Smallville: Season 2: Less Freaky, More Sneaky

Previously on Smallville. Audiences are introduced to teenage Clark Kent/Tom Welling who arrived in the small town of Smallville, Kansas via a meteor shower and soon into the hands of Martha Kent/Annette O’Toole and Jonathan Kent/John Schneider who would raise the son as one of their own. On the outside Clark looks like any other ordinary high school teenager. Hidden however are Clark’s abilities many of which he is learning about as they develop. The first season would spend a majority of the time focusing on the meteor shower that brought Superman to our skies and the subsequent “freaks” that developed because of these meteor rocks. This “freak of the week” system would continue to be developed in Season Two but interjecting at perfect moments were more story threads that would continue to develop as the season concludes and makes it way into Season Three when things really start getting interesting.

Between Season One and Season Two, Smallville only suffered one character change. The role of Whitney Fordman/Eric Johnson was dropped from the cast primarily because Whitney’s girlfriend is Lana Lane/Kristin Kreuk who Clark has a crush on. All other principal characters return and remain virtually the same at least at first. Clark still has his best friend Pete/Sam Jones III, Chloe Sullivan/Allison Mack still writes for The Torch the school’s own newspaper with better investigative reporting than The National Enquirer, the aforementioned Lana Lane is still making coffee and giving cute smiles with her head slightly tilted to the left. On the more serious side, Lex Luthor/Michael Rosenbaum is still bald, rich, and still interested in his friend Clark and how he seems to do the oddest things without getting harmed. Brought more into the fold is Lionel Luther/John Glover Lex’s Dad who splits his time between making money and enemies, his son included. And yes, Mommy Kent and Daddy Kent continue to be the loving parents of Superman when they can catch him.

Before Season Two can settle down, the season premiere concludes Season One’s finale which found Lana Lane in trouble as a pair (or was it a trio) of twisters are bearing down on her red truck. Clark, who leaves Chloe at the prom arrives in time to save Lana but not before her truck is picked up into the eye of the twister and she witnesses Clark ripping the door off her truck. Lana is then bumped on the head by her own truck which we all know means she will forget or be confused as to Clark’s true actions. Anyways, the episode ends with all those who found themselves in life threatening situations because of the twisters rescued but not without a cost. In the storm, the spaceship that brought Clark to Earth is whisked up in one of the storms and dropped in a corn field for anyone to find. Oh, oh.

Now before we hurry into the spaceship storyline, the next episode introduces Clark to his heat vision which arrives by in no surprise a sexual feeling for his new biology teacher. Due to a heat wave and the air conditioning not working, Clark becomes aroused at his teacher and accidentally sets the classroom on fire. Meanwhile, his new biology teacher turns out to be a “freak” as she has the ability to control men to do things against their will, including murder and she sets her sights on making Lex fall in love with her and get Jonathan to kill Lex.

Back to the spaceship episode, Pete comes across it. Clark tries to stop him from exposing it to anyone else and in the end the only way to do this is to tell Pete the truth. That he, his best friend, is not from Earth. Pete takes it quite well.

Now that the spaceship is back in the Kent’s underground shack, the next episode switches things up yet again. This would be the last episode for a bit that would be really of any excitement until we catch the series on its way to the conclusion of Season Two. “Red” shows what happens to Clark when he is exposed to red meteor rocks. We know that he is “allergic” to green ones but he doesn’t seem to be allergic to red rocks in fact it seems to make him turn into a completely different person. The red rock hidden as a stone in a class ring causes Clark to go wild. He stops wearing blue and red and takes up green shirts, biker jackets, and shades. He even uses Mommy Kent and Daddy Kent’s credit card to buy an HDTV, Xbox, video games, satellite receiver, and a motorcycle. The episode brings up an important point. How do you stop Clark Kent if he really doesn’t want to be stopped?

From here, Season Two calms down a bit and the freaks return in force. Clark does battle against a “bestial creature”, a life sucking mutant, a woman shows up claiming to be Clark’s biological mother, and a student who is able to clone himself.

Yawn.

Things chance for the better with the episode “Skinwalker”. Although still a freaks episode, “Skinwalker” introduces Clark Kent to some cave walls which bear markings quite similar to the markings he has seen from Krypton. With the help of a beautiful girl who finds him after he has fallen in (and is intrigued because he has no scratches on him) she helps translate the markings which tell of a man coming from the sky who would posses power enough to save mankind.

The caves will pay a very important part later (especially in the season finale for Season Three) but for now they are a huge mystery. Who wrote these markings? Are they a gateway for Clark into his true lineage? And there’s a key looking hole in one of the walls, but where is the key?

Suffice to say, Clark eventually gets a hold of the key. When he does the key leads him to his starship which activates hitting Clark with a beam of light. I won’t go into all the details here, but this sequence of events leads up to the introduction of Dr. Swason/Christopher Reeve in the episode “Rosetta”. Yep, that’s right. Christopher Reeve now plays an important part in the Smallville universe. There will be more Christopher Reeve in the next season.

To polish off the second season, Martha gets pregnant, the spaceship continues to talk to Clark, Lex get married and then finds himself alone and in an airplane about to crash, and due to a tragedy Clark cannot forgive himself and puts on a red class ring that we learned in the episode “Red” turns Clark all evil, jumps back on the motorcycle he must have kept from that episode and rides off to Metropolis turning his back on Lana.

As for the DVD, like Season One all 23 episodes are presented in book format on six discs. And, thankfully, like the first DVD set you can watch all the shows on a particular disc one after another without having to go back to the main menu. There are a few special features: A look into the special effects on Smallville. There is a nice documentary on how the producers were lucky enough to get Christopher Reeve to take a part in the show. And, a gag reel which is always too funny and too short to watch.

Overall, Season Two was marginally better than Season 1. Whereas in the first season the formula seemed to be all about the freak of week v. Clark Kent – the second season introduces budding Superman to two big things that will lead to changes in future seasons. The cave walls will play a huge part in Season 3 and into Season 4. And, Clark’s change due to red meteors signal something very bad that could happen to the character – something that the cave walls seem to foretell.

There has been some discussion on how the other characters in the show don’t really add much to the show and Season Two is no different. In fact besides Pete finding out Clark’s secret, and Lana learning that her biological Dad was in fact someone else she never knew – the Clohe, Lionel, Lex, Jonathan, and Martha characters only have slight changes to their characters when not dealing with Clark.

Even so, Smallville is a darn addicting show to watch.