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Smallville
Tempest
airdate 05-21-02
Will Clark be able to save Lana from the funnel cloud? If he does, will she still wait for Whitney, or was she never really planning to do that in the first place?
Will Lex choose to save his father? Will Pa Kent be able to stop the unscrupulous reporter from escaping? What will the spaceship reveal to Ma Kent? How will Chloe feel about being ditched at the dance?
In a bold decision, the producers left the first season of Smallville teetering on a serious cliffhanger. A real life and death kind of thing, not just the kind of ending that actually wraps everything up before delivering one last twist (Dawson's Creek does this every year). No, there are real questions left to answer in every plotline, and we're stuck to ponder them until October.
And there's a whole lot going on, too, even before the promised tornado hit. Much of it has been at least teased in previous episodes, or plays off past plotlines, but it was a busy 60 minutes nonetheless.
Lionel Luthor opens the episode by breezing, quite literally, into Smallville and announcing the closing of the LuthorCorp plant. He lays the blame at Lex's feet, claiming the plant wasn't showing a profit. Naturally, Lex tries to refute this accusation. He goes so far as to orchestrate an employee buyout, desperate to forge his own independent future.
The plant closure would leave half the town unemployed, forcing many to leave, including Chloe's family. Lionel retaliates against Lex's plans by buying the Smallville Savings and Loan, tying up most of the town's capital.
After a brief and seemingly innocuous scene last week where Whitney learned of his father's military past, he has enlisted in the Marines. He wants Lana to wait for him, which she's not entirely sure she wants to do, but for now, at least, she seems willing.
But if both Lana and Clark are left without their significant others, will they home in on each other? Especially since Whitney's got the meteor necklace with him as a memento?
Finally, Lex's pet reporter Nixon follows his nose to the Kent farm, where he rigs their truck to explode and videotapes Clark surviving it. He even swipes the crucial octagonal item from Lex's desk and goes into the storm cellar to find the spaceship, just as the tornado is hitting.
Jonathan is incensed to find him there, and chases him out into the storm, just as the missing piece has fitted itself into the little craft, which lights up in front of the astonished Martha. (Totally the seal of the House of El, by the way.)
This last piece of the cliffhanger does bother me a bit - aside from the mysterious crash, Clark isn't all that suspicious. He's not very subtle about using his abilities, though, and I may have overlooked Nixon overlooking him in the act. It's not that I don't think he'd eventually get to the Kents - I'm just not convinced that the conclusion would be so easy to draw.
Lex has noticed the missing meteor memento, though, and is tearing up his office searching for it when Lionel storms in. The storm then tears up the mansion, and Lex must make the choice whether to rescue his father from the debris or leave him to his death. We leave a conflicted, bloody-eyed Lex weighing the pros and cons.
While Lana is driving Whitney to the bus station to ship out for training, Clark is romancing Chloe at the Spring Formal. (Pete's "shout-out" to theme song-providers Remy Zero is incredibly lame, but they're a pretty good band.) But when the news of the tornado reaches the gym, he takes off like a shot, arriving just in time to watch Lana's truck get sucked up into the crappy CG funnel cloud. Seriously, The Wizard of Oz had better effects.
So it's to be continued, and please don't fret your little heads with speculations and spoilers this summer. Get out there. Read a book or watch a good movie. Swim or inline skate or something. I know I will be.
It's not that I don't care what happens, but for some reason this cliffhanger completely failed to engross me - unless it means John Glover won't be back for more magnificent scenery-swallowing next year, in which case I'd rather spend the summer in blissful ignorance.
