Deron Generally
Deron GenerallySuperman & Lois
The CW
Season 1 Episode 10
O Mother, Where Art Thou?
Morgan Edge reveals his secret to Clark. Lana’s family is fractured by Kyle’s actions and Smallville is under siege.
Edge reveals his Kryptonian identity to Clark and it is a bigger reveal that I was expecting. His connection to Clark is going to be a huge issue for all the characters in the series and the revelation that Clark’s mother is responsible for the device altering the citizens of Smallville will be another interesting plot point in this episode. As interesting as both of these things are and how they play out in the episode, the family complication elements of it might be a little too much in a series that already has multiple family dramas playing out in pretty much every episode. The Edge/Clark dynamic is interesting, but not real necessary.
After returning from his meeting with Edge, Clark has to deal with everything he just learned as well as the fact that the Kent Farm is under siege by General Lane and the military. It’s an interesting complication that plays out well throughout the episode. Clark finds himself in a difficult situation that will require him to seek the advice of Jor El in order to get some kind of perspective. At the same time, Lana discovers that Kyle has been changed when Lois comes to her house to warn her. This leads to more family drama as Sarah doesn’t know the whole story and storms off before all the action. While the entire sequence was happening, I did ask myself what happened to their youngest daughter and how is she always conveniently missing.
The siege of the Kent Farm spills out into Smallville as Lane and the others look for anyone else that has been changed by Morgan Edge. The boys tell Sarah the truth about her father and she goes to see him in custody. A scene that really felt out of place considering the pace of the episode, but was necessary to give Sarah and the Kent boys something to do. After finding the scientist Edge used to create the machine, they discover that there is only one person who can find a way to reverse the transformations, Clark’s mother. This leads to the more interesting elements of the plot as someone close to Clark volunteers to be his mother’s host in order to help the town.
The moments with Clark and Lara are well done and frankly deserved more screen time than they were given. It was the perfect moment to bridge the emotional gap between the loss of Clark’s mother in the first episode and his renewed commitment to his family. I think it would have had more emotional weight had it been given the opportunity to be explored rather than rushed. We do get more of Edge’s back story and it is interesting, but veers to close to cliché. It’s your basic; “What if Superman hadn’t landed in Smallville?” style of story that is ok in its execution, but the audience has no emotional stake in Edge to care.
After confronting Edge again, he activates the other Kryptonians and there is a great chase sequence with Superman running from the others and coming up with a dangerous plan to stop them. The action is fantastic and it’s definitely a flip on the trope of starting the episode with the Superman action. The resolution was satisfying and definitely left the viewer with the sense of more conflict and mystery to come.
Superman & Lois S01XE10
