Smallville 1.17 - Reaper

Click here to watch the podcast.

After a few weeks, Smallville has returned to the freak-of-the-week format. Tyler Randall is a young man visiting his terminally ill mother. She says she can't stand the suffering and begs him to end her life. After initial reluctance he agrees and smothers her with a pillow. A security guard comes in and pushes him away. It's a bit too hard, because Tyler falls out of the fourth floor window to his death.

When the coroner examines him, he finds that Tyler is wearing a bracelet with a small green stone. By now we know what that means. He takes off the bracelet and sees that the stone was broken by the fall and is embedded in his arm. He pulls it off and proceeds with the examination, but Tyler sits up, not dead at all. He grabs the coroner's arm, and his body turns to ashes.

Turning people into ashes is Tyler's special ability, and he wants to use it for good. "With great power comes great responsibility". He goes on a mission to kill anyone who's suffering too much to live.

Martha Kent takes Clark to visit the organisation Mobile Meals, which caters for old, bed-ridden people. I assume she's donating flowers and vegetables. They meet Tyler, who's working as a volunteer. Together with him they visit an old lady, Mrs. Sikes, who complains about her suffering. Tyler gives her an iris to cheer her up, but she says she'd prefer a white rose.

That night Tyler visits her, first handing her a white rose, then touching her lovingly. The physical contact makes her body turn to ashes. Chloe hears the news the next day and thinks it might be something for her Wall Of Weird. She takes Clark to the old people's home. They find the last ashes in the bed. Clark sees a white rose and immediately suspects Tyler.

The father of Whitney Fordham, Lana Lang's boyfriend, was already seriously ill, but now he's had another heart attack. Whitney hasn't been in the hospital visiting his father, so Lana asks Clark to speak to him. Weird. Couldn't she ask him herself? Clark finds Whitney on the baseball court with a manly new hairstyle. Not that the hairstyle is relevant, but it's the first thing I noticed. Whitney says that he wants to remember his father as he used to be, healthy and strong, not as an invalid in hospital. Clark persuades him to visit. Tyler is also in the hospital, though it's not clear why. What's important is that he witnesses the visit, and he decides that Whitney's father should die to end his suffering. But this time it goes one step further. Tyler sees that Whitney is suffering at seeing his father so ill, so he thinks that Whitney should die as well.

There are various subplots, all on a father-son theme. Clark and his father go on a yearly fishing trip. Clark doesn't want to go this year, because Lex has given him tickets for a football game. (That's American football, not real football).

Lex Luthor is visited by Dominic Sanatori, his father's personal assistant. Dominic has been sent to audit Lex's business because of unusual expenses. In particular, Lex has carried out an expensive investigation into the crash in the first episode, trying to find out how Clark was able to save him. Lex has also launched a full investigation of the Kent family. Dominic visits the Kent farm to ask about it. Jonathan Kent is angry about being investigated by Lex behind his back and warns Clark, but Clark say that he already knew about it. This makes Jonathan even angrier, causing yet another father-son argument.

In the final scene Lex drugs Dominic and stuffs him in his trunk to deliver him to his father. Rather than be angry with him, Lionel says "Well done". He might be working against his son, but he respects Lex when he can stand up for himself.

Dominic has been in the series before, in the episode "Hothead", but I only found out today that he's Sean Connery's son Jason. He's evidently appeared in more than 30 films, but the only one of them that I've seen is "Shanghai Noon", and I don't remember seeing him.

This episode is different to the ones that went before it. It's a darker episode, with more deaths. Four people die in the episode: the coroner, Mrs. Sikes, Hank at the Mobile Meals store and Tyler himself. (Michael Rosenbaum wrongly stated there are three deaths, because he didn't include Tyler's suicide).

Two weeks ago Tom Welling said that his wife no longer watches "Smallville" with him. In my review of "Nicodemus" I recommended that she should start again. I'm glad that she listened to me. Tom said that he sat down with his wife and kids to watch "Reaper", having completely forgotten what it was about. After the scenes with the attempted smothering and the coroner's death he realised it wasn't suitable for children and turned it off. Maybe he can take a risk and let them watch next week's episode. Alternatively, he could just watch it with his wife when the kids are in bed.

Michael Rosenbaum recommended "The Jeffrey Dahmer Story" as an even darker series that he greatly enjoys. I'll have to watch it when I get the chance. I'll be watching more Netflix than usual over the next few weeks, so I'll take his advice. But Tom won't watch it. He said that it doesn't sound like something he would like. Fair enough. Michael likes horror films and Tom doesn't.

One of the podcast's followers wrote to Michael that in "Reaper" the words "my father" are used 18 times. That fits the episode's discussion of father-son relationships, but I'm amazed that someone sat and counted. That's the sort of thing I would do.

Maybe I wasn't pedantic enough to count the "my father" utterances this week, but there's something else I always do. Whenever there's a newspaper on screen I pause my Blu-ray to read it. The article about the coroner's death is relatively easy to read. (Click on the image to enlarge it). If you look carefully you'll see that the text in the right column is a copy of the text in the left column. There are also questionable sentences, such as

"He too has disappeared but the coroner's body was disintegrated to ask in so far has been described by police as a case of spontaneous combustion". That's sloppy.

Tomorrow I'm going on holiday for five weeks. Theoretically, I could watch the podcast while I'm away, but I'll be without my Blu-ray player, so I can't watch the episodes. It's best that I delay my review of the episodes and podcasts until I come back. That will be the last five episodes of the first season. I apologise to the regular readers of my Smallville reviews. Better late than never.

	Order from Amazon.com
	Order from Amazon.co.uk
	Order from Amazon.de