Smallville: Collateral

By Aden Penn

I have actually been really looking forward to the return of Smallville. Partly because I can now start “Countdown to Cape 2011” *cue dramatic news story music* Will we see it for longer than thirty seconds of the last episode? Will Tom Welling even look good in the suit?

Since it has been a little while, let me at least refresh the cliffhanger they left us with last year. It was a moving final scene, the band got back together to lay Carter to rest next to his wife. Everyone was there, there was touching music, and then this little white triangle thing started to come out of the sand. There was a huge flash of white light, and everybody was passed out cold. Everybody.

Now we get back to things with a kind of creepy pan through the Kent house. Lois is at the window in the kitchen and listening to hold music which breaks in with the usual “your call is important to us” Apparently she is on old with the VRA and once someone comes on she chews the woman a new one. All because she is trying to find Clark. Speaking of Clark, he walks in the front door and they have a touching little reunion complete with some meaningful music.

“Lois, it was the VRA. They were waiting for us at Carter’s funeral.”

Aww, dammit. Really? I understand that the main “villain” in this whole thing is the VRA but I was kind of hoping the whole flashing triangle thing would have ended up being someone or something a little cooler.

Clark follows Lois into the living room and bends down to help her clean up the broken glass on the floor. In doing so he cuts his finger. Well…oopsie. Clark claims that the VRA took his powers and Lois asks the right question. “How could they?” Suddenly Clark stats having a trippy flashback memory issue. He is laying in this weird table/pod thing with wires all over his head. He is waking up and struggling but people are holding him down. As they are shoving something in his neck, we see a familiar face. It’s Chloe. “Put him back under”

Oh $h!t.

We break away to Oliver standing outside of his office which has a big sticker thing across the doors. It says “No Trespassing: VRA Investigation Site” Of course he tears them off and walks inside. I kind of like how they have lit this scene, it lends a nice set of mood to the whole thing. Oliver walks over to a little glass table to pour himself a drink, and finds a phone sitting there with a picture of Chloe on it. This prompts his own flashback. Same scenario. Needles, tubes in uncomfortable places and Chloe.

Clark has gone back to the now dormant Watchtower and there he finds Dinah. Apparently they took her powers too, and she has been having the same kind of flashes. Complete with the Chloe cameo. Wow, the VRA got a whole lot done in the two weeks they claim to have been gone. Now Dinah is pretty quick to point fingers and throw a blame net over Chloe, but Clark just can’t bring himself to believe that she is in any way responsible for it. During their conversation Dinah says that Oliver just showed up at the hospital. Clark goes there to see Oliver only to find him trussed up in a straight jacket and claiming that the VRA is messing with his head and trying to convince him that Chloe is behind everything. Clark goes back to saying no, it can’t be her. After he leaves all of the lights in the room start to flicker and pop out, the wall at the back of the room starts to ripple and Chloe emerges out of the wall. Dressed all in white, she says “Hello Oliver”

Oh $h!t.

So here is the deal: The VRA has all of them sitting them in a facility somewhere, and they have jacked their minds into a collective mainframe. The world they are in is not actually real, as we are shown when Chloe pushes open the door to the room and the straight jacket disappears from Oliver’s body. He does get her to explain why everyone was seeing Chloe in their flashbacks. It apparently was her trying to unplug them, but having to hook them up again because their bodies were shutting down. As they are moving through the hospital to escape Chloe explains that he needs to keep in mind that things here are not real and that will give him some control over the world. Oh yeah and more importantly, every six minutes a patrol comes through. Armed and dangerous. But hey apparently that is not a real big deal because Chloe knows gun-fu.

And this is the point in the episode where I slowly start to check out.

Back in the matrix…I mean virtual world…Clark and Lois are trying to find the facility where they think they were taken for that time. Dinah comes in and shows them the great escape that Oliver and Chloe made from the hospital, being sure to show them the shooting. Lois and Dinah start to argue about being on sides and loyalty and blah blah blah. Clark does the smart thing and starts to walk away from it. He gets a text from Chloe that says “meet me on the roof”. When he gets up there he sees Chloe and Oliver and they start to give him the same “none of this is real” pep talk. There is some more explanation, including the idea that the VRA is trying to figure out the triggers in the brain that gets them to access their powers. So in essence they can control it.

Yeah…still checking out. Is it bad that I am finding this so very lame?

So the cyber patrol is coming and apparently the only escape is to jump off the roof of the Planet, but Clark can’t seem to trust Chloe enough to take her hand and go. He watches as the two of them jump and we see them plummet into the sidewalk and through the portal to the real world. (all while music that sounds like it was ripped from the Matrix movie plays)

Oliver wakes up in his pod and as he gets out Chloe is there waiting for him. They share a quick kiss which is interrupted by Flag walking through. Now we can see the bodies of the VRA guards on the floor. Oliver doesn’t look too happy about the idea that Chloe is working with the suicide squad, but it appears to me she is running more of the show than anything else.

The clock seems to be ticking, the VRA catching up them, and of course there are still some people jacked in. So Chloe sits down in front of the computer and gets back to work with pulling them out.

(Why the hell am I still watching this?)

Now she is trying to pull Dinah out from her virtual cage. (oh god, stop with the bird puns. Seriously) We see that Dinah is not going to go easily so this means yay we get a chick fight. And I guess all it took for Dinah to believe it was all fake was for Chloe to stop a knife in mid throw.

“This canary needs to eat some crow.”

WHO THINKS THIS IS CLEVER?!

Back in the fake world Lois is trying to convince Clark that everything is fake. He is not buying it, he’s pretty messed up about Chloe leaving and saying why. Lois brings up a good point about secrets and trust, and it looks like she is starting to get through. The scene switches back to Chloe at the computer where we see Trotter whacks her over the head with the butt of her gun. Someone takes over the computer and hijacks Chloe’s avatar. Now she has changed her tune, but Lois can tell it is not the real Chloe and manages to knock her through some glass doors giving her and Clark enough time to run off. (Back in the real world it almost looks like the VRA winning but then Flag starts shooting things up and it tilts back in the “good” guys favor. Deadshot even saves Chole with a very fancy shot) When they get up to the roof, evil Chloe avatar is already up there and we get more speeches. During all of this Clark gets inspired by Lois and suddenly they are flying. Well damn…

They make a circuit in the sky around the Planet before diving down through the portal.

At the Kent house Clark and Chloe have a sappy Hallmark moment, and at this point I think axes are buried and a little bit of closure is had between the two of them. This gets worse when Lois asks her to be the maid of honor. Then we are treated to Chloe and Oliver having their own sappy moment with flowers and tearful kisses.

So the episode ended on a high sappy note with no impending doom to set us up for the next episode. As much as I didn’t like this one, it was a nice way to end it.

Oh yeah and: yay Chloe is back!

Aden Penn is a mild mannered document clerk by day. She divides her love between Orson Welles, Dr. Sheldon Cooper and Dr. Douglas Fargo. Things on her list of “Cool” include superheroes, Pop Tarts, most things sci-fi and giraffes. For more Aden, visit her website, Aliens & Airships.

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