Smallville 2.16 - Fever

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The episode begins with Jonathan Kent fixing a pipe under the sink. This is where Martha Kent hid the spaceship's key in a tin of flour in the episode "Insurgence", so she needs to put it somewhere else. She takes it into the storm cellar, where the spaceship itself is kept. She digs a small hole and puts the flour tin in it. While she's digging there's a small cloud of green spores, presumably contaminated by the meteor rocks. She inhales the spores. When she goes back into the house she passes out.

Jonathan and Clark take Martha to the Smallville hospital, where she's treated by Dr. Helen Bryce. She tells Jonathan that Martha's baby is healthy, which is a shock, because he didn't know she was pregnant. On the contrary, he'd always thought she was incapable of bearing children.

Dr. Bryce reports the illness to the Disease Control Agency. They send a doctor who informs Jonathan that it's an unknown disease, so his farm has to be quarantined and thoroughly searched. Clark rushes back to the farm at super-speed and loads the ship into a truck. While in the storm cellar, he also inhales the spores. Pete offers to store the ship in his house, but while they're driving Clark gets sick and drives the truck into a ditch. He wants to pull the truck out, but he's lost his super-strength. Clark and Pete can barely pull the truck out together.

The agents of the Disease Control Agency find the flour tin in the storm cellar. They also find the octagonal key. Jonathan pretends he doesn't know what it is, and it's taken for examination. In hospital, Martha tells Jonathan that when the spaceship was activated on the day of the tornado (the episode "Tempest") she was bathed in a blast of light from the ship. She says that she felt healed, and this was the moment when she became able to get pregnant. As for hiding the key, she was afraid that Clark might use the spaceship to leave Earth forever.

Clark collapses at home. Dr. Bryce examines him and says he should be in hospital, but Jonathan refuses and says he should remain at home. Dr. Bryce wants to take a blood sample. Jonathan agrees, as long as she examines the blood herself and tells nobody about it. When she examines the blood in hospital she's shocked by what she sees.

Martha's condition has worsened. She's not expected to make it through the night. Jonathan thinks the spaceship might heal her, but the DCA has taken the key. He breaks into the army base where the items from the farm are being stored. Martha is pronounced dead at 2:17 am. A few minutes later Jonathan arrives at the hospital with Clark. He puts the key in the spaceship, and it rises up in the air. It lets off a blast of light, as it did in "Tempest". This heals Clark, and it brings Martha back to life. It's a miracle.

It's also a miracle that no doctors, nurses or patients were looking out of the windows and saw the spaceship. And what about the other people in the hospital? Were they also healed? The episode's writers evidently didn't think about it. It's a puzzle to me, and Michael Rosenbaum also mentioned it the podcast. Screenwriters aren't perfect. I just don't understand why the director or even the actors didn't talk about it when they were filming the episode.

There are a few sub-plots in the episode. Chloe writes a letter for Clark in which she declares her love for him. She reads it to him when he's lying at home sick, but he doesn't hear it. At least Chloe has a new car, a red Volkswagen beetle. It looks too cool for words.

Lana is deeply affected by seeing Clark ill. She forgives him for treating her badly in the episode "Rush".

Lex has a present for Helen. Is it an engagement ring? That's what I expected, and it's what any woman would expect under those circumstances. No, it's a key to his mansion. He wants her to move in with him. That's not a very romantic gesture, but it's the most we can expect from a man like Lex.

Lex has also bribed a junior doctor from the DCA to give him Martha Kent's medical file.

Now to the podcast itself. Michael and Tom sit and talk about various things, not always Smallville. Michael has a pet hate: he doesn't like films that are too long. The second Avatar film is over three hours long. He remembers the good old days when films lasted 90 minutes. He hasn't seen "The Way of Water" yet, and he won't watch it in the cinema. He'll watch it at home, eventually. I doubt he's ever watched "Love Exposure", a four hour masterpiece. I have a saying:

"A good film is never too long. A bad film is never too short":

One of the callers asked Tom how he was able to lie still while Allison Mack (Chloe) was reading the letter to him. The answer is simple: he didn't. While there was a close up of Chloe's face, Tom wasn't in the room. It would have distracted her. She was reading the letter to herself.

I'm always happy when Tom remembers details of an episode. It's disappointing when he says that he forgot everything.

It was Ryan's 35th birthday the day before the podcast was filmed. Happy belated birthday!

Michael, Tom and Ryan agreed that "Fever" isn't one of the best episodes. The acting was good, but they didn't like the story. I wonder what the screenwriters would think if they listened to the podcast. "You're shitting on our script!"

Once more, my thanks to Michael, Tom and Ryan for a wonderful podcast. I'm getting much more enjoyment out of "Smallville" than when I first watched it 15 years ago.

The Talon is the place to be. They even have concerts. But who's Steadman?

That's Steadman. They're okay, I guess. Pleasant enough music, easy listening at a charity concert, but forgettable. Their sound reminds me of Radiohead. They appeared on a lot of television programmes in the early 2000's, but it wasn't enough to make them a household name. They split up in 2005.

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