwash. It's so straight laced, I just wanted a Buffy writer to jump on in and spice things up -- the potential for vast out of character entertainment was virtually limitless. Instead, though, we're stuck with drama of the highest degree.
But, I suppose…naked Lana. It was partially worth it.
Another grating factor to the show is its main reason for staying on the air for so long - WB music had their very own weekly advertising outlet. Yes, HAHAHAH, I get it, they play REM in an episode about sleep. HAHAHAHA. Ahem. But five songs? Conveniently around the time REM are releasing a new CD. Pfft. It wasn't so much funny as it was a painful distraction that took away from this already out of place Freddie-lite plot.
It was nice, I suppose, that the show, at the very least, was trying to break away from formula. But…well, clearly, they should just stick to what they're good at…producing mediocre eye-candy with some decent acting and dazzling effects shots.
Clark Kent has a nightmare with a girl called Sara Conroy (Katharina Isabelle) being chased by a weird creature called The Traveller (John De Santis) and sleeps for thirty-six consecutive hours. When he wakes up, he finds that Sara Conroy has just moved with her uncle and tutor Nicholas Conroy (Christopher Shyer) to the house on the next door that belonged to Lana Lang. Intrigued with the situation, he visits Sara with Lana Lang and see that the girl has been in coma for six years, increasing the mystery. Blending reality with dream, like in "A Nightmare on Elm Street", and with the participation of Katharina Isabelle of "Ginger Snap" trilogy, "Slumber" is a great episode of "Smallville". The sexy beginning, with Lana Lang bathing naked in the lake, would suffice to make "Slumber" a worthy story.
Despite being a pretty predictable episode, I actually really enjoyed, and I don't really know why.
Almost all of this episode was a dream sequence, and for the most part they were all pretty interesting moments, the scenes that most stuck out where the scene Clark dreams that Lex is trying to hit him with the samurai sword and turns out he finds out his secret (though it's a dream, so obviously he doesn't really find out).
I found some parts of the episode to be pretty funny, like the end scene where Lana tells Clark: "Maybe in You Dreams..." about Skinny Dipping, which was what they actually did in his dream. So I liked this episode, it wasn't outstanding or anything but it was pretty enjoyable.
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