Cure

DVD, Smallville S7 (Cure)

I love it when they bring a character back, love it! But this was far from a sequel to Season 1's 'Drone' despite the return of Sasha Woodman, one of the least likely meteor freaks I ever expected to see again. I don't think it was the same actress, as her name didn't come up, unless she was uncredited this time, but I was more excited than I had a right to be that they were going to do a return to a previous story, and more especially, one from the golden age of the series, even though 'Drone' was actually one of the weakest episodes of that season. It became about something completely different, the potential for a cure for meteoritus (or whatever), from Dr. Curtis Knox, who… well… turns out to be Jack The Ripper, and lots of other people throughout history (cue 'Star Trek' suing the writers for copying Flint, but it's probably a sci-fi trope so there's no copyright for such ideas!). Knox didn't ring true, he was just a means to an end in getting the story going: he comes from nowhere though he's lived for centuries, he causes some problems, then he goes to who-knows-where thanks to Phil Morris' character, though that guy refuses to tell Clark about his 'crime and punishment' secrets so he could be dodgy. Unless he nipped back to Mars to incarcerate the immortal Dr. when everyone knows all he needed to do was chop his head off - it worked for 'Highlander'!

I wish Morris' Martian/Kryptonian had a name because it's long-winded to refer to him, otherwise. He remains something of an enigma, with Kara now weighing in against him and causing her to part company with Clark for not trusting her. I'm with the Kryptonian, I think she's not to be trusted, and I can believe in the hating match between Jor-el and Zor-el. At the same time we don't know enough about Clark's apparent protector to fully trust him either, and he could just as easily have his own motives. How do we know he wasn't one of the criminals that popped out of the Phantom Zone last season, since that's when he appeared for the first time? Clark did his own zipping about in this episode, dashing to the store to get maple syrup for Lana's pancakes, but wait: he was gone only a second so he'd have had to take longer if he stopped to pay, unless… he didn't pay and grabbed it off the shelf!

That's not the only questionable moment with Clark this time, as he says to Lex how sick he feels that he had to take a life to save him, after Lex gets beaten by Knox. For his part, he buries a clip into the doc, but it just so happens, and this gets both of them off the hook, that Knox is immortal. But would Clark really have killed Knox if he didn't have the 'get out of jail free' card of Knox turning out to be immortal, because that's rather out of character and didn't fit the situation. He could just as easily have flung the guy in another direction so that he didn't end up electrocuted! A bit lazy in the writing, or lacking logic, it still makes Clark look bad. It's back to being a Season 1-type story, (even though the 'Drone' connection soon dries up), thanks to Clark saving Lex, who didn't expect it (and was knocked unconscious as he always used to be!), Lana swanning around the farm, and Chloe worried about being a freak. Oh, wait, that's a new development.

She's put in the same position Clark used to face on a regular basis: not being able to tell someone close about being different. I hated the way that went over and over the same ground in season after season with Chloe or Lana or Chloe and Lana, not being able to forgive Clark for not being honest or able to explain why he did something or said something. This time it's Jimmy on the receiving end of the lack of trust, and he don't like it. Meanwhile Kara's been buttering him up and it takes more steps into the super-soap category it so wants to be. But I liked the majority of the episode, and only the last scene, which dragged on far too long, taking things further than it needed to and saying everything on the nose, ended it with a dip.

One character that's becoming more intriguing is Lana. She's apparently keeping house for Clark, putting flowers on the table, pancakes on his plate, and generally gliding about the place - I imagine she's doing all the housework he might have shunned since Martha left, like cleaning the loo, or hoovering the stairs, but that wouldn't be very dramatic which is why we don't see those scenes. That's what you're supposed to think, at least if you're Clark, because in reality she's not the innocent girl with a quiet life - she's obsessively spying on Lex (possibly from Metropolis where she says she's going to meet Aunt Nell in a rare mention of that character, though it's not clear whether she was in the city or still in Smallville), somehow managing to have rigged cameras all round the Luthor Mansion and grounds, and even able to zoom in on his computer screen, all while under the guise of having a plan to help the meteor freaks that Lex has abused in 33.1. It looks like all that money had gone into surveillance, which smells fishy to me, because Lex is so good at that stuff, he probably already knows about it. He might even have set it up to feed misinformation. I don't know what's going on between them, but it's not going to be pretty.

The casting of Dean Cain as Dr. Knox was great fun, and continues the tradition of featuring actors from past Superman productions in the series - so far we've had the great Christopher Reeve, his Lois (Margot Kidder), and now we have another Supes, this time from 'The New Adventures of Superman,' the cartoonish, silly version of the Man of Steel from the 90s. Not to say Cain wasn't a good actor in the role, and I liked him in this one, too. I hope we haven't seen the last of him, because I'd like to know more about Knox and his past, and understand his history: is he Kryptonian or some other alien, or what? Someone that still hasn't made an appearance since the season opener is Lionel Luthor, whom I continue to await the inclusion of with interest. Will he be involved in the government connection with LuthorCorp? Lois also continues to be conveniently off on assignment for the new Editor of the Planet, but I don't mind as I think it's good to give different people moments in the spotlight at different times.

Jimmy's continued anti-mutant talk hasn't helped Chloe get over her feelings of inadequacy or loneliness at having a power, and now she's even worrying that it could kill her if she uses it again. I liked that her fears are at the heart of the story, but I could have done with some kind of message out of it, like 'fear is what causes problems,' and show her getting over it somehow. That would have given it some inspirational drive, and although the story isn't bad, it was missing something to make it special. But I'm probably thinking back too much to Season 1 and how good some of those episodes were. For a latter-day episode it was pretty good and not full of holes. It must have been the Season 1 reminders that made me first think Knox' wife lying comatose on the bed was Victoria Hardwicke! And I loved the 'Karate Kid' reference of Mr. Miyagi! With Clark and Lex working together in some ways, a villain with meteor freak interests, and a fight in a room of Kryptonite, this had enough nostalgia to bring it back to something of the good old days, even ending with a musical number fitting for the moods of the people, even if, as I mentioned, it goes on longer than necessary.

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