Whitney! Kryptonite necklace! Freak of the Week! Smallville High! A good, ol’ flashback episode this week, missing only poor, ignored Pete to make this truly a tribute to seasons gone by.
The episode starts with a flashback to the time period of the early 1st season when Lana was a cheerleader, wore a Kryptonite necklace and dated Whitney. It’s a football pep rally. Here comes the mascot – poor Scabby Abby, teased mercilessly by the players when she takes the mascot costume head off. Look, it’s a pretty girl made up to look ugly.
Then we’re back to the present. Lois, having completed her mission to find Chloe, is all set to leave Smallville, when Ham Tyler, er, Sam Lane, shows up to tell Lois she’s just enough credits shy to not have graduated and she has to repeat a semester. Clark’s laughter and subsequent look of disbelief is priceless.
Meanwhile Scabby Abby shows up again, but of course now she’s gorgeous, thanks to her psycho plastic surgeon mother and some kryptonite (yay! Freak of the Week is back; it’s fun when it’s not every episode) Really, she just took off the false teeth, thick glasses and the prosthetic pimples. Chloe talks Lois into working for the Torch, even though journalism isn’t her thing. (Ha!) Her first assignment – teen plastic surgery and Scabby Abby, er, Abigail.
Clark, now a senior, decides he wants to join the football team, despite his father’s misgivings (hooray for worry-wart Pa Kent!) He goes to see the coach, and finds Jason, Lana’s beau (ugh), now the assistant coach. He and Clark get along pretty well, actually, though of course Clark doesn’t know that he and Lana are exposing shoulders together.
Clark tries out and of course impresses with his throwing arm. He finds out he made the team when his father tells him the coach called. Oops! Not how he wanted Pa to find out. Clark gets a lecture – and another important lesson on knowing when to hold back in the heat of the moment. Then comes the stupid part. He tells his father he wants to be his own person, by being just like his Dad and playing football. Huh? Individuality by imitation? Whatever.
Abby hooks up with her biggest tormentor. Who’s more shallow? The guy who wants the former object of his torment, or the girl who wants to hook up with her former tormentor. They're both idiots. But when they start kissing in the shower (I sense a recurring theme this season) she passes something onto him. He looks fine until he sees himself in the mirror. He thinks he has turned into some kind of freak! Oh, cruel irony! He’s fine but the side effect of her “Kryp/Tuck” is that she passes along some LSD-like hallucinogen that makes people she comes into contact with think they are ugly. He runs out of the locker room onto the campus and straight into Lois’ car!
Jonathan and Martha have a discussion about Martha working at the Talon, where chauvinistic pig Jonathan continues to object to the idea of his college-educated wife working. He whines, “but why for the Luuuthors?” Fine, she can work there. What a guy. But that’s the end of that story for now.
Lana, unfortunately, is part of the main plot this week. She sees Scabby and Shallow Guy in the school hallway, so now she’s a witness. After Lana visit Dr. Psycho, who tells her that her tattoo (yawn!) is below the surface of her skin, Abby shows up. Mom soon realizes Lana is a witness, pretty Lana has to go now too. So in the next scene where Lana and Coach Jason make goo-goo eyes, Abby shows up and kisses Lana, making the poor girl think she’s ugly. A mirror falls on her, cutting her up and knocking her unconscious.
Visiting unconscious Lana in the hospital, Jason makes a little speech about how much he cares for her only to be interrupted by Lex, who acts all smarmy before introducing himself and revealing that he knows Jason’s family. And clever guy, he’s the 1st person in Smallville to realize that Jason and Lana expose shoulders together.
Investigative Lois makes an appointment with Dr. Psycho to uncover the truth, by posing as someone who needs plastic surgery (not Lois! She’s hot!) But amateur reporter that she is, Lois carelessly lets her noisy tape recorder rewind, so that Dr. Psycho knows she’s being set up. She puts Lois in her krypto-contraption, complete with a half-naked death trap outfit for Lois. Hey, works for me. This is supposed to make Lois ugly. But Clark saves the day, getting Lois out of the trap before collapsing from the kryptonite therein. Lois then saves her own day with a swift kick to Crazy doc.
All's well that ends well, Lana is fine (do you only like me'cause I'm pretty? auggggh!), Clark and his Dad reconcile about football in a touching, father/son bonding moment, Lionel is a no-show and Lois gets her first taste of investigative reporting. The episode ends with a bookend of a present-day football rally. And now – in the theme of flashback – we see Chloe get jealous of the chemistry between her cousin Lois and Clark. Too bad, because Chloe’s looking pretty good this season too.
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