When my family began watching the third season of Smallville, it was clear that this would be very different from the two that preceded it. An evil-looking green glow surrounds the key characters on the cover, and there is menace in the clips chosen for the pre-menu montage whenever we put in the DVD. It should come as no great surprise that this season would have a darker tone to it, considering the catastrophic events of the season two finale. Still, I proceeded with some trepidation, unsure whether I would enjoy the show as much when things had taken such a turn for the worse. Having just finished up the season, I am in many ways reminded of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, in which Harry, in the throes of adolescence, becomes a brooding, sometimes mean-spirited character. Clark (Tom Welling), tainted by an entire summer of hard living as the red Kryptonite-infected, devil-may-care Cal, has a definite mean streak that wasn’t there before, or at least was much fainter. He is increasingly willing to resort to dubious tactics to accomplish his goals, and he becomes suspicious of the motives of his friends, particularly Lex (Michael Rosenbaum) and Chloe (Allison Mack). However, while the fifth Harry Potter installment was my least favorite, I must admit that this third season is marked by an intensity, continuity and excellence unmatched in the previous seasons. Spoilers ahead...

The season starts off alarmingly, with Clark / Cal still on the lam in Metropolis, his whereabouts known only to Chloe, who is writing for the Daily Planet, thanks to an agreement with Lionel Luthor (John Glover) that stipulates she must deliver information to him on the mysterious Mr. Kent. Lex, having survived a horrific plane crash en route to his honeymoon, is stranded on an island, where he battles illness and tangles with someone abandoned on the island earlier - if his failing faculties are to be believed. Once he makes it back to Smallville (shortly after his funeral), his first task is to figure out whether it was his wife or his father who betrayed him - or both. Meanwhile, Lana (Kristin Kreuk), who still considers herself Clark’s girlfriend although they haven’t spoken all summer, Pete (Sam Jones III) and the Kents (John Schneider and Annette O’Toole) are desperate to get Clark back, and Jonathan finally resorts to extreme measures by making a bargain with Clark’s biological father that will give him the power necessary to bring his son home.

This season has a lot to do with Clark dealing with the consequences of the extremely unfortunate choices he made in the second season’s finale. Guilt-ridden over the death of his unborn brother and Jonathan’s compromised health following his successful intervention, he is more inclined to hesitate and weigh the options before him, though these contemplations are usually less calm and measured than they are frantic and overwhelmed. He loses some degree of faith in most of the people who matter greatly to him. Of course, it isn’t all negative. Though there’s little room for levity in this ominous season, we get to see him take a refreshing dip in Crater Lake with Lana; forge a friendship with alcoholic, curmudgeonly Perry White (Michael McKean), his future boss at The Daily Planet; walk in the snow (!) with someone who appears to be a kindred spirit (okay, this really isn't a big deal; it's just the first time I've seen snow in Smallville); hover above the ground with a girl who claims to be from Krypton and don glasses for the first time. The spectacles follow a bout of temporary blindness, during which Clark develops super-hearing, leading to a handy but unhealthy eavesdropping habit that feeds into his mistrust of others. One of the things I find most bothersome about Clark in this season is his constant flow of righteous indignation because someone is hiding secrets or keeping tabs on him. This is, of course, a complete double standard because I don’t think even Lionel Luthor has more secrets up his sleeve than Clark, and Clark seems to spend a great deal of this season spying on people.

The real focus of the season, however, is Lex, and Rosenbaum gets the highest applause from me on his acting chops, followed closely by Glover. Lex is completely compelling throughout the season but especially in the heart-breaking Shattered and Memoria, my two favorite episodes. In the former, he goes into hiding after someone tries to murder him. Lex is convinced his father is behind it; Lionel, meanwhile, tells Clark that Lex is delusional and must be admitted to a psychiatric hospital for treatment. Clark is left to decide which scenario is more likely and which course of action would truly be best for his friend - and those around him. In the latter, one of the final episodes in the season, Lex undergoes an experimental treatment to recover the memories lost during his session of radical electro-shock therapy. Atypically, Clark, as concerned as Lionel about what these treatments will reveal, works with him to stop them from happening in spite of Lionel’s track record of being most untrustworthy. Though he does not succeed in finding the memories he was looking for, he does uncover several significant moments from a past he had blocked out, and we finally learn exactly what happened to his infant brother Julian.

Lex’s sanity is called into question from the first episode, but because of his father’s dark dealings, we are never sure how much of Lex’s bizarre behavior is the result of psychological instability and how much is dastardly manipulation on the part of his father in order to keep Lex’s discovery that Lionel murdered his parents under wraps. Although we see Lex lash out against Clark after learning of his abilities and threaten him most menacingly, once in a dream sequence and once while in a mental institution (which he forgets after his father subjects him to the electro-shock therapy), I attributed one to Clark’s increasing paranoia and the other to Lex’s madness. I know intellectually that such scenes are an indication of things to come, but in my heart I truly want to believe in Lex’s goodness. He spends much of the season seeming sad, lost and frightened, and the emotion he most often invoked in me was sympathy. While Lionel’s interest in Clark has bloomed into a dangerous full-fledged obsession, Lex seems to have decided, for the most part, that his friendship with Clark is more important than his curiosity about him. Instead, he concentrates most of his efforts this season on investigating his father and trying to bring him down, partly because of their perpetually strained relationship and partly to bring justice to his grandparents. He also begins to explore the possibility that his climactic encounter with the meteor rocks may have impacted more than just his hair.

Lionel is a most perplexing character; because he is almost as good an actor as Glover, even in the moments in which he seems profoundly remorseful or concerned or shocked, it is very difficult to discern whether he is being sincere. He’s one smooth operator, and particularly in his associations with Chloe he has mastered the art of delivering poisonous threats in the trappings of sickly sweet consideration. In flashbacks, there are moments when, in spite of being unsuited to his task of fatherhood throughout the bulk of Lex’s life, Lionel seems gently paternal, while he appears to find seeing his son locked up genuinely painful - though not so painful that he is unwilling to risk turning him into a vegetable in order to erase the memory of his fateful discovery. He also still seems to have a crush on Martha, though her opinion of him has hardened. Lionel was only slightly less interesting to me in this season than Lex and probably more frustrating, since it seems every time I decided he wasn’t so bad after all he went and did something ruthless. Maybe he’s little better than Richard III, that charismatic Shakespearean thug who I simply couldn’t help liking just a little even as he picked off dozens of decent people in his ascent to the throne. I hope I never meet someone like that; I’m beginning to suspect I’m easy to manipulate. Anyway, I have to applaud Glover for his masterful, layered acting that always keeps me guessing and particularly for the range of emotions he so aptly displays in Memoria. I want to get a screen cap of his face contorted into a deadly rage; it’s truly terrifying.

Martha remains virtually unchanged in this season, but Jonathan is clearly weakened and, though he won’t admit it, he seems to be bitter about some of the sacrifices he has made because of Clark. His brushes with death reinforce our perception of Clark’s devotion to him, but they prompt a mid-life crisis that leaves him restless, angry and hard for even the ever-patient Martha to handle. Meanwhile, while Chloe seems to have pretty much given up on ever getting together with Clark, she almost immediately regrets her agreement, made in a moment of vulnerability, to feed information about him to Lionel, though she remains curious about him herself, and when she temporarily develops the ability to make people tell her the truth, she can't resist the chance to try to learn more about her mysterious friend. Though she doesn't get the dirt on Clark, she gets some startling insight into other characters and discovers how dangerous her inquisitiveness can be for other people. Throughout the season, not only does she have to worry about running The Torch and delivering regular columns to The Daily Planet, she becomes increasingly occupied with trying to extricate herself from the life-threatening situation in which she has placed herself by consorting with Lionel. In addition, her killer journalistic instincts win her several enemies, including one who has the means to hypnotize everyone she knows and program them with the mission to kill her.

Lana and Clark continue their awkward romantic shuffle, with Clark convinced that they must keep their distance for Lana’s safety and Lana just wanting some answers. Every time one is ready to reignite their romance, the other decides it’s not a good idea. It’s hard to blame Lana for being warier of Clark after all his red Kryptonite shenanigans, but her angst is sometimes a bit tiresome. From Clark’s end of it, refusing to date her hardly seems to keep her out of trouble; she’s in mortal peril several times this season, and the closest call of all is entirely Clark’s fault, which causes normally sweet Lana to expend considerable animosity on her friend and leaves the door open for the season’s most intriguing new character, a teen named Adam Knight (Ian Somerhalder) who she meets in the hospital. At first it seems that a legitimate love interest has entered the field, but given the fact that virtually every guy who has expressed an interest in Lana has turned out to be a psychopath, we have reason to worry. It’s a shame that a nice, normal guy can’t fall for Lana (or Chloe, for that matter) for once. (It’s also a pity that Adam’s six-story arc must end in an episode with a flimsy phone-call-from-the-future premise.) Through all her troubles, Lex - during his sane moments, at least - increasingly is the one to whom Lana turns for help and guidance. Given his infatuation with her, Lex is ready and willing to assist her in any way he can - even if it means letting her give up The Talon so she can go to school in Paris, though he’s none too happy about it and blames Clark for driving her away.

We see less of Pete than we usually do, though he’s still an important character. He is increasingly frustrated by the difficulties inherent in being Clark’s best friend and having to guard his secret. Tired of being a perpetual also-ran, he makes a name for himself in one episode by street racing with Kryptonite-laced race cars, a dangerous and illegal activity that earns him a death threat when he refuses to throw a race. He starts out angry with Clark for trying to stop him from doing the one activity at which he excels, but in the end it’s Clark who is both the fast and the furious, enraged that he is forced to risk exposing his powers and compromising his friendship with Lex in order to get Pete out of his predicament. Though he and Clark seem to get along fine in the episodes following this incident, it no doubt wears on Pete and may be a small factor in his decision in the next-to-last episode to go to Wichita with his mother, a move that signals the end of his parents’ marriage. Incidentally, he delivers what I found to be the funniest line in the season. In a dream sequence (though we don’t realize it yet at the time), Pete approaches Clark in school and informs him that he has missed his history test. “You flunked!” he admonishes in a voice dripping with disgust before stalking away. The fact that this is a dream explains the over-the-top nature of the encounter, but it’s just funny to see Pete tut-tutting Clark as though he has just blown his chance to go to Harvard.

There are far fewer one-note villains this time around, and every episode is crucial to our understanding of the rest of the season. The focus has moved away from the high school drama of the first season; aside from the requisite scenes in the office of The Torch, Smallville High doesn’t come into the stories very much. In a way, neither do the caves, but in the episodes involving them they are a crucial landmark gradually revealing their secrets. We learn, for instance, that Jor-El once visited Earth himself and, because of the kind treatment he received at the hands of Jonathan’s parents, sent Clark to Smallville on purpose, a radical notion that seems to run counter to traditional Superman mythology. Because of his glimpses at Jor-El’s past, Clark is able to put a more human face on his distant, intimidating biological father; later, he recalls his biological mother and is startled by her affectionate nature. Lionel’s fascination with the caves increases, and Christopher Reeve makes an encore appearance as the eccentric Dr. Swann, though his conversation with Clark yields more questions than answers. Although Clark fiercely resists the idea that he could be Naman, the hero whose coming is foretold in the paintings on the cave walls, bits of the prophecy continue to fall into place and cause him to contemplate whether the ancient artwork could really be a forecast for his future. Consequently, he is troubled by the revelation, by way of a sacred artifact, that if he truly is the subject of this legend, one of the Luthors is destined to be his arch-nemesis.

Season three ends on the most cataclysmic note yet, with most of the key characters undergoing a major life change. Clark’s will most likely lead him to a much deeper understanding of his purpose in life, though it may not bring him peace, particularly as his presence has brought so much pain to those he loves, whether he intended it or not. I look forward to the fourth season with some trepidation, as events have now been set into motion that cannot be stopped, and many of them are not pleasant. The season finale leaves more than one character in mortal danger, and there seems a great possibility that someone about whom Clark cares a great deal will not survive to the fourth season. Moreover, I’ve been told the writing in the fourth and fifth seasons is uneven, and I’m not particularly looking forward to the arrival of Lois Lane, who I have always found aggravating and unworthy of Clark’s adoration. But the third season is an absolute masterpiece, if more infused with tragedy than I generally like. I wasn’t so sure I could handle all that darkness, but I’m forced to concede that this is the best season thus far.

Pilot
Season One
Season Two
Season Four
Season Five

Poems:
His Friendship
A Luthor is a Lion
A Father's Love
Metamorphosis
Martha
Destiny
Jonathan
This Moment

Parodies:
The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald
Save Me
Harrigan
Rhymes and Reasons
Leaves That Are Green
Kathy's Song
Silver Bells
A Most Peculiar Man

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD