Smallville 1.12 - Leech

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"Leech" is the last of four episodes with the British actress Kelly Brook as Victoria Hardwick. It's a shame to see her go, but her time in the series is over. In this episode we see her father, Sir Harry Hardwick, for the first time. They're working together, even though she seemed to be working against him when we first met her. Based on the data that Victoria found on Lex's computer, Sir Harry has bought Cadmus Labs, expecting to make a big enough profit to buy Luthorcorp. But Lex expected Victoria to spy on him, so he planted false information on his computer. Cadmus is worthless, so the money spent on acquiring it has made Sir Harry's company vulnerable to a hostile takeover. Exit Victoria and her father.

Do takeovers really work that simply? Can one bad transaction make a company collapse? Somehow I doubt it.

After Victoria has left, Lex is shown intimate photos of Victoria with his father, Lionel Luthor. There are two ways this can be interpreted. Either Lionel was behind Victoria's schemes to undermine Lex. That's what Michael Rosenbaum suggests in the podcast, but I consider it unlikely. The other possibility is that Victoria also tried to seduce Lionel to get information from him. Maybe.

The freak-of-the-week is Eric Summers, played by Sean Ashmore. He's in the same class as Clark Kent, and he's the son of one of the teachers. The class goes on a field trip to collect rocks. Eric picks up a meteor rock and puts it in his backpack. He's a rebellious boy. When the class catches the bus back to school, he walks off listening to rock music on his Walkman. Clark volunteers to look for him. He finds Eric standing on the edge of the Smallville Dam. A storm starts, and Eric falls off the dam. Clark catches him and pulls him to safety, but at that moment a lightning bolt hits Clark, and a green mist surrounds them both. Clark's powers are transferred to Eric.

A lot of questions arise in the episode, concerning both Clark and Eric. Clark is afraid that his parents won't love him now he's lost his powers. That's a foolish thing to think. Why should they stop loving him? Eric's parents are the opposite. Now that he's gained powers (strength and speed) they think of him as a freak and want to send him for medical investigation.

That's Eric's own fault. He doesn't try to hide his powers. When he sees a thief snatching Chloe's handbag in the street he runs and stops him. This gains immediate praise from the onlookers. A newspaper article calls him Super Boy. Nudge nudge wink wink. The new found fame goes to Eric's head. He has a crush on a girl at school, so he beats up her boyfriend. This doesn't win her over, it makes her hate him. What did he expect? The police come to arrest him, but he tosses police cars around. Nobody can stop him.

Almost nobody. Clark has an idea. If Eric has taken his powers, maybe he's also taken his weaknesses. Clark borrows Lana Lang's meteor rock necklace and takes it to Eric. In a final showdown, Eric holds a live power cable against Clark while Clark is holding the necklace against Eric. The electric shock makes Eric's powers return to Clark.

This story resolution is a deus ex machina. Clark only wanted to make Eric weak. The return of his powers was accidental. It wouldn't have happened if Eric had only dropped a car on his head. It's a very artificial way to end the episode, in my eyes unsatisfying. Michael Rosenbaum calls this one of the best episodes so far. I disagree.

This week's guest star on the Podcast is John Schneider, who played Clark's father Jonathan Kent in the series. When Tom Welling appeared in "Smallville" he was at the beginning of his career, and he looked up to John Schneider as an older, experienced actor. They were only acting as father and son, but John taught Tom just as much as a real father would. Tom grew into a talented actor in his own right over the course of 10 years, and John was proud of him.

The 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center still remains in John Schneider's thoughts. They say that everyone remembers where he was when he heard the news of the 9/11 attack. John remembers it precisely. He was filming the third episode of "Smallville", "Hothead". That's another important experience which he shared with Tom Welling.

John plugged his new film, "To Die For", which will be released on 20th October. That's interesting. I've never seen any of his films, and I'm curious. As far as I can tell, it will only be available on the streaming site CineFlixDOD, John Schneider's own website.

To finish, here are a couple of points of trivia. This is the first episode in which we see the Talon cinema, just as it's closing. It belongs to Lana's Aunt Nell, who's now decided to sell it. It'll become important in future episodes.

Sean Ashmore has an identical twin brother Aaron, who will become a regular character (Jimmy Olsen) in the sixth season.

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