An atmospheric moment from the pilot episode of SMALLVILLE.
© 2001 The WB

Mania Grade: D+
Stars: Tom Welling, Michael Rosenbaum, Kristen Kreuk, Allison Mack, Annette O'Toole, Erica Durance
Directed by: Glen Winter
Created by: Alfred Gough, Miles Millar

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"Smallville: Crimson"

I’m sort of an odd fan of Smallville, I watch every week even though I’m disappointed with the series more often than not.  The problem is that I remember that first season and the second, the good episodes of the show, and I hold out hope that the creators might get back to that level of quality at some point.  The past couple of episodes for me have been quite exceptional, featuring storylines that progressed Clark as a hero and didn’t get bogged down in over done soap opera romance.  Well, just as I was starting to really look forward to Thursday nights here comes a red kryptonite episode. 

In the past, the red kryptonite episodes were mostly there just for pandering and the events that happen just seem to work themselves out with few if any repercussions to the overall story arc.  We get that again with this episode, but there’s a little more here that helps keep the episode out of the “F” category.  Lois being down about her break up with Oliver accepts a gift of special lip stick from a mysterious woman who is selling all kinds of trinkets and potions.  The woman tells her that she will fall in love with the first person she sees while wearing the lip stick, and of course Lois sees Clark.  Clark fights Lois off until she finally kisses him and the red stuff kicks in.  At the same time Lana and Lex are preparing for their big engagement dinner.  In an attempt to prove to Lois that he’s more than just a farm boy, Clark leaps from one building to the clock tower holding Lois in his arms and he also lets out Oliver’s secret.  Just when they are about to get it on he sees Lois’ invitation to the dinner and he decides that they should crash it together. 

At the dinner, all hell breaks lose with Clark ripping everybody in the room a new one.  He tells Martha that she’s becoming more of a Luthor than a Kent less than a year after his father died.  He tells Chloe that he knows she’s pining away for him and that he’s thought about it, and he gives it to Lana and Lex too.  As much as I liked this scene I started to feel like “oh hell, here’s the pandering” and by the end of the episode somehow they’ll all have forgotten about it, but at least in regard to that scene, I was wrong.  Lex gets pissed and tries to take Clark down only to get knocked down himself.  Clark kidnaps Lana and takes her to the barn to get her to admit her love for him.  In the barn, Lex pulls a gun on Clark, and Clark turns into a bad ass ripping the gun from Lex’s hands telling him he doesn’t know the rules to the game.  Clark flings Lex though a wall and chokes him out a bit.  He also tells Lex that if he’d known what kind of man Lex would turn out to be he never would have saved him that day back in season one.  Lex grabs a tool and stabs Clark with it.  At the same time, Martha shows up hiding a chunk of green kryptonite so it looks like Clark goes down from the attempted stabbing. 

Now as is common for one of these episodes Lois does forget everything that happened between her and Clark, irritating but predictable.  But all the other stuff that happened sticks with the big zinger being Lana stealing the tool that Lex used to stab Clark.  It’s all gnarled and bent and she keeps it wrapped in a red cloth in one of her drawers back at the mansion.  When Clark apologizes to Martha she tells him that she believes there is a grain of truth in everything he said and that he has to deal with those feelings.  So it seems that much of what Clark said will have a ripple effect in the series.  The first ripple happens at the end of the episode when Jimmy breaks up with Chloe not being able to live with the secret relationship that she and Clark share.  She does a better job with this scene than Lana has done with her emotional scenes the entire run of the series.  We may see Martha step back and reconsider her relationship with Lionel too.  Lana ahs seen the worst in Lex, she saw him draw a gun on Clark and he tells her he doesn’t know what he’d be capable of if he lost her.  So she has to take a real look at the situation she has put herself in.  So, as much as I hate these episodes as a whole at least some of what happened in this episode seems like it’ll make an impact on the series. 

New story arcs do appear to be getting a start in this episode too.  Lana has really been pressuring Clark and Chloe over Clark’s secret.  She even tells Chloe in this episode that she’ll stop asking Chloe about it as long as Chloe stops pretending that it doesn’t exist.  Now that she has the bent tool she may be more impassioned than ever to discover the secret.  Also, in a meeting with Lana’s doctor it appears that there’s something “special” about Lana’s pregnancy and Lex has something to do with it.  Will it be interesting to see where these plot threads go?  I can’t say, but I’m hoping for the best.  There’s a bit of foreshadowing in this episode involving a future relationship between Clark and Lois, and that’s fine with me because the way these two act with each other is just about the only thing in this series that’s similar to the classic Superman story I grew up with. 

While this episode was nowhere near as terrible as I expected it to be, it’s still a red kryptonite episode and plenty happens that those involved suddenly forget, and what about the girl who sold the red kryptonite stuff to start with?  She was just a plot device and nothing more.  Yes, this episode did appear to serve more than the simple purpose of pandering but the red kryptonite crutch was worn out a long time ago.