Smallville - S08E13 - Power

Lana.  Pfft.

This guy playing the mad scientist has one of those great voices.

What the...?

It seems like half the people in the opening credits aren't even on the show anymore... :-(

I'm annoyingly conscious of all the directorial decisions this evening.  Can't turn it off!  

I remember the Welling-directed episode as being well done.  Was it the one when Jonathan died?

Clark's "I got it together after Lana left" speech sounds like one I've heard a lot from post-break-up people, just on a larger more super powered scale.

Who directed tonight?  I missed it.

@Conor - He's done 4.  The first was 'Fragile' in 06.  

"A woman is shattered by a high-pitched scream, and many believe the culprit to be the woman's foster daughter Maddie. However, Clark doesn't believe that Maddie is the reason behind the death. Though Clark's mother Martha doubts that Maddie can be proven innocent, Clark tries to find the real murderer."

@cable77: Allison Mack.  It's written up top.  ;)

Was Lana's DVD available on NETFLIX and I missed it?  How does Tess know about it?

How long can they keep up Lex as this off-screen, unseen villain?

@Conor - ah, missed that.  Just excited to get here and get chatting so I didn't read the description.

Locks of love? 

"Alison, we want you to direct this season.  Do any particular episodes look interesting to you?"

"Are there any where bad shit happens to Kristin?" 

wow pretty good for doing it with a strait edge.

Wait, I missed what happened - was the whole Lana escaping from theose dudes and then cutting her hair off with a straight razor a flashback or is that happening now?

Whoa, Friday the 13th premieres on a Friday the 13th AND it's the day before Valentines Day?  That's like a studio wet dream.  

@conor, flashback

Can some one explain to me what happened between lana and tess last episode? I wasn't paying attention during that part. And right now im reallly confused.

Apparently Gossip Girl is going the route of EYES WIDE SHUT.  Interesting.

@matthaber - Lana told/showed Tess that Lex was tapped into her eyeballs.  Did some neuro-thingy to her where Lex was watching everything happen through Tess's eyes.  At the end, Tess did something that blocked the signal so he can't watch anymore...supposedly.  But he can still watch what's going on through the mirrors in the mansion.

@matthaber: Lana showed Tess that Lex had implanted a nanodevice in her that broadcast everything she saw and heard to whatever location he was in (awkward on dates and when hitting on Clark, I imagine) and so had been remotely monitoring everything she did.  Tess got pissed and stopped the transmission.

I feel like a transmitter like that would take up a lot of noggin room.  

I was really hoping that that was Black Canary's medallion.

@Paul: Nano tech! They're like Pym particles, they serve any storytelling need.

I'm a teacher and apparently I missed that workshop where I could get trained to be a green beret skilled in torture.  Thought I'm at the middle school level -- maybe that's at the high school level.  Or elementary.

invincible???

"I used to like to weld in dark, dank subterrainian lairs."

@cable and conor

 thanks for the info. The stuff with tess makes more sense now.

So Lana's Elektra now?  

@cable77: I believe that Treat Williams teaches the Green Beret class.

@Paul was totally right.  Allison Mack chose the "Put Kristen Kreuk in horrible physical torture" episode.

@Conor - nice! :)

Is this Lana's last episode?  Anyone know?

Man -- her hair grows fast.

@cable77: She must have the same hair growing genes that Tim Drake has.

Umm... ick?

ITS THE MAD HATTER!!!

@cable77: She is in at least one more episode this season.

getting a bit pentagon-heavy this season, aren't we?

"Alison, this stuff isn't coming off.  It's burning."

"Try not to breathe so much.  This is for my reel." 

Are they parked in Schumacher Gotham?  

Interesting to see if Lex does kill Tess from offscreen.  Giant tentacle thing crashes through the mirror and she dies.

Do we think Lana is really kidnapped or that she sought out this procedure?

"More dry ice!  Just shovel it in!  We need more smoke!"

So is it a wig, then?

I like that you could casually forget something like Project Aries.  

"Oh, the alien DNA soldier enhancer thingy, yeah.  Whatever happened to that?" 

Didn't Chloe get her memory wiped? I thought she forgot about Clark's powers?

Or was "super scares" a joke?

I think they should have overexaggerated the blood spewing up from Regan.  That would have been funny.

Well, that was fairly gruesome.

Jesus, was she wearing cleats?

@conor she got her memories back in the legion episode.

Chloe got her memory back after getting Brainiac cleansed out of her system 

@conor, after brainiac was removed she got all of her memories back.

@Conor - She got her memory back in Johns' episode.  

"Chloe, do you remember...?"

"You secret?  Of course Clark.  I could never blah blah blah" 

@Paul - They were stilletos.

Oh, right, right.  I forgot about that plot point.

@matthaber In Conor's defense, I think that the dialogue at the end where Chloe reveals that she knows about Clark's "secret" was deliberately vague.

Jor El put the memories in the Trash folder but didn't empty it.  Saturn Girl dragged and dropped them back onto the desktop.  

Where did we leave off with Doomsday?  Is he frozen in the Fortress still?

did any one else get that pink panther 2 commercial. Man that movie looks bad.

@cable - He burst out of the ice and Hulked out.  

Lana must have fantastic bandwidth.

Snazzy transition, Miss Mack.  

I really want to see Michael Rosenbaum in that horrible green and purple Lex power suit!

ah ha!  Not kidnapped!

@Paul: That was a pretty skillful job.

I want them to recast Michael Stipe as Lex just for the green and pruple suit.    

*purple

I don't know why, but Tess pistolwhipping that lab tech made me laugh.

The Phoenix!

Seriously, scientists need to stop naming things Icarus and Prometheus.  

Hey!  Maybe Lana is the Superwoman running around Metropolis in the comics!

Well - now Clark and Lana can get to some loving again.

@Conor - I thought that earlier...maybe Johns had a hand in planting that seed?

@cable77: Oh, I'm just kidding, Lana's not super powered in the comics.

@Conor - but what if she did?  :)  I know she's not superpowered in the comics.  Was thinking the whole superwoman angle though. 

So is Lana's suit going to vanish in the next 5 mins?

Actually, the last I saw her in the comics, Lana was Mercy - she was running LexCorp while Lex is in prison.  I don't think she is anymore, though...

"More smoke!  More smoke!"  

Song is a little much in the background...

@Conor - and she's divorced from Pete Ross, right?  

Yeah, a really distracting musical cue here.

together we can rule the world like Lana and son..

oh this'll end well...

hmmm...Lame.

Hurm.

Oh come on!!  Is that LEX in the previews???

Lana in the comics is in charge of the business section of the Daily Planet and lives with Supergirl, who is posing as her niece.  Now I remember.  

the first 'meh' of the season for me

@Paul: Right, right, right - she left LexCorp and went to the Daily Planet.

I will never get over Lois having red hair and lana have black.  IT'S JUST NOT HOW IT WORKS!!!!

@Gabe: I don't think Erica Durance has red hair...

That episode was pretty weak, they need to somehow get Johns on this show fulltime.  It's not like he has a lot going on right now. :-)

transdermal evisceration?  I do not think that word means what you think it means.

It was a good episode, but I can't really stand the idea of Super-Lana and wasn't this device used before in Buffy when Riley was feeling inadequate next to Buffy's superpowers??  It's all crap.

Bring back Doomsday and Lois.  These last two episodes have been the worst of this season's offerings. 

This was one of the worst episodes this season and it doesn't look like next week's will be any better.

Her hair looks fairly red to me.  Not as much as Tami, but in the right light.   Either way, it's just strange to me

lex comes next! i can't belive it!

Yeah, but that was not Michael Rosenbaum.

Bleh, the best episodes of the season were the ones w/o Lana. Now she's superpowered. Ick.

It's weird...I have to watch these episodes online because I'm busy on Thursday nights(really miss the live commentary) and the preview I saw online had Lex wearing a muzzle in it. I was just watching Scrubs reruns on my local CW, though, and they had a preview with Toy Man coming up for this Thursday. So, I don't know who the official villain for this week is, but I agree that Lana with powers does = lame.

Was this an extended trailer for that Chun Li film coming out?

Just kidding. Good stuff, pretty solid. Allison mack's got a fair amount of directing flair, although I agree with what Paul said. Whenever an actor directs an episode I focus so much on the directing I miss half the plot. I don't know if that's more unfair to the actor for over-scrutenizing, or the other directors for not noticing their work as much. Ah, the conundrum.

As a few have said though, this show NEEDS to lose the Lana/Lex thing again. As soon as they were gone Smallville suddenly got a second wind. Get back to Lois and Doomsday, that stuff was interesting.

Super-powered Lana? That's twice as dull as Regular Lana, which is saying something. Now we'll get pining and twice as many effects shots, which means the latter half of this season will be scaled way back on budget.