February 27, 2025 • 24 mins
🔍 This week on Podcast Full of Kryptonite, we're seeing right through Smallville's episode "X-Ray"! 🔍
Join us as Clark discovers a shocking new ability – X-Ray vision! Suddenly, privacy is a thing of the past for the students of Smallville High. Meanwhile, Lex continues his shadowy investigation into the meteor rocks, and the Kents grapple with the implications of Clark's ever-growing powers. Will Clark learn to control his new sight, or will Smallville be forever changed?
Join us and we'll see you through it!
Join us as Clark discovers a shocking new ability – X-Ray vision! Suddenly, privacy is a thing of the past for the students of Smallville High. Meanwhile, Lex continues his shadowy investigation into the meteor rocks, and the Kents grapple with the implications of Clark's ever-growing powers. Will Clark learn to control his new sight, or will Smallville be forever changed?
Join us and we'll see you through it!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
The Superman Superman.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Hey, I like it, Superman. It's catchy. Sticks with you.
The kind of name that looks great squashed across three columns, Supermanman.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
My name is Clark Kent and I am Superman. I'm
Clark Kent.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
I'm the Daily Clint.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
So what are you? Man? Are Superman?
Speaker 3 (00:35):
Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of the podcast
Full of Kryptonite. I am your host, John Reid, and
we are back again for another episode of Smallville. So
we are in season one of Smallville. We have if
you're just joining us for some reason, if you've missed
the last few episodes. We finished our review of Superman
and Lois, we took a little bit of a break,
and now we're back and we are doing a rewatch
(00:57):
of Smallville, starting with season one, going all the way
through through season ten, and then who knows what we
do after that, pick another Superman show and the keep
the train rolling. But if the track, if something goes
wrong with the track, Superman will swoop down. He will
stop the train, or he will lay himself down and
become part of the track, and we will be saved
no matter what. So I don't think no matter what,
(01:17):
I can actually go off track on the Yes I can,
but yes, we are talking Smallville. It is season one,
it is episode for X ray and this is a
fun episode. Clark gets stop power in this episode. It's
another Freak of the Week episode. It's got some guest
stars in it. So excited to talk about this one.
If you are joining us on any of the social
(01:38):
media's out there, we have some new accounts on Blue Sky, Threads,
a couple of other places. We are typically at Superman
PFK for podcasts full of Kryptonite, So at Superman PFK.
You can find us out on social media there and
interact with us. Let us know what you're loving about
the show, let us know what you love about Smallville.
If you even want to go back to Superman and
(01:59):
lowesst you can let us know what you loved about
Superman at Lois would love to talk about that too.
So whatever you got, we would love to talk with
you about it. I'm just a huge Superman fan, so
I am willing to talk Superman anytime you want, all right, So,
as I said, this is the episode X ray, season one,
episode four, directed by James Frawley, who also did episodes
of the Monkeys and Grey's Anatomy. Writer was Mark ver Heiden,
(02:22):
who did the He co wrote the nineteen ninety four
movie The Mask with Jim Carrey. He's also done some
work writing for Daredevil and I Believe. He also wrote
for Constantine and swamp Thing. Director of photography was Attila
sesele I hoping I'm saying that right, Supernatural and The Flash,
and the editor was David Ekstrom, who did episodes of
The X Files and Millennium. Tom Welling played Clark Kent.
(02:45):
He was in Lucifer and Cheaper by the Dozen. Kristin
Kruk played Lana Lang. She was in Beauty and the Beast,
The CW Show, and Euro Trip. Michael Rosenbaum was Lex Luthor.
He was in the Justice League animated show as the
voice of the Flash. He was also in Sorority Boys.
Alison Mack played Chloe Sullivan. She was in Wilfred and
Honey We Shrunk Ourselves. Sam Jones the Third is Pete Ross.
(03:06):
He was in Blue Mountain State and Glory Road. John
Schneider was Jonathan Kent. He was in the Dukes of
Hazzard and Doctor Quinn. Medicine Woman a Nette O'Toole was
Martha Kent. She was in Superman three and It the
nineteen ninety version. Eric Johnson was Whitney Fordman. He was
in The Flash Gordon TV show and Vikings and American Gods.
(03:27):
All right, diving right on into this one, Let's see
what we can see.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
Shall we?
Speaker 3 (03:32):
Episode throws you right into the action here. In fact,
we open at the Smallville Savings and Loan and you've
got this person who is let's just say, is Lex Luthor,
trying to close all his accounts and is demanding cash.
The bank manager is understandably confused in this situation, especially
when the signature is a little off. Turns out it's
a person named Tina Grier. She is our meteor Freak
(03:54):
of the week. She has a shape shifting meteor freak
used who's used her power to look like Lex Luthor
so she can rob the bank. She gets away with
the cash, and in her escape she literally bumps into
Clark and sends him flying through the window of Specs Optical.
But here's the kicker. As Clark's recovering, he gets this
crazy headache and suddenly bam X ray vision And what's
(04:16):
the first thing he sees lexis skeleton glowing green. Talk
about a bit of a strange start of the day
for Clark. So this whole bank robbery thing gets the
Kent's involved naturally, Martha's reading about it in the paper,
and Clark's like, no way, Lex robbed a bank. Jonathan
being Jonathan is ready to believe the worst about Lex
and all of the luth Wars, but then Lex himself
shows up at the Kent Farm, all charm and mister alibi.
(04:39):
He was supposedly in Metropolis with fertilizer distributors, because that's
the story you go with when there's you're suspected of
a crime. Only in Smallville. Lex is there to chat
with Clark since he was an eyewitness, but Clark's sticking
to his story the robber looked just like Lex and
as another example of kind of that Lark Lark. Now,
(05:00):
I'm trying to ship Lex and Clark. Clark Lex Clark dynamic.
That is one of the best parts about the show,
setting up that kind of complicated friendship, that kind of
push and pull between the two of them. Clark's new
power a little out of control. He doesn't quite know
how to handle this yet and when we get this
kind of classic teenage boy moment. He's in gym class.
(05:22):
He's climbing the rope, glances over at Pete and accidentally
x rays him down to his muscles.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
She makes me feel kind of funny, like when we
used to climb the rope and gym.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
Class and he is so freaked out he falls off
the rope. Then, because you know, teenage hormones and it's
the CW. He accidentally takes a look through the gym
wall and x rays into the girl's locker room and
sees Lana getting changed.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
He's a peeping tom.
Speaker 3 (05:50):
Cue the awkward teenage smile on Clark's face. Little cheesy,
but it's Smallville cheesy, so we're gonna let it pass.
It works here he confesses to his parents about the
X ray is. They're very supportive, as they typically are,
trying to get him to practice some control, but Clark,
being a frustrated team just storms off. There was, Yeah,
there's a moment in some of these scenes where it
(06:12):
reminded me.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
This, being my.
Speaker 3 (06:14):
Probably third or fourth rewatch of this show, kind of
reminded me of the awkwardness of the reason behind how
he's able to activate his heat vision powers, and then
you go through thinking, well, wait a minute, is that
what actual superman has to think about to activate his
heat vision powers when he's fighting a supervillain. So don't
(06:36):
take that too far. Just go with it. It's a
CW show, Clark's a teenager, Just go with it. Meanwhile,
Tina Greer gets a little creepier on us. She visits Lana,
starts asking some weird questions about Lana's aunt and Nelle
adopting her wanting to be sisters with her. Lana understandably
is a little freaked out. And this is where the
(06:57):
guest actress in this one, Lizzie Kaplan, really starts. Even
in this early role, looked up a little bit on
her bio. I have not watched as much of her stuff.
I've seen Cloverfield, mean girls, I have not watched Masters
of Sex.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
She's in that one too.
Speaker 3 (07:10):
I mean, very talented actress and she's and she's even
got kind of a range. You can kind of see
when the when the guest stars come on, not that
the regular actors that are in the show are of
a different caliber, but you can kind of see you
sometimes when these early roles, you see someone that's going
to go on to do some really good things. We've
(07:30):
got coming up pretty soon. Amy Adams will be one
of the guests, one of the freaks of the Week,
if you will, coming up in one of the episodes.
And yeah, it's just it's kind of fun to see
folks in these early roles before they really kind of
you know, their careers really kicked off, you know. So
she does a great job as the villain of the week,
the freak of the week, and she's making Tina more
than just a kind of one dimensional cardboard cutout comic
(07:54):
book character. She really brings kind of this unsettling vibe
to the character. She's a little creepy, she's a little unstable.
That's pretty good, you know, for an early season, Battie,
you know, season one of this show. I think they
do a really nice job with their villains and especially
some of the visual effects that they were doing, remembering
at the time that this was TV, this was TV
(08:14):
in the very early two thousands, And I know that
they make some comments on that on the Talkville podcast
as I've been listening through on that one as well,
just kind of you know, sometimes how shocking almost it
is that the visual effects have held up over the
course of the years. All right back to the plot,
Clark and Martha are in town and Clark gets another
(08:34):
X ray headache. Suddenly everybody's skeletons are popping into view,
and I'm kind of wondering, I think, was it family
guy that had the joke about Clark and all the
women he's ever worked with suddenly get cancer all at
the same time because he's worked with them for years,
and he's like, Oh, yeah, isn't that weird? Kind of
made me think of that every time somebody gets X
(08:56):
rayed in this episode. Yeah, suddenly everybody he's seeing skeletons
all over the place. He spots that green green glow
of home again and tracks it to Rose's antique shop.
Rose is Tina's mom. Turns out Tina's already there, disguised
as her mother Rose. Martha and Clark follow Rose quote
unquote Rose inside asking about Tina, and quote unquote Rose
(09:18):
claims that Tina is with Lana. Classic misdirection here, Martha's
Spidey sense to steal a term that's not from this
show is tingling. Martha does not have powers, by the way,
just in case you were wondering about that and worrying
about that, she notices some cash with a small Ville
Savings and Loan band, and quote unquote Rose is acting
shifty and then bam, Martha almost gets run down by
(09:41):
her own truck with quote unquote Clark at the wheel,
except it is Tina disguised as Clark. The real Clark
shows up to save Martha and they realized that Tina
had stolen Martha's keys. One of the things about this power,
this X ray power, and I feel like one of
the ways in which this has been done really well
in the past, and I think it's done well in
(10:01):
this episode too. But I really liked how Man of
Steel handled that. When you get the scenes with young
Clark and he's in school and all of a sudden,
he's you know, he starts to gain some powers, and
he starts to hear things, and time kind of slows
down for him a bit, and then he x rays,
I mean unintentionally x rays his teacher. And I would
think as any young kid, he seemed to be maybe
(10:24):
like six seven at the time, maybe like a first grade,
second grade something like that. You know, if you look
at your teacher and suddenly you can see all of
her muscles and bones that would freak you out. And
I really loved in Man of Steel how they did
that scene where he freaks out, he runs and hides
himself in a closet, and then his mom has to
come and kind of talk him down a bit. We
get a little bit of that Martha wisdom in here too.
(10:45):
I think there's a scene later on where Clark asks,
you know, if mom, if you could, if you could
see anything, what would you do? And I think her
comment was something like, learn to close my eyes. And
so it's, you know, that that motherly wisdom that we
usually get. The spectrum of Martha Kent is already shining
through early on in the show. All right back at
(11:06):
the farm, they start to piece everything altogether, abandoned truck,
antique shop, weird Rose, the cash Clarker members Tina's a
glowing green skeleton. Martha figures out that Tina must have
gotten powers in the meteor shower, explaining her soft bone
disease miraculously healing right after the meteor shower in nineteen
eighty nine. This is the small Villa logic at its finest.
(11:28):
In a bit of a side plot that's going on
right here. Lex is dealing with some blackmail drama. Roger Nixon,
who is not a crook about a journalist, tries to
shake him down for one hundred grand, threatening to expose
Lex's shady past at Club Zero, which we will find
out more about in an episode later which I believe
is titled Zero. Lex being Lex, doesn't cave. He turns
(11:49):
the tables on Nixon, basically blackmailing him into becoming Lex's
personal pr guy and digging into Lex's own past, specifically
Little tea tiny car crash that happened three or four
episodes ago. Lex has already started to show those luthor
tendencies earlier on and manipulating people, controlling situations, and it's
only going to get worse from here on out. But
(12:12):
he wants Nixon to do a little digging for him,
and that's going to come back up later on. Meanwhile,
Alanna's doing some digging of her own, cleaning out the garage.
She finds her mom's journal, learns that her mom hated
cheerleading dreamed of leaving Smallville, so she confronts her aunt Nell,
who admits that she kind of sugarcoated Lnna's mom's life.
Lana's having a bit of an identity crisis here and
(12:32):
realizes that she's been chasing this image of her mom
that wasn't even real. This is a nice little character
moment for Lana, in fact, probably one of the first
times we get some good character development for Lana in
the show. You know, up to this point, there's been
a little bit here and there, a little bit with
her and Clark, but this kind of on her own.
She's able to kind of explore some of this and
(12:52):
do it on her own without having to rely on,
you know, any of the other Maiden characters for it.
So it kind of shows her, you know, trying to
find her own path, separate from what everybody else expects
of her. Back at school, Clark's full on staring at Tina,
trying to x ray her again, which I'm sure doesn't
make anything awkward whatsoever. Way to go, Clark, Way to
be subtle. Clark, Chloe, and Pete are watching, thinking Tina's
(13:15):
just obsessed with Lana, which, let's be honest, she kind
of is. Tina then puts on this sob story on Laana,
saying that her mom is moving to Metropolis, and asking
to move in with Lana and Nell. Lana hesitates, and
Tina takes that as a rejection and storms off, And
as we know, if you are a superman villain Smallville,
rejection usually leads to superpower beat down at some point
(13:36):
in the episode. Yeah, the villains don't take rejection very well.
Maybe that's just a hallmark of being a villain. Clark
does manage to focus on his X ray vis. I'm
getting like little little things in my head of the
Princess Bride in here, because I think there's a scene
where the scene at the beginning, I think where Lex
is that I think the real Lex is left handed
(13:57):
and Tina is right handed, and so I was thinking
of the but I am not left handed. And then
we get to this part where you know, Tina takes
this rejection and walks off and storms off, and the
line pops into my.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
Head and I get used to disappointment.
Speaker 3 (14:11):
Oh okay. Clark manages to focus his extra vision in
time and does see that there's a backpack full of
cash in Tina's locker, So Bingo time to tell the parents,
and they realize that Tina is the bank robber. So
the cops show up at the antique shop looking for Tina. Tina,
still disguised as Rose, is almost caught, but then pulls
a quick change. Lana shows up at the Kent Farm loft,
(14:32):
supposedly to Warren Clark about Tina, but quote unquote, Lana
kisses Clark and morphs back into Tina. So I'm sure
Clark was very excited until he realized this was not
the real thing. It was his lifelong ambition. Clark ratted
her out, and Clark's like, we can't call the cops.
I'm the only one who could see through her disguises,
so natually Clark's got to handle this himself. Lana, in
(14:54):
her own storyline, goes to Chloe at the Torch and
finds her mom's graduation speech from nineteen seventy seven. Chloe,
being the awesome investigative journalist that she is, finds out
it was considered too controversial and was never printed. So
get a little intriguing storyline here. Lex and Nixon have
their showdown at the Luther Mansion. Nixon shows up for
(15:14):
his blackmail money, but Lex is having none of it.
He basically threatens Nixon into working for him, offering him
a deal to control the narrative around Lex Luthor, both
positive and negative, and tasks Nixon with figuring out how
Lex survived that car crash, so he is already building
his little Luthor empire. Even in season one of the show,
Clark practicing his X ray vision in the barn when
(15:34):
Lana visits telling him about her mom's journal. They have
a nice little reflective moment about parents and expectations and
things like that. Later, Clark and Pete go to the
antique shop to investigate, and Clark just happens to have
a hunch and X rays a cabinet and sees a skeleton.
When they open it up, it is Rose's body. They
also find pages with Lana's signature repeated over and over,
so we know that Tina's next target is Lana. One
(15:57):
of the funny things about this, and I think they
mentioned it on the Top Phil Podcast two, is Pete.
I'm not surprised with Clark, but when Rose's body falls
out of the cabinet, Pete doesn't really seem all that surprised.
It's just kind of like, oh, look at that. I mean,
it's Smallville, weird stuff happens, but still you'd think you know,
high school freshman kid's probably gonna freak out when he
(16:18):
sees a dead body. All right, it is time that
we hit the climax of this episode. We've seen through
the lies of the Jedi, and now we know what's
going on here. Tina disguises Lana tricks Whitney into giving
her his letterman jacket. Lana's at the cemetery, visiting her
parents' grave, as she does, probably having a little conversation
with them there, and quote unquote, Whitney shows up being
(16:39):
all emotionally manipulative, manipulative, saying that Lana doesn't deserve her life.
Tina reveals herself, strangles Lana, steals the kryptonite necklace. Of
course there's kryptonite involved. We have to have kryptonite involved.
Lana wakes up trapped in a crypt Talk about a
little gothic horror moment. Clark arrives at the cemetery, finds
Whitney with the necklace, and they fight. Whitney is coldly
(17:01):
kicking Clark's spot until he loses the jacket and the cryptonite.
During the fight, Tina taunts Clark, saying that Lana is dead,
but Clark uses that x ray vision scans the cemetery.
He sees a skeleton moving in one of the crypts.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
Lana is alive. She's alive.
Speaker 3 (17:16):
He busts into the crypt and saves her, just in
the nick of time. Episode wraps up with Clark's parents
reassuring him, Whitney comforting Lana, and Clark getting a pang
of jealousy seeing the two of them together. Oh, the
teenage angst. It's of course, it's Smallville, so we have
to have a good, healthy, heaping, healthy helping of teenage
angst in it. Chloe finds an audio tape of Lana's
(17:37):
mom's graduation speech for Lana. Lanna gets a chance to
listen to it and finds some closure with her mom.
It's kind of a nice, slightly bittersweet ending, but it's
kind of a nice little bit of character development and
for her to find out more about, you know, what
her mom was really like as opposed to this idea
that she had of her mom. So x Ray overall,
solid early episode of Smallville. It's got the classic formula
(17:58):
we're seeing in these early episodes. Meteor freak, Clark figuring
out his powers, the relationship drama, it all works. Lizzie
Kaplan's performance is a highlight of the episode that explores
some interesting themes about privacy, responsibility, family expectations. You know,
of the episodes we've seen so far this season, I
always enjoy the ones where Clark is getting a new
(18:19):
power and so there's moments of this that you are
really fun. And I think this one too had some
good moments for Lana as well. So it's kind of
nice to see these, even the side characters get a
little bit of development, and then to see Lex really
kind of, you know, go start to go all in on.
He's got to know the true he's got. He doesn't
know if he fired five bullets or six bulls, but
he's got to know. But really wanting to I don't
(18:42):
remember if that was the right number of bullets from
the quote, but he really wants to find out about
what's what's going on. He does not trust that there
was nothing weird about the car accident where Clark did
not even get hurt, so he is definitely going to
be keying in on this moving forward.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
All right.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
Oftentimes I like to list the because there's fun like
late nineties early two thousands music. Of course that they
get going in every episode. So I was able to
find the list of the different pieces of music, different
songs that are played throughout the episode. We've got the
song Movies by alien Ant Farm that is played when
fake Lex robs the bank. We've got oo La La
by the Wise Guys that's played when Clark and Pete
(19:19):
are in gym class. Of course, the ooh La la,
you can consider that to be maybe the same as
the Back to the Future ooh La la as Clark
gets a little sneak peek. Breathe you in by Stabbing
Westward is played when Tina visits Lana at her house.
Up All Night by Unwritten Law is played during Lex's
first run in with Roger Nixon. Analyze is played by
(19:40):
the Cranberrys, played when Lana visits Chloe in the Torch office,
and Unbroken by Todd Tibau was played when Clark X
rays Lana when she drops by the farm. Yeah, so again,
there's a lot of it's a it's a fun episode.
It's like I said, I always enjoy when Clark starts
to get new powers and we get to kind of
explore some of that.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
Stuff a bit.
Speaker 3 (20:01):
So a lot of fun, A lot of fun when
all that stuff happens. There were a few other things
from this one that was kind of making me think,
you know about oh, just like some weird little details
that we found. I was able to find some of
these online. But some of the weird little details is
that I think I read somewhere that they mentioned Chloe
mentions that she was working at the school newspaper the
(20:24):
year before, copying their graduation speeches. But they're freshmen, so
that would mean and this could be the case because
I remember when I was in eighth grade, we were
in a town where I want to say, grades K
through twelve we're all in one building, and it was
probably a town that wouldn't be too much different than
the size of a smallville, Kansas. So seems strange that
(20:46):
somebody who was a freshman would have been working at
the newspaper the year before. But if she's an overachieving
eighth grader and it is a small town, a small school,
that's not too much of a surprise.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
Yeah, so that was kind of a deal.
Speaker 3 (21:01):
I did also see that there is there was a
mention in some of the trivia on this one that
Laura Lang's prom so Lana's mother. The theme was said
to have been Saturday Night Fever, but her prom would
have been in the spring of nineteen seventy seven, and
the movie wasn't released until December of seventy seven, so
they'd be a little bit off in their timeline there.
(21:25):
All right, Yeah again, another a fun episode X ray
this one. We've got another fun one coming up next
time around cool Is Episode season one, Episode five. High
school athlete Sean Kelvin. Oh, look what they did there?
They gave him a name that had something to do
with temperature.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
Look at that.
Speaker 3 (21:45):
High school athlete Sean Kelvin falls into an icy lake
laced with meteor fragments. He emerges with a condition that
forces him to absorb heat from others to survive, leading
him to target some of his classmates, including Chloe Sullivan.
Clark must intervene to stop Shawn's dangerous quest for warmth. Meanwhile,
Lex Luthor offers financial assistance to the Kent family, but
(22:06):
Jonathan Kent is hesitant because he's a Luthor and you
don't take money from Luthor's because bad people. For the
most part. All right, again, thank you so much for
being here. Another fun episode of Smallville. I always look
forward to being able to do a rewatch of these,
And you know, X Ray is a fun one with
Kool coming up soon, let's see with Cool coming up soon.
(22:27):
And Our Glass is another fun one coming up. But
you get a little bit of a little bit of
some little hints and east eggs here and there. Our
Glass has kind of a first a little bit of
a first look at maybe the idea of what Clark's
future is going to look like. There's a little bit
of a future prediction going on in there. And then
we're just a few episodes away from Craving, which, if
(22:49):
I remember right, that is the one where Amy Adams
shows up and is the meteor infected person in that episode.
So yeah, if you have anything that you want to
show hear about any of these episodes, please feel free
to reach out or Blue Sky Threads. We are on Twitter,
we are on Facebook, or on all those so if
you want to check those out, it's typically at it's
(23:10):
either a podcast full of Kryptonite or it's at Superman
PFK on those, So if you want to check those out,
if you want to interact and just kind of let
me know what you're thinking what you love about the episodes.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
I would love to hear from.
Speaker 3 (23:20):
You, but yeah, I'm a big Superman fan, so always
happy to talk and happy to have long drawn out
conversations about Superman, DC comics, anything you want, So everybody,
thank you so much. Go watch Smallville if you haven't
been watching Smallville, and I won't go watch anything Superman
doesn't have to be Smallville. But if you want to
(23:40):
follow along with us, go watch some Smallville and up
up in a way.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
See you back here next week, Spo, get inside.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
Full and I will give you anything. No ill.
Speaker 1 (24:18):
All my dreams are far coll SOMD
Speaker 3 (24:37):
That's you,
The Superman Superman.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Hey, I like it, Superman. It's catchy. Sticks with you.
The kind of name that looks great squashed across three columns, Supermanman.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
My name is Clark Kent and I am Superman. I'm
Clark Kent.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
I'm the Daily Clint.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
So what are you? Man? Are Superman?
Speaker 3 (00:35):
Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of the podcast
Full of Kryptonite. I am your host, John Reid, and
we are back again for another episode of Smallville. So
we are in season one of Smallville. We have if
you're just joining us for some reason, if you've missed
the last few episodes. We finished our review of Superman
and Lois, we took a little bit of a break,
and now we're back and we are doing a rewatch
(00:57):
of Smallville, starting with season one, going all the way
through through season ten, and then who knows what we
do after that, pick another Superman show and the keep
the train rolling. But if the track, if something goes
wrong with the track, Superman will swoop down. He will
stop the train, or he will lay himself down and
become part of the track, and we will be saved
no matter what. So I don't think no matter what,
(01:17):
I can actually go off track on the Yes I can,
but yes, we are talking Smallville. It is season one,
it is episode for X ray and this is a
fun episode. Clark gets stop power in this episode. It's
another Freak of the Week episode. It's got some guest
stars in it. So excited to talk about this one.
If you are joining us on any of the social
(01:38):
media's out there, we have some new accounts on Blue Sky, Threads,
a couple of other places. We are typically at Superman
PFK for podcasts full of Kryptonite, So at Superman PFK.
You can find us out on social media there and
interact with us. Let us know what you're loving about
the show, let us know what you love about Smallville.
If you even want to go back to Superman and
(01:59):
lowesst you can let us know what you loved about
Superman at Lois would love to talk about that too.
So whatever you got, we would love to talk with
you about it. I'm just a huge Superman fan, so
I am willing to talk Superman anytime you want, all right, So,
as I said, this is the episode X ray, season one,
episode four, directed by James Frawley, who also did episodes
of the Monkeys and Grey's Anatomy. Writer was Mark ver Heiden,
(02:22):
who did the He co wrote the nineteen ninety four
movie The Mask with Jim Carrey. He's also done some
work writing for Daredevil and I Believe. He also wrote
for Constantine and swamp Thing. Director of photography was Attila
sesele I hoping I'm saying that right, Supernatural and The Flash,
and the editor was David Ekstrom, who did episodes of
The X Files and Millennium. Tom Welling played Clark Kent.
(02:45):
He was in Lucifer and Cheaper by the Dozen. Kristin
Kruk played Lana Lang. She was in Beauty and the Beast,
The CW Show, and Euro Trip. Michael Rosenbaum was Lex Luthor.
He was in the Justice League animated show as the
voice of the Flash. He was also in Sorority Boys.
Alison Mack played Chloe Sullivan. She was in Wilfred and
Honey We Shrunk Ourselves. Sam Jones the Third is Pete Ross.
(03:06):
He was in Blue Mountain State and Glory Road. John
Schneider was Jonathan Kent. He was in the Dukes of
Hazzard and Doctor Quinn. Medicine Woman a Nette O'Toole was
Martha Kent. She was in Superman three and It the
nineteen ninety version. Eric Johnson was Whitney Fordman. He was
in The Flash Gordon TV show and Vikings and American Gods.
(03:27):
All right, diving right on into this one, Let's see
what we can see.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
Shall we?
Speaker 3 (03:32):
Episode throws you right into the action here. In fact,
we open at the Smallville Savings and Loan and you've
got this person who is let's just say, is Lex Luthor,
trying to close all his accounts and is demanding cash.
The bank manager is understandably confused in this situation, especially
when the signature is a little off. Turns out it's
a person named Tina Grier. She is our meteor Freak
(03:54):
of the week. She has a shape shifting meteor freak
used who's used her power to look like Lex Luthor
so she can rob the bank. She gets away with
the cash, and in her escape she literally bumps into
Clark and sends him flying through the window of Specs Optical.
But here's the kicker. As Clark's recovering, he gets this
crazy headache and suddenly bam X ray vision And what's
(04:16):
the first thing he sees lexis skeleton glowing green. Talk
about a bit of a strange start of the day
for Clark. So this whole bank robbery thing gets the
Kent's involved naturally, Martha's reading about it in the paper,
and Clark's like, no way, Lex robbed a bank. Jonathan
being Jonathan is ready to believe the worst about Lex
and all of the luth Wars, but then Lex himself
shows up at the Kent Farm, all charm and mister alibi.
(04:39):
He was supposedly in Metropolis with fertilizer distributors, because that's
the story you go with when there's you're suspected of
a crime. Only in Smallville. Lex is there to chat
with Clark since he was an eyewitness, but Clark's sticking
to his story the robber looked just like Lex and
as another example of kind of that Lark Lark. Now,
(05:00):
I'm trying to ship Lex and Clark. Clark Lex Clark dynamic.
That is one of the best parts about the show,
setting up that kind of complicated friendship, that kind of
push and pull between the two of them. Clark's new
power a little out of control. He doesn't quite know
how to handle this yet and when we get this
kind of classic teenage boy moment. He's in gym class.
(05:22):
He's climbing the rope, glances over at Pete and accidentally
x rays him down to his muscles.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
She makes me feel kind of funny, like when we
used to climb the rope and gym.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
Class and he is so freaked out he falls off
the rope. Then, because you know, teenage hormones and it's
the CW. He accidentally takes a look through the gym
wall and x rays into the girl's locker room and
sees Lana getting changed.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
He's a peeping tom.
Speaker 3 (05:50):
Cue the awkward teenage smile on Clark's face. Little cheesy,
but it's Smallville cheesy, so we're gonna let it pass.
It works here he confesses to his parents about the
X ray is. They're very supportive, as they typically are,
trying to get him to practice some control, but Clark,
being a frustrated team just storms off. There was, Yeah,
there's a moment in some of these scenes where it
(06:12):
reminded me.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
This, being my.
Speaker 3 (06:14):
Probably third or fourth rewatch of this show, kind of
reminded me of the awkwardness of the reason behind how
he's able to activate his heat vision powers, and then
you go through thinking, well, wait a minute, is that
what actual superman has to think about to activate his
heat vision powers when he's fighting a supervillain. So don't
(06:36):
take that too far. Just go with it. It's a
CW show, Clark's a teenager, Just go with it. Meanwhile,
Tina Greer gets a little creepier on us. She visits Lana,
starts asking some weird questions about Lana's aunt and Nelle
adopting her wanting to be sisters with her. Lana understandably
is a little freaked out. And this is where the
(06:57):
guest actress in this one, Lizzie Kaplan, really starts. Even
in this early role, looked up a little bit on
her bio. I have not watched as much of her stuff.
I've seen Cloverfield, mean girls, I have not watched Masters
of Sex.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
She's in that one too.
Speaker 3 (07:10):
I mean, very talented actress and she's and she's even
got kind of a range. You can kind of see
when the when the guest stars come on, not that
the regular actors that are in the show are of
a different caliber, but you can kind of see you
sometimes when these early roles, you see someone that's going
to go on to do some really good things. We've
(07:30):
got coming up pretty soon. Amy Adams will be one
of the guests, one of the freaks of the Week,
if you will, coming up in one of the episodes.
And yeah, it's just it's kind of fun to see
folks in these early roles before they really kind of
you know, their careers really kicked off, you know. So
she does a great job as the villain of the week,
the freak of the week, and she's making Tina more
than just a kind of one dimensional cardboard cutout comic
(07:54):
book character. She really brings kind of this unsettling vibe
to the character. She's a little creepy, she's a little unstable.
That's pretty good, you know, for an early season, Battie,
you know, season one of this show. I think they
do a really nice job with their villains and especially
some of the visual effects that they were doing, remembering
at the time that this was TV, this was TV
(08:14):
in the very early two thousands, And I know that
they make some comments on that on the Talkville podcast
as I've been listening through on that one as well,
just kind of you know, sometimes how shocking almost it
is that the visual effects have held up over the
course of the years. All right back to the plot,
Clark and Martha are in town and Clark gets another
(08:34):
X ray headache. Suddenly everybody's skeletons are popping into view,
and I'm kind of wondering, I think, was it family
guy that had the joke about Clark and all the
women he's ever worked with suddenly get cancer all at
the same time because he's worked with them for years,
and he's like, Oh, yeah, isn't that weird? Kind of
made me think of that every time somebody gets X
(08:56):
rayed in this episode. Yeah, suddenly everybody he's seeing skeletons
all over the place. He spots that green green glow
of home again and tracks it to Rose's antique shop.
Rose is Tina's mom. Turns out Tina's already there, disguised
as her mother Rose. Martha and Clark follow Rose quote
unquote Rose inside asking about Tina, and quote unquote Rose
(09:18):
claims that Tina is with Lana. Classic misdirection here, Martha's
Spidey sense to steal a term that's not from this
show is tingling. Martha does not have powers, by the way,
just in case you were wondering about that and worrying
about that, she notices some cash with a small Ville
Savings and Loan band, and quote unquote Rose is acting
shifty and then bam, Martha almost gets run down by
(09:41):
her own truck with quote unquote Clark at the wheel,
except it is Tina disguised as Clark. The real Clark
shows up to save Martha and they realized that Tina
had stolen Martha's keys. One of the things about this power,
this X ray power, and I feel like one of
the ways in which this has been done really well
in the past, and I think it's done well in
(10:01):
this episode too. But I really liked how Man of
Steel handled that. When you get the scenes with young
Clark and he's in school and all of a sudden,
he's you know, he starts to gain some powers, and
he starts to hear things, and time kind of slows
down for him a bit, and then he x rays,
I mean unintentionally x rays his teacher. And I would
think as any young kid, he seemed to be maybe
(10:24):
like six seven at the time, maybe like a first grade,
second grade something like that. You know, if you look
at your teacher and suddenly you can see all of
her muscles and bones that would freak you out. And
I really loved in Man of Steel how they did
that scene where he freaks out, he runs and hides
himself in a closet, and then his mom has to
come and kind of talk him down a bit. We
get a little bit of that Martha wisdom in here too.
(10:45):
I think there's a scene later on where Clark asks,
you know, if mom, if you could, if you could
see anything, what would you do? And I think her
comment was something like, learn to close my eyes. And
so it's, you know, that that motherly wisdom that we
usually get. The spectrum of Martha Kent is already shining
through early on in the show. All right back at
(11:06):
the farm, they start to piece everything altogether, abandoned truck,
antique shop, weird Rose, the cash Clarker members Tina's a
glowing green skeleton. Martha figures out that Tina must have
gotten powers in the meteor shower, explaining her soft bone
disease miraculously healing right after the meteor shower in nineteen
eighty nine. This is the small Villa logic at its finest.
(11:28):
In a bit of a side plot that's going on
right here. Lex is dealing with some blackmail drama. Roger Nixon,
who is not a crook about a journalist, tries to
shake him down for one hundred grand, threatening to expose
Lex's shady past at Club Zero, which we will find
out more about in an episode later which I believe
is titled Zero. Lex being Lex, doesn't cave. He turns
(11:49):
the tables on Nixon, basically blackmailing him into becoming Lex's
personal pr guy and digging into Lex's own past, specifically
Little tea tiny car crash that happened three or four
episodes ago. Lex has already started to show those luthor
tendencies earlier on and manipulating people, controlling situations, and it's
only going to get worse from here on out. But
(12:12):
he wants Nixon to do a little digging for him,
and that's going to come back up later on. Meanwhile,
Alanna's doing some digging of her own, cleaning out the garage.
She finds her mom's journal, learns that her mom hated
cheerleading dreamed of leaving Smallville, so she confronts her aunt Nell,
who admits that she kind of sugarcoated Lnna's mom's life.
Lana's having a bit of an identity crisis here and
(12:32):
realizes that she's been chasing this image of her mom
that wasn't even real. This is a nice little character
moment for Lana, in fact, probably one of the first
times we get some good character development for Lana in
the show. You know, up to this point, there's been
a little bit here and there, a little bit with
her and Clark, but this kind of on her own.
She's able to kind of explore some of this and
(12:52):
do it on her own without having to rely on,
you know, any of the other Maiden characters for it.
So it kind of shows her, you know, trying to
find her own path, separate from what everybody else expects
of her. Back at school, Clark's full on staring at Tina,
trying to x ray her again, which I'm sure doesn't
make anything awkward whatsoever. Way to go, Clark, Way to
be subtle. Clark, Chloe, and Pete are watching, thinking Tina's
(13:15):
just obsessed with Lana, which, let's be honest, she kind
of is. Tina then puts on this sob story on Laana,
saying that her mom is moving to Metropolis, and asking
to move in with Lana and Nell. Lana hesitates, and
Tina takes that as a rejection and storms off, And
as we know, if you are a superman villain Smallville,
rejection usually leads to superpower beat down at some point
(13:36):
in the episode. Yeah, the villains don't take rejection very well.
Maybe that's just a hallmark of being a villain. Clark
does manage to focus on his X ray vis. I'm
getting like little little things in my head of the
Princess Bride in here, because I think there's a scene
where the scene at the beginning, I think where Lex
is that I think the real Lex is left handed
(13:57):
and Tina is right handed, and so I was thinking
of the but I am not left handed. And then
we get to this part where you know, Tina takes
this rejection and walks off and storms off, and the
line pops into my.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
Head and I get used to disappointment.
Speaker 3 (14:11):
Oh okay. Clark manages to focus his extra vision in
time and does see that there's a backpack full of
cash in Tina's locker, So Bingo time to tell the parents,
and they realize that Tina is the bank robber. So
the cops show up at the antique shop looking for Tina. Tina,
still disguised as Rose, is almost caught, but then pulls
a quick change. Lana shows up at the Kent Farm loft,
(14:32):
supposedly to Warren Clark about Tina, but quote unquote, Lana
kisses Clark and morphs back into Tina. So I'm sure
Clark was very excited until he realized this was not
the real thing. It was his lifelong ambition. Clark ratted
her out, and Clark's like, we can't call the cops.
I'm the only one who could see through her disguises,
so natually Clark's got to handle this himself. Lana, in
(14:54):
her own storyline, goes to Chloe at the Torch and
finds her mom's graduation speech from nineteen seventy seven. Chloe,
being the awesome investigative journalist that she is, finds out
it was considered too controversial and was never printed. So
get a little intriguing storyline here. Lex and Nixon have
their showdown at the Luther Mansion. Nixon shows up for
(15:14):
his blackmail money, but Lex is having none of it.
He basically threatens Nixon into working for him, offering him
a deal to control the narrative around Lex Luthor, both
positive and negative, and tasks Nixon with figuring out how
Lex survived that car crash, so he is already building
his little Luthor empire. Even in season one of the show,
Clark practicing his X ray vision in the barn when
(15:34):
Lana visits telling him about her mom's journal. They have
a nice little reflective moment about parents and expectations and
things like that. Later, Clark and Pete go to the
antique shop to investigate, and Clark just happens to have
a hunch and X rays a cabinet and sees a skeleton.
When they open it up, it is Rose's body. They
also find pages with Lana's signature repeated over and over,
so we know that Tina's next target is Lana. One
(15:57):
of the funny things about this, and I think they
mentioned it on the Top Phil Podcast two, is Pete.
I'm not surprised with Clark, but when Rose's body falls
out of the cabinet, Pete doesn't really seem all that surprised.
It's just kind of like, oh, look at that. I mean,
it's Smallville, weird stuff happens, but still you'd think you know,
high school freshman kid's probably gonna freak out when he
(16:18):
sees a dead body. All right, it is time that
we hit the climax of this episode. We've seen through
the lies of the Jedi, and now we know what's
going on here. Tina disguises Lana tricks Whitney into giving
her his letterman jacket. Lana's at the cemetery, visiting her
parents' grave, as she does, probably having a little conversation
with them there, and quote unquote, Whitney shows up being
(16:39):
all emotionally manipulative, manipulative, saying that Lana doesn't deserve her life.
Tina reveals herself, strangles Lana, steals the kryptonite necklace. Of
course there's kryptonite involved. We have to have kryptonite involved.
Lana wakes up trapped in a crypt Talk about a
little gothic horror moment. Clark arrives at the cemetery, finds
Whitney with the necklace, and they fight. Whitney is coldly
(17:01):
kicking Clark's spot until he loses the jacket and the cryptonite.
During the fight, Tina taunts Clark, saying that Lana is dead,
but Clark uses that x ray vision scans the cemetery.
He sees a skeleton moving in one of the crypts.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
Lana is alive. She's alive.
Speaker 3 (17:16):
He busts into the crypt and saves her, just in
the nick of time. Episode wraps up with Clark's parents
reassuring him, Whitney comforting Lana, and Clark getting a pang
of jealousy seeing the two of them together. Oh, the
teenage angst. It's of course, it's Smallville, so we have
to have a good, healthy, heaping, healthy helping of teenage
angst in it. Chloe finds an audio tape of Lana's
(17:37):
mom's graduation speech for Lana. Lanna gets a chance to
listen to it and finds some closure with her mom.
It's kind of a nice, slightly bittersweet ending, but it's
kind of a nice little bit of character development and
for her to find out more about, you know, what
her mom was really like as opposed to this idea
that she had of her mom. So x Ray overall,
solid early episode of Smallville. It's got the classic formula
(17:58):
we're seeing in these early episodes. Meteor freak, Clark figuring
out his powers, the relationship drama, it all works. Lizzie
Kaplan's performance is a highlight of the episode that explores
some interesting themes about privacy, responsibility, family expectations. You know,
of the episodes we've seen so far this season, I
always enjoy the ones where Clark is getting a new
(18:19):
power and so there's moments of this that you are
really fun. And I think this one too had some
good moments for Lana as well. So it's kind of
nice to see these, even the side characters get a
little bit of development, and then to see Lex really
kind of, you know, go start to go all in on.
He's got to know the true he's got. He doesn't
know if he fired five bullets or six bulls, but
he's got to know. But really wanting to I don't
(18:42):
remember if that was the right number of bullets from
the quote, but he really wants to find out about
what's what's going on. He does not trust that there
was nothing weird about the car accident where Clark did
not even get hurt, so he is definitely going to
be keying in on this moving forward.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
All right.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
Oftentimes I like to list the because there's fun like
late nineties early two thousands music. Of course that they
get going in every episode. So I was able to
find the list of the different pieces of music, different
songs that are played throughout the episode. We've got the
song Movies by alien Ant Farm that is played when
fake Lex robs the bank. We've got oo La La
by the Wise Guys that's played when Clark and Pete
(19:19):
are in gym class. Of course, the ooh La la,
you can consider that to be maybe the same as
the Back to the Future ooh La la as Clark
gets a little sneak peek. Breathe you in by Stabbing
Westward is played when Tina visits Lana at her house.
Up All Night by Unwritten Law is played during Lex's
first run in with Roger Nixon. Analyze is played by
(19:40):
the Cranberrys, played when Lana visits Chloe in the Torch office,
and Unbroken by Todd Tibau was played when Clark X
rays Lana when she drops by the farm. Yeah, so again,
there's a lot of it's a it's a fun episode.
It's like I said, I always enjoy when Clark starts
to get new powers and we get to kind of
explore some of that.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
Stuff a bit.
Speaker 3 (20:01):
So a lot of fun, A lot of fun when
all that stuff happens. There were a few other things
from this one that was kind of making me think,
you know about oh, just like some weird little details
that we found. I was able to find some of
these online. But some of the weird little details is
that I think I read somewhere that they mentioned Chloe
mentions that she was working at the school newspaper the
(20:24):
year before, copying their graduation speeches. But they're freshmen, so
that would mean and this could be the case because
I remember when I was in eighth grade, we were
in a town where I want to say, grades K
through twelve we're all in one building, and it was
probably a town that wouldn't be too much different than
the size of a smallville, Kansas. So seems strange that
(20:46):
somebody who was a freshman would have been working at
the newspaper the year before. But if she's an overachieving
eighth grader and it is a small town, a small school,
that's not too much of a surprise.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
Yeah, so that was kind of a deal.
Speaker 3 (21:01):
I did also see that there is there was a
mention in some of the trivia on this one that
Laura Lang's prom so Lana's mother. The theme was said
to have been Saturday Night Fever, but her prom would
have been in the spring of nineteen seventy seven, and
the movie wasn't released until December of seventy seven, so
they'd be a little bit off in their timeline there.
(21:25):
All right, Yeah again, another a fun episode X ray
this one. We've got another fun one coming up next
time around cool Is Episode season one, Episode five. High
school athlete Sean Kelvin. Oh, look what they did there?
They gave him a name that had something to do
with temperature.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
Look at that.
Speaker 3 (21:45):
High school athlete Sean Kelvin falls into an icy lake
laced with meteor fragments. He emerges with a condition that
forces him to absorb heat from others to survive, leading
him to target some of his classmates, including Chloe Sullivan.
Clark must intervene to stop Shawn's dangerous quest for warmth. Meanwhile,
Lex Luthor offers financial assistance to the Kent family, but
(22:06):
Jonathan Kent is hesitant because he's a Luthor and you
don't take money from Luthor's because bad people. For the
most part. All right, again, thank you so much for
being here. Another fun episode of Smallville. I always look
forward to being able to do a rewatch of these,
And you know, X Ray is a fun one with
Kool coming up soon, let's see with Cool coming up soon.
(22:27):
And Our Glass is another fun one coming up. But
you get a little bit of a little bit of
some little hints and east eggs here and there. Our
Glass has kind of a first a little bit of
a first look at maybe the idea of what Clark's
future is going to look like. There's a little bit
of a future prediction going on in there. And then
we're just a few episodes away from Craving, which, if
(22:49):
I remember right, that is the one where Amy Adams
shows up and is the meteor infected person in that episode.
So yeah, if you have anything that you want to
show hear about any of these episodes, please feel free
to reach out or Blue Sky Threads. We are on Twitter,
we are on Facebook, or on all those so if
you want to check those out, it's typically at it's
(23:10):
either a podcast full of Kryptonite or it's at Superman
PFK on those, So if you want to check those out,
if you want to interact and just kind of let
me know what you're thinking what you love about the episodes.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
I would love to hear from.
Speaker 3 (23:20):
You, but yeah, I'm a big Superman fan, so always
happy to talk and happy to have long drawn out
conversations about Superman, DC comics, anything you want, So everybody,
thank you so much. Go watch Smallville if you haven't
been watching Smallville, and I won't go watch anything Superman
doesn't have to be Smallville. But if you want to
(23:40):
follow along with us, go watch some Smallville and up
up in a way.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
See you back here next week, Spo, get inside.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
Full and I will give you anything. No ill.
Speaker 1 (24:18):
All my dreams are far coll SOMD
Speaker 3 (24:37):
That's you,
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