Episode Review: Homecoming

"No, seriously, past me, look at me and tell me I'm not good looking". "You need help".

Well, here we are.  One day before Smallville’s ninth birthday saw episode 200, and for my money, it was well worth the lengthy wait.  In fact, this is already one of my favorite Smallville episodes ever, and I’m almost certain that it’s not because I’ve just seen it.  There have only been a handful of scenes in this series’ history that have really gotten to me emotionally (the end of “Vengeance” springs immediately to mind), but I found myself holding back tears several times in “Homecoming”.  It’s a testimony to the love and respect that the creative team has given this show, these characters, and the entire Superman legend that an episode in the tenth season could inspire such a reaction from me and, I assume, from countless other fans.  There were a few aspects of “Homecoming” that I did find a bit over-the-top, but I’ll touch on those as lightly as possible, because I don’t want to detract from the wonderful overall impression I had of this milestone episode.

Unbelievable. It had been years now since Clark had canceled his subscription to Seventeen, but the damned things just kept coming!

As our episode opens, Clark is looking at a collection of recent magazines surrounding the public perception of the heroes in Metropolis.  The recent events of “Supergirl” and the alienating actions of Jor-El have seriously undermined Clark’s faith in who he is and whether he’s up to the task of being the world’s greatest hero after all.  Enter Lois, who’s become Clark’s one-girl cheering section since finding out his secret.  I really adore the evolution of this relationship.  Just when I thought things couldn’t be done in a more satisfactory way than they were in Season 9, the writers gave Lois the certainty that came with knowing about Clark, and it’s made more difference than I could have imagined.  I love how absolutely resolute she is in making sure that Clark knows how important and irreplaceable he is, not just in her life, but in the lives of those he touches daily.  I really connected with her speech about standing by The Blur no matter what because that’s just what you do when you believe in someone.  Part of believing in people is doing so even when they’ve lost sight of what it is to believe in themselves.  It’s a very sweet, very real way to write these two characters, and I’m so pleased to see it.  To cheer Clark up, Lois suggests that they attend their Smallville High reunion.  I was cracking up when they started debating about Lois’s attendance record and how important of an event this was for her to be a part of.

Brainiac had come back in time on a vital mission to save Smallville from destroying its 200th episode with a pointless villain.

Now, I must say, this next sequence really just didn’t work for me.  It involves a truly pointless subplot about a school counselor who evidently has it in for Clark because she’s spent ten years dealing with meteor-infected patients and he’s always somehow involved in their stories…or something.  She has what looks to be a voodoo doll of Clark in his red and blues sitting on her desk and is about to stab it with a large needle when Brainiac freezes time and tells her to leave Clark Kent to him.  The first issue I have with this is that is goes absolutely nowhere.  Nothing is ever done with this character because Brainiac changes her motives right here in her introductory scene, so there really is no reason to start this episode this way.  Also, the voodoo doll was just sort of a cheesy gimmick in my opinion.  I had to stifle an unintentional laugh when I saw this, and I’m grateful that nothing else was really done with this character.  There are simply too many questions set in motion with her being the antagonist of the episode.  Why was she so angry with Clark?  Did she assume he’d infected everyone, or was she just angry that they all talked about him in therapy?  Why wait ten years to exact her revenge when she knew Clark was in Metropolis?  At the end of the day, you could take this entire scene completely out of “Homecoming”, and it would make no difference to the proceedings whatsoever.  I suppose it’s here just as an introduction to Brainiac, but it really wasn’t necessary.

Yep. This was the look of an imminent hug all right. Clark was frightened.

When Lois and Clark get to Smallville High, there are a few great moments where the series recalls “Pilot”, and they’re all handled extremely well.  Giving us a glimpse of Lana’s “man or Superman” line when Clark stops to pick up a pile of books a mere two episodes after the Nietzsche reference in “Shield” was a real masterstroke.  Also, I’m not sure if anyone else noticed, but it seemed like the audio on Lana’s delivery was slightly different than in the original episode, almost as if the line was originally ADR’ed.  Lois, meanwhile, is having a hard time getting anyone to remember her short stint as a student, eventually stumbling upon Lana’s name tag.  I really appreciated the mention of the dance in “Bride” being the last time Lois saw Lana.  It’s a great emotional payoff – not only for the end of this episode, but for Lois’s character in general – that that moment still stands out for her as much as it does.

Try as they might to deny their relation to one another, the fact was that goofy looks just ran in the family.

Clark enters The Torch office to find everything covered up and packed away.  There’s a great little moment with Clark standing in front of what was once the wall of weird, recalling Chloe as she was at the beginning of the series.  Honestly, it made me remember just how much I used to like Chloe back in the day when they actually allowed her character to smile every once in a while.  Lois apologizes for bringing Clark to the reunion and making him deal with so many memories.  But before they can really get into that conversation, two aspiring Torch reporters enter the room.  They’re huge fans of Chloe and have a theory that The Blur was actually born and raised in Smallville (an idea that Lois quickly attempts to shoot down to protect Clark).  These two were really cute onscreen together.  They actually reminded me of Zan and Jayna from “Idol” a little bit with their enthusiasm and well-meaning fascination with all things Blur.  I really liked the continued thread here of Lois keeping Clark’s faith in himself intact.  You really get a feel for how hard it must be for her to be this encouraging without letting on that she knows who he really is.

This candid photo was snapped a half hour into the first press screening of "Craving".

The scene transition here to Clark’s absolute indifference to being honored as the alumni homecoming king was hilarious, and Lois having the time of her life was such a great contrast.  I have to say that Greg Arkin’s look to Clark here, given where this show eventually takes him, is really humorous and more than a little strange.  But hey, this is bug boy we’re talking about.  I’ll forgive the show paying homage to its cheesy, freak of the week Season 1 roots for the sake of nostalgia.  We get another time-freeze sequence as James Marsters makes his second entrance as Brainiac (though I still contend that this scene would have been a more effective first entrance).  He tells Clark that this is the moment that his life changes forever and whisks him away with the power of the legion ring, leaving Lois alone on her throne of honor, presumably assuming that Clark sped away to avert some disaster or another.

The best wood-chipper Jonathan had ever purchased, and Lionel had poured sugar in the gas tank. All bets were off.

After explaining that he has been “cured” by the events of “Legion”, Brainiac takes Clark on a journey through time, beginning with one of the most affecting sequences I can ever recall seeing on this show.  The first stop is Jonathan’s funeral.  He tells Clark that this was perhaps the single defining moment in his life; the day he began to blame himself.  Clark is then shown the night Jonathan died, and Brainiac finally allows him to understand that protecting Clark was always his father’s choice.  Had these events happened on that or any other night, the outcome was ultimately set in motion by Jonathan, not by Clark.  The way this series of scenes was handled was just completely perfect.  I actually fought back tears as Clark instinctively began to move to help his father only to be held back by Brainiac, who assured him that he could not change Jonathan’s fate.  It’s so great that Smallville is paying such tribute to its long history, and if anything, I felt compelled to go back and re-watch “Reckoning” with this new perspective on the importance of that story and its impact on Smallville as a whole.

Lois hadn't taken inter-dimensional travelers into account when she looked to see if anyone would notice her stealing from the pastry cart.

Clark is then shown a present-day Oliver who’s unsure of how to proceed after his admission to being The Green Arrow.  Clark’s pushed him away and has been dwelling on past mistakes and allowed them to taint his current relationships.  This leads in to his being shown a meandering Lois, left to contend with the rest of the reunion alone (including one intensely rude punch bowl server that I frankly wanted to smack through my television screen).  He says that all he’s tried doing after what happened with Lana was to protect Lois, but Brainiac points out that Clark has spent so much time thinking about the past that he’s missing the present that’s right in front of him.  I really appreciated this issue being addressed.  Those of you who read these reviews week by week will know that I’ve recently been disturbed by how little involvement Clark has had in the lives of those closest to him, seemingly unaware of major events that happened one or even two episodes prior.  But more than that, if there’s one issue that “Homecoming” touched on that I connected with personally, it’s the idea that something in your past can cast a shadow on everything you are, even if you’re not fully aware of it.  I loved the message of how important it truly is to let those things go and allow yourself to live and love again, even if it seems impossible.  Clark’s had so much guilt and shame and feelings of responsibility weighing his heart down for so many years, that he’s all but let it define who he is.  In fact, it’s ironic, but I think that’s why so many of us thought that this whole thread of there being a darkness in Clark was so contrived at first.  We’d become so used to Clark this way – even as observers – that we didn’t see it any more than he did.  But those emotions are soul-crushing, and if we let them, they can shape our lives.  I like that the point is made here that it is always our choice in the end how much power these things hold over us.  Allowing ourselves to embrace life in the present is always an option we have if we’re only willing to take it.

"Very funny, Brainiac...we were about to kiss. Bring Lois back, please".

After he gets a look at Greg walking toward Lois, Clark makes a move for the legion ring and inadvertently transports himself to the year 2017.  I won’t go into the logistics of this or how it makes sense for Clark to have lived those seven years when Lois didn’t live her single year leading into “Pandora”, but I’ll just chalk all of this up to Clark being predestined to return to the present while Lois actually altered the course of history by returning in Season 9.  Regardless, what follows is worth any time paradox that it might introduce.  I felt about these future sequences like the rest of the fan community evidently felt about that opening scene in “Salvation”.  This was all just fantastic, from Clark’s relationship with Lois and his gradual realization that she now knows everything about him to the misunderstanding that ensues when he attempts to sit down at his old desk in the basement.  The humor in these scenes came off just flawlessly, exactly as it should have.  It was whimsical without being silly.  It felt like Superman.  Actually, it felt like a Superman comic book, and it’s exactly this kind of fun, light-hearted, action-packed approach that I’d personally love to see taken with Zack Snyder’s new Superman reboot.  If I had one problem with “Superman Returns”, it’s that it lost a great deal of that sense of fun that made the Christopher Reeve films so unique and special.  Not so here.  This is how a Superman film (and series) should feel.  But as to the specifics, I’m going to devote one more paragraph to them because they’re all pretty tremendous.

"Oh, you really want to do this, Lois? You're challenging ME to a staring contest? Perhaps you forgot the part where I can shoot FIRE from my eyes"!

Straight away, Clark bumps into Lois, and her take-charge, no-nonsense attitude with him is so much fun.  It’s almost a joke to say this, but you can tell that Lois wears the pants in her future relationship, even with the most powerful man on the planet.  She actually reminded me of her early character some in these scenes.  She’s a mile a minute, talking without thinking, never slowing down long enough to really get what it is Clark’s trying to tell her.  And yet it’s wholly endearing in a way that makes us realize just how precisely right Erica Durance’s Lois Lane was to fill these shoes from the moment she came on the scene back in Season 4.  She’s Clark’s human connection but she also keeps him from over-analyzing things (something I think every Smallville fan out there can agree that Clark desperately needs).  Clark meeting his future self in the elevator was just as fantastic.  I loved everything about this exchange.  I especially liked future Clark’s iconic look with the slicked-back hair.  I’ve actually worried in the past about whether they’d leave Tom’s hair as-is when he finally donned the super suit for the first time, but this future-Clark look is just perfection.

"I'll bet he has no clue why he can't lift off", Clark laughed to himself. It was Friday, it'd been a long week, and sometimes you just had to slip on that Red K ring and chillax. Ah, good times.

In fact, everything about these scenes thrilled me from beginning to end.  As for the naysayers last week about the effects work in “Supergirl”, how about these apples?  My jaw was on the ground during pretty much the entire helicopter sequence.  I remember thinking “wow, they’ve really stepped things up in a major way for this episode”, and it gives me total confidence that, if they do cut corners in a scene here or there this year, it’s going to be in the spirit of giving us the best, most visually-astounding finale that any of us could possibly have hoped for.  And just a side-thought here, but THANK YOU, writers, for not only leaving Lois conscious this week, but actually allowing her to knock someone else out for a change!  How refreshing!  I adored every moment that Lois and Clark had on top of the Daily Planet building after the save.  These scenes were so wonderful, in fact, that it might just be enough to take the sting away from the Lana / Clark moment in Season 8 at this same location that, well, I think we can all agree should never have happened.  You can see in Clark’s eyes how relieved he truly is that Lois is as capable as she is to protect his secret and keep up in his super-powered world.  It’s like he’s looking at her for the first time, realizing that this is someone who’s always going to fight for him, always going to protect him, and who’s never going to feel for one moment as though doing those things is a burden.  She does for him because she wants and needs to.  She truly loves him.

The sad fact was, meteor freak or no, creepy was still creepy.

When Brainiac finally catches back up with Clark, we get another of my favorite scenes in “Homecoming” (which is, I know, starting to feel redundant to say – in truth, the entire episode felt like a collection of favorite moments).  As it turns out, despite having a predilection toward projecting pointlessly eerie looks across rooms at Clark, Greg Arkin’s actually been successfully rehabilitated.  Can I just say that I loved every single thing about this development?  Clark’s gone up against so many meteor freaks over the years, and yet never have we gotten a real sense of the good that he’s been responsible for in all that time.  We’ve seen countless dangerous people put away at an episode’s end never to be heard from again, but it’s one thing to think that’s Clark’s getting these people off of the street and quite another to actually feel that by doing so, he might actually be helping them in the long run.  I’m not sure if everyone got the same feeling from this scene, but I came away feeling that perhaps there was a similar hope for many, many other “villains” that Clark has gone up against in the past as well.  This was such a classy move creatively that I’m really at a loss.  This is what sets Superman apart from every other hero out there.  It’s why he’s the most inspirational and pure of any of them.  Anyone can beat someone up and throw them in prison.  Only Superman can change the world for the better from the inside out, using hope and kindness instead of high-tech gadgetry as his weapon.  As you might have noticed, I’m beginning to see Clark in terms of being Superman and not of just being the Clark we’ve known for the last nine years.  And honestly, that’s the best compliment I could imagine giving “Homecoming”.

They might have been booed off the dancefloor for unsportsmanlike conduct, but at least they had each other.

Just as Clark is about to finally dance with Lois, the song is cut short and it seems as though the moment is going to be spoiled yet again.  As someone as close to the music of this series as anyone out there, I must take a moment to acknowledge what a perfect choice I think it was to use Lifehouse’s “Everything” for this episode.  It’s a perfect way to recall that first episode (and “Tempest”, for that matter), and yet I think a creative decision was made here in this scene that was as perfect as anything I could have come up with myself.  That song is about Clark’s past.  It was the song he was playing when he’d imagined Lana saving him a dance in “Pilot”.  It represents who Clark was as a freshman in high-school and where his heart was at that point in time.  It isn’t right for him and Lois.  It would have felt as out of place to have them dancing to that song as “You and Me”, and I think it was absolutely the right thing to stop that moment in its tracks and give us the one that closes this episode instead.

Only Clark could pull off teary-eyed AND cocksure at the same time. Patent pending.

Clark’s goodbye to Jonathan at the gravesite had me fighting back tears yet again.  I know I’m probably just a bit too close to this whole subplot this year having just lost someone who, for me, was a father, but I don’t think it’s just my personal life that made this scene so powerful.  I wondered at first why Clark had chosen to wear his new outfit while saying goodbye (since it didn’t seem like he had any intention of doing anything else but visiting the grave), but now that I’ve had a few days to think about it, I think this was the right way to go thematically.  Clark is saying goodbye to his past.  He’s showing his father who he’s going to become, and making a promise to be the person that Jonathan always knew he could be.  Emotionally, it rings very true that he would want to make a speech like that wearing what he’s chosen for being the Earth’s protector.  It had never hit me before that Clark hadn’t said goodbye to his father, but when he did, I just couldn’t hold back the emotion any longer.  The symbolism of burying the watch and making that promise was just done so well and so right that part of me almost hopes that we don’t see John Schneider again in Season 10 as previously reported unless it’s in the final episode.  I feel like that journey has finally come to a close for Clark, and I’d hate to see the power of this scene diminished.

Slightly misframing a shot to reveal a boom mike was one thing, but this DP would never work in the business again.

When we meet back up with Oliver, he’s fielding questions from an incredibly hostile reporter.  Part of me was actually a little bothered at the time by how one-sided the journalist was, but then it hit me how sadly true-to-life such a portrayal really is.  Anything else would have felt even more fabricated to be honest.  And in this context, I think it made complete sense that the public sentiment would go against Oliver.  Not only is Oliver trying to inspire people with heroism while his personal life isn’t as perfect as the persona he’s trying to project, but he’s also the very embodiment of the “evil rich”.  And I think part of the reason Ollie goes on his political kick here and tries to distance himself from those who drill oil wells or erect fences to keep immigrants out of the country is because, on some level, he’s railing against being stereotyped as evil because he’s wealthy and threatening because his life is different than most.  This was also a great way for him to give some sideways future-proof support to Clark, and it made their quick look at each other that much more meaningful.  This interview really felt like a game-changing sequence to me, as if now we might start seeing the heroes emerge from the shadows as the season heads to its last run of episodes (oh, that’s just sad to say).  But I’m glad that this has happened so early.  I wasn’t looking forward to a season-long subplot of anti-vigilante public opinion.  I think Metropolis is ready to embrace heroes like Oliver and Clark for who they are.

While Greg admitted to Clark that he owed him one, he really didn't appreciate having to hold the spotlight from the rafters.

This brings us, finally, to the last scene in episode 200.  I’ll try my very best not to gush too profusely over this, but it’s going to be one of the most difficult exercises in restraint I’ve ever faced if this doesn’t run completely away with me.  Everything about this was perfect.  I love how the mention of the dance in “Bride” made this scene feel like Clark’s atoning for that day with Lois.  I love that the song that was used here felt like it belonged exclusively to Lois and Clark and was more memorable than just about anything we’ve heard on the show in years.  I love how awkward Lois is at first, deflecting everything that Clark throws at her, attempting for all she can to diffuse directly confronting the situation.  I have a feeling that Lois considers herself fairly emotionally dysfunctional.  She’s had a series of terrible events in her life, leaving her feeling isolated and alone, even through her temporary relationships with the likes of Ollie and Grant.  She’s so scared of messing things up that, in her mind and heart, it might actually seem the wiser course to just stop things from approaching a level of closeness that will leave her hurting yet again.  Add to this, she’s a bit intimidated by Clark at this point.  She knows that he’s the one.  She knows he’ll never let her down, and she projects that certainty onto her support of The Blur.  But when it comes to channeling that same conviction into a real-world relationship that she’ll actually have to structure her life around, she’s the high-strung, nervous Lois that we’ve seen for years.

Okay, I'm sorry, but this is just too romantic to belittle with a snarky caption. I got nothin'.

I was smiling through this entire scene because of how Clark is with Lois.  When she tells him not to worry about leaving her at the reunion, and he says “I’m not worried about you…I missed you”, it’s like she doesn’t know how to take that for a moment, flattered through she may be.  But he finally stops her from over-analyzing the moment (just as, as we’ve seen, she will ultimately do for him as well), and the two share the dance they’ve been trying to have with one another for years on this series.  The “I love you” that they say to each other is just done in such a completely right way that I was left speechless.  And I’m so glad that there was no kiss after that statement.  There was nothing but comfort and contentment for both of them.  Clark’s final moment of floating with Lois has more symbolic meaning for me even than the practical amazement I felt that he was finally defying gravity.  Love, when it’s as it should be, shouldn’t be about taking on someone else’s burdens or complicating one’s life.  It should be a certainty in your heart that someone will be there forever, whether you’re with them or you aren’t.  It’s an assuredness that you’ll never have to deal with anything in your life alone.  People have a tendency to think of all the ways that being in love will complicate their lives and forget that its true power lies in simplifying it.  It makes your heart feel lighter, and allows you to let go of the things weighing it down.  It frees you in ways that you just can’t understand until you let go and allow it to happen.  I think if this scene means anything to me, it’s that both Lois and Clark have finally found it within themselves to do that.  I adored almost everything about “Homecoming”, and right now I’m just beside myself with anticipation for the rest of Season 10.  I’d especially like to see a rematch now between Clark and Darkseid.  Something tells me the results might be somewhat different now than they were the first time.