Smallville: Sacrifice (s9 ep19)

It was also a better epsiode this week in Smallville as things start to kick off. You can tell it's getting close to the end of the season as storylines begin to get resolved and the action starts to ramp up ready for the season final.

This week started with the Watchtower going into lockdown when Checkmate starts to hack its computer systems. Can someone tell me why? It's being hacked from outside (using a device in Tess' body) so what good will sealing the place do? Other than nearly killing Chloe and Tess, that is?

Actually, Tess does die. Chloe kills her in order to shut down the router device inside Tess. Later, Chloe is able to bring Tess back to life because, of course, she's a skilled medical professional and is able to get those defribrillator shock paddles to work through Tess' top. And, miraculously, Tess gets up immediately with no brain damage due to being dead for an hour (or however long it was).

Meanwhile, Green Arrow fights Zod. Luckily GA has a handy kryptonite arrow in his arsenal (handy that) but ultimately it does no good. At first, I thought Zod (and Smallville's writers) had killed Oliver and burnt his face off, but that was just some other guy. Instead, it seems GA is going to have to change his codename to Zenith or something - what with that big Z burnt into his chest!

Slight aside but I'm not thrilled by Smallville's Zod. Callum Blue doesn't seem to have the right presence for one of Superman's main enemies. And his accent just sticks out like a sore thumb.

Anyway, elsewhere Checkmate kidnaps the Kandorians but then Clark rescues them. In retaliation Zod attacks Checkmate's base causing mucho destructiono. In the end, Zod and all of the Kandorians gather at the Fortress of non-Solitude - well, all except the pregnant Faora (or whatever her name is) who Zod had strangled earlier, hence the title of this episode I guess. We then find out that Zod has very quickly given the rest of the Kandorians a blood transfusion because they then all flew off.

Which again highlights a problem with Smallville - how come Clark hasn't learnt to fly yet? Kara (Supergirl) could. Zod can. The poor Kandorians, who have been sat around doing nothing for weeks, pick it up in no time at all. Heck, even evil Clark could fly. But not bland Clark. SFX-wise, you could just say that when Clark runs away at superspeed he's actually flying away at superspeed, so it can't be that. It just seems like a silly restriction (there are lots of those in Smallville).

Only two more episodes to go...