Episode Review: Harvest

"Well, naturally, I don't need it, Lois, but that's not the point. I save the world every week and I should live a little. Besides, this baby corners like it's on rails".

I think if anything about Season 10 has stood out for me so far, it’s its ability to salvage seemingly silly story lines and turn them into unexpectedly entertaining episodes.  I wasn’t sold on the whole misguided village that time forgot angle going into this episode.  It seemed, as with “Isis”, that this would be a throwaway entry or, at best, one of the season’s lesser moments.  I’m pleased to say that I not only didn’t end up disliking “Harvest”, but came away rather taken with it on a few levels.  Our first scene is our first with both Lois and Clark fully in the know about his powers and each other, and it’s a fantastic one.  I have to say that it’s so refreshing to have someone who’s just been made aware of who Clark is finally ask the questions that anyone in that position would be asking.  Most of the time in Smallville’s history when someone’s been let in on Clark’s secret, they’ve been stunned at first, but then they just sort of accepted it and nothing much was made of it ultimately.  But I know that if I found out someone I thought I was extremely close to was a super-powered Kryptonian, I’d certainly have more than one or two burning questions.  Lois plays this just right, putting things together from long seasons ago with this new knowledge.  I loved this approach.  It made things seem far more realistic.  This isn’t a revelation that you would just sweep under the rug.  It’s kind of a game-changer.

It wasn't exactly the most dignified thing he'd ever done, but Clark knew it was his own fault for not going before he left.

Through this initial conversation, it comes out that Clark got Tess to reassign Lois to cover the cherry festival with him so she wouldn’t be covering the anti-hero protest in Metropolis.  He felt that her pro-Blur articles might have put her in danger with such a hostile crowd.  Lois appreciates the concern, but tells Clark that she can take care of herself – a concept that the writers of this series might be able to sell a bit easier to this reviewer if they didn’t insist on knocking Lois out cold every couple of episodes.  After their car blows a tire, we get a cute little scene of Clark changing the tire in record time while Lois looks on, incredibly amused.  Am I the only one who just loves that Lois knows about Clark now?  It’s just great to see these two being able to play something with each other that’s from a totally different perspective than we’ve seen for the last five years.  As much as I’ve enjoyed pretty much all things Clois for the last few years on Smallville, the same banter with the same things hidden just beneath the surface might have gotten stale after too much longer, and I’m glad the Lois knows now instead of at the very end of the show.  We’ve grown with these characters and seen them slowly fall in love over time.  We deserve to have a little bit of time with them onscreen the way they’re going to be going forward.  I think we’ve earned that as fans.

Moments later, Clark would find himself loading the trunk with more boxes of Tagalongs and Thin Mints than any person could reasonably eat in a lifetime.

A young girl comes out of nowhere to offer Lois some lemonade, and Lois takes the opportunity to play up her damsel in distress role with Clark and force him to walk at a normal pace into the next town to get another tire for the car.  Naturally, we know from years of watching similar scenarios that this girl is going to be nothing but trouble.  Why else even introduce her, right?  On the other hand, I will say that I was pleasantly surprised that the writers didn’t fully stereotype this girl or the people in her town in “Harvest”.  Sure, there are a few token elements that creators of these types of stories just can’t seem to shake (a strong religious undertone, a certain aversion to technology, and a predilection toward carrying torches to reinforce the group’s angry horde mentality), but for the most part, they steered clear of some of the more tired clichés.  I had expected, for example, that this little girl would have a thick Southern accent to further sell the whole backward, misguided redneck angle, but then I suppose they were going more for the Northeastern Amish demographic.  In any case, it’s nice to see a group of people like this who aren’t portrayed exactly like we always see in episodes like this.  You could actually see why Lois might go off with this little girl.  She and her town are actually quite charming at first, and it’s only because we know this show and it’s mechanics that we know this can’t possibly end well…and of course, it doesn’t.  Clark gets back and finds Lois gone.

"Hey, now, calm down there! We're only talking about a speeding ticket here, mister, don't make it worse than it already is"!

He’s met there by one of the most realistically unhelpful policemen I’ve ever seen on television.  Despite being quite obviously calm under the circumstances and stating his case in a reasonable fashion, the cop instantly asserts that Clark has either remembered things incorrectly or is hysterical.  I find it both sad and hilarious that the only way a character could be drawn this way and have it not instantly draw suspicion is to throw a uniform on him and drop him in a squad car.  Clark’s also somehow lost his powers for reasons as yet unexplained.  Now naturally, we all know this guy’s bad news just as we did with the little girl.  But hey, we need a show, right?  So after Clark makes his case to the officer’s satisfaction, he agrees to help Clark follow the cart tracks and see where they lead.  Lois, meanwhile, has hitched a ride with Charlotte in an attempt to get back to Metropolis in time to cover the protest rally.  Again, the townsfolk here are presented as adequately helpful and charming, appearing so disarming that Lois actually agrees to stay for dinner before heading back into town.  I’ve seen so many scenarios like this one on other shows where you can’t really sympathize much with your protagonists when they walk straight into a situation that’s obviously creepy from the outset, so I’m glad things are played with more subtlety here.

After weeks of blindly posting Craigslist ads, Tess was finally able to scrounge up a skeleton crew of random kids to come to a party for a boy none of them knew.

Back at Luthor Mansion, Tess is throwing Alexander a birthday party.  We learn that he’s aging rapidly and that she’s looking desperately for a cure before his body gives out.  I’m still not entirely sold on this subplot with Tess and young Lex.  At this point, I feel like the show is painting itself into a corner with this kid.  Either Michael agrees to come back to the show as the Lex we have all come to know, or this boy will ultimately grow up to become that Lex in the end.  I’m not sure I can really get fully on board with either of those two ideas.  The first makes all of this build-up with Alexander meaningless in the end, and the second undermines the character that Rosenbaum brought to life all those years as not being the “real” Lex Luthor at all.  It just makes me uneasy about how this is all going to be resolved.  There was a touch that I missed when I first watched “Harvest” that I caught on my re-watch.  After Alexander thanks Tess for throwing him the best party ever, he shoots a haunting look at the fireplace while hugging her, as if to indicate that he remembers the significance of that location.  We get some further foreshadowing here as well that perhaps Alexander has more of Lex’s memories than we once believed as he draws an S shield before collapsing in a seizure.

"Yep, that's it right there. Only bathtub in the county. Now it's not too roomy, but it gets the job done just fine...what's wrong"?

Clark and the police officer track the buggy’s tracks to an old shack with a water pump out front, and Clark discovers that the water supply is contaminated by blue Kryptonite from the 1989 meteor shower.  I must say it’s refreshing to see something sourced back to the original meteor shower that Clark doesn’t instantly become Emo-man and blame himself for bringing down on Earth.  Here, he’s simply concerned and offers up a warning.  Old school Clark would have just sighed and felt responsible, and it’s awesome that he’s moved through that stage – even if it did take him a decade to do it.  When the bell tower sounds, the policeman blindsides Clark with the butt of his rifle.  I’m not sure if the irony of this fully struck me at the time, but I’m not sure I can remember the last time that Lois was allowed to remain conscious throughout an entire episode and Clark was the one knocked out by blunt force head trauma.

Tess had crossed the line. Twice before, Alexander had asked her nicely not to mess with his action figures. He'd never leave them unguarded again.

Tess questions Alexander about the S shields he’s been drawing and begins to understand that his memories aren’t merely those of an innocent young boy.  It seems that young Lex has been genetically engineered with a predisposition for hating all things related to the symbol and “the bad man” of his dreams.  I really felt for Tess here.  She’s finally able to have someone in her life onto whom she can pour all of the love and caring that she was always denied, and he begins unavoidably spiraling into the very monster she’s trying so desperately to prevent him from becoming.  Tess has always come across in Smallville as a rather tragic figure to me, seemingly doomed to fight for lost causes and put her faith in the wrong things despite the best of intentions.  Her relationship with Alexander is, in fact, a great metaphor for her character in general.  Alexander winds up locking Tess in his bedroom and escaping from the mansion.  This is Luthor Mansion security at its finest and most typical, ladies and gentlemen.

Shockingly, revenue from tourism was down yet again this year.

Lois, meanwhile, is having an increasingly tense dinner with the locals, who eventually divulge all sorts of disturbing information about offering up a sacrifice every year as a means of sustaining plentiful crops and good health.  Evidently, the family Lois has been taken in by lost their daughter in the meteor shower and attributes the flourishing nature of their entire town to said annual sacrifice.  All of this talk finally creeps Lois out and she starts to leave, only to be told by Charlotte that she’ll never be allowed to go.  She’s met by the aforementioned mass of torch-carrying villagers as she tries to exit the house.  Perhaps I think too much into these things, but I have to wonder where these kinds of people come from.  They’re always portrayed with torches in scenes like this, but do they really all have torches lying around for just such an occasion?  Was there a set time for them to surround the cabin, or have they been standing there through Lois’s entire meal?  Does it ever occur to any one of them to look around, see a mob of people carrying torches, and question even for a moment what it is that they’re doing?  Regardless, Lois is captured, and finds herself inside one of the cabins with Clark.

"Wait. You're saying that all they're after is a woman to sacrifice? They're not after me at all? Um...hey, Lois, I think I left the oven on back in Smallville, I'll be right back".

This was one of my favorite scenes in “Harvest”.  One thing that distinguishes Lois from anyone else Clark has confided in in the past is that she actually works with him.  She may not be super-human, but she’s his partner.  The two find a way to work together on equal footing in a way that benefits each of them.  That’s something that Lana could never have done for Clark.  She was so consumed with feelings of inadequacy over not having powers when Clark did, in fact, that she went behind his back to obtain them, ultimately sacrificing their entire relationship in the process.  Lois doesn’t need that kind of reassurance to know that she can be good for Clark.  She understands that she’s who he has chosen, exactly as she is.  And she’s confident enough in herself to let that be enough, which is exactly what Clark needs in his life.  It’s Lois who finds the way out of the cabin and improvises to unlock the cellar door.  Clark is really taken out of the driver’s seat for a change and forced to deal with a tough situation through Lois’s practical, human-scale solutions rather than simply overcome everything with his powers.  This was a great play on the opening scene, and I could sense that it made him understand that there’s just as much validity in Lois’s brand of heroism as there is in his own.  Now, that’s not to say that I loved all of this.  It’s a bit of a silly contrivance that the villagers would place their entire future on this sacrifice and then leave Lois – with Clark – in a cabin all by themselves with a way out.  You’d think that if the livelihood of their whole community depended on this going correctly, they’d exercise a bit more caution with their prisoners.  Then again, these are people who sacrifice a woman every year to have good crops and have torches on hand, so I’ll take it as a given that their combined intelligence is a few rocks short of a meteor shower.

Alexander knew now what his calling had been all along: to produce a series of youtube videos defending ginger kids and their negative depiction on South Park.

Tess finally catches up with Alexander in Clark’s barn, and by the time she gets there, he’s already pretty much gone off the deep end.  The memories with which he’s been implanted begin to take hold, and he starts ranting about how he can never trust Clark again after he made Lionel hate him and took away everything that ever mattered to him.  I liked the nods here to a few moments in Season 1, and it made me long for Michael’s return to the series all the more.  I know I’m mentioning this almost every week now, but really, it just has to happen after all of this teasing.  Tess attempts to calm Alexander down and urge him to forge a different path than Lex once did, but Alexander is already beyond helping.  He accuses Tess of attempting to save the world by clinging to powerful men and trying to save him just to exercise her own demons.  This drives Tess over the edge, and she finally hits Alexander.  There’s a really chilling moment here where the power shifts from Tess to young Lex.  It’s as if by pushing Tess to that dark corner of herself, he’s won some small victory and towers over her in a way that the little boy at the beginning of this scene never could have done.  This really reminded me yet again of how much psychological warfare factored into Lex’s schemes over the years, and how much more of a threat he was as a villain because of how subtle and calculating he was with people.

Clark had carelessly taken twelve times the recommended dose of Pepcid which, as plainly stated on the box, could result in death or death-like symptoms.

Clark and Lois are discovered while attempting escape, and Clark is cut down with a scythe while trying to protect Lois.  I’m not sure exactly what made Lois just assume that Clark had been killed here.  Maybe the moment just wasn’t sold for me as I felt it should have been, but I definitely got more of a “badly injured” vibe from this scene.  In any case, the villagers make the mistake of burying Clark out away from the town and heading back to the ceremony, which allows his body to heal.  Erica has some really good moments here trying to defend herself and balance grief and anger.  Again, I wasn’t fully sold on her thinking Clark was dead at this point, but it does work toward making her a bit more resigned to her fate than she might otherwise have been.  I did feel that perhaps this sequence played out just a bit long for my taste.  And it’s not that it was executed poorly.  It just didn’t really hold a whole lot of tension for me.  We know Lois is going to find some way out of this, and so this methodical build-up to something awful happening to her just came off a tad forced in my opinion.  But still, I’m kind of glad on some level that things were played out this way, because it actually allowed Clark time to make his way back to the village and find a weapon.

Clark had only recently learned of his ability to shoot blue flames from his back. But while visually impressive, it really just kind of freaked Lois out.

Not to mention, the following scene is just so completely worth it.  Just as Lois is about to be doused in scalding liquid, Clark runs – at normal speed – and shields her from getting hurt.  I have to go off for a moment here to say how much I adored this moment.  It’s one thing for Clark to save Lois when he’s got super-human strength and can’t get hurt.  It’s quite another for him to save her like this, when there’s every likelihood that he could die in the process.  Just when I think there’s no other way the writers could take the entire Clois dynamic to the next level, they find a way to make the two of them even more romantic.  It’ll be a crying shame if we don’t get a big screen adventure with Tom and Erica in these roles.  They’ve earned it, and what they do onscreen together just simply floors me every week.  Seeing Clark willing to sacrifice himself for Lois and running into harm’s way just to protect her made me think of what I would do if I were faced with a similar situation.  I know it may seem strange to say, but I can relate to that feeling in a lot of ways right now, and it was really a powerful moment for me personally.

It was...honestly, it was just beyond description. Farmer Joe had been so confident that he'd finally take first prize this year, but when he saw Bill Gardner's pumpkin, he was rendered utterly speechless.

Lois takes the opportunity to do a bit of improvising, playing up Clark’s super-human ability to withstand pain and punishment.  What a great and ironic play on Lois knowing Clark’s identity!  This scene was just so hilarious.  Using religious paranoia as an excuse to actually tell the villagers the truth about Clark was a real stroke of writing genius, and it was a terrific play on the cliché itself to actually have it to provide a way out for our heroes.  As it happens, I was also watching this episode in a room full of people all intimately acquainted with “Pulp Fiction”, and Lois’s “great vengeance and furious anger” allusion to Tarantino’s film had us all rolling with laughter.  As Lois gets more and more carried away – coming dangerously close to getting shot for her trouble – Clark finishes off her “sermon” to the impressionable townspeople with an “amen” that was so well-timed and played by Tom that it felt instantly classic.  I remember turning to a friend as Clark super-sped away with Lois and saying “how is it that Smallville is taking these ridiculous set-ups this year and somehow turning them into really entertaining episodes”?  The look on the villagers’ faces after Clark uses his super-speed is played for just the right amount of humor here, and I found myself smiling at how much I was enjoying yet another episode I wasn’t sure I was even going to like going in.

"Tess, how stupid do you honestly think I am? That Veritas logo was NOT always on that window and I can prove it to you"!

Finally giving up her efforts to rehabilitate young Lex, Tess has all the research on treating his rapid aging destroyed and throws the first sample of the antidote (again, symbolically) into the fireplace.  I had to wonder if this was a coincidence or if any hope of redemption for Lex Luthor was just destined to be consumed in that fire.  It’s a chilling thought at any rate, as was the final shot of young Lex standing in front of the mirror after shaving his head.  It’s an interesting contrast between this Lex clone and the “real” Lex, who always saw his baldness as a source of ridicule and isolation growing up.  This permutation seems far more deadly and accepting of his defining traits as strengths rather than weaknesses or even sources of pain.  While I’m still not entirely sold on this child growing up to become the Lex Luthor who will be Superman’s most formidable nemesis, I will say that this subplot is becoming more intriguing than it once seemed.  I’m glad they’re carrying through with this young actor as well.  It’s a great sense of continuity in having him reprise the role of young Lex after “Fracture” and “Eternal”, and also more than a little sad to see the same eyes now embody such malice and hatred that Clark once assured he’d always believe in when they represented what was still good in his friend.

"Lois, I've learned a lot of invaluable lessons right here in this barn. For example, you can never have too many globes or light sources".

As has probably become a predictable pattern in these reviews with me, I’ve saved the final Lois and Clark scene for last in my take on “Harvest”.  If the writers of this series have done anything right this year, it has been conveying in a few short and meaningful lines of dialog with Clois what they were unable to sell for years with the Clana relationship.  Having Clark proactively hand Lois Dr. Swann’s Kryptonian journal and tell her that he wants her to know him fully with no secrets was just exactly how this should have been handled.  I love that with Lois, Clark is making a choice to be open without being asked repeatedly to do it by someone who could never have made him feel comfortable enough to take that final step.  I love that Lois doesn’t have to ask him to reveal anything.  He simply wants to, because it isn’t enough with her to get just close enough as is possible through half-truths and guarded emotions.  He lets Lois in because she makes it possible for him to come to that on his own.  That’s why Lois and Clark work.  There’s an acceptance there that no one else could ever have had with Clark to this extent…an assurance that she loves him no matter their differences, no matter his past, no matter the obstacles that might stand in the way.  And she’s there with him as an equal partner.  And the best part is that, as we saw in this very episode, she doesn’t need Clark’s powers to be that partner.

"I'm really not so sure that's a great idea, Lois. Not only does it go against my training, but trust me, super-speed is not a toy".

And that’s why I found this whole ending sequence with the two of them so right.  They’ve finally gotten to a place where Clark can say “you’re the one and you always will be” and have that be the truth.  While Smallville has had love scenes in the past, I don’t know that any have felt this tender or caring before.  The use of Cary Brothers’ “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” had me a little misty, I have to be honest.  I’ve loved that song for a year and was so happy to see it used at such a pivotal moment for Lois and Clark.  I think if I could say one last thing about how this scene was done, it really struck me how calm it was.  And that’s a good thing.  It wasn’t made a huge deal of, and I think that was absolutely the right decision.  When you reach a certain point with someone, that’s just a level of closeness that should happen on its own.  It isn’t self-conscious, and it isn’t a situation that feels forced.  It just is.  I truly can’t think of a better way this could have been portrayed than how it was here.  That’s not to say that I found “Harvest” perfect.  If I have one concern about Season 10 going forward, it’s that its episodes are a bit too easy to categorize thus far.  One of the things that made Season 9 so great for me was that the really strong episodes like “Kandor” and “Salvation” were strictly mythology-driven.  And with very few exceptions, you couldn’t say – as we’ve been able to with Season 10 to this point – that this episode was the “Cat Grant Episode” or “The Creepy Villagers Episode”.  I’d like to see this season find its overall story arc footing a bit more like it did last year.  As it stands, I feel almost like Season 10 is giving us Season 1 (that is to say self-contained) episodes with a few sequences tacked on that we have to see to follow the rest of the shows (like the ending shot of Lex at the mirror or last week’s ending scene with Clark finally opening up to Lois).  Last year, it felt more like those big moments made up the majority of the episodes and the side stories were what were sprinkled in.  I’d like to see a return to form in that area, and I hope we’ll see that going forward.  All in all, though, this was a solid and entertaining Halloween-themed episode.  Smallville hasn’t had the most solid track record with those in the past, and I’ll take creepy, torch-toting villagers over a sorority of vampires any day of the week.