Smallville Season 4: Created by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar  Character created by Joe Shuster and Jerry Seigel.

In a multipronged assault on our sensibilities, Smallville season three ended with Lana leaving for Paris, Lex lying on the floor dieing of poisoned brandy, and Lionel Luthor still in prison.  Kara, a woman from the Kawatche Caves, claiming to be Clark's cousin, kills Agent Loder who has been closing in on Clark's secret.  In dealing with her, Clark ends up going through the mysterious wall of the Cave, and a Kryptonian symbol burns itself into the Kent's field.  And lastly, Chloe and her dad are taken into protective custody, in preparation for testifying against Lionel Luthor.  As they dart into a safe house, there is a tremendous explosion!  The place is leveled.

And now, on with Season Four.

This year, Clark's senior year, explores the role of three Kryptonian stones that contain all the knowledge of lost Krypton.  The war for control of the stones rages among four factions; Clark, their rightful heir, the Luthors, who almost count as two factions, the Teagues, and the spirit of a 17th century witch, the Countess Isobel Thoreaux, who inhabits the body of Lana Lang.  Complicating matters are Lana's romance with Jason Teague, which as she is a student, and he is a coach, is verboten.  Another theme is Lionel Luthor's personal search for redemption.

The year introduce two new concepts; magic, which can hurt Clark, and Black Kryptonite, a decidedly non-canon invention of the show.  It also introduces two new Characters, Bart Allen (Impulse) the fastest man alive, and Lois Lane!

The Episodes.
Season 4, Episode 1: Crusade
Lois Lane: Look, I didn't come here fishing for thanks. I think Clark might know something about my cousin Chloe's death.
Martha Kent: I'm so sorry for your loss.
Lois Lane: Yeah. Were she and Clark ever an item?
Martha Kent: Oh, I think for a minute...
Lois Lane: It's funny; I never thought she'd fall for the farm boy type.
Martha Kent: Trust me, that can happen to the best of us.
Lois Lane: Not me. Give me a nerd with glasses any day of the week.
Martha Kent: Clark has many sides.
Lois Lane: Yeah, I've seen several of them already.

Lois Lane is a woman on a mission.  She is going to discover who killed her cousin, Chloe Sullivan.  But as she blows into Smallville, there is a mysterious light, and Lois' car ends up in the corn.  Also in the corn, a very naked Clark Kent!  Suffering from amnesia, he is collected from the hospital by Martha.

Meanwhile Lana is in Paris, and she has picked up three things; two of them are a new boyfriend, Jason Teague, and a tattoo on the small of her back, placed there by a long dead witch!

Lex is recovering from the poison, (Drat!) and has found an artifact in Egypt; a crystal with Kryptonian symbols.  Yet, the crystal is stolen from the plane, by a man who can fly!

And Dr. Virgil Swann's assistant gives Martha Kent a new type of Kryptonite to use if Kal-El can not be snapped back to being Clark.

Season 4, Episode 2: Gone
Lana: It's funny, isn't it? After everything we've been through, I thought it would take us longer to get over it.
Clark Kent: Us?
Lana: You and Lois.
Clark Kent: Lois? She's bossy. She's stuck-up, she's rude - I can't stand her.
Lana: The best ones always start that way.

The mystery surrounding Chloe's death deepens as Lois and Clark investigate, finding links to both Lex Luthor, and to Lois' father, the General!  Lana comes home to explore the link between her new tramp stamp and the symbols on the Kawatche Caves.  And Lionel, preparing for his murder trial, hires a liquid metal meteor freak to discourage Lois and Clark's investigations.

Season 4, Episode 3: Façade
Chloe: I'm off to see Clark Kent in a wet t-shirt. Care to join me?

While the Freak of the Week is a morality lesson on how beauty is only skin deep, and her meteor induced powers make anyone she kisses her insanely loyal lackey, the real meat of this episode is in the sub plots; Lois joins the Torch, Martha takes over management of the Talon, and Clark stands up to his father and tries out for football.  Lana's boyfriend Jason Teague is one of the coaches, adding an interesting subplot of forbidden love.

Season 4, Episode 4: Devoted
Lois Lane: Oh, advanced chem. How many cheerleaders does it take to draw a double helix?
Mandy: You wanna quote?
Lois Lane: Yeah.
Mandy: Back off, b*tch.

Like the neo cons, the Smallville cheerleader squad are not content with ruling the roost, they want total control.  So they are using a Meteor enhanced love potion to get it.  A definite Freak of the Week entry. 

This episode is also devoted to Christopher Reeve.  Reeve died three days before this episode aired.  Reeve showed us all what being a real hero is all about as he faced life after a tragic accident.  He did it with courage, with humour and with grace.  He will always be Superman.

Season 4, Episode 5: Run
Clark: So, what are you going to do now?
Bart Allen: I don't know. I mean, it's a big world. See if there's anyone else out there like us. Maybe start up a club or a league or something.

Clark is not entirely alone; he meets a kid who is as fast as he is, possibly faster, Bart Allen!  While Bart has problems with impulse control, the two find a way to be friends.  Also, Lex finds a Kryptonian map hidden in an ancient manuscript.

Season 4, Episode 6: Transference
Lionel Luthor always has an escape hatch, and an exquisitely developed sense of revenge.  As he if facing the full weight of the law, he decides to let it fall on his nemesis; his son Lex.  Using a Kryptonian crystal, he prepares to switch bodies with Lex.  But he hits Clark instead, and now he understands that Clark has powers.  The Djinni is out of the bottle now!

Season 4, Episode 7: Jinx
I always wondered how they would incorporate some of the weirder Superman villains.  The answer is ‘very well.'  Mr. Mxyzptlk was a fifth dimensional sorcerer.  Here, he is a kid with a non kryptonite power; the power to make whatever he says to another person happen.  If he says, trip, you will.  And to what end does he put this awesome power.  Betting on sporting events.

Season 4, Episode 8: Spell
Magistrate Wilkins: You have been found guilty of committing the darkest art, witchcraft. For this affront against God, I hereby condemn you to burn in the fires of hell of which you so eagerly seek communion.
Margaret Isobel Thoreaux: You think this ends with a lick of flame? I sleep but a while. And when the time is appointed my heir will awaken me and I will have vengeance.

When Lana went to France, she got a Kryptonian symbol mysteriously imprinted on her back.  This was the gift of her ancestor, Margaret Isobel Thoreaux, a witch burned at the stake in 1604.  The Witches sought magical crystals, which turn out to be Kryptonian, now back from the grave, they seek them anew, possessing the bodies of Lana, Lois and Chloe!

Season 4, Episode 9: Bound
Clark Kent: Lex, the way things have been between us the last few days... I felt your father was being more honest with me than you were. I hated that feeling. I felt like we were enemies.
Lex Luthor: Don't give up on me yet.

Lex is in trouble with a sex and murder scandal, and Clark appeals to Lionel to help his son.  Also, Lana meets Jason's mother, and she is a woman Lana has seen before; in her dreams; she was the sworn enemy of Countess Thoreaux!

Season 4, Episode 10: Scare
An explosion at Luthorcorp releases a cloud of gas that traps people in their nightmares.  Lex's nightmares are enough to make YOUR hair fall out.

Season 4, Episode 11: Unsafe
Alicia Baker: I'm surprised you remember my name.
Clark: How could I forget... you tried to kill me.

There are a lot of repaired relationships in this episode.  Lionel and Lex are trying to bury the hatchet somewhere other than in each others heads; Lana wants Jason back, enough to consider loosing her virginity, and the teleporting Clark groupie Alicia is back, with a red kryptonite ticket to Vegas.

Season 4, Episode 12: Pariah
Chloe Sullivan: Lois, if you found out something, something someone didn't want you to know about them, would you tell them?
Lois Lane: That depends. Is that person someone you care about?
Chloe Sullivan: Yeah.
Lois Lane: And does keeping the secret hurt anyone?
Chloe Sullivan: No.
Lois Lane: Then my answer is no. If I really cared about that person, I wouldn't tell them that I knew. But I would go out of my way to be supportive of them so that hopefully, one day, they would be comfortable enough to tell me themselves.

When both Lana and Jason are attacked, all signs point to Alicia.  Genevieve Teague approaches Lex for help in breaking up her son Jason and Lana, and Alicia outs Clarks powers to Chloe!


Season 4, Episode 13: Recruit
Clark: So what're you gonna do? Are you gonna go stay with Chloe?
Lois Lane: They've got a tiny one-bedroom apartment. I can't do that to them. It's fine, really, I'm just gonna check into a motel and when the money runs out, I can always sleep in my car. The backseat's not too bad if you bend your knees and avoid the drive train and then, you know, if I have to sell my car for food, that's okay too. I've always dreamed of being a hobo, riding the rails, cooking beans over roadside fires...
Clark: If you want, I guess you can stay with us.
Lois Lane: You're a lifesaver! God, am I in need of a hot shower! Don't worry, Smallville. I'll try to keep it under a half hour.
Clark: What just happened?

While Clark wrestles with the moral implications of his accepting a football scholarship, Lois is accused of killing a member of the Metropolis Team!  Lex rats out Genevieve's visit to Lana.

Season 4, Episode 14: Krypto
Lex: (to Genevieve, Jason's mom) You should get together with my father and write a parenting book. Sure it would be a best-seller.

The Writers watched an old film called the Doberman Gang, and it gave them an idea how to introduce Krypto, a staple of the comics.  Here, he is a golden retriever with kryptonite induced powers.  (Which technically makes him more like Streaky, the super cat.) Lois is allergic, and Clark is delighted.

Season 4, Episode 15: Sacred
The octagonal key is returned to Clark as a condition of Virgil Swans will.  When Clark places it in the Caves, he gets a message from his Father, Jor-El.  There are three stones from Krypton on Earth, (Kal-El retrieved one from Lex) and Clark must find the other two.  The clues lead him to China, where Lana, possessed by the Countess Thoreaux, is also angling for the stone.  You get the feeling the writers watched Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon recently.

Season 4, Episode 16: Lucy
Lucy Lane: Well, thanks for letting me stay, I don't know how to repay you
Clark Kent: Well, just tell me plenty of embarrassing stories about Lois.

While Lana and Jason deal with the fact the stone was stolen from Lana's apartment at the Talon, Lois and Clark deal with Lois's sister Lucy.  Who would have thought that Lois was the good child?

Season 4, Episode 17: Onyx
Lex Luthor: I gotta hand it to you guys. I mean, keeping something like this a secret must've required an impressive ability to obscure the truth. Maybe the Kents and the Luthors have something in common after all.

Superheating kryptonite creates a new form; Black Kryptonite.  It has the power to split a person into their good and evil sides (Shades of Eclipso!).  And the person it has affected is Lex Luthor.  If you thought he was bad before....

Season 4, Episode 18: Spirit
Lois Lane: Mrs. Kent, a lot of things are possible in this world, but there will be a man on Mars before Clark and I go to Prom together.
Martha Kent: (Possessed by Dawn) So what, you two just get together and mack, but keep it on the down-low in public?
Clark Kent: Mom!
Lois Lane: I don't mean to be rude, Mrs. Kent, but did you crack open the cooking sherry?

While Lex is pursuing a second stone, racing Jason Teague, Bridgette Crosby (Margot Kidder) is killed for the stone.  Meanwhile, Dawn Stiles, local gossip queen and self proclaimed Prom Queen crashes a top a mother load of Green K.  Now a disembodied spirit, she passes from body to body by touch, like in Fallen, starting with Martha Kent, then pretty much moving through the female population of Kansas. 

Season 4, Episode 19: Blank
Clark: So it must've been kind of strange to have a zombie best friend walking around.
Chloe: Yeah, I mean, you know, I never really realized how complicated that zombie's life was.
Clark: [apprehensive] Complicated? Did I do something unusual?
Chloe: You had a clean slate to start all over with, and you made all the same choices... except for one.
[Clark laughs nervously]
Clark: Chloe, I need you to be completely honest with me.
Chloe: [challenging] Honest, huh?
Clark: What'd I do?
Chloe: You trusted me.

The freak of the week, Kevin Grady, has the power to wipe memory, and uses it to commit crimes.  When he hits Clark, at least his family and friends are old hands at coping (remember the season opener.)

Lana is less sure about Jason, and when she tells him so, he gets a little ‘Glen Close,' telling her he has been protecting her.

As it ends up, Clark helps Grady, and Grady returns the favor.

Season 4, Episode 20: Ageless
Though we see the early part of this scenario, Clark and Lana find a child in a crater in Evan's field in a sort of echo of Clark's own discovery.  However, the child, named Evan, is aging at a phenomenal rate.  The only hope is a marrow transplant from his father, and even then.... The scientists at Luthorcorp don't hold out much hope.

Meanwhile, the Luthors and the Teagues continue the cold war for possession of the stones; Lionel trumps Genevieve with poison to obtain her stone.

Season 4, Episode 21: Forever
Some people just can't move on, and this Freak of the Week has a Medusa's touch, and he is building his own Smallville High, one he can stay in forever.

Meanwhile the war of the stones heats up and the Teagues kidnap the Luthors for a little torture session for possession of the Kryptonian Stone.

Season 4, Episode 22: Commencement
Chloe Sullivan: Hey, Clark, can you believe it? Twice in sixteen years. I mean, this is crazy. Smallville has some extraterrestrial bulls-eye on it.
Clark Kent: It's pretty weird, huh?

Season Closers have to be big, and shake things up.  So Lana kills Genevieve Teague with one third of the Kryptonian crystal.  This has two effects; one, Lana is freed from possession by the spirit of Isobel, and a meteor swarm is redirected toward Smallville.

Jor-El says the only way to save the town is to reunite all the crystals.  Lana gives Clark the Chinese stone, Clark has the Egyptian Stone, and that leaves the Teague stone...which is in Lionel's pocket.  The pulse from the stone lands him in a coma.  Lois gets out...Chloe heads back in, and Lana is at ground zero.

And where is Clark with the completed stone?  At the North Pole....

Final Thoughts.

This year saw a definite movement towards the focus on organized themes, and away from the Freak of the Week syndrome.  The theme of the stones will bloom in Season Fours Opener.  The Theme of Magic opened doors in the world that make Kryptonite less the most important substance in the universe.  And we see a lot of personal growth in the characters.  Clark is preparing to become a man, Lionel, after a dive into dark waters, seeks the light, and Lana explores some darker corners of her psyche, which is a little crowded.  And Lex tries to rekindle the embers of his friendship with Clark.

All and all, this season is the most different from all the others; many fans disliked the magic, many more loved it, but as Clark prepares for the real world, the show has grown up too.

The Smallville Saga

Smallville: Season One
Smallville: Season Two
Smallville: Season Three
Smallville: Season Four
Smallville: Season Five
Smallville: Season Six
Smallville: Season Seven
Smallville: Season Eight


Animation

Superman: Doomsday

Novels

The Last Days of Krypton

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Fit for Friday Evening
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children up Ages 8