In a nutshell, Lana is (so not) dead, Lex is under arrest for her death, Lionel might be dead, and Lois was dead but now she ain't because of the Meteor Freak Power of Chloe's Tears. That takes care of all the L people, yes? Moving on. Chloe, meanwhile, seems to have paid for Lois's life with her own, because she looks pretty damn dead. Al and Miles were on notice all summer for that one, lemme tell ya. Lex, Lionel, Lois and Chloe are all in various proximity to the Project Ares dam, which has just burst open, courtesy of Bizarro!Clark catapulting Real Clark into the wild blue yonder.
Bizarro
All caught up? Okey dokey.
At the start of Season 7, Lois holds Chloe's head above water inside the quickly-flooding dam. Outside, Lex sits in a police car in the middle of a bridge over the river, when the dam breaks completely, sending a wall of water straight at him. This guy does not have good luck with bridges.
701 - underwater car
Clark comes to in a forest somewhere, and is soon joined by his Bizarro counterpart, who is dressed "opposite" to Clark in a dark red shirt and navy jacket. Nice nod to the mythology of Bizarro as a fractured, negative image of Superman, even if we don't get the full effect with his speech patterns. They do, however, do a nifty thing with Tom Welling's voice, which seems to be a combination of him lowering it himself and the sound guys messing with it in post. Bizarro taunts Clark about what all the poor humans would do without him. He plans to replace Clark, having absorbed not only his DNA but his memories. As he steps into the sunlight (spoiler alert!), his face goes all fracturey and Clark wallops him into a power line.
Meanwhile, a little boy and his dad are fishing downstream of the dam, when suddenly there's a tsunami. Just goes to show, there's no such thing as land-locked. Dad trips and falls unconscious, but Clark speeds to the rescue, using his heat vision to vaporize the entire impending flood of doom. Sure, it's tidier than cutting off the water with a handy rockslide, but that's been done, so.
Opening credits. Significant changes include the departure of Annette O'Toole (sniff!), the inclusion of Aaron Ashmore (yay!) and Laura Vandervoort (opinion pending!), and the promotion of Michael Rosenbaum to second billing. If anybody's got the skinny on that bit of development, I'm all ears.
At the bottom of the river, the police car is quickly filling with water as Lex desperately tries to break a window with his cuffs. This is one of those times when it sucks to be in the back of a police car. You know, compared to the times when it's tons of fun. Lex is overcome by the water, staring out into the depths where he sees...oh my! It's a mermaid! It's an angel! It's...Laura Vandervoort, kinda watching him die.
701 - floaty supergirl
Back at the power lines of indeterminate distance from our heroes, Bizarro extricates himself from side impalement just in time for a concerned citizen to drive up and ask if he's okay. Bizarro smiles and blasts the guy with heat vision. Kind of like a handshake.
Lois drags Chloe to a dry area inside the dam. She looks out the window to see that they are completely underwater, and is startled by a child grabbing her hand and asking her to help him/her. I'm not trying to be funny -- I literally cannot tell the gender of this child. Elsewhere in the dam, Clark arrives looking for Lionel, spying only his shoe sticking out of some rubble. Cut to somewhere downstream, where the battered and bloody body of Lionel lies washed up, half immersed in the stream. A pair of legs approaches and drags him away, and that's an episode wrap for John Glover. Not bad work if you can get it.
Lois screams for help, trying to move some rubble out of the way. The (s)he-child asks whether Chloe is dead, and Lois insists that she is not. Clark bursts through the rubble, claiming the ceiling gave way, and kneels immediately at Chloe's side.
At Kent Farm, Bizarro fishes for a piece of kryptonite in a lead box. Finding one, he is so excited he rips away his T-shirt and stares at himself in the mirror! I don't know about you, but that's my immediate impulse upon discovering a chunk of radioactive meteorite. But lest we forget, Bizarro is opposite!Clark, so the kryptonite has healing powers. He presses it against the wound in his side, which closes up immediately, turning the rock white.
701 - magic kryptonite
Lex lies on the bank of the river, soaked to the bone, having apparently been rescued at the eventual convenience of Our Lady of the Floaty Costume. He stares up at her, perhaps wondering how she got completely dry. When he looks away for a moment, she takes off. As in, shoots up into the air, Superperson-style.
At the hospital, as the doctors get to work on Chloe, Clark asks Lois what happened. Lois recalls being stabbed in the gut and passing out, and then a warm light waking her up with no wound whatsoever and Chloe unconscious nearby. Clark and Lois wonder if Lex's men did some kind of experimental thing to the two of them, and Lois decides to go to Luthor mansion to see if Lana can help her figure out what. Clark, realizing that Lois does not know that Lana is (so not) dead, is about to break it to her, when Lois interrupts, telling him to "make [himself] useful for once," and stay with Chloe. For once? Oooookay. You get one freebie due to emotional distress, Miss Lane.
At Luthorcorp, Lex sits in his office, staring at his wedding ring. A team of aides enter, informing him that a chopper is waiting to get him out of U.S. jurisdiction in two hours. From Kansas. Uh huh. Subdued, Lex says he was dead, and an angel rescued him. He wonders why, after all he's done. Since what he does is pay her salary, though, the lead aide encourages him to get a move on, as he is wanted for his wife's murder. Lex tearfully announces that he's turning himself in.
701 - wedding ring
Lois saunters into Lex's office at the mansion, takes a quick look to make sure she's alone, then closes the door behind her. Turning around again, she jumps in surprise to see Clark Bizarro there. He makes with the gravelly-voiced flirting, which she deflects at first by saying that Lex's men must have cleaned out anything suspicious before the cops came. Including themselves, apparently; though to be fair, no one would find out half as much on this show if the Luthor mansion had decent security. Supremely uninterested in anything but Lois's hot bod, Bizarro grabs her ass and gets a slap in the face for his trouble. I guess he's drawing primarily on the memories of Clark on Red K for tips on how to put the mack on.
Back at the hospital, the medical team are still trying to get Chloe stable. Her vitals go haywire and then flatline, and the doctors are unable to revive her. The camera pans prettily but pointlessly across the circle of extras' faces before settling finally on Chloe, dead.
As you were no doubt expecting if you've seen TV before, we then open on Chloe inside a drawer at the morgue. She wakes up. She is less than pleased with the sleeping arrangements.
In the hospital hallway, a doctor approaches Clark, asking for Chloe's next of kin. Panicking, Clark bursts into the operating room to find Chloe no longer there, and another doctor tells him that Chloe didn't make it. He goes into a spin, complete with blurry camera effects, which is annoying to me because I'd rather see the grief on Clark's face. But the choice seems to indicate that Clark's supersenses kick in when his emotions are in high gear, because among the other hospital noises he can suddenly hear Chloe screaming for help.
Clark yanks open Chloe's drawer and she sits up, freaked out. He explains that she's alive, and she realizes that means she wasn't alive. They both stare at her toe tag, and he tenderly removes it.
701 - toe tag
Chloe quickly dresses in a lab coat, deflecting Clark's questions about how this happened and anxious to get out of there before they turn her into a lab rat. She sees her death certificate on a clipboard and tears it off, only to see Lana's right beneath it. Well, there's a fun and personal way to find out your best friend is (so not) dead.
In a police interrogation room, Lex's lawyer plays him a recording of his last conversation with Lana, in which she tells him that she loves Clark, he hits her, and she tells him he'll have to kill her to keep her from leaving. The lawyer doubts Lex can get bail with evidence like that, though I'm not clear on how the police even know about it. Or why the police suspected Lex in the first place. Lex is more concerned about recovery efforts on the dam, and in particular Model 503. The allusions to America's Next Top Model on every CW show can stop anytime. The lawyer informs Lex that 503 is still MIA, as is Lionel, and that they need to establish an alibi for Lex. Lex insists that he was brought back to face his demons, not run from them, because the writers insist on starting every new season by infusing us with false hope that Lex isn't all that bad.
As if to illustrate my point, Bizarro rips off the bars to the cell and enters, promptly dispatching the lawyer in distinctly permanent fashion by punching him in the gut and removing an organ, which he then tosses to the floor with a plop. Ew. Bizarro wants Lex to lead him to a large quantity of meteor rocks so that he can kill Clark. Lex feebly argues that he would never kill Clark, but Bizarro knows that what Lex has always wanted is a Clark on his side. To begin, sure.
At the Talon apartment, Chloe tearfully watches a video of her and Lana apparently on vacation in New York. Now, see, I don't hate Lana like much of fandom does, but I don't particularly care about her, either. That said, when Allison Mack cries, I cry. Chloe and Clark embrace sadly, and my heart goes out to them both. Deciding that denial is their friend right now, though, they set to work on figuring out Bizarro's weakness. This, writers, is why you can never kill off Chloe Sullivan: no one sells steaming piles of exposition like Allison Mack.
Clark explains that the Phantom needed a Kryptonian body to duplicate, but now Clark doesn't know how to stop someone who can fly. Chloe: "This guy can fly? God, Clark, you gotta get on that one." Heh. Clark recounts that Bizarro seemed to weaken just before he hit him, and that he seems to gain strength from meteor rocks. Chloe pulls up some records tracked down by Oliver (yay!) that indicate that Lex had shipped large amounts of meteor rocks to Reeves Dam. Wow, the writers are in fine shout-out form tonight. Nice one. Clark and Chloe don't know how to stop Bizarro, but Clark knows who might.
701 - martian manhunter
In the Kent barn, Clark meets with John Jones, AKA the Martian Manhunter. I guess Clark taped an MM in his window? Anyway, MM gives Clark some gentle shit for allowing the Phantom to do exactly what Jor-El was trying to prevent, but while Clark feels bad about that, he's done apologizing for the way he was raised to protect people. 'Bout time, honey. MM glances out the window and suggests Clark turn to something he's always taken for granted: the yellow sun. I don't remember the yellow sun as a source of Clark's power ever being mentioned in this particular Superman universe, but whatever. I do not argue with the pretty, pretty light.
At the dam, Lex leads Bizarro to a closed door, behind which he says is the meteor rocks. When Bizarro's back is turned, however, Lex pulls a big manly gun on his and demands to know who he is and where he came from. Bizarro challenges Lex to decide whether it's more important to kill him or to figure out what makes Clark Kent tick, but before Lex can say "sex and chocolate," Bizarro tosses him against a wall and helps himself to a Jolly Green snack. Clark arrives, and Bizarro boo-hoos that he deserves Clark's life more than Clark does. He doesn't bother to base this pronouncement on anything in particular, so one imagines he didn't captain the debate team back in the Zone. Poor Clark actually looks really nervous.
Clark takes a flying leap, and Bizarro deflects him into the concrete wall opposite, which crumbles, letting in the sunlight. As Clark struggles to get to his feet, his wounds in the direct path of the sun's rays begin to heal. Energized, he taunts Bizarro to do better than that. For his trouble, Bizarro has his ass walloped all the way into the stratosphere, fracturing and flaking apart on his way. Woot! My theory on why sunlight makes Clark stronger than kryptonite makes Bizarro, is that Krypton was only a planet. The sun is a star, bitch.
701 - pretty sunlight
At Kent farm, Clark listens sadly to a radio news report discussing the death of Lana Luthor. Chloe enters and promptly turns it off, hoping to get him to talk to her. Clark isn't sure he's really any better than the Phantom, considering the first thing he did upon hearing of Lana's death was to visit Lex with the intention of killing him. He muses that, ironically, he finally understood Lex: "Loving someone is hard; it's difficult. But hate is so...clean." Chloe assures Clark that his anger is natural, and that no matter how much the Phantom may have reminded him of what he could become, she's here for him. Even in his grief, though, Clark neatly turns that one around on her: when she's ready to talk about what happened to her, he's all ears.
Before Chloe's tension can become solid ice, Lois breezes in. "I forgive you." Obviously Clark has no idea what she means, but she says she knows Clark didn't mean "it," as he must have been in shock from Lana's death. Startling everyone, she hugs Clark warmly and assures him that the pain will be manageable after awhile. Clark nods gratefully. Lois: "But if you ever grab my ass again, I will be taking your head with me when I go."
Clark and the Martian Manhunter are in the barn, which means we have arrived at this season's Theme: Clark's time in Smallville has made him who he is. He will never be human, and it is time to take up the cape charge of destiny.
And now that we've learned stuff, it is time for the music montage. The honor goes to "Sober" by Kelly Clarkson, as we watch Chloe burn her death certificate, followed by Lex being led into his jail cell. He sits on his cot and pulls out a photograph of himself and Lana, staring at it over the lyric, "Picked all my weeds but kept the flower." Okay, sniff. That one's almost good enough to make me forget that he shouldn't have any personal effects in the cell with him.
Okay, that should be the en- Oh, wait. We're in...a really, really clean Shanghai, following a girl in a red dress walking down the street. It's Lana in a short blonde wig! Who could have predicted that? In her apartment, she removes the wig and looks longingly out the window, gazing up at the still-visible moon in the clear blue sky. This moon morphs into one at night, at which...Clark is gazing. Oh wow, been a while since we've ended an episode with our star-crossed lovers doing an impression of "Somewhere Out There." Anybody miss those? Just making sure. This time, though, the camera pans down to include Supergirl, sitting atop the Smallville water tower, looking vaguely stoned. She's changed out of her angelwear, apparently having gotten the family memo to wear blue and red at all times. She looks at her pile of cast-off clothes and reclaims a wide silver bangle before shooting off into the night.
701 - bangle
I take it back. Tonight's lesson: accessorize.
First screencap courtesy Smallville Dedication. All others courtesy 16tosvo.
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