One New York Life

1) The primary theme of this season was Clark’s friends and family dealing with his secret — regardless of whether they actually know the secret. In what must have been a great November Sweeps storyline at the time, Lex ended up discovering Clark’s secret, his father’s secret (that Lionel killed his own parents for insurance money), and being committed for being crazy. Lionel, in protecting himself, had Lex given electroshock therapy to erase his memory of the seven weeks where he discovered all this information. A little cheesy, yes, but the touch of doubt Clark has about whether Lex remembers or not is great. Probably the best moment of this arc was Clark leaving Lana to babysit crazy Lex, whose paranoid delusions led him to throw Lana in to a horse stall, which spooked the horse, who stomped Lana and broke her leg in four places. Lana realized how much danger comes to her when she’s around Clark.

2) Speaking of Lex and Lana, this season saw the writers tease a Lex/Lana relationship. As Lana’s still in high school and Lex, by now, must be in his late 20s, they haven’t pulled the trigger yet (Aside: they finally confirmed toward season’s end that Lana’s a junior in high school. So, she gets up at 4 am, opens her coffee shop for breakfast at 5 am, then goes to school, then goes back to the Talon at night and closes up? Really?). I’m assuming this path will be traveled at some point because, apparently, everyone in Smallville has fallen in love with Lana Lang — but I do hope that Clark and Lex’s final falling out before becoming mortal enemies is not over something so cliched as a girl. That will be somewhat disappointing.

3) Little thing that I appreciated from Season three. In an episode where a new family moved in across the street from the Kents — the family’s daughter was being drugged and kept in a coma by her evil uncle who wanted to keep access to the family’s fortune. The girl, somehow, was able to pull Clark in to her dreams. Like an Nightmare on Elm Street movie, Clark would try to stay awake and occasionally just fall asleep by mistake and we’d drop in to a dream sequence without knowing it. Whenever this happened, they wouldn’t mention it, but an R.E.M. song would always be playing in the background.

4) A storyline formula that the writers rely on that I’m really getting over is the following: Smallville High student gets a power, Smallville High student uses the power to attempt to date, rape, kiss, or otherwise molest Lana Lang, Smallville High student attacks Clark, Smallville High student ends up dead or in an Belle Reve (Metropolis’s version of Arkham) Asylum. Alternately, girl falls for Clark, decides she needs to use her powers get Lana out of the way by killing her. This season we saw it happen with Smallville’s version of Magneto, Smallville’s much cuter version of Nightcrawler, Ian (Boone!) Somerholder turned it in to a four-episode arc. And, speaking of Belle Reve, at least we know now where the bulk of Clark’s non-dead opponents wind up. Lex joins Jonathan Taylor Thomas’s guy who can duplicate himself, the kid who accidentally stole Clark’s powers in season one, and the kid who tried to kill Clark with Kryptonite bullets.

5) I kind of dug the (topical for the time in 2003) episode based on meteor-freak profiling. After Tina Greer murdered his father, Van McNulty takes on a personal mission to kill all Smallville’s meteor-altered people. Clark is sickened by the profiling of people who are different. OK. I understand the message. Here’s the problem: the show has spent three seasons pointing out that humans (other than Jonathan Kent for a small time) can’t be trusted with super powers. According to the show, without exception, powers granted by the meteor turn people in to killers, thieves, and rapists. Van’s first victim, a student who can breathe underwater, is shot and killed while attempting to pull Lana underwater to drown her. Pete and Lana point this out to Clark, who righteously mentions that killing is never OK. Lana reminds him that she’d be dead without the shooter’s help. The whole argument is awkward as they point out how many meteor-freaks have wound up dead after confrontations with Clark. Look, if the writers want to put up this kind of episode, they need at least a few meteor-freaks who aren’t bad guys. Otherwise, it seems like Van is doing God’s work. And, as if more evidence was required, Van meets his end at Belle Reve at the hands of a meteor freak who turns on him and chokes him to death with a bench press bar. So, really, was he wrong?

6) New power for season three: Clark is temporarily struck blind when his heat vision is reflected back in to his eyes through a piece of kryptonite. To adjust, his body develops Superman’s super-hearing. A useful plot tool as Clark uses it to find out secrets people are keeping from him. Clark discovers Chloe’s deal with Lionel when he overhears them on the phone together through a wall. One bad part — the cheesy animation they use to show it. I don’t think it’s really necessary to animate in to his head to show his ear bones rattling. We know how hearing works. It’s not really necessary to show it.

7) Important moment in the third season: almost every episode closed with Clark and Lana in the final scene together talking about something and dancing around their relationship. It was usually surrounded with semi-depressing music or a power ballad (think Hoobastank’s The Reason, or something similar). In Delete, which introduced Ian Somerholder as Adam, a mysterious dude and love interest for Lana, it became Clark and Chloe. This seemed to symbolize the end of Clark and Lana’s relationship.

8) And as for Chloe — as the show moves forward I’m relatively certain that Chloe is eventually going to figure out Clark’s story on her own. Lex exists on the show as a proof of why Clark shouldn’t just tell the people he thinks are his friends. The problem with Chloe is that, like Lex, she has a rabid curiousity for the unexplained. She also nearly always gets to the truth. I feel like Clark should give her some kind of answer. She’s already proven heelish tendencies. She turned on Clark when she was scorned at the end of last season. She was ready to turn on him again when she gained the power to force the truth out of people. She’s right on the border of being evil. Maybe she’d be happy if he just told her he was a meteor freak of some sort without mentioning the whole “alien” thing? I don’t know. I don’t see this ending well.

9) In one of the great moments of the season, Clark and Lex have a discussion about the prophecies written on the cave wall. The prophecy says that Naman (Superman) would come to Earth and his greatest enemy Sageeth would begin as his friend. The episode closes with Lex monologuing to Clark. He says that were the prophecy true, then Naman would have unlimited power on Earth. If Sageeth wasn’t there to keep him in check, Naman would have unlimited power to take over the world. Did Clark ever think that maybe Sageeth was the hero of the story? This is why Lex Luthor rules.

10) In a cool circular reference to bring the entire season together — the finale has Pete moving to Wichita because he just can’t deal with protecting Clark’s secret from all the people who are after it in Smallville. Between almost telling Chloe when she became temporarily meteor-altered (gaining a power that forced people to tell her the truth and, yes, temporarily turning evil because of it) and being beat up by an FBI agent — Pete was afraid he’d inadvertently betray Clark. Clark decides to let Lana leave for Paris so she’d be safe. And the season closes with Lionel Luthor being put in prison and, apparently, arranging for the death of Chloe and Lex. I’m going to presume they both survive, but how, exactly, they will explain Chloe’s survival after being consumed in a fireball will be interesting.

11) Bonus thought: it’s also finally confirmed that Jor-El was in Kansas in the 50s and met Hiram Kent. This is the best evidence we have that Jor-El did, in fact, know of the yellow sun’s effect on Kryptonians. It’s also evidence that the Kents were meant to find Clark. While the pilot episode made it seem like coincidence more than anything else, Jor-El clearly wanted the Kent family to be the people to raise his son. Of course, then, in the finale, he’s perfectly willing to kill Jonathan Kent to get Kal-El to do what he wants… so I’m really not sure what Jor-El is yet. His actions seem pretty evil. He uses Jonathan Kent to retrieve Clark from Superman, arguably damaging his heart in the process. He used a super hot girl (and possibly killed her somehow) to try and trick Clark to returning through whatever portal is in the caves.

Additional DVD thought: Why would you put stuff meant to see before the season on disc six? Why would you put special features containing spoilers on disc four? It’s hard enough staying moderately unspoiled during occasional checks of the Smallville Wikia for research/confirmation/music lookup purposes. Do I really need to see stuff from upcoming episodes if I happen to watch a special feature?