TNMC

Have you ever stopped and wondered what it would be like if Lana and Clark had kids? No? Oh, right. You’re not a ten year old girl. Gotcha. Well, the producers obviously thought it was a dandy idea.

Steven DeKnight wore two hats for this episode. Given his previous association with shows like Angel and Buffy, I figured this episode would be one awesome bit of Smallville. Nope. There was only one decent moment in the entire thing and that came right near the end. I’ll get back to that in a second, but first, the Lana.

I’ve said my piece regarding the Lana over and over again with pretty much no relief. I’ve raged and bellowed pretty much constantly for a couple years now. Maybe longer. I can’t remember. This show just sort of bleeds together in my memory. But I have to wonder why she was so irritating in "Ageless". None of her usual drama is present. She’s not saying anything about "secrets" or "honesty" or "witches". The Pink Warrior Princess doesn’t pop up at all. She’s just got this look in her face, I guess. I can’t quite put that into words. She just irritates the living hell out of me. For one, when you’ve got a kid who’s freak-power is to age rapidly with almost explosive results, what do you do? You take him to a windmill set and you stand on it with him knowing that he could probably kill you at any second.

Oh, the kid? That’s about the least bothersome bit about all of this. The Freak of the Week didn’t really get on my nerves, except that the actor playing the young adult version of him wasn’t exactly easy to look at. Neither was the guy playing his father, now that I think of it. I guess that was appropriate then. As for the aging, the kid was a second-generation meteor freak. His mother had some minor ability to short out electronics, but it never really came of anything. I’m not sure if the father had any freakish powers beyond his Neanderthal forehead. Basically, these two stupid Smallville kids have sex at some party. The girl is pregnant and goes through the whole shebang (I never really thought about that word before now) in a couple of weeks, and winds up being disintegrated when her son is born in an energetic explosion.

The kid ages rapidly, each time accompanied by a burst of energy and light that does damage to his surroundings. Clark takes it in pretty quickly, and even wants to take the kid home. He seems to think the kid might be another Kryptonian for a minute, so his eagerness was understandable. He doesn’t stop helping the kid when he realizes it’s not like him, but you can tell he’s disappointed. That was subtle, which I’m not used to on this show.

So the kid things Clark and Lana are his parents, even calling them Mom and Dad. This makes them uncomfortable, but they don’t really put forth much effort to stop him. When they realize the kid is dying, they try to find his biological father. The guy’s a real jerk, and refuses to do anything for his freak offspring. This results in his accidental death at his own son’s hands, which I’m not sure made sense. I mean the kid accidentally impaled his father on something, but it didn’t look sharp to me. Maybe my television set is dying. Needless to say, the kid did a bad thing. And that was his last chance to survive beyond the episode. The kid’s system was unstable, and Lex discovered that the kid’s only hope was a bone marrow transplant from a living donor. The father was the only possibility at a match. This is crap, since bone marrow can be matched outside of your immediate family. Then again, this kid doesn’t exactly have leukemia, either. Nice try, I guess.

So the kid dies, brilliantly, on top of that stupid windmill with only Clark there to contain the explosion. Clark survives the explosion, but was obviously in it. He looks like it, at least, but Lana seems to accept his "I got out just before" cock and bull. There’s a lot of time spent on how sad Clark and Lana are about all of this. Which is why next week we will have gone back to the way things were as though nothing had ever happened. That’s the Smallville way. Unless it’s about the Lana, everything stays more or less the same.

Now for the good stuff. Lionel is being kept on a short leash by Genevieve Teague and he takes steps to keep her away from Lex. Genevieve, you see, believes that Lex has the Element Jason stole from China, which Lana later pretended was stolen from her. Lionel poisons Genevieve and offers her a trade. She gives him the Element she stole from Bridgette Crosby and he’ll give her the antidote. Also, she’ll stay away from Lex or anything that happens to him will happen to her. She seems to agree. I liked that moment, but I think it was awesome b/c the rest of the episode pretty much sucked. The whole thing ends with Lex being all dark and evil. He tells Clark that the research they did on the aging boy, Evan was his name I think, could advance cancer and AIDS research by decades. Lex claims he’s going to release the research to every institution in the world, so Evan’s death was not in vain. Clark likes this, even seems to look at Lex differently. Then when Lex’s chief researcher asks him if he’s actually going to release the research, Lex just says, "Eventually." The End. Nice that. I give "Ageless":

3 out of 10