Smallville: Plastique

By TrinityVixen

It’s official: Clark Kent is a journalist! His official press pass looks more fake than the fake one Alterna-Lois made him back in Jor-El’s false Earth. Clark’s credentials are less real than the dreams of his dead father. Yeah, just about.

Clark further jeopardizes his impossible career by showing up on his first day in a plaid button-down. Lois hastily corrects this with a borrowed shirt from another reporter and a trip to a phone booth changing room for Clark. (She really has room to criticize Clark for his lumberjack-friendly apparel when she’s dressed for a safari?)

Tom Welling cleans up nicely with the wardrobe change. Lois swoons, falling into Clark’s arms, though only because a bomb goes off outside The Daily Planet offices. While Lois gets drunk on the idea of a byline that she will, against all odds, receive for covering this story, Clark super-dashes outside in full view of witnesses. Maybe Smallville has decided to chuck the secret identity shtick entirely and gone with the transparency-is-best-plus-we-couldn’t-stop-our-hero-from-outing-himself-if-we-tried policy. Hey, it worked for Iron Man.

An overturned bus is on fire and smoking in the surprisingly narrow Metropolis street. Instead of hanging back and using super-breath to blow away the flames, Clark rushes right in, smacking into a skateboarding kid on his way. He peels apart the bus roof despite the fact that the emergency exit on the roof works perfectly well when he opens that first. As people trapped on the bus pour through the new and improved exit in the ceiling, Clark notices one woman passed out on the floor. He sweeps her up into his arms and evacuates. It’s Ms. Mercer, the new CEO of LuthorCorp, who is apparently a huge fan of mass transit. (She can’t be entirely evil!) She and Clark share a meaningful look, one of many things she inherited when she took over for Lex.

Chloe arrives on the scene and rushes past the police barricades to help a girl overcome with smoke inhalation. (She was on the bus.) Because the police are too busy not controlling the crowd, they’re entirely unavailable to help a victim and potential witness to the bombing. Chloe calls out, and a lone paramedic responds instantly. Please welcome Doomsday (aka Davis Bloome) to the show, folks. (My roommate: “Maybe that’s why he doesn’t have a partner—he ate him.”) Being on his own, Bloomesday recruits Chloe into helping him give some oxygen to the girl, Bette. Further proof that he’s not quite human, Bloomesday is totally able to hit on Chloe through the whole thing. Terrorism-schmerrorism, romance knows no boundaries! (Certainly not those of good taste.)

Chloe and Clark pow-wow about the bombing while still on site. Bloomesday watches them and gets the totally right wrong idea about their level of intimacy. Clark confesses that this is why he wanted to work at Chloe’s dream job—the closer he is to the stories, the better his chance of arriving in time to forestall tragedy. Lest that seem like he’s crowing loudly in the face of her failed plans for her future, Chloe reassures him that she’s ready to try new things. (Like possibly evil paramedics.) Equally improbable to Clark getting her dream job: Chloe no longer wanting it. Too bad, so sad, says Smallville to seven years of Chloe’s character continuity.

At the Planet, Clark contemplates how to break the news that he’s ruined a rented shirt to his poor colleague as Lois lets into him for disappearing on her. All is forgiven if he has any intel, however. This feels very true to the mercenary story-sniffer Lois Lane should be. Clark gives up the news that the police think the bomb on the bus misfired, since no one died. (Maybe it never got up to 50 miles-per-hour to truly arm itself in the first place?) Clark dumbly giving away scoops is also very character-appropriate, as is Lois stealing it and then chiding him for being so gullible.

Lois’ tirade is interrupted by Clark being called into the new boss’ office. In between absorbing Lois’ helpful suggestion about how to handle this interview (“Try not to get fired on your first day”) and getting to his destination, Clark manages to clean off not only himself but the bomb-soot-and-sweat-stained shirt such that he’s entirely presentable when he arrives. Ms. Mercer formally introduces herself (and her six inches of eye makeup).

The blue shirt has increased Clark’s IQ to the point where the only thing that throws him about having pulled the new LuthorCorp CEO (and his boss) from a bus is the fact that an ostensible billionaire would be riding one in the first place. That’s fairly brilliant, in Clark terms. Ms. Mercer’s excuse is that she’s “going green.” Sure you are. And this little meeting is entirely a coincidence.

Ms. Mercer admits that it is not: “I already had you on my to-do list today.” She’s still stuck in soft-core land after her exchange with Lois last week. (Speaking of, how does Lois not know Ms. Mercer is the boss at the Planet? She knew Mercer was taking over for Lex.) At the mention of Lex, Clark dissembles, trying to deflect Ms. Mercer’s interest. Except that she’s rabid about finding Lex and has it in her head that Clark can help. Clark asks if she has any leads, masking his terror as hope. Clever, that—disguising his extreme interest in not having Lex running around god-knows-where knowing his identity as intense, personal agony that a “friend” is missing.

When Clark says he can’t help, Ms. Mercer accepts this and offers him her card should anything jog his memory. He is dismissed after an exchange of a come-hither leer from his new boss (“You were extraordinary out there,” Ms. Mercer purrs as she looks directly at his crotch) and a bit of moralizing of his own in return (“I saw how this job consumed Lex’s life. I’d hate to see the same thing happen to yours”). This seeming threat passes only because Ms. Mercer is totally aware Clark is lying through his pouty lips. She assures her Blonde Underling that she can keep an eye on Clark herself. Lex did leave her a room in the mansion dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge about Clark Kent, so she’s good. Since Blonde Underling is already picturing Clark naked, this is a good managerial decision on Ms. Mercer’s part. Poor management technique can really sink a good villain. I’m glad to see Ms. Mercer was paying attention when she got her Masters from Villainy Technical Institute.

Over at Metropolis General Hospital, Chloe attempts to maintain her civility against the provocation of a teenager with exactly zero respect for it. Bette is a teenage runaway who hasn’t got a nice thing to say about any of Chloe’s suggestions that she try not living on the streets. Her failure creates an opportunity for Bloomesday to come sidling up and play hero by offering a spot for Bette at a special home that trains girls so they can get jobs and support themselves. Bette puts the kibosh on that straight away yet still gets to go home with Chloe for the night if she promises to consider it again some unmentioned time later. Chloe needs not to invite street tramps into her home, but it could be worse: she could have taken Bloomesday along with.

Back at the bomb site, Lois flirts madly, destructively with Clark while spitting nails about Tess Mercer being her boss. Amazingly, given television shooting schedules, Lois’ comment about Ms. Mercer being a pit-bull was shot way ahead of look-alike (and inferior fictional woman) Sarah Palin’s joke at the Republican National Convention. Lois fails to charm the police (who suddenly care about securing a crime scene) while Clark uses super-hearing to learn that there were no bomb materials on the site. He tells Lois and suggests they interview Bette and the other bus passengers to find out whether they noticed anything stranger than, say, a bomb going off on their bus. Clark assumes the cause must be meteor-rock-related. Because the writers are lazy, this is true. Clark is off to Smallville to visit with Bette.

When Chloe and Clark explain what meteor powers are, Bette magically remembers a kid named Tommy who played around with some meteor rock and got a literally explosive temper as a result. Tommy is the skateboarding kid Clark saw fleeing the bomb site, and he and Bette go to talk to him. Tommy bolts when he spies Bette is with Clark and with good reason: Bette’s the real Firestarter. She blows him up, making it look like suicide so he’ll take the rap. Clark, dumbed down by the weight of the plaid shirt he changed back into, doesn’t catch her all but cackling with glee.

Lois writes Tommy off as the bomber. She fobs off the duty of writing Tommy’s obituary onto Clark. This is at least a believable job for a rookie reporter, even if Clark shouldn’t be a rookie reporter. First things first: they have to make sure Tommy was, in fact, a meteor freak. (I love that this has now become an accepted fact that can be reported in a real newspaper and be understood to be totally true.) Hospital trip!

Bloomesday ambushes Chloe at the Isis Foundation. Ostensibly, he’s got an application to the home he told Bette about, yet his real motive is getting as far inside Chloe’s personal space zone as possible. (Well, at least he has good taste.) Chloe nervously talks up the Isis Foundation’s guiding principles, of which Bloomesday good-naturedly approves. He’s seen enough as a paramedic to know that meteor freaks might need the help, and Chloe is a genuinely good person who could really transform Isis into more than just an abandoned plot device. Bloomesday is being sympathetic towards near-universally evil meteor freaks; therefore, he’s evil. Even if you didn’t know about him being evil, he’s so obviously evil. No one except Chloe is allowed to be empathetic and on the side of good. They banter until Bloomesday’s intentions are clear enough to Chloe that she shoves the plastic bling ring Jimmy gave her into his face to get him to back off.

Ms. Mercer looks over Bette’s file and gets an update about the Montana facility being closed down. Male lackey whines that Lex would have let them just kill the loose cannons like Bette. Ms. Mercer shuts him down. Sister’s doing it for herself!

Over at Metropolis General, Lois uses one of many stolen key cards to boost the coroner’s report while Clark keeps a lookout in the hall. Bloomesday walks by and stops to congratulate Clark on being en fianced to the queen of the stone foxes, which is news to Clark. Embarrassed. Bloomesday breaks the news to Clark that Chloe’s engaged and he just assumed, given their closer-than-friends attitude, that it was to Clark. Oops.

Chloe returns to the Talon with the application for Bette. She is unbelievably pushy, forcing the idea onto Bette until Bette gives up the ghost and blows up Chloe’s phone to get her to lay off already. Bette’s a right brat, but she has a point about Chloe not listening. Bette flips out about how she was being hunted by some bad people and she killed Tommy because he ratted her out to them. Chloe is appalled. Bette was held captive in Montana, like Chloe, only for three years instead of three weeks. She was let go by the people running the facility, only she scarpered before they could tag and release her properly. Chloe is sympathetic. She confesses about her meteor powers; Bette assumes this means Chloe is behind her murder-to-survive ethos. Chloe is appalled. I have whiplash from Chloe changing her attitude towards Bette so rapidly. Bette decides Chloe’s resumed conscience means she has to die.

After the coroner’s report revealed Tommy wasn’t a meteor freak, Clark used some bad physics to determine that Bette was the real pyro. (Don’t ask, just lie back and let the show tell you how to think.) He arrives in time to save Chloe, who is back to being on Bette’s side again. Bette invents a new narrative for herself—woe is Bette, she is a monster! She has to murder people because they would hate her if they knew! Why would anyone help her? Because Clark and Chloe have suffered enough cranial trauma not to know any better? Hilariously, helping her means letting her be taken away by the police to Bellereve. Serves her right, I suppose, though I don’t see how this isn’t selling her out to LuthorCorp since Lex and Lionel have had their paws in that place for a while.

Clark and Chloe finally discuss her engagement to Jimmy. She’s been sitting on the news for all of a week, after getting back from Black Creek with the torture and the drugging and whatnot, so, of course, Clark has to lecture her on keeping secrets from him. I banned Clark from giving anyone a hard time about keeping secrets three seasons ago when his secrecy almost got Chloe killed. This does not compute.

Nor does this: “We’re more than just friends, Chloe.” There is a cruel second in which you can see the old love-struck Chloe almost believing that Clark means more-than-just-friends in the way she’s always cherished. Then she crumples and a little bit of her stubborn romantic heart dies. Clark trusts her more than any other friend, but they are not really more than just friends. A wedding, a marriage will change not change that, but it will alter how they coordinate their special friendship. Chloe fishes for an out from Clark, saying maybe she’s not ready for that. She’s still the girl at the dance who got that one kiss, hoping there’s another one in her future. Clark says that she should put her happiness with Jimmy ahead of everything else and not to worry about them and their relationship. He’s behind whatever makes her happy. They hug, but neither of them is smiling. It’s breaking my heart because Clark does want to be generous yet cannot fight how possessive he is of Chloe; Chloe wants to be happy with her decision but won’t let go of the idea of her and Clark.

Ms. Mercer interrupts Bette’s transfer to Bellereve with a proposition: join her roster of meteor freaks. She wins Bette over by appealing to teenage ego, or one version of it that she threw up all over Clark and Chloe, anyway. Bette’s onboard with the Legion of Doom, and we have this season’s version of Lex’s plan (via his proxy) to save the world by destroying it.

Terrorism has become so passé that the Planet puts Lois’ lonely byline on their front page even though the bombing in a major US city is the sort of thing for which investigative journalist teams were created. She smugly drops off her edit of Clark’s obituary draft, which is longer than what he wrote. This is even less plausible than Lois landing the front page as Lois Lane is the perennial proof that editors will never go out of business. (Holla!) Because she realized her wildest fantasy of landing a front-page article, she’s generous with her praise of Clark’s writing ability despite her copious abuse of red pen. She can afford to keep up the ruse that she esteems Clark as a partner since she got the front page all to herself. Again, character-appropriate no matter how ridiculous it is.

Chloe wraps up her unresolved flirtation with Bloomesday by leaving him the longest, most authentically awkward voice mail. She will be re-opening the Isis Foundation, and isn’t he a sweetheart for encouraging her? Yeah, this isn’t c***-teasing or anything. For shame, Chloe. As she finishes, the camera pans over the city to an alleyway. Bloomesday is lying naked on the ground and trembling. (Is he supposed to be a poor man’s Jim Profit?) The camera zooms in on his face. Above his brow, a thick ridge of bone protruding from his forehead sinks back in, gone without a trace. Bloomesday wakes up gasping. Dun-dun-dun!

Next time: Now that Justin Hartley is a cast member, we have an entire season to get burnt out on plots that exist solely as an excuse to have him being shirtless. Too bad it looks like Smallville is going to blow its wad on the next episode—with Oliver surviving some kind of maritime wreck, no less. I’m sure that, what with his parents having died at sea, this will not be traumatic for him at all. Stay tuned.

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About TrinityVixen: There’s an asterisk on TrinityVixen’scollege transcript that assures anyone who reads it that, though there is no specific major, degree, or certificate for it, she did, in fact, complete some kind of creative writing program as an undergrad. Armed with that symbol of irrelevant experience, she has polluted the internet with her opinions and horrible fanworks ever since (and for quite a long while before). Living poor in New York until she finds a means to become independently wealthy, she must subsist on the juicy meat of fandom. Fandom and noodles. And instant soup.