Smallville: Combat Image
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Mania Grade: C
Episode: Combat
Stars: Tom Welling, Michael Rosenbaum, Kristen Kreuk, Allison Mack, Annette O'Toole, Erica Durance
Created By: Alfred Gough, Miles Millar

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"Smallville: Combat"

I didn’t get a chance to review last week’s episode of Smallville and that’s a shame because for my two cents they actually finally did something interesting with the Lana/Clark/Lex love triangle thing.  Of course, it took the great Lionel Luthor to really make things fun, but so what?  At least it was interesting.  As interesting as I thought that episode was it does put us firmly back where we were with the only real exception being that Lana knows Clark’s secret.  Things aren’t good in Lanaville this week as she and Lex are carrying the subplot of the episode with Lana losing her baby.  I hate to say it but I’m glad this happened.  I was not looking forward to watching that pregnancy run its course.  You’d have Lana in a fat suit being depressed with herself and Clark staring at her from afar.  So, she did lose the baby and it appears that Lex, as always knows more about it than he’s letting on.  To bad I could care less about what he knows or what he’s done in regards to Lana or her baby.  I’m more interested in his involvement in the main plot.  It turns out that Lex Luthor is the hidden ringmaster of a fight club involving “meteor freaks”.  Is it just me or does this term feel more comfortable coming from Chloe than Lex?  Seems like he’d be using something more clinical. 

Anyway Chloe finds out about the fight club and Clark discovers that the main event isn’t a meteor freak but a zoner, a Kryptonian named Titan.  Titan is a warrior looking for battle and he’s killing meteor freaks left and right.  Lois lost a story for the tabloid that she works for and if she doesn’t find a new one she’s gonna get canned.  So, she discovers what Chloe and Clark are investigating and she decides to go undercover and investigate it herself for a story.  She finds the location of the fight club and meets the lesbian-ish security guard.  There’s some pandering with the two girls getting close enough to each other to almost kiss and then a cat fight leading to Lois getting captured. 

Clark wiggles his way into the fight club and ends up fighting Titan.  The main event was what I was really looking forward too.  It’s about time we had some super hero action on this show and while the fight between the two was pretty energetic it ends all too quickly, and easily.  I didn’t expect Doomsday here but we’re talking two all powerful Kryptonians and Clark just kills him after a few traded punches?  Oh and following the Smallville method of operation Lois conveniently got knocked out so she wouldn’t see Clark and Titan go at it.  One of Lex’s flunkies reported Titan’s death to him and discovered that Titan was in fact not a meteor freak but an alien.  What Lex will do with this new information remains to be seen.  I hope it’s something interesting…. 

Last episode and this one start a new emotional arc for Clark, rage.  He’s angry, angry about Lana’s decision to marry Lex and angry at his life in general and who he is.  Martha talks to Clark at the beginning of this episode about an article in the newspaper about criminals being mysteriously turned in to police, many of which were pretty badly beaten. At the end of this episode Clark has to deal with this anger and the fact that he didn’t just beat Titan, he killed him.  He asks himself what he’ll do about other Zoners that appear.  Will he have to kill them too?  I was laughing out loud last episode when Clark would get mad and throw something because it wouldn’t just fly across the room, it would fly out the window and out of sight or it would hit the side of the barn and break something.  The stage is set for a darker turn for Smallville, Lana is devastated over the loss of her baby, Lex had something to do with it, and Clark is in a dark place emotionally.  As weak as I thought this episode was if it helps make that tonal change in the series it’ll be worth it.  Oh and one other quick thing, the security guard girl was obviously there for her chest because her acting was horrific as was Kane’s.