Season 3 of Smallville represents a collection of some of the best and worst episodes ever to be aired. It's pretty much the exact opposite of Season 1, choosing to focus mainly on plot and the relationship of Clark Kent, Lex Luthor, and Lionel Luthor (Lex's father), with the exception of only a few "freak of the week" episodes that predominated the first season (where there would be a different Kryptonite-powered enemy every week). This season also departs a bit from the tone of Season 2, which tended to focus more on the relationship between Clark Kent and Lana Lang. What is kept from Season 2 is Clark's continuing mission to keep his powers a secret, and this becomes the major goal for Clark throughout Season 3. Now onto the episodes...

1.) Exile
This was a great season premier, probably the best of all the seasons. It begins where the Season 2 cliffhanger left off, with Clark having run off to Metropolis after putting on his red Kryptonite ring. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the series, it was revealed in Season 2 that when Clark is exposed to red kryptonite, that he basically turns into "evil Clark" and starts fulfilling all the repressed desires in his mind without a conscience. This always makes for some of the most enjoyable episodes of Smallville to watch, because too often we see Clark as so weighted down with a conscience that he hardly even feels like a real person. Another treat on this episode is the opening fight between Clark and his father Jonathan Kent, who at the end of Season 2 was given the same powers as Clark to get his son back. The toll that this decision takes on Jonathan Kent's health will be a critical theme throughout the remainder of this Season, which makes Clark's guilt and sense of responsibility a little more believable. We also see a continuation of the Lex Luthor cliffhanger where he was left to die in a plane crash last season, which leads to the mental instability that predominates his character during this season (and makes him the very best character to watch throughout the season).

2.) Phoenix
The season continues to be excellent with this episode that continues the ramifications of Clark's decision to run away to Metropolis. The enemy is a gangster named Morgan Edge, who is old friends with Lionel Luthor, and leaned about Clark's powers while he was in Metropolis and doing un-Clark like stuff such as robbing banks. I won't spoil the end of this episode, but it really keeps you in suspense. While you always know the main character's never going to be killed off, part of the fun here is guessing whether or not the bad guy Lionel Luthor is going to find out about Clark's powers.

3.) Extinction
This is the first so-so episode of the season, featuring the son of a very minor character from a prior episode coming back to seek revenge on all the "meteor freaks" who gained powers from Kryptonite. So we have a twist on Season 1, this time the bad guy's an ordinary human who persecutes the usual villians, and we get an obvious moral lesson about prejudice or something like that. We also get a ridiculous copying of the Clint Eastwood movie "A Fistfull of Dollars" near the end of the episode and a gruesome scene that's no fun to watch where Clark gets shot by Kryptonite bullets and then his parents have to perform an operation on him at home to remove the bullet. Like I said, this is so-so.

4.) Slumber
This episode manages to sink lower than the prior one, and I would go so far as to say it's just plain terrible. Even the usually great music selection is boring, and someone thought they were being creative to put nothing but REM songs in an episode about Clark dreaming (get it, REM, ha ha, yeah, not funny). Apparently some girl in a coma is entering Clark's dreams because she needs his help dealing with some ordinary guy who's keeping her in a coma. There's no super-powers for the bad guy here, which makes it a little more interesting to watch, but the usually fantastic special effects in the dream sequences are terrible, and the script is probably even worse.

5.) Perry
This is easily one of the best episodes of the season, possibly of the show. It's amazing really, it could have been cheesy introducing Perry White to the show, and the show takes a risk every time it chooses to introduce another character who Clark is not supposed to know until he moves to Metropolis for good according to the comic-books. If only Smallville had done as good a job introducing Lois Lane in Season 4, who in my opinion, is currently ruining the whole show. But Perry White was excellently portrayed, thanks entirely to actor Michael McKean, who is actually the real-life husband of Annette O'Toole, who plays Clark's mother on the show (and interestingly enough, who played Lana Lang in the original Superman movies with Christopher Reeve, if you're into Smallville trivia). Here, Perry is portrayed as an alcoholic burned-out reporter who no longer has any integrity, and tries to rebuild his career by guessing Clark's secret. Needless to say, Clark helps him find his way back, blah blah blah. Well, here's to hoping they bring back Perry on the show real soon, Season 4 needs him desperately.

6.) Relic
This is one of the stupidest episodes ever, we have a definite television cliche here in which we see a glimpse of the past in which we find Clark's biological father Jor-El meeting Lana's Aunt Louise, and guess who plays these two: Tom Welling, who plays Clark Kent, also plays his father, and Kristen Kreuk, who plays Lana Lang, also plays her aunt. How creative! It's also a terrible plot that tries too hard to show how all of the characters' ancestors were intertwined with one another, and is not at all believable.

7.) Magnetic
As if Relic wasn't bad enough, now we have a "freak of the week" episode featuring a guy with powers ripped off from Magneto out of the X-Men comic books. I'm not even going to waste any time talking about this episode, because it's the second worst one of the season (unfortunately the worst is yet to come, but so is the best at least...)

8.) Shattered
Here we reach a classic Smallville episode, easily one of the best ever. I won't spoil the major surprise at the end of the episode for those of you who don't know yet, but needless to say, someone figures out Clark's secret here, and it's more interesting than Pete Ross as in Season 2. It's also got some fantastic acting and an excellent script that makes you surprised this is just a tv show. If more episodes were as great as this one, this would be the best show ever to appear on television!

9.) Asylum
This one is a bit of a dissapointment, as any episode would be coming off of "Shattered." We find Lionel Luthor as the bad guy here, who's had his son Lex put in a mental institution to prevent Lex from telling the truth, which is that Lionel killed his parents to gain his fortune. We also are treated to the return of not one, not two, but three prior villians: the one from "Extinction" just earlier this season, none other than Jonathan Taylor Thomas (yes, from "Home Improvement," groan), who played a "freak of the week" who could split into multiple people and who was introduced in Season 2, and a character who's figured out how to absorb Clark's powers from a great Season 1 episode "Leech." Unfortunately, the highlight of the episode is probably just the Massive Attack song in the beginning (it is a really cool song), and it's all downhill from there because this episode tried too hard.

10.) Whisper
Here comes the worst episode of the season, and one of the worst episodes ever of Smallville (probably rivaled only by the episode in Season 1 where a fat girl tries to suck the fat off of her victims or "Nocture" in Season 2 which seems like a bad version of the old "Incredible Hulk" series in the 1960s). Why is it so bad? Well, for some reason that's never quite explained, Clark goes blind in the beginning so that they can introduce a new super-power for him, super-hearing, a power he just happens to need to stop the enemy on this episode convinently enough, even though he's never needed this power before. The bad guy apparently screams so loud that he hurts people's hearing, oh gee, I wonder where this is going, perhaps Clark will need to learn to control his super-hearing so he can fight the bad guy. And it just goes on like that.

11.) Delete
This was a fun episode, although not amazing. An unknown bad guy uses computer technology to try to get the people in Chloe Sullivan's life to kill her, including Clark and Lana. The only cringe-worthy moment is when we find out that Chloe's cousin is Lois Lane, some foreshadowing of the horrible season 4 to come.

12.) Hereafter
This episode is one of those unmemorable ones that I really have very little to say about it. There's nothing really wrong with it, and at least the "freak of the week" character featured here is not a bad guy, but rather helps out Clark, playing a character who has the somewhat intersting ability to see the moment of people's deaths in the future. But it just doesn't do anything special.

13.) Velocity
This is a fairly weak episode, which is a shame because it's the first and last Pete Ross centered episode of the season, and the actor who plays him, Sam Jones III, was canned at the end of Season 3, with this not-so-great episode being his last chance to shine (the real shame is that he was a good actor who often got poorly written parts on this show). Pete gets obsessed with racing cars powered by what else but Kryptonite (here we go again with the Kryptonite), and Clark doesn't like him living so dangerously or something like that. It's really an irritating episode to watch, and Pete deserved a better script.

14.) Obsession
This episode feels a little bit like Season 4, except it's at least decently written. I say it feels like Season 4 because of that season's excessive focus on sex. In this episode, a girl who can teleport becomes obsessed with Clark, hence the title, when she discovers his powers. And in stereotypical obsessive behavior, she tries to kill Lana, thinking that she's the reason why Clark doesn't want to be with her. The episode is a little less child-friendly than most Smallville episodes up until this point, but it's entertaining to watch, even if lacking in substance.

15.) Resurrection
On this episode, Jonathan Kent's heart gives out as a result of the powers he acquired at the beginning of the season, and he has to get an operation while a bad guy threatens to blow up the hospital with a Kryptonite bomb. Ugh, a Kryptonite bomb? Are they even trying anymore? Well, despite how lame the plot sounds, the episode is salvaged by an amazingly cool special-effects sequence near the end, in which Clark uses his super-speed in a pretty unique way.

16.) Crisis
In this episode, that rips off of the fantastic movie "Frequency," Clark gets a phone-call from Lana one day in the future in which she gets shot, and then he has to try to stop the imminent event from occuring. The highlight is the special effects sequence near the end once again in which we see Clark using his super-speed as the rain around him slows down (unfortunately, they did this once before on Smallville in the episode "Accelerate" near the end of Season 2, and that was a much better episode, and in fact the villian from that episode comes back near the end of this season).

17.) Legacy
This is nowhere near as good as the episode in Season 2 called "Rosetta" that also featured Christopher Reeve, but he makes a so-so episode work, and I think putting Reeve on the show was a work of genius. He will be missed. The episode's writing is its weakpoint though, which is a surprise because Jeph Loeb usually delivers, as he did on "Red" in Season 2, and in fact he has experience writing Superman in the comics. This wound up primarily as a filler episode, setting the tone for the remainder of the season without actually going anywhere.

18.) Truth
This was a great episode, and much needed after the second half of the season's slump. This time we find Chloe Sullivan as the one with the power of the week, and it's a power designed just for an investigative reporter like her, she can make anyone around her tell her the truth. Of course, the power doesn't work on Clark, but she spends most of the episode trying to get those around her to reveal the truth about him, and it's interesting to see someone other than Lex or Lionel trying to discover Clark's secrets for a change.

19.) Memoria
This has to be the greatest episode ever of Smallville, let alone of this season, managing to even beat "Shattered" earlier this season. It finally reveals the truth about Lex's childhood, including a traumatic experience that he had long suppressed involving the death of his younger brother Julian. And it really explains the complex relationship between Lex and his father, and some of the reasons why Lex turns bad down the line, better than any other episode. Most surprisingly, the actor John Glover who plays Lionel, and usually is not one of the show's better actors, puts on an amazing performance here where you can really feel his emotions along with him. This episode alone is a reason to purchase this DVD!

20.) Talisman
Feh, nothing special here. Some Indian gets Clark's powers, and the two of them fight. After "Memoria," this is a big let-down, but it's hardly the worst episode of the season. I've never been all that crazy about the Indian legends being put into the Superman mythology on this show, but it plays on the cave Clark discovered in the second season with Kryptonian writing on the walls if you liked that plotline at all.

21.) Forsaken
Again, this is just a so-so episode, and unfortunately what was at times a great season doesn't go out so well. This episode sees the departure of Sam Jones III, and Lex backstabs his father in a way that will have lasting ramifications into Season 4, and so forth.

22.) Covenant
This is a weak season finale, featuring the supposed return of Clark's sister from Krypton, Kara. It does end with a pretty gigantic surprise, however, which may make you want to tune in to Season 4. Unfortunately, you will be dissapointed when you see the explanation of that surprise in Season 4. Oh yeah, and you get to see Lionel get his head shaved at the end of this one, that's probably the highlight of the episode as unremarkable as that is.

So all in all, not the best season of Smallville, but it had some of the best moments. And if you're a fan of the plot of Smallville, particularly in Season 2, you owe it to yourself to pick this up. Casual fans of the storyline who enjoyed Season 1 will probably be dissapointed, and not understand several of the plotlines.

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Fit for Friday Evening
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older