Ageless

DVD, Smallville S4 (Ageless)

Another episode that seems half-done, not thought through, just there to make up the numbers, even if it does try and tack on a meaningful lesson about parents and children and being a parent and having a child, it's really just an excuse to see Clark and Lana play happy families and pretend to be Mum and Dad for a bit, until the obvious conclusion which was coming the moment you realise it's about a child that lives faster than normal. So all you can enjoy is the journey, but it's not a trip I wanted to go on.

And how could they blow up the windmill that's been there for years? It's not the safest place to go at the best of times, but Lana wasn't being too sensible to take a boy up there who may explode at any time, all for a weakly sentimental ending which doesn't have a quarter of the punch that Ryan's balloon trip had in a similar episode, mainly because you can't care about Evan that much as we don't know him for long enough and he has nothing to him, no history or connection, just a super fast grower. It was best that he left as with the Kents, an alien, a dog and a would-be reporter (where was Lois, incidentally?), the farm was getting crowded!

The plot thickens along with Lionel's head of hair and he's unashamedly back to his old ways, nearly killing Mrs. Teague, all for one of the 'stones' that has been a badly threaded plot meandering around, or more often, not even featuring in episodes. I liked Lionel's protectiveness of Lex, even if it's not necessarily genuine, lest we forget he tried to kill him in the past. As for Jason, Lana may have abandoned him, but so have the writers as this is another episode he doesn't appear in! I'd love to hear how Lex straightened out things with child services, seeing as the child in question turned into a teenager and then exploded, but maybe he bought them a new building or something so they brushed it under the carpet? A filler episode that has almost nothing of interest beyond Clark having to change 'diapers'. And I thought the baby was going to turn out to be Doomsday...

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