Sleeper

DVD, Smallville S7 (Sleeper)

In fairness, it's been a good run recently with the Veritas plot, Pete coming back and Lionel murdered, so I was fully expecting a duffer to be on the horizon, and though this was not awful, it did fall into that category much more than a good one would. It begins well enough with a cat burglar Ninja dude taking out a guy and stealing his retinal scan briefcase (I didn't realise until the second run later in the episode that the guy who's jumped was none other than Sergeant Siler/the stunt guy from 'Stargate SG-1'! Did he move to 'Smallville' once his series ended or was this just a one-off thing, I'd love to know!). The music is all Asian and sets you to thinking this is some new villain of some kind, but then he pulls off his mask and it's Jimmy! That's one of the best gags here, and as a whole it wasn't terrible, like I said, it was just too farfetched that by the time I got to the dance I was gone. As soon as I saw this was going to be a Jimmy episode I was surprised at the novelty, then reality set in and I thought back to other ones where he was front and centre and my expectations dropped. But it was the dance at the Ace of Clubs between Chloe and Jimmy that sunk me, I just couldn't believe they were going to go for the whole dance.

I think we were supposed to be charmed by all the Jimmy/Chloe stuff going on, that things are going bad with so many secrets such as Chloe letting Oliver Queen use Isis as a storage area for his groups' equipment, not able to tell Jimmy about it (ooooh), then they eventually talk and it's all happy again (wheeee), but as I was never that bothered about them, I saw only the ridiculousness of the story: Jimmy's recruited by Special Agent Webber, evil agent stereotype supreme, who's seen Chloe's extracurricular activity trying to help Clark locate Brainiac and Kara - they had to tie it into Clark's story somehow, and it does make a certain amount of sense that the government would be investigating her after all the hacking she's done - usually when she gets in too deep it's one of the Luthors who bails her out, and what do you know, Lex takes her name off the federal arrest blacklist by the end, only this time it's to blackmail Jimmy, something to hold over him in future. Have we been here before? Yes, we have, Lionel and Lex have both blackmailed various people for various reasons so stick this is the 'cyclical' box along with so many other plot devices on this series.

What's silly is that a federal agent would recruit a friend of Chloe's to spy on her when clearly he could be with her, and would at the least have allegiance to her. I'm surprised Clark wasn't pulled in too, and Lana, if she weren't still in a coma, as associates of Miss Sullivan. Lana's missing again, (what can you do with a girl that just sits there), but then Clark barely figures either, his most memorable scene being with Jimmy who travels out to the Kent farm to ask about Chloe, while Clark gets his wires crossed and thinks he's talking about his own secret, almost spilling the beans. It would have made Lois look even more stupid if she was the only goodie left  who wasn't in the know (not that she's in this episode). Granted, that was a good moment, but would Jimmy really believe in Chloe as terrorist or that he couldn't ask her about what's going on, especially as he knows her deepest secret of being a meteor freak! So Webber gives him this briefcase of gadgets and he gets to play James Bond, and it's all so much wish fulfilment for teenage boys that it's too far out. I've moaned before about the series stretching credibility when it strains the boundaries of its own style and world, and this is another case in point. He trusts this woman and agrees to help her, ending up the hero when he rescues Chloe using his handheld shooting game (don't know what it was) as a distraction.

In other news Lex gets to Switzerland and finds the Veritas secret, a kind of astronomical clock mechanism, getting attacked by the bank guy in the process who knows he's not of the group. That guy must have been working there for a long time to protect the box! How could he be certain it would be violated when he was on duty? Suspension of disbelief, suspension of disbelief, then click your heels and you're back in Smallville, Kansas. How did Lex deal with the government whom his lackey reports are on his case? The same way he took Chloe's name off the list, I suppose, he must have friends in presidential places! I thought for a while this might be where Jimmy learns CK's secret, and you have the feeling that either that or Chloe's secret is going to be the eventual price Lex demands of him, but for now he remains ignorant.

Clark actually heads back to the Fortress of Solitude, risking a freezing like the last time he was there, though Dad doesn't even talk to him this time. Best of all Kara, manages to send a garbled message, and that, added to Chloe's pictures from a satellite (the reason she wanted to break into the building that Jimmy's tasked with accessing, which means her information wasn't really needed, except as confirmation), plus a page appearing in Swann's journal which wasn't there before, warning of Brainiac's intentions, leads them to the result: Brainiac and Kara went back in time to Krypton before it was destroyed, setting up the most overly expectant cliffhanger that they'll never be able to pull off: perhaps it's time Clark went home? Yeah, right, they're never going to achieve that on a TV budget. Are they?

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