Smallville: Harvest

Posted by: Andrew Burns  •  November 4, 2010 @ 9:15am

Filed under: Recaps & Reviews

With the kryptonian out of the bag, Lois & Clark decide to take a break and get out of Metropolis for the weekend. Somewhere along the way they get themselves trapped inside a M. Night Shyamalan film (and no I don't mean Unbreakable).

With an anti-hero protest going on in Metropolis Clark comes up with the ruse to keep Lois out of the city and out of harm's way. On their ride out of town Lois is still processing this new information about the fact her boyfriend is an alien. While Lois is playing 20 questions with Clark, to trying and fill in the blanks, they get a flat tire. Lois, being little upset by Clark being so over protective, sends him into town for a new tire while she waits with an innocent little farm girl on the side of the road. Lois soon finds out that little girl isn't so innocent after discovering that the girl caused their flat tire because of her village's need for a human sacrifice. Clark returns and Lois is gone, sending him into the woods after her; only to find a village full of righteous medieval townsfolk with blue kryptonite in their drinking water. This is bad news for the Blur.

The episode starts out great with Lois bringing up bizarre past situations her and Clark were in. It was fun to watch Clark fill in the kryptonian blanks for Lois and see her reaction. I still was a little disappointed that Clark never actually drops the 'I am from another planet' bombshell on screen, like he did with Chloe, because it would have been great to see Erica Durance react to that. Although Durance does have a great line when Lois is asked if she is okay with Clark being an alien saying: "Are you kidding me? Its like dating a god or Bono". The down side is they don't get to spend a lot of time in this episode talking about Clark's kryptonian back ground, but it still looks like Lois may get some more answers in the next episodes to come.

Now "Harvest" is still not without its problems. I didn't mind the angle of Lois & Clark getting held captive, by a twisted cult like town, and I did liked the part about blue kryptonite. However I thought it was too big of a stretch for this town of people to be so old-fashioned and separated from modern society. It was like I was watching a different version of M. Night's The Village, just with the people who were all hopped up on blue-K. Since there Fashion Jewelry For Sale was no time travelling done in this episode I didn't believe that this small town of people were living like this back in the 80's, before the first meteor shower hit Smallville. But as farfetched as that scenario was it could have been a lot worse if it wasn't for, yet again, Durance and Tom Welling's chemistry. There is also a nice nod to the recent Batman franchise when some of the town's people are wearing masks that look like Cillian Murphy's Scarecrow.

There was a side story with Tess and the young cloned version of Lex that was expanded a little more. Now I liked the fact that they brought back Connor Stanhope, from past episodes, as a younger Lex Luthor because it keeps the series continuity intact. But I'm still not seeing the purpose for even having this story arc, other than to give Cassidy Freeman something to do. It's a stretch for audiences to think that Cartier Jewelry Tess is so emotionally committed to saving this young Lex before he grows up to be like the real Lex Luthor. Especially since Michael Rosenbaum and Freeman have never had any scenes together to merit this emotional connection.

That being said I do have one theory for this whole Lex clone angle. This side storyline maybe just one big backup plan if they can't get Rosenbaum to return for the end of the series. If that doesn't happen (heaven forbid) they could always just have some kind of deformed, Michael Rosenbaum look-a-like, cloned version of Lex be Clark's final villain. From a fans perspective I think if that were to happen it would piss a lot of people off and polarize most those diehard fans, who have been watching the series since the beginning.

Like "Iris", "Harvest" has a ridiculous storyline to take the series away from it's mythology and help set up the relationships between certain characters. I may not agree with the producers' choice of said storylines for these past couple of episodes but I do like the fact they are getting them out of the way now if they are to have more mythology based episodes in the future. Clark does give Lois Virgil Swann's journal so I hope that doesn't mean they are taking the easy way out by giving her a Clark 'how to' manual.

With the next episode, "Ambush", bringing Lois' father and sister back in the picture. It looks promising that they will stop this recent silliness and have a solid character/mythology based episode. But I've been wrong before.

Tags: Smallville, Tom Welling, Erica Durance, Cassidy Freeman, Connor Stanhope, Michael Rosenbaum, Cillian Murphy

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Andrew Burns loves film and comics, and can be found writing about when those worlds converge. You can follow him on Twitter at @myAndrewBurns.

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