#5.15 “Cyborg” Recap & Review

NOTE: Read no further if you don’t want to be spoiled! There is a killer of a cliff-hanger at the end of this episode which I spoil; big time. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Recap:

Victor Stone (guest star Lee Thompson Young) is released from a secret lab by a sympathetic scientist. He breaks through steel doors to escape his pursuers right before he gets hit by Lana’s car.

Victor takes Lana to the hospital. Then Martha gets a mysterious package with a DVD player that shows something that disturbs her, they don’t show what she sees at first. After talking with Lana, Clark soon catches up with Victor and discovers his metallic inner workings using x-ray vision. Martha gets a phone call about the video she’d received just before Lionel walks in. He offers his help with whatever it is that is upsetting her; she refuses and says she can handle it.

Clark and Victor talk about how Victor came to be at the lab. Clark researches the lab with Chloe’s help and it turns out that the company running the experiments, Syntechnics, is owned by Luthorcorp. Furious, Clark goes to Lex to confront him about the experimentation. Lex denies any knowledge of the lab or its research.

Lana visits Victor to ask him about his girlfriend just as two bad guys show up and shoot Victor. Clark knocks them out but Victor is hurt and “bleeds” a black oily substance. Clark and Lana take Victor to Lois’ apartment. Victor reveals the fluid he’s bleeding runs his power cells and that he’ll die if it isn’t repaired. Clark leaves to try to find the doctor that helped Victor before.

He goes to the doctor’s house where he finds the doctor dead just before Lex shows up. They fight outside about the experiments done on Victor. Clark reveals that Victor was shot and is dying. Back at Lois’ apartment Lana tells Victor about the doctor being dead. Discouraged, Victor goes off to find his girlfriend so he can see her “one last time.” Lex lays in wait and captures Victor. Lionel shows up at the money drop and scares off Martha’s blackmailer. She reluctantly agrees to accept Lionel’s help. Back in the lab, Victor is repaired but Lex tells him that they will put in a chip that will dampen his emotions. After discovering Victor had gone, Clark rescues Victor just as the evil doctor was about to install the chip. Clark confronts Lex about what he’s done and Lex finally gets the last word and walks out on Clark.

Clark and Lana get Victor together with his girlfriend, Katherine. Martha talks with Lionel about his having taken care of the extortionist. She thanks him and says she’s glad he’s her friend. Clark and Lana have a talk about the state of their relationship.

Finally, Lionel pays off the black-mailer and then looks at the video Martha received. It was tape of Clark saving Lana from the explosion in Lockdown. Lionel looks at a freeze frame of Clark holding Lana in the firestorm of the explosion and says “Your secret is safe with me… Kal-El.”

Review:

Whoa… what a great cliff-hanger which ended this episode, but I’ll talk about that more at the end of the review (that’s my own little version of a cliff-hanger…) since almost everything leading up to it was great too.

I don’t think that it’s possible to say enough good things about this episode. Everyone did an excellent job starting with the marvelous guest star that played Victor, Lee Thompson Young.

It’s easy to criticize many of Smallville’s guest stars, many of them haven’t been all that great at acting to be honest, but Lee Thompson Young was awesome. Lee could easily have played Victor much more dour and glum. He’s been changed into something not entirely human, even if it isn’t readily apparent to anyone who hadn’t just hit him with their car. That would be enough to depress anyone and Victor was perhaps understandably wishing he had died in that car crash that killed his family. Also, it would have been easy for Lee to turn the Cyborg character into one that is more of an automaton: a mechanical and emotionless person, influenced unduly by his unique physiology. However, Lee had unexpectedly added a wonderful tenderness and humanity to his portrayal that showed a unique insight into what someone like Victor might be going through. Here’s hoping that Victor (and Lee Thompson Young) makes a return appearance sometime in the future.

I usually save the comments on the director ’til the last part of the review, but I’m going to mention helmer Glen Winter earlier than normal because he did such a wonderful job. Although actors can still put in a good performance even with a bad director, rarely do they excel the way everyone did in this episode. Everyone from vets Annette O’Toole and John Glover on down did excellent work and I think that’s thanks to the stellar directorial debut of Glen Winter.

Normally one of Smallville’s two directors of photography (Barry Donleavy is the other), this episode saw Glen Winter sit down in the director’s chair for the first time. I am always impressed with the photography in the show, so much so that I usually mention it in my reviews. Winter has shot some of the more beautifully filmed episodes in the series, recent standouts “Lexmas” and “Vengeance” among them, so I was looking forward to this episode a lot. I figured it would be a good looking show, if nothing else, but it was more than that: It was well-paced, exciting, beautifully acted and tightly directed. Winter has a lot to proud of in his directorial debut. I hope he gets added to the roster of regular helmers for the show.

Tom did a fantastic job in this episode, as is usual for him of late, but he especially excelled in the scenes with Victor and Lex. With Victor, Clark came off as more of a mentor, a boy who is just coming to terms with his “otherness” and needs guidance and help. Clark provided that to Victor and Tom played perfectly the protectiveness Clark felt for Victor.

In his scenes with Lex, Clark was his normal sanctimonious self, but this time Lex finally fought back. The interplay between the two men was terrific. I love how Tom plays the resolute nature that Clark has recently developed. His confrontations in this episode with Lex were more like the openly antagonistic relationship that typifies Clark’s dealings with Lex in the comics. He’s becoming more and more Supermanly each episode and I’m loving every minute of screen time he’s getting lately.

Michael Rosenbaum must be ecstatic that Lex is finally now openly revealing his evil side. Lex’s involvement with Victor’s captivity and the unethical experimentation on an unwilling human subject was pretty damn evil. Michael’s playing the duplicitous Lex with a finesse that is a lot of fun to watch. And I ABSOLUTELY LOVED that Lex finally got the final word in the library scene with Clark and left the room saying “You can let yourself out.” That was fantastic and Michael played Lex’s impatience with Clark’s self-righteousness perfectly. What an incredible scene for both men.

I find it interesting that Clark is about the only person that knows what Lex is up to. Even the normally conspiracy-minded Chloe was skeptical that Lex would have anything to do with the evil-doers that had changed Victor without his consent. The speed of the build up to whatever it is that will finally cause the rift between the former best friends has picked up and it’s a good thing. I can’t wait to see what will finally pull the two men irretrievably apart.

And how creepy was Lionel? Yikes… I’m not sure what to think about what he did in this episode. Was Lionel manipulating Martha for some nefarious purpose so he had hired the man to blackmail Martha? We know that he lied about not knowing what the extortionist had on Clark. And how had Lionel known Clark’s birth name? Is he still channeling Jor-El like he did in “Hidden” or does he actually remember what happened when Jor-El had controlled him? Or has he figured that out in some other way? And how terrific is John Glover working with this story arc? Both he and Annette O’Toole have given us some fantastic interactions to watch and watching John Glover play this far more subtly manipulative Lionel is pure joy.

Scribe Caroline Dries, in her apparent professional writing debut, gave us an episode that was better than usual. Victor’s story wonderfully echoed Clark’s and gave Clark some things to think about. The act break cliff-hangers were fantastic and the dialogue was better than the normally solid work other Smallville writers produce. And that was one hell of a cliff-hanger for the spring hiatus. Damn but I want find out more about what Lionel is really up to and I don’t want to wait the six or so weeks we’ve got until the next new episode airs. Kudos to Caroline for writing such an excellent script! Every writer should have such a wonderful episode as their first.

Director of Photography Gregory Littleton, also in his own Smallville debut, shot a beautiful episode. The lab scenes were wonderful, especially at the opening of the tease when Victor was alone in the dark lab restrained in the cage. The scenes between Lionel and Martha were great. I found it interesting that Lionel was lit from behind in several of the scenes. The scene in the first act when he first walked in on Martha and stood in the doorway he was lit from behind and there was some haze in the air that made the light beams visible. The haze and the beams coming into the room from over his head and shoulders gave him an almost angelic appearance. Does that mean he’s just trying to help Martha like he claims?

But I think my favorite moments from the photographer came in the tease during the chase scene. The beginning of the chase had low angle tracking shots combined with some hand-held shots and dramatic lighting (along with some quick cutting from the editor) helped heighten the tension during that chase. Later in the chase when Victor ran through what looked like an abandoned warehouse there was dust in the air and the light beams from the sun cut through the haze in the dark rooms. It was beautiful and dramatic.

The special effects were wonderful, especially the jump that Victor and Clark take off the roof and the X-ray peek into Victor’s body. As long as they couldn’t duplicate the implants into Victor’s body showing, like the way they are on Teen Titans, it was a nice touch that the implants inside his body were similar to the cartoon version.

What a terrific episode and I think the only thing I had a problem with it was that Tom wasn’t in this more, but that probably isn’t really any reason to mark the episode down so I give this episode 5 secret evil labs out of a possible 5.

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