Hmm, I just watched the season premiere after downloading it this afternoon. Well, the previous season 4 was a no-go for me, so all I know was through spoilers and ep summaries. Maybe there's much I lost out on but SV seems to be a show where even a whole season doesn't matter in the grand scale of events.
I was actually pretty impressed with their idea of the fortress of solitude, though that scenes were subdued by Chloe nearly freezing to death.
Plot-wise it's interesting how Clark can so easily accept his normalness. This feeling rose while he was watching the sunset and in the end I was confirmed by their whole conversation.
By the way, you're right about Super-Barbie and Super-Ken, they were a mere distraction and imho nothing more than servants of this strange black-liquid-whatever(-brainiac?)-being.
At the moment I'd also be quite happy without any shipper-content as I'm probably going to be catching up on the plots and subplots for a few episodes.
