S9, E 17 - "Upgrade" - John Corban is back!
Clark proves he's still a hypocritical male and a lunkhead, by not trusting Lois (for keeping secrets from him - really?) and not listening to Chloe when she says "stop stalking Lois!" Clearly, Mr. Kent didn't listen, and what happened? He got himself dosed with Red K. Instead of going all kinky like last time, it made him all buddy-buddy with Zod. Chloe really needs to put a leash on that man. (The Blur, not Clark.)
The juxtaposition between Clark/Zod relationship and the Lois / Metallo relationship was interesting. Clark is trying so hard to redeem Zod and make him a valuable member of society. Clark is failing because Zod doesn't want to be a member of society, he wants society to bow down and kiss his boots.
John Corban tried to kill Lois previously (when he went crazy with his first green K heart) to get at the Blur, but with his brains returned, he's actually not that bad of a guy. He wanted to redeem himself and it seems that Lois's convert to the side of good worked out better than Clark's.
Of course, it was Tess's Frankenstein labs which have been holding John prisoner and trying to mold him into their own super solider. I was glad to see that the "do what I say" chip doesn't really work on him. He only uses it to block his emotions (as the outtake scene implied), but is able to make some decisions on his own. Like to trust Chloe and not Tess.
It seems a little dose of green K still removes the red K from Clark's system. Only now, Zod knows about the green K and the ice fortress with the Kryptonian library in it. The only good that came from super stalker Clark following Lois was that he learned that Zod was now super powered.
I'm not quite sure what the whole "let's make it snow in Seattle" scene was about. It sounded more like they had air to fill and a free special FX guy handy. Plot wise it made no sense.
The whole truce partnership between Tess and Chloe was weird. I wasn't quite sure what to think of it, but I'm glad it was Chloe who got the upper hand. John had enough brains left to know better than to trust Tess. I was worried about the whole knock out Lois scene towards the end, but then Lois ended up with the red K heart anyway, so I'm guessing that Chloe helped her out and just knocked her out so Tess wouldn't hurt her, because those two are like oil and vinegar. (That's not the right saying, is it? Darn idioms! Foil me again!)
I have to say, again, I really do like having Brian Austin Green at Metallo much better than the LnC version. He brings so much more to the character. Then, again, the LnC version was written as someone big and stupid. The Smallville version wasn't. I wonder if we'll see red K Metallo again and what affect he might have on Clark.
The whole scene between John and Lois at the end, where he asks her to run away with him, felt like echos of the Chloe and Davis scenes from a season previously, mixed a little bit with EVERYONE falls for Lois theme (which got a little old) in LnC. I'm glad she set him straight, but I'm sorry he ended up with a broken heart.
I believe if they had built up the John Corban character as an experienced reporter at the Daily Planet opposite Clark as the newbee reporter with both of them vying romantically for Lois, S8 would have had a much better vibe to it than this whole "Zod wants to take over the world" A-Plot, which I have to say is pretty yawnsville. LnC proved that one doesn't need an over-arching bad-guy theme to every entire season. The earlier seasons of Smallville were better at this. True, they did have their crazy themes with the whole everyone is Kryptonite infected, Lana is a witch reincarnated theme (ugh), the stones, the bad, bad psycho asylum, the caves, but at least they (usually) weren't so much in our face as Zod and the cloned kyrptonians. I sure hope Smallville does better with it's A-plots in S10.
