#9.17 “Upgrade” Review

NOTE:This review contains spoilers, read no further if you haven’t seen the episode yet and do not wish to learn important plot details ahead of time.

All I knew about this episode going in was that it was going to bring back John Corben and Clark was going to be hopped up on Red Kryptonite. Really that’s all I needed to know for me to highly anticipate the hour: Tom Welling usually does wonderful things when Clark is on Red-K and I absolutely adored Brian Austin Green as John Corben in ‘Metallo.’ That one was my favorite episode of the season. I even had hope of this rivaling that one in my affections, how could it miss with Red-K infected Clark and Brian Austin Green? Even while it fell short of that mark, overall it was still an enjoyable outing.

I guess it started out with a bit of a contrivance (How many medical labs even have Bunsen burners, much use them in the same room they store tanks of oxygen?), but it was still a very good tease. The explosion was surprising and the unexpected save by John Corben had a terrific reveal. But that was probably a contrivance as well. What was it that Lois had fallen down? Was it an elevator shaft? I didn’t see the doors she went through if it had been…

Written by Andrew Landis and Julia Swift, the episode was exciting and kept up a good pace. Despite the little bit of cuteness with Clark and Lois at the beginning of the first act, they immediately jumped into the meat of the story. Lois got a call from Zod (pretending to be the Blur) and then she finds John in pretty bad shape down in the basement of the Talon.

John explains what’s going on in some nice, yet quick, expository dialogue. It wasn’t exactly an information dump, John was a bit altered because of the trauma he’d gone through and the way that was written fit in with what he’d been going through. It was a very short first act, at only a little over six minutes long, so I guess they didn’t have much time to fool around. They got us in and out pretty quick and Clark got infected with the Red-K at the end of it.
Next, Chloe is forced to admit she’s the one that was stockpiling weapons and then Clark discovers John in trying to investigate one of Chloe’s stockpiles. Weakened by the Kryptonite, he needs to get rescued by Zod which also shows Clark that Zod has somehow gotten his powers. Big surprise that, I’m amazed the Red-K fueled Clark took it so calmly. I guess it was a slow burn, he did show his fury in the next act when he confronted Zod.

As for Metallo: I liked how John Corben’s entry back to the show tied into Zod’s and Clark’s stories. Although, I’m not sure he was put to the best use here. You have a guest star of Brian Austen Green’s caliber, a popular actor who had been in other popular genre shows; he probably should have been featured more strongly.

Although I did like that John had been redeemed a bit. He is obviously still fond of Lois and isn’t completely over his hatred of The Blur, but he still came around and helped Clark. Although, I’m not sure what he meant when he told Clark that he owed him right before he stabbed him in the stomach, unless he was being sarcastic. Or maybe he was referring to the fact that Clark’s dropping a couple hundred pounds of ice on him knocked the ’emotion chip’ off John’s neck, but I wish that had been made clearer.

I liked Chloe and Tess banding together to try and protect Clark from himself. When I’d seen vague mentions of that online beforehand, I wasn’t sure that I would, but it worked out well for both characters.

Tess and Chloe have the same goals in trying to protect Clark, and the world, from the Kandorians, but I hope this doesn’t turn them to being BFFs. Chloe is right to not trust Tess completely so it was a good move of hers to turn off that tracker on John before it revealed his destination. I’m glad that they showed that Chloe wasn’t entirely trusting of Tess. She has done too many things to hurt people for Chloe to ever forget who she is, but I’ll be interested to see what happens next with them.

I’m curious what Tess’s motivations are with Zod, however. She moved to get closer to him at the end, playing him against Clark and the growing rebel faction within the Kandorians, yet that doesn’t seem to be in either hers (or the Earth’s) best interests.

I’m curious where that storyline will be going, especially now that Zod’s apparently given powers to only his loyal followers. Zod and his people have now become a much bigger threat since Clark and Zod destroyed all (or most) of Chloe’s Kryptonite stockpile and there aren’t as many options to fight a contingent of angry and dangerous Kryptonians.

I don’t know why Tess has seemingly forgotten what the future had been like, what Zod had done to humanity, but there’s no way that Clark would have. She’s playing Zod for some reason that isn’t obvious yet, but what’s Clark’s excuse?

I know he’s all about hope and believing the best about people, but Zod is also the man who had summarily executed Alia. The original version of Zod killed their home planet for whatever reason. Despite the fact that nothing like that will happen now, Zod is still a man who’s capable of starting World War III and making possible the near complete subjugation of humanity. Clark himself told John Jones in ‘Checkmate’ that he needs to consider that eventuality might still be possible in the future. Now, in just the next episode he’s making Zod his best friend forever?
I don’t buy it.

I can see Clark being torn, or even being cautiously optimistic about Zod, but to completely forget what he’d seen of Zod’s actions in the future? I don’t think so. He knows the extreme danger Zod poses now that he has his powers. Clark isn’t that naïve.

I don’t care how lonely and how sorry for himself he’s feeling, Clark has a good memory. He’s not going to forget what Zod is capable of, even if this version of Zod hasn’t really done anything like that yet. Although I think summarily executing his followers is bad enough to give Clark a reason to not completely trust Zod.

Yeah, of course Clark is going to see the best in people, even Zod, even Lex, but that doesn’t mean he all of a sudden becomes trusting of Zod’s alleged good intentions. He’s done too much for me to really buy Clark trusting Zod to be a good boy just because they bonded after burning up Chloe’s kryptonite stockpiles and playing pranks on humans.
Oh, and I’m not sure even under influence of Red-K that Clark would play pranks like making it snow when it’s 64º out. Maybe he would have done that back in season two or three, although he hadn’t had the Super-breath power back then, but I don’t see him doing something so childish and impulsive now, Red-K influence or not. That was yet another contrivance in an episode that had more than its fair share.

I hope Clark feeling like Zod’s his brother is going somewhere worthwhile; otherwise I don’t like it. Maybe Clark will come to his senses soon or something will happen that makes the storyline seem more logical, but I guess we’ll see. Yet, whatever it is it’ll have to be soon. There are only a few episodes left after this one, so they don’t really have much time left to deal with it.

Although, in watching the episode again, it sort of makes sense. Zod had brought up the fact that, despite their differences, Jor-El was like the opposite side of his soul.

They were fated to be enemies, perhaps, despite their initial friendship. It is exactly like what Clark and Lex shared in the past and will share in the future. If they’re trying to build up that parallel in our minds before Zod and Clark finally have their confrontation, maybe it will be worthwhile to explore this a bit before the end of season. Also, it did give Clark more information about the Book of Rao that Jor-El had hidden back in the farm.
One problem I had with the pace was that it was probably too fast. With things moving as fast as they were in this episode, it’s probably a miracle that anything makes sense much less made for a cohesive story. Things were more or less made sense, yet there were a few points where things seemed to come out of the blue and I got confused. It makes me wonder whether things were left on the cutting room floor.

There were several things: how did Lois save John? He caught her, how did the explosion save him? How did Lois figure out where one of the kryptonite stockpiles was so she could tell John about it so he could get his fix? How did Zod know that Clark had a map of Chloe’s kryptonite stockpiles? How did Tess discover a secret rebellion within the Kandorians? What did Zod mean about Tess sending a ‘modern day metal Nero’ after him? I assume he’d meant John Corben, but when had John gone after Zod? And when exactly did Lois get hold of that Red-K heart for John?

And that reminds me of something, why was the chip that took away John’s free will called an ’emotion chip’? That doesn’t make any sense, it has the opposite affect from you’d expect from that name: it doesn’t give him emotion, it takes it away. It made more like a machine. I figured it must be a reference to the other fandom Brian is connected to, the “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles” series. I mean, there was a big issue with emotion chips in the films anyway, I didn’t watch the show much, but it weren’t for that show the reference wouldn’t make sense.

So there were some things that weren’t completely explained and I was confused at a few points because of it, but some might have been due to directing (or editing) choices so I can’t totally lay the blame for all of those on the writers. So, despite the problems I had with a lot of the details, I didn’t have really any major problems with the writing a broader sense. The pace was good, the act breaks were all effective and the stakes constantly rose for Clark and others. It was an exciting hour that I enjoyed it for the most part. Not sure this was the best story to bring John Corben back in on, but I liked what he’d done in this episode. Overall Andrew and Julia had done a good job, but it’s not a perfect outing.

Tom Welling was awesome. I loved how he had Clark act on Red-K this time, it was different than what he’d done before. Clark was still cocky, but Tom didn’t play it as broadly as he’d done before. That makes sense given the darker storylines for Clark this season. He gave Clark a far more complicated series of motivations that made the Red-K infection more interesting than the last few times they’d done it.

Although I’m not sure I like Clark’s more conciliatory attitude toward Zod, I don’t have any problems with what Tom did with those scenes. After the Red-K had gotten out of his system, he had Clark talk to Chloe with such a sincere and seemingly heartfelt earnestness, it just seemed to be the perfect way to play that.

Allison Mack did a great job in this episode. I really liked what she had Chloe do when dealing with Tess and their détente while they tried to help Clark. She played Chloe’s complicated motivations well. I liked the edge she gave the scenes with Tess and the slightly prickly attitude she’d portrayed Chloe having in the last scene between her and Clark.

Erica Durance was terrific as Lois. I like the way Erica plays Lois when she’s investigating: she seems so intense and single-minded that it makes sense that Lois will get into trouble. I liked how Erica dealt with John, at first suspicious and then willing to help when she realized he had been hurt by Tess and was just trying to help her.
Cassidy Freeman was fantastic as Tess. Probably my favorite scene of her was the one with Zod. While I’m not sure quite what Tess is up to there, I do like the way that Cassidy played it. She was a bit playful, even while keeping the edge Tess had developed with Zod of late.

Brian Austin Green was again fantastic as John Corben. I absolutely adore the character and I love how Brian plays him. It was interesting to see John be more like a cyborg in this episode, the way he adjusted his physicality when the ’emotion chip’ was installed was perfect. I like the ease with which he had John deal with Lois, even after she basically broke his heart.

As much as I hated that one line he said to her, “I hope your guy knows who you really are because you are a real… dame, Lois Lane,” I loved how delivered that. ‘Dame’ is a pretty old-fashioned term for a young guy like John to use, so I’m not sure how much I like him saying it, but he put so much meaning into it, so much affection and respect, I had no doubt what John meant by it. He did an awesome job. I really hope Brian can come back next season so I’m glad they really left it open.

Everyone looked awesome in the episode, so I gotta say that Director of Photography Barry Donlevy did an outstanding job shooting the episode. The lighting was perfect.

James Philpott I’m not sure gave his best work here. His set for the lab was a bit confusing, was that an elevator shaft Lois fell down or what? It would have been nice to gotten a better sense of that being an elevator shaft through inclusion of cables or something in there. All they had were little lights going down the walls, it was confusing. It didn’t look like an elevator shaft, but what else could it be? A stairwell with no stairs?

I don’t know what was done differently with the hair, but everyone’s hair looked fabulous in this episode. So, Sarah Koppes did a great job as Key Hairstylist.

I’m not sure who these last two bits should belong to, so I’ll put them here at the end:

One: I hated that Clark’s eyes turned red while talking to someone who should have know what red irises meant (Chloe) and she didn’t have any clue he was on Red-K. His eyes changing colors while infected with different types of kryptonite (they also did that with the ‘gemstone kryptonite’ in ‘Persuasion’) is something new this season. I liked it better the old way when his eyes only changed color at the beginning of the infection instead of changing colors randomly while he’s infected.

Two: there was a pretty big continuity oops in the episode.

In Clark’s confrontation with Chloe in the beginning of the second act, there’s a broken chair in the background that wasn’t broken moments before when Chloe gets knocked down by Clark. Something obviously got cut: I think we saw a bit more of Clark throwing Chloe around in the previews, but that part of the scene apparently didn’t make the episode. You can see it on the floor behind her before Clark burns the sign of the House of El into the wall, yet after he leaves and she stands up its back in one piece. That was a bit sloppy, but it makes me think there was a whole lot of stuff that went on in the scene that got cut. I hope the deleted scenes on the DVD set include ones from this episode. It will probably fill in some major blanks.

While I did enjoy this episode quite a bit the first time I saw it, it didn’t bear up well with repeat viewings. So I give this episode 4 pulsing Red Kryptonite hearts out of a possible 5.

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