By Brandon Nolta
Do Kryptonians dream of crystalline sheep? As illustrated by the sequence that opens this week’s installment, Kara (Laura Vandervoort) dreams of home, and her beloved father, who sent her to Earth. Unfortunately, Kara tends to fly when she sleeps and narrowly avoids getting plowed by an airliner. After the FAA files a funky report, Clark (Tom Welling) noses around and finds out from Jimmy (Aaron Ashmore) that Kara was following a lead on her missing Kryptonian crystal, and decides to dig further, which takes him to Lionel (John Glover). While they discuss the mysterious government program responsible for alien autopsies, Agent Carter (Kim Coates), the head badass, is investigating the crystal and having a pissing match with Lex (Michael Rosenbaum). Not literally, of course.
Proving that Kara’s time in the TV immersion chamber or whatever her ship had was effective, Kara heads to a bar and seduces information on the crystal out of a hapless geek. Unfortunately, Agent Carter must be psychic, because the crystal was moved before Kara arrived. Meanwhile, Chloe (Allison Mack) goes to a counseling clinic for meteor victims, and finds out that Lana (Kristin Kreuk) is running the show. This should be good, but Lana’s giving off the “I’ve got a secret” vibe. Speaking of weird vibes, Clark catches up to Kara and tries to talk to her, but Kara’s not thrilled with Clark and punches him through a wall. Whee!
Kara hotfoots it over to Lex’s place to see if he’s got the crystal, only to run into Agent Carter and his magic kryptonite handcuffs. As an encore, Carter shoots Lex with a tranquilizer gun and spirits Kara away. Clark gets the address, and guess what he does next? Well, we’ll get there in a minute; first, we go back to Kara. Under the influence of Carter’s torture, she relives a memory of her aunt, Clark’s mother Lara, played by none other than former Supergirl Helen Slater.
Lara, visiting the Kent household in 1986, already intended to send Kal-El to the Kents, based on Jor-El’s experience, and it turns out that Kara had stopped by as well. In the real world, Clark shows up to help, and somehow, he ends up sharing a memory with Kara that shows a side of her father she wasn’t happy to remember. Turns out Zor-El was in love with Lara, and was a wee bit obsessive. Fortunately for the Kryptonians, Lionel shows up just in time to plug Agent Carter and save the kids. Does everything end happy? Well, it looks like it … until it turns out that Clark has picked up Kara’s crystal and didn’t tell her. This won’t bite him in the ass…
It’s nice to see Ms. Slater brought into the mix; SMALLVILLE seems bound and determined to reunite all the former Kryptonians into one series, and they’re doing good. Squeeze in Tim Daly and George Newbern anytime soon, they’ll be right on track. This episode is building on the mythology, and seems to be bent on furthering character changes, i.e. Jimmy dating Kara, Lana heading toward Darth Vader territory, etc. It’s a strong showing, although Chloe gets sidelined for too long. It’ll be a shame if they turn this spunky sidekick into Mopey Chick for any length of time. Then again, there’s always the Oracle route, though it would be nice if they could get there without shooting her in the spine. Guess we’ll see; there’s lots of season left to go.