In "Hourglass", the sixth episode of "Smallville", Clark encounters two
elderly people who've been affected by the meteor rocks. The first is
Cassandra Carver, pictured above. In the meteor shower the meteors struck close to her and blinded
her, but at the same time she was given the ability to see the future of
anyone she touches. Her name isn't random. Cassandra was the prophet of Troy.
It's a common theme in the series that names are picked for the characters
which are somehow relevant to their powers. Another example is Sean Kelvin in
last week's episode, "Cool".
Cassandra was affected when the meteors first fell, but the
other person is newly affected by the rocks. Harry Volk falls into a lake
near the old people's home where he lives. There are rocks in the lake, and they
cause him to become a teenager again. The effect isn't permanent. A few days
later he becomes old again, so he has to jump back into the lake to recharge
his youth.
In the podcast the question is asked why the rocks affect everyone
differently. One person becomes young, one becomes cold, one becomes hot and
another becomes a shapeshifter. Michael Rosenbaum suggests that everyone is
given his deepest desires. Maybe that's a factor, but it's not always true.
The meteor rocks made Lex Luthor lose his hair, which I doubt he really
wanted. Or maybe he was teased because of his ginger hair and hated it?
Michael might be onto something. The best person to ask is the series
creators.
Harry is the freak-of-the-week. When he was 17 he murdered his teacher's son
because he wasn't given a scholarship to study music. He uses his new young
body to take revenge on the children and grandchildren of the jurors. One of
the jurors was Jonathan Kent's father Hiram.
Cassandra only indirectly aids Clark in stopping Harry. When she touches him
he also sees her visions. He sees that the waitress at the Beanery, Zoe
Garfield, being attacked by Harry, so he rushes to save her. Does he
change the future? In the vision we see Harry strangling Zoe with a piano
wire, which we don't see in the actual events, but we don't see her death in
the vision either. It's possible that Clark saved Zoe when she already had the wire
around her neck. In the vision we also see a man who looks
like Jim Gage being killed, although he was already dead at the time of the vision.
The picture isn't clear enough for me to be sure
who it is.
This is the man, trapped underneath a car.
The car is overturned. Why?
There's a girl at the window watching the car burning.
I've watched this scene over and over again in slow motion, frame by frame,
but I can't be certain what's happening. Maybe it's supposed to be one of
Harry's future victims, so Clark really has changed the future. I'd be glad to
hear the opinion of other Smallville fans.
Or maybe it's just a mistake, like this newspaper cutting we see in Chloe's
hand. The text beneath the photo is the same as the text to the left of the
photo. That's sloppy.
Cassandra shows Clark a vision of his future where he's surrounded by the
graves of everyone he knows and loves. It's possible that this just means he
has an unnaturally long life and will outlive everyone he knows. I'm not
familiar with the Superman canon; will he live for hundreds of years?
Cassandra sees a vision of Lex as the American president. That's not bad in
itself, is it?
But then she sees President Lex Luthor surrounded by corpses, and
blood is raining from the sky. The sight is so horrific that it kills her. Lex
doesn't know what she's seen, but we the viewers know.
In the podcast Michael Rosenbaum shows a photo of Tom Welling posing with his
stuntman, Chris Sayour. Michael says repeatedly that the stuntmen should be
allowed to do their stunts, because that's what they're paid to do. Unless
your name is Jackie Chan, of course. Stuntmen are the invisible stars of film
and television. If a stuntman does his job well, nobody will know it wasn't
the actor himself. Some stuntmen are better than others. In "Buffy the Vampire
Slayer" there are fight scenes where you can see that Buffy is being played by
a man with a blond wig. Maybe not everyone sees it; only freaks like me who
replay scenes in slow motion.
Michael Rosenbaum calls this one of the best episodes in the first season,
second only to
the Pilot. I can't comment on that. I've forgotten most of the episodes in the first
season. I'll have to judge them as the rewatch podcast continues. It's
noticeable that nobody gave the episode a rose'n'bomb rating this week. Maybe
Michael read my blog and I convinced him it's not a good idea to rate
episodes, but it's more likely that he simply forgot.
This is a great podcast. My thanks go out to Michael and Tom for all the hard
work they're putting into it.
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