Wednesday, April 05, 2006

Oh, Milton, You're So Fine...

What? Everyone else has used that tired joke. It's my turn.
Anyway, I realized over the weekend that I completely left out any of the Brainiac action from my review of last week's Smallville episode, "Hypnotic." I couldn't imagine how I could possibly make such a huge oversight. The Brainiac stuff was clearly the best stuff about the episode. Then I realized why I would leave it out. For one thing, there was nothing to rant and complain about. Anybody who knows me knows that I would much rather talk about a show that is pissing me off than one that I fined little to criticise about (which is why I don't talk about Veronica Mars very often -- it's too good.) However, the far bigger reason was because it seemed like it was a completely different episode than the one with HypnoHo -- a better episode from a better show. Hell, when I saw the opening I though I might have stumbled upon an early season X-Files episode. It was that cool, and also pretty creepy.
The Lex and Professor Fine interaction was great, as was to be expected. Nevertheless, I almost felt bad for Lex when he confidently proclaimed that he knew that Fine was actually a government agent, though I guess it's a good thing that he was so far off since getting it right would have meant getting speared through the frontal lobe. Brainiac is clearly playing Lex now and I cannot wait to see what comes of it. I loved that Fine planted the idea of a possible alien invasion. If you wil recall, when Clark was hallucinating in Professor Fine's office during Splinter, he imagined Lex addressing a group of people about Clark being the first wave of a possible invasion. I have high hopes that they will actually go somewhere with this (and that it might tie back into Lex's season three notion that Segeeth -- the Naman's nemesis from the cave paintings -- is actually the hero).
I also want to comment on how good Michael Rosenbaum and James Marsters are opposite eachother. So many of Lex's scenes have been with Lana lately, it is really nice to see him working against an actor that can challenge him. And since both actors have a habit of getting A games out of lesser actors, what they get out of eachother should be fun to watch. I really look forward to seeing this team up of both the characters and the actors.
Brainiac's final scene was the most intriguing. He oozes out of the ship, like he did in the season premier, only this time there are 4 of him (no idea why the 4 Brainiacs are clothed while the 1 was naked). Then one of them says "We need more samples," and all 4 speed off in opposite directions. I assume that he is refering to collecting more samples of the ebola-like disease he got in the opening scene. Perhaps this is part of a plan to rid Earth of humanity with a supervirus. I am also curious as to whether he is in Honduras because it is a good place to collect disease samples or because of its Kryptonian significance. It was mentioned in "Transference" that the Water stone, which allowed Lionel to swap bodies with Clark, was found in Honduras. Perhaps Slavkin & Swimmer, who wrote both episodes, just like Honduras. As this is Smallville, we may never know.

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