Too much caffeine, perhaps, and not enough time for Smallville's writers to deliver the goods this week...

“Abandoned”

Sometimes, it takes a lot of filler to get a one hour episode for television. This week’s Smallville had some really good things, but it seemed like the writers wanted to throw a lot in that dragged the episode down, and may or may not have made sense. Let’s just jump in and see if we can figure this out.

Tess has a nightmare. She’s a child, and in a strange place, with a music box playing “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies”. She wakes up, and hears the exact same song. She finds the music box in the study, with a tag that says “Happy Birthday, Tess”.  Obviously, this is all amiss.

Down at the Kent Farm, Clark wakes up to find Lois looking at a box of her things. He tells her she can admit that she’s moved in so that she doesn’t have to keep getting into the boxes for her things. She explains that they are things that her mom gave her when she found out she had cancer. She has been avoiding them, because she feels bad about not visiting her mother in the hospital. Then she finds videos from her mother, and is scared of what she’ll say. She does finally watch them, only to find that her mother (a guest appearance by Teri Hatcher) told her father not to bring the girls to the hospital. It’s a wonderful – if overly sentimental – scene, and one that gets Lois to thinking about Clark’s relationship to Jor-El. She travels to the fortress to confront him, telling him that Clark is the hero he wanted him to be, and that Jor-El needed to quit being a prick. Lois is trapped in a stasis field, which I believe still hasn’t taught her to keep her mouth shut.

Clark and Tess find an address on the music box, and investigate what appears to be an orphanage that Tess apparently has ties to, but can’t remember. The orphanage is run by Granny Goodness, and she is claimed to be the saint of wayward girls. They go under the guise of two reporters looking to do a fluff piece on the place, but soon find that nothing is what it seems. Granny Goodness erases the girls memories to make them one of her followers, as she seems – along with club owner Desaad and radio hate breeder Godfrey – to be preparing the world for the arrival of Darkseid. Tess fights with – and is nearly killed by – Mad Harriet, a super hot but super-dangerous disciple of Granny Goodness. Clark is subdued via Kryptonite, and nearly brainwashed by Granny. He, of course, has just enough strength to save the day.

In the end, Tess has found her real birth certificate, stating that she is actually the daughter of none other than Lionel Luther, making another one of those, as the cool kids say, WTF moments. Clark comes back home to find that Lois has gone to the fortress. He gets there, saves her, and Lois tells him she loves him too much to let there not be some connection to his father, even if he’s just a computer generated consciousness these days. They both come face to face with a hologram of Jor-El and Lara (Julian Sands and Helen Slater returning for a cameo) recorded just as they’re about to send the ship to Earth, and there’s a really nice scene of them both telling Clark that he is that which they are most proud of, and they are certain he will grow into the hero they both know he can be.

To celebrate, Clark tells Lois they are going out to karaoke, and we get a glimpse of the ring that Clark has purchased for her. Now, everyone say with me: Awww. Not the best episode of the season, mostly because it seemed like there were two separate episodes smashed together, and I think I’m not alone in wondering where the hell Darkseid is hiding himself, since he’s supposed to be the big bad this season (rumors abound that he’ll only be on the show himself for the last couple of episodes). But that’s Smallville for you; they love to drag storylines out for dramatic effect.

IF YOU ENJOYED THIS ARTICLE, PLEASE HELP SUPPORT OUR SITE, AT NO COST WITH ONE CLICK ON THE FACEBOOK 'LIKE' BUTTON BELOW: