Last night's
Smallville offered a touching character study of Clark, Chloe and Lois, not to mention Zatanna. It fell back on a classic fantasy premise, a magical character who can grant wishes, in order to explore the psyches of the series protagonists. If the Monkey's Paw theory that you need to be careful what you wish for because you just might get it may not be new it's been around for a long time for a reason. It's a great parable for talking about what really matters to people.
Next Thursday
Smallville returns to a more traditional, story arc driven episode with "Eternal". According to the official episode description for Eternal, "Tess (Cassidy Freeman) tries to kill Davis (Sam Witwer) by blowing up his truck. However, after he escapes, she realizes she needs help to destroy him and turns to Clark (Tom Welling). Tess reveals Davis’ secret childhood with the Luthors and hints that she knows Clark’s true identity. Meanwhile, Davis runs to Chloe (Allison Mack) for help."
The CW released two new videos today, one a trailer and the other a scene from the episode. In the trailer memories from Davis' point of view reveal that he arrived in the cornfield when Clark first crashed to Earth. While that wouldn't exactly make them brothers it would give them a duality, the hero and the villain cut from the same cloth, starting from the same point. Usually evil twins are a way for writers to talk about free will, showing that two people starting with a blank slate will make different choices. But is that true in Davis' case?
The second clip is very hardcore and ends with quite an exclamation mark. I almost hate to say a word about it to ruin the surprise, except that like so many of the best episode clips it raises more questions than it asks. The fallout from this one is going to be very interesting.
What's going to happen now that Chloe has returned to her flock? Will Davis be able to pick up the pieces? And how exactly will his story rewrite the classic
Smallville mythology as we've always known it?
-Henry Jenkins, BuddyTV Staff Writer
(Image courtesy of The CW)