Episode Review: Isis

After giving Clark a hard time for taking ten years to learn to will himself to fly, Lois was finding out it was easier said than done.

I can’t lie.  I went into the fifth episode of Season 10 tentatively prepared to dislike it.  Reading the plot description, I felt my eyes reflexively roll.  Lois was being possessed again.  Hadn’t we gone down that road before?  Hadn’t we seen just about every cast member on this series under the influence of some alien power or another?  On the page, it felt like this just couldn’t possibly have been anything but a tired concept in a semi-new package.  And in some (minor) ways, I suppose it was.  Fortunately, everyone involved with “Isis” seemed to understand this just as well as I did.  I’ve never seen any episode of this series so completely and effectively saved at every turn from becoming what it might have been by a cast having the time of their lives and a few iconic, indispensable moments that no Smallville fan can possibly keep from drooling over.  “Isis” does so many things right that it not only gives me hope for next week’s “Harvest” (which, again, looks a bit odd from the teaser trailer), but for the remainder of Season 10 in general.  I’ll hit on the specific reasons as I continue, but suffice it to say that I think the powers that be have their minds and hearts in precisely the place they need to be to give us the series-ending season that we all dreamed could happen.  And on that note, let’s dive right in to my second-favorite episode so far this year.

All Ollie could think of now was how to shut this girl up. What came out was "I'll just use my grappling hook". Fortunately, it worked into the conversation nicely.

As “Isis” begins, we see that Oliver is becoming very comfortable in his new role as the public face of Metropolis’s superheroes.  It’s not made very clear whether all of the Egyptian artifacts to be unveiled at the following day’s gala event were all brought back to the states by Carter after the events of “Shield”, but I’m assuming that’s the case.  In any event, we know from this opening sequence that Isis’s amulet (which was in Carter’s tent and subsequently taken by Lois) was intended to be a part of the collection and has gone missing.  Tess shows up to give Oliver a taste of reality and hold the mirror up to his rapidly expanding ego, and we get the sense right away that the two still have a lot of unresolved issues.  Tess and Oliver have an energy I like very much on the show.  They’re not close in the way that any other characters are on Smallville, and yet they have more history than almost any of them, and their bond is a strong one built on never pulling punches with one another.  Tess is the only one who will look Oliver right in the eyes and tell him the way things are, even when the truth hurts.  Looking back, it almost makes me re-evaluate the scene at the end of “Checkmate” when I felt Oliver was too hard on Tess given the feelings he supposedly had for her back in “Pandora” when she died in the future.  Perhaps Ollie was just giving her a dose of tough love as she’s doing with him in this episode.  Either way, they’re an interesting pair.  You can tell that Tess still loves Oliver, but she cares too much to say anything, especially when his heart still belongs to someone else.

"And when I caught sight of this full-wall, stained-glass window that clashes with absolutely everything I own, I just knew I had to buy this place"!

I truly hope that Lois has a hybrid vehicle.  Otherwise, they can’t possibly be paying her enough at The Daily Planet to compensate for her fuel costs in making the commute every day from The Talon.  But this is such an adorable scene to start us off.  Lois is prepping herself to let Clark know that she knows his secret, and it’s done in the cutest way imaginable.  Erica’s having such an incredible amount of fun this year, and it shows in everything she does.  I like that her Egyptian outfit isn’t explained immediately in this opening scene with her.  I know it’s a minor detail, but it actually makes the situation feel more real when, if someone’s wearing something out of the ordinary, there’s not a line or situation immediately in place to explain why.  No, this scene is strictly about Lois wanting to open up to Clark and not knowing how to do it.  But I like that this is being played not as a heavy-handed, intense thing for Lois, but rather something she’s incredibly excited about delving into with Clark.  At this point in the episode, I was pretty sure that the writers would do what they’d done every time we had an episode structured in this way.  Surely, they’d find some way to stop this revelation between Lois and Clark from happening.  That’s what they’d always done.  It’s one of the things Smallville’s most notorious for doing.  As Lois decides to go for the “coffee and donuts” approach with Clark to smooth things over a bit, we’re shown that she still has the amulet of Isis in her possession.

"I can't lie to you, Clark. I've been late to JLA meetings lately because I've had to get my Fortifix. I know I need help, okay"?

Now, it’s not that I didn’t like either of the opening scenes.  Quite the contrary.  But what follows totally stunned me.  The one thing that worried me about this episode was that it would be cheesy filler like I felt “Shield” was, and would focus so much on a possession plot that nothing would move forward.  Not only did this not happen in “Isis”, but the elements of the story that do have to do with that thread are played in such a tongue-in-cheek way that they actually work.  Our first post-credits scene has Clark telling Oliver about his recent trip to the future and how it has motivated him to finally confide in Lois about who he is.  I’m not sure if everyone got this feeling, but something tells me that maybe this scene wasn’t always meant to play where it does.  It almost seems like this should have gone before the Oliver / Tess scene, because his attitude here is very cocky and whimsical, unlike how we saw him after Tess chewed him a new one for embracing his hero status a bit too eagerly.  But I hardly cared while watching, and because Justin played this scene so entertainingly, I was forced to laugh on more than one occasion.  The bit with the greeting card and the cereal was really great, as was his advice to Clark to just tell Lois and risk everything for a life with love.  I feel like these characters we’ve all known and grown with are finally being allowed to put down some of their burdens and have real lives for a change, and that’s simply fantastic as far as I’m concerned.

"Well, yeah, but when I signed the contract, I didn't know you were going to let Lois one-up me in every possible way. I think I'm gonna cry".

Another thing that’s fantastic is humor at Cat Grant’s expense, and we get it in spades in the next sequence with Lois and Clark at The Planet.  They’re both fumbling around trying their very best not to be awkward with each other, both planning for this to be their big day with the other.  As much as I hate to admit it, Cat actually serves as a decent foil for our two leads here, and she’s portrayed in a much more low-key way here than she was in “Shield”.  That’s not to say that I liked her character any more than in that episode, but the humor set up for Lois because of her presence in this scene is just too good to resist.  It’s almost as if the writers knew how annoying Cat came off when she was introduced and turned Lois into our heroine, taking Cat down a notch at every possible opportunity.  The rips are so blatant, in fact, that I actually – almost – felt for her.  Cat’s evidently intrigued by the missing amulet, and tries to commandeer Clark as her sidekick for the story, but he quickly makes an excuse for a rooftop meeting with Lois instead.  I simply loved the “roof, five” motion that Clark makes to Lois as he walks off.  Having Cat in this scenario forces Lois and Clark to admit that they understand each other, and their repertoire is much richer for having someone in the mix to whom neither of them could ever fully relate.

Clark had to admit it: he felt a little silly. But what choice did he have? It was 4:15pm, which was when he always stood heroically on the roof, and the jacket was at the cleaners.

One of the best things about this episode was its structure.  From the very first scenes of Lois wanting to tell Clark she knows and Clark wanting to tell Lois who he is, you just know how this episode’s going to play out.  And what’s fantastic is that the writers toyed with those very expectations for nearly the entire length of this episode.  To that end, the aforementioned rooftop meeting is preempted by Lois inadvertently activating the amulet and becoming possessed by the goddess Isis.  I did question momentarily why Lois had the sudden urge to remove the piece from her purse right at that particular moment, but what follows is so perfectly timed and humorous that I just couldn’t find it in me to care too much.  Clark naturally confesses who he is to Lois mere moments after she becomes possessed (apparently making an exceptional effort not to see some pretty dramatic character changes in her, I might add), and is told that the Lois he knows no longer exists except to serve Isis.  She then flies away in a fiery streak, leaving Clark with the biggest “what just happened” look he may have ever had on this series.  I just thought this was so hilarious that I couldn’t stop laughing the entire time.  Clark really just can’t catch a break.  He finally gets up the nerve to tell the woman he’s destined to be with the truth and she turns out to be an ancient Egyptian goddess with flight powers and a bad attitude.  I’d say you can’t write this stuff, but evidently you can.

"Oliver, I appreciate the thought, but I think Lois and I can figure out our own technique. This is yours".

Back at Watchtower, Clark and Oliver figure out Isis’s agenda of bringing back her lost love Osiris from the underworld and unleashing hell on Earth.  While another episode might have played this scene serious and dark, “Isis” has fun with it, letting Ollie get in a few quips here and there that really made me remember how much I used to enjoy his character when he first joined the series.  Justin is, in my opinion, a far more endearing actor and – perhaps more importantly – also a more likable character when he’s allowed to use his natural charisma in a scene instead of being forced to fill all his lines with angst.  Clark suggests they bring Tess into the mix to help with their computer woes at Watchtower, but Oliver tries to convince him otherwise.  I like that they’re writing Clark as someone who believes in the good in people once again.  I remember the old days of Smallville when Clark used to be all about giving people the benefit of the doubt and a second (or third) chance when they messed up in life.  Somewhere along the way, that original Clark got jaded and hurt one too many times, and he’s had a rather large chip on his shoulder ever since.  It’s really awesome to see that it’s beginning to fall away after the events of “Homecoming”.  Superman is the world’s greatest hero for many reasons, not the least of which is his belief in the goodness and strength inherent in humanity.

And in the moments after he lost control of the skateboard, Willard pondered karma's role in his decision to goof off while on the clock.

Cat tracks Isis back to the warehouse housing all of the Egyptian artifacts, where she’s located Osiris’s heart.  I must say, if Isis comes away from all of this with a low opinion of the citizenry of Metropolis, I can’t really say I blame her.  She breaks into the museum by lifting up a metal door which just crumples to the ceiling under her strength only to be confronted by an absolutely brilliant security guard who runs straight for her, gun still in its holster, yelling at her that she can’t do that.  I don’t even have the words.  Cat doesn’t fare much better, although at least we’ve already established that she’s no genius when it comes to avoiding the bad guy in these situations.  She simply strolls right up to Isis and tells her she won’t get away with anything else.  Or not, Cat says, until she gets photographic proof of the crime first.  Now, as we’ll establish later at the end of the episode, this is the only copy of these pictures Cat has, so I’m not sure how taking them before Isis kills her solves anything, but no matter.  Clark gets to her just in time and super speeds her away to the coffee shop in the blink of an eye, leaving Cat extremely confused in the process.  When he gets back, though, he’s lost Isis, who’s taken Osiris’s heart.

So many people to subtly belittle and smirk at behind their backs...so little time.

We get the first seed of a plot point that will pay off later here, with Tess granting a sketchy-looking doctor permission to take Lex’s young clone with him for observation.  I like how hesitantly Cassidy plays this moment, and it pays off rather well in the end.  There’s a decided Lex quality about Tess in this scene, though, in being willing to do anything to find out all she can about the Lex clone, even if it means sacrificing the childhood of an innocent boy in the process.  It reminded me just how chilling of a villain Lex really was.  The exchange is broken up by Cat, who tells Tess that she’s uncovered the true identity of The Blur.  At first concerned that Cat might have actually discovered the truth about Clark, Tess is relieved and amused to find that Lois is Cat’s suspect instead.  There’s this really awesome moment here where we actually get to see Tess cracking up at the irony of what she’s hearing, and I’m so glad that Tess is given something else to do for a change than look wryly away from another actor or appear stoic and devious for no apparent reason.  But there’s more Tess goodness coming up later on that deserves even more attention.

"Come on Clark, let's both stare at Tess". "Oliver, Clark, please, I..." "Unnerving, isn't it, Tess? Good thinking, Oliver".

Case in point: this absolutely wonderful scene that’s probably my third favorite sequence in the entire episode.  Clark, Tess and Oliver all meet up at Watchtower to discuss where Isis may be headed.  As it turns out, a sarcophagus at the museum exhibit is rumored to contain a high priest of the underworld, and the three deduce that it may actually be Osiris.  If what you’ve just read sounds like a pretty dry exposition scene, it’s because that’s what this scene easily could have been.  But Tess and Oliver’s banter here is absolutely spot-on, with Tess finishing every sentence that Oliver starts.  Then there are a few terrific lines about Tess using Ollie’s laptop and how “low-tech” it is.  This is all done in such a cute, disarming way that I actually found myself having to roll the scene back afterward to hear what I was actually supposed to be paying attention to, because I was having more fun watching the characters interact than watching the scene itself.  Of all of the characters in Smallville, I think I enjoy Ollie most when he has a foil.  My favorite moments in “Absolute Justice” were his scenes with Hawkman, and his work here with Tess is no less entertaining.  What this episode does so well is take a scene like this one and make it into something special by introducing little character quirks that elevate things beyond merely getting the plot from point A to B.

Clark was kicking himself right now. He should have known that trying to hook up with Wonder Woman was a really stupid idea on multiple levels.

Clark catches up with Isis and tries to convince her that she can’t bring Osiris back.  The two have a surprisingly relevant conversation about love and what Clark understands of it.  Isis is played as something of an empath, a trait that I’d imagine to be quite logical after living for centuries ruled by one’s heart.  She senses that Clark hasn’t given his heart fully to Lois yet, and hurls him across the room and bonds him to the sarcophagus with magic ropes.  I did question why this would really be a threat to Clark initially, but then I remembered that the show has established his vulnerability to magic and assumed that’s what was going on.  Isis reinvigorates Osiris’s heart in her hand and prepares to use Clark’s body as a vessel for him to rise from the underworld.  Around this time, Cat arrives on the scene, determined to expose Lois as The Blur once and for all.  When Isis goes up for the killing blow, Cat backs up in fear and knocks over an artifact, momentarily disrupting the ritual.  She bumps into Green Arrow and, in an ironic twist, asks him to protect her from Isis.  In what I’m going to assume was yet another nod to the fans like myself who were more than a little annoyed with Cat the first time out, he stuffs her in the nearest sarcophagus and proceeds to confront Isis alone.  I recall ending my “Shield” review by saying that it was possible to have a character on this show who was unlikeable without making her annoying.  To follow up on that this week, I have to say that Cat Grant is used flawlessly in “Isis”.  She’s still the same character as before, but this time out she doesn’t chew up entire scenes or waste our time showing off how fast and irritatingly she can talk while undermining our favorite characters.  I actually found her funny in this episode, which is nothing if not a minor miracle.

Clark had been swindled. Cubic zirconia! He hadn't been this ticked off in months, and in the moment, he incinerated the entire necklace.

Ollie confronts Isis and tells her he knows that the only way to trap her back inside the amulet is by exposing it to sunlight.  He manages to lure her far enough from Clark to break the spell of the ropes, and Clark uses the diversion as an opportunity to pick up Osiris’s heart and threatens to destroy it if Isis doesn’t release Lois.  When Isis threatens to kill Lois rather than admit defeat, Oliver shoots the amulet off her neck and into Clark’s hands, who uses his heat vision to emulate sunlight and send her soul back where it belongs.  There’s this nice moment afterward where Clark super speeds to Lois before she collapses and she opens her eyes.  This is the first save for which she’s actually come back into consciousness, and you can see the understanding in her eyes immediately.  It’s as if she knows something major just happened and Clark saved her…and nothing else really matters.  It’s really touching how Lois instinctively comes up with some lame excuse as to why they’re both at the museum to save him from the trouble of coming up with something himself.  Part of me wishes Lois had been let in on Clark being The Blur a long time ago, but I have to remind myself that these kinds of scenes wouldn’t be half as satisfying now without the long wait we’ve had since Season 4.

Three hours after "Paranormal Activity 2", and Tess was still finding it hard to focus once again on world-domination.

Next up, we get my second-favorite scene in episode five.  Oliver and Tess have a really nice exchange wherein Oliver admits to having let his ego get to him and thanks Tess for being the one person he could depend on to call him on it.  I’m not sure if it’s what was meant in this scene, but I got a definite feeling that this conversation was also a bit of a penance for Oliver for his actions at the end of “Checkmate”.  His apology felt more meaningful to me than his lack of faith in Tess merely over the course of the last day, and I’m glad that this was brought up again and resolved so well.  As I’ve said, Oliver and Tess share a tough love bond with one another, but it’s still a love nonetheless, and I’m happy they’re back on the same team.  But as much as I liked what this scene meant for Oliver, it really belongs to Cassidy Freeman’s Tess.  When Clark enters the scene and she’s welcomed as a part of the Watchtower team, she doesn’t know how to process things.  Tess is an interesting character because she’s an example of what Lex might have been able to become had he not extinguished his better self in that fire.  She’s had the same pain, the same lack of love in her life that Lex had, and yet she’s still fighting against the darkness toward a life that might have a small hope to transcend what’s come before.  And yet when she’s confronted with acceptance and trust, she still doesn’t possess the functionality in her own heart to let it in fully.  She’s torn here, both elated and terrified at the thought of being finally loved.  She knows deep down that it’s exactly what she’s needed all her life, but it’s still too foreign and overwhelming a feeling to embrace with open arms.  At least not yet.

Forced to wear thick coatings of lip gloss and cursed with a wandering eye, young Lex was once again doomed to be ridiculed all his life until he became the world's most evil villain.

But what I absolutely love is how Tess takes what’s given to her in the preceding scene and immediately uses it to begin making the right and more humane choices in her own life.  Her decision not to allow the doctor to take Alexander away reinforced my feeling that her resemblance to Lex in the earlier scene with the doctor had been no accident.  Having seen what someone having the smallest bit of faith in her could do in her heart, she instinctively knows that she must preserve Alexander’s heart in a way that hers and the original Lex’s were never nurtured.  Now, on a strictly personal note, I do find the kid who plays Alexander a bit inexplicably creepy rather than the cute I’m assuming the show runners are going for.  Maybe the uneasiness I feel is intentional considering that this is, after all, a Lex Luthor clone we’re talking about.  I don’t know.  But it did feel like the “I love you, Tess” line veered a bit into eerie territory for me.  Based on Tess’s accepting the statement at face value and seeming so happy to have the love of the child, I’m assuming we were meant to find this heartwarming rather than disconcerting.  But then, I also think a great deal of my feeling toward this has to do with my reservations about this plot thread being how we’re going to see Lex before the series ends.  Please don’t let us all down, Michael Rosenbaum.  This new clone version of Lex becoming the “real” Lex Luthor would be an unnecessarily cheap way out of a corner that we needn’t be painted into after ten years.  More importantly, this idea cheapens the series as a whole and seriously undermines the validity of your role as the Lex we’ve all grown up with.  I don’t think anyone wants to see that happen.

When Cat offered to show Lois her new magic trick, she'd neglected to tell her that she'd just watched "The Dark Knight" the evening before.

At this point, Cat’s gotten the bad end of the stick for nearly 40 minutes (did I mention that I really enjoyed how she was used in this episode), and she’s out for blood.  She stomps over to Lois and stabs her in the hand with a pen before she ever sees it coming.  Lois’s “what the hell?!” and almost-punch are just legendary.  While I personally would have been totally fine with Clark letting Lois get one good hit in (she did just impale the hand of his true love, after all), the banter that ensues between Lois and Cat here is so fantastic that it doesn’t matter.  I loved everything here, from Lois calling Cat 12-years-old for spelling out s-e-x to Clark nonchalantly derailing both Cat’s evidence and her theory in one fell swoop.  I really found it hilarious (and overdue) that there were not one but two references in this episode to strange things being an absolutely normal thing in Metropolis.  It just made me crack up to think of someone as tightly-wound as Cat coming into this bizarre environment where people regularly deal with things like superheroes, evil alien races and demonic possession like the rest of the world might deal with deciding where to go for lunch.  “Isis” as a whole works because, at the end of the day, it’s Smallville having a lot of fun with itself.  This series has always worked best when it’s done that, and it’s that element that made this episode fun where it could have been silly, exciting when it could have been mediocre, and…well…“Isis” when it could have been “Shield”.

In his heart, Clark had to admit that Lois was right. How could she love a man who couldn't tie a tie properly? So much for telling her he was a space alien.

I dedicated two entire paragraphs last week to the closing Clois scene, and it’s going to be really hard not doing it again.  As I’ve touched on, “Isis” structured this episode in a way that threw me completely off guard.  It set up the main characters wanting to get things out in the open which, in the Smallville universe, typically means there’s no chance of it actually happening.  And if it does happen, it doesn’t stick (see “Reckoning” and “Infamous”).  And in fact, even this closing scene starts off precisely how we assume it will, with Clark assured yet again that keeping his identity a secret is the best way to protect Lois.  Lois tells him that she wishes The Blur knew that she was willing to take that risk and walks toward the elevator in one of the slowest walks I’ve ever seen on this series.  And I mean emotionally.  I could almost feel Lois just hoping that Clark would stop her, and being heartbroken all over again when he didn’t.  As the camera panned around to reveal Clark’s patented tortured expression, I expected a black screen to appear like it always has in moments like this.  Only that didn’t happen.  The scene continued, and I sat up in my seat.  I could feel it.

"Okay, Clark, I think you've almost got it, but I think we need to do just a couple more. Trust me, there are many subtle nuances to a successful tacklehug".

Lois is very nearly tuning him out at this point, just waiting for that elevator to come and take her away from feeling so shut out yet again.  But as Clark keeps talking she realizes – and we realize – what he’s about to do, the elevator comes and goes, and then he says those four words that meant very nearly as much to me as the three he said last week: “I am The Blur”.  What follows is probably the most joyous moment I’ve ever seen on Smallville.  I gushed last week, and I’m going to gush again.  I loved everything about this.  It was so perfect on so many levels.  Once again, my hat is off to Louis Febre.  His Lois and Clark theme swells here to such pitch-perfection that I suddenly realized what he’d been doing musically with the two of them for the past year on this series, and it’s nothing short of genius.  I loved how Clark does what he does because the one thing that scares him more than trusting someone and risking everything for love is never being with the one person who makes that risk worth taking.  I love that Clark saves countless people every single day, but Lois is the one person alive who could ever save him.  I love Lois running and leaping into Clark’s arms, totally overwhelmed at knowing that he has finally found it within himself to need a life with her as much as he needed to hold on to fearing life altogether.  I love that the theme of “Isis” is that love truly does conquer all, and that maybe all any of us need is just one person to say “I believe in you”.  Is it Friday yet?