#7.17 “Sleeper” Review

WARNING: This review will spoil you rotten, so don’t you dare read this until after you’ve seen this episode. I gave you fair warning…

You know, I had a bad feeling about this episode as soon as I realized the tease was a flashback.

I loathe that as a plot device. I mean I LOATHE it with a passion. I cannot express how much I hate flashback episodes. In fact, I hate it so much any hope I had for this episode actually died a very quick and painful death even before the tease was over.

I hate flashback episodes mostly because the device had been used so poorly by Smallville in the past. It’s a crutch to insert tension and drama into a moment and to maybe even, especially in this case, use up some screen time of a short episode by showing parts of the action twice. I really think with “Sleeper” that they didn’t have enough story in order to tell it all in the space of the hour, so they had to tell some of it twice.

I can only think of a one episode of Smallville that’s used this device well, “Combat.” “Spirit,” also directed by this episodes helmer Whitney Ransick, was a particularly good example of it being used badly.

I’m surprised scribe Caroline Dries produced such a boring episode, but what surprises me more is how much ground was lost from what had been gained in just the last episode. Clark, so passive and wrapped up in trying to protect Lana in “Veritas,” had actually shown some backbone and acted very much like his Future Super-self in “Descent.” He has seriously backslid as a character in this episode.

Here in this episode, not only was he obsessed with Lana, spending all night with her at the asylum, he was totally ignoring the promise he’d made to Chloe at the end of “Descent”. She told him, massively stating the obvious by-the-way, that Clark had to get the keys away from Lex.

Clark had replied, “He’s not going to have the chance. I won’t let him.”

What a great line.

What a perfectly awesome Superman moment…

The resolve in Tom’s voice, the determination on his face: it was all perfectly like Superman. What a great scene and what a terrific promise that I was sure he was going to keep. At least, I was sure until this sorry excuse of an episode.

So, why on earth would they take Clark a step forward, get him closer to his future-self, and then move three steps back in just the next episode? Why would he tell Chloe that he doesn’t care about Lex now? What happened? Is he bipolar? Does Clark have multiple personality disorder? Why the change in the space of an episode? Why squander the ground they’d gained so quickly?

I just said in my “Descent” review how much like Superman Clark had become. Then they turn him into a guy who forgets a promise he had just made to not let Lex get away with anything.

I know they’re getting another season, but come on. I love this show and tend to be more forgiving than a lot of other reviewers online, but what they did with Clark here was ridiculous.

And yeah, I can even see why they did it. They needed to put Clark into a sort of a holding pattern for the space of this episode. This was largely what is derisively called by online fans as a “filler” episode. I have said in the past that I don’t think that Smallville really has filler episodes, even almost completely pointless episodes show some forward momentum in the season’s storylines. There was some moving along here too: Lex got to Zurich and Clark did finally buy a clue about where Brainiac took Kara and Chloe and Jimmy patched things up a bit. But somehow at the same time, and inexplicably, they actually moved backwards with Clark’s storyline.

The filler vibe in this episode, and I truly think this is like Hero or Blue with the ends very much justifying the means here, is doubly inexcusable because at this point they went in knowing that they were two episodes short this season. Why even have a “filler” episode to begin with? They were lucky they got five more to shoot after the strike ended. Some shows didn’t get to finish their seasons, like Heroes, or only got a few more episodes to shoot, like Supernatural (coming in at 6 episodes short of a full season). Why blow the chance to do their best every single episode they had left?

Maybe this dreck happened due to rewrites done when Tom was given the helming duties for the next episode, “Apocalypse…” The man isn’t a machine, after all. He needs time to do the prep work for what could possibly be the most important episode he’s directed so far. Or maybe it was due to some reshuffling they had to do to get five episodes shot in only 6 and a half weeks after the writers’ strike was over…. I have no clue why a normally very dependable writer (“Subterranean,” notwithstanding) like Caroline would produce dreck like this.

I mean, not only do they do this to Clark, they also turned hapless and not-quite-with it Jimmy into James Bond? I understand that this is homage to a comic book series on Jimmy, but get serious… Does anyone really believe he could take on a trained government agent and not have his butt handed to him on a platter? He can’t take good enough photos to guarantee his job much less have good enough eye-hand coordination to make an omelet without breaking eggshells into the bowl. How could he possibly last longer than a second with a trained operative?

And why did they have him do a tango with Chloe? I know Allison Mack has dance experience, but I don’t buy Jimmy as a good dancer anymore than I buy him competing with James Bond for a 00 license.

And why was it Clark who had suggested that Chloe break Federal law to hack into top secret spy satellites? With Jonathan and Martha gone, I thought he’d become the new moral compass of the show. Why would he want Chloe to break the law and risk jail for him? How did she even get the skills to do that anyway? She’s not a hacker in the traditional sense and she’s not a computer science major. She’s a journalist.

Why is a satellite monitoring station in the same building as a night club to begin with? Does any night club actually want to be in a building that secure? It’s a silly plot point.

As much as I hated this episode, there were some things to like. I’m glad I was right about Lex not being guilty of Gina’s murder in the last episode… The guy who attacked Lex certainly was the same man, he looked the same… However, his attempt on Lex’s life opened up more questions than answers. Who is he? Why was he surprised that Lex wasn’t one of “them”? Was he referring to the Veritas group Lionel had killed off? Why try to kill Lex if he didn’t know who he was?

And how does that thing-a-ma-jig that Lex retrieved from Zurich even control Clark? What does it do? The engravings in the brass looked kind of like a map of some kind… A map to what? It’s an intriguing aspect to the Veritas storyline.

Another thing I was glad to find out was what Brainiac had been up to and where he’d taken Kara, even though it’s a bit of a stretch. So, she’s on Krypton in the past, but why did he need her there? Why take her to the past? Does it make it easier for him to get closer to Clark as a baby Kal-El on Krypton? How could she get away from him to communicate with Clark in the future? Maybe they’ll explain that, but color me massively confused by that specifically and by this entire episode in general.

Arguably, it had enough storyline advancement to probably not be a totally worthless episode, but I was bored silly during most of it. I was completely under whelmed so I only watched this twice. It fared even less well on a second viewing. I can honestly say the best part of this episode was the preview for the next episode that Tom directed, “Apocalypse…”

Hopefully, Caroline will restore my faith in her writing skills with her next effort. This one was massively disappointing on several levels.

Tom Welling was barely in this episode, having less than ten minutes of screen time, since he was given some time off to prepare for his helming duties. I don’t know how much I can say about him.

Well, I could probably talk about the wonderful scenes he had with his costars. Despite his character’s inexplicably deliberately obtuse reaction to the threat that Lex posed (yeah, that’s me saying he was a Big Dumb Alien, BDA, but in a nice way), he did well in his scenes from an acting standpoint.

He’s always had nice chemistry with Allison, as he did again here, but it was nice to see him getting some quality screen time with Aaron’s Jimmy. While they aren’t really friends in the comics, Jimmy looks up to Clark and will ask him for advice. Tom did a good job acting the older, wiser friend. It was nice that Tom and Aaron were able to portray a little bit of that and it was probably one of the few good things in this episode. I hope they do it more in the future.

Michael was terrific in this episode, even though he had even less screen time than Tom. He kicked it up a notch with the evil-doing, but showed a nice touch of regret when Lex looked at the passport wallet Lionel had given Lex.

However, his miniscule amount of screen time in this episode is inexcusable, actually. They knew coming back that they maybe only have him for just the rest of the season since he still hasn’t signed up for next year. So why waste a minute and a half of his potential screen time for the sake of a Jimmy/Chloe tango? Inexplicable…

Allison Mack did a terrific job as Chloe, I guess, but the plot holes got in the way. She did have some nice moments with both Tom and Aaron. I especially liked the morning scene between Jimmy and Chloe. She played Chloe as sincerely charmed by Jimmy so she was reluctant to leave, but I guess she had a meeting with Clark she couldn’t miss. Oh, and it’s nice to see Allison showing off her skills on the dance floor, but the choreography didn’t help her much. The dance seemed stiff and I don’t think it was photographed well.

I love Aaron Ashmore’s Jimmy, I do, don’t get me wrong. He was charming and earnest as Jimmy, yet in this episode he bored me silly. He was adorably goofy in the opening breakfast scene with Chloe and his confusion with escalation of the episode’s events was well played, but I couldn’t wait for this episode to be over. I don’t think it was his fault, even though he had the most screen time of anyone in this episode, but it makes me not look forward to any future Jimmy-centric episodes.

I was thoroughly disappointed with this episode on several levels, so despite the excellent ending and terrific acting by everyone I give this episode 2 Veritas secret brass what’s-its out of a possible 5.

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