DtS Review – Bloodline
By: Kevin
“Look, uh, when it comes to Clark’s… THAT… I steer clear.”
~ Oliver Queen
A serene, sunny morning dawns at the ol’ Kent Farm as Lois arrives to take Clark up on his standing (and seemingly forgotten about) offer to live back on the farm like she did in years past. Lois explains that it’s due to Chloe & Jimmy’s nocturnal activities – an awkward (and humorous) fact that Clark didn’t need to know about. Lois then hands Clark a mystery package that she found on the doorstep – a cookie-filled care package from Ma Kent perhaps? Clark opens the box to find the blue crystal that Tess has been searching for during the past couple of episodes. Clark is confused and a little hesitant, but after all, he has received “gifts” like this before from Virgil Swann and the like. But there’s no note and no return address. As soon as Clark touches the crystal, it comes to life, soon engulfing the farm house in a blinding light that sends the familiar (but still really cool) Phantom Zone flattened cube (for lack of a more-descriptive… er… description) spiraling out of the kitchen window into the distant sky, carrying Clark AND Lois to an uncertain fate. As far as “cliffhanger” openings go, this is a pretty sweet one! Sure, Clark’s been to the Phantom Zone before and managed to escape by the hair of his rugged chinny-chin-chin, but never has a non-Kryptonian like Lois Lane been given a ticket to ride as well. You gotta admit – that’s a pretty fun & exciting twist.
Enter Chloe Sullivan; come to help Lois with the move, and starts putting the pieces of the puzzle together when Lois & Clark are nowhere to be found. No sooner does she pick up the crystal off the floor and put it in her bag than Tess Mercer slithers out of her hiding spot behind Chloe. Tess knows the crystal is here, somewhere, and she want it bad. When Chloe quickly goes into defensive cover-up mode, I love that the writers give Tess the sarcastic retorts they do. Because, let’s face it most of the lies & misdirection that people give to explain away the other-worldly happenings in Smallville are pretty ludicrous. Chloe & Tess have a nice banter session – a little sarcasm here, a few scathing remarks there, its good stuff, and I like when Allison Mack & Cassidy Freeman share screen-time. It’s not all the time, but they have good chemistry.
Meanwhile, back in the Phantom Zone, Clark wakes up in horror to realize where he is. I for one, l-o-v-e LOVE the look that T.P.T.B. gave “the Zone”. Perhaps it’s been drawn up in the comics, I don’t have a super-extensive knowledge of them, but it’s never been seen on-screen before Smallville. Sure, it’s appeared on the show before, but this episode just re-emphasizes how cool it is – utterly desolate, bleak, gray & lifeless, rivers of blood. Okay, maybe it’s not actually blood, but I like to think it is. But, now Clark is back and, unfortunately for her, Lois is with him. When she comes to she knows that they’ve been abducted by aliens! This is funny, and true in a round-about way. After a few hours of “hoofing it” around The Zone and finding half of a decomposed body, a dark hooded figure leaps from the bluff nearby and knocks out Lois. And just when she was getting used be conscious again, too. After a brief scuffle, Clark sees the Kryptonian arm bracelet and knows that it’s Kara. She’s been in The Zone a lot longer than Clark was his first time around and it shows. She’s a lot rougher around the edges and is a tad hostile -especially on the topic of leaving The Zone. Zor-El built Kara a way out long ago, but she has stayed to prevent another “prison break” like what happened when Clark escaped.
After a short distraction by Davis Bloome to help him with his blackouts/family tree problems, Chloe tracks down Oliver Queen, who is pretty hesitant to get involved with any of Clark’s alien gizmos. But, Chloe won’t take no for an answer and when Oliver finds out it’s Tess Mercer who he’ll need to get certain information from, he’s all to eager to help out. And you know, I’ve honestly never thought about it before, but all those shippers out there that root for “Chlollie”, something about this scene made me want it just a little bit, too.
While Clark stands guard, defending the entrance to the portal, Kara successfully sends Lois back to Earth, but then a Phantom enters the chamber, knocks Kara aside and follows Lois through the portal before it closes. Lois wakes in a shady side of Metropolis at night and is no sooner on her feet than she becomes possessed by the Phantom, who turns out to be Faora, wife of General Zod, and she’s got one thing on her mind – her son. And, after having encounters with Tess & Chloe along the way, she finds her son, Davis Bloome at Metropolis General Hospital. But, he’s not quite what she was expecting – instead of human carnage & destruction, he actually… helping people? What gives? And after “Lois” calls Davis her son and gives him a motherly embrace, Davis gives on of the best “wtf?” faces in the history of mankind. It’s truly priceless.
Alright, so now Chloe & Oliver are getting ready to hack into the crystal at the Isis Foundation & Clark & Kara are still in peril in The Zone. As Chloe starts the hack and her nose starts bleeding and her eyes turn ghostly white (a side-effect of her Brainiac symbiosis), Oliver doesn’t like what he sees and tries to stop her, but it tossed aside like yesterday’s garbage and is the show’s 654,378,234,753rd person to get knocked out at an inopportune time. Clark tries to save Kara, who’s trapped under a Krypto-beam and is gravely injured. I think this scene is really one of Clark & Kara’s best. They’ve always had sort of a rocky relationship. But, in this scene they forge a stronger family bond than ever before. Clark tells Kara that she’s helped him feel like he finally belongs to something and she doesn’t deserve to die in this awful place. Just then, they are sucked back to Earth to find Chloe who’s the bearer of bad tidings about “Faois” – I dunno if I just made that hybrid name up, but I like it. Clark tells Kara to go to the police station and get John Jones (woo hoo! Martian Manhunter)’s Phantom-vacuuming crystal, while he goes and stops Faois.
For me, the real bright spot of this episode is Erica Durance. Well, she’s usually my favorite part, but in this case, it’s cuz of her acting, hehe. She very capably portrays two totally different people and does it in a way that, even though I’m looking at Lois Lane’s body, I can totally believe that it’s not Lois Lane behind the wheel. To me, that’s impressive. Kudos Mrs. Durance, kudos. Faora spins her tale to Davis about his true family tree. That she & Zod were unable to have children and so they created “Davis” as genetic matter containing Krypton’s most powerful life forms all in one cute little genetic package to eventually become Earth’s ultimate destroyer. She stabs the disbelieving Davis through the chest with a metal rod in order to prove that he is not yet who she wants him to be, but that in death he will become stronger. I loved this whole scene, partly because of Erica’s performance, but also because I wasn’t even expecting Doomsday’s origin story to be laid out in front of me. The “Bloodline” I was preoccupied with this whole time was Clark and Kara’s: their reunion. It made giddy to hear Smallville’s family history of “Earth’s ultimate destroyer”. And, now that we know the course of season 9 and all that, Sam Witwer does bear a pretty strong resemblance to Callum Blue.
After a quick skirmish at MetGen, all the hoopla has ended & Faora has been sent packing. Tess summons Clark for a meeting and tells him that Lois was spouting off some pretty strange stuff when she saw her the day before. Clark quickly tries to deflect this, but Tess isn’t budging. She knows something is up. She has a boot print of Clark’s from the Kent Farm that matches the one found at the site in the Arctic where Lex was last seen. Clark won’t spill the beans, but she wants him to trust her. We want to trust Tess, but is she sincere? Tess has learned much from Lex in this regard – she’s very good at hiding her true intentions and motives. I think it’s something that the writers have done a great job with – keeping that air of mystery alongside the “Luthor” villains even after Lex & Lionel have bid farewell.
Just as Clark is getting excited to once again have Kara around the farm again, she tells him that she can’t stay. In the Phantom Zone, she heard rumors of Kandor, a lost Kryptonian city that preceded the destruction of their home world. Clark is eager to help her in her quest but Kara tells him that his destiny is to be there to save and inspire mankind. Aw, just like Pa Kent used to do.
The episode ends ominously as Davis hides himself away in a hospital room and plunges a knife into his abdomen. Well, I should say, he TRIES to plunge a knife into his abdomen. Faora’s magic trick of death has worked and he is now impervious to death, at least death by stabbing of sharp metal objects. Dun-dun DUN!!!!
Okay, so there you have it – Bloodline – a very solid episode in my opinion and packed with a lot of cool stuff. I tried to be more objective with this review and find stuff I didn’t like, but there wasn’t really anything there that I didn’t enjoy. It has a ton of well written dialogue and I highly recommend watching (or re-watching, as the case may be) it for those high-quality smile-inducers alone.
