Smallville “Shield” 

When great bands and artists decide to call it quits, they give the fans one final farewell tour as a token of appreciation.  Devoted fans will show up to these shows and completely overlook the sloppy playing, off key notes, and technical mishaps because it’s the final goodbye and things that would normally draw criticism get a pass.  So this tenth and final season of Smallville is essentially the big farewell tour, and speaking solely as a fan boy, I’m going to do my best to let the little things slide this year…no promises.

The second stop on the tour (Friday’s episode “Shield”) is another piece of the overall season puzzle, while in itself telling a somewhat self-contained story.  Chloe has traded herself to the Suicide Squad for Oliver and he’s in an effin rage, Lois has taken a job at the foreign desk in Africa and is paid a visit by Hawkman, and Clark has to deal with his new annoying partner who is being mercilessly hunted by an assassin known only as Deadshot.

When Clark’s new partner introduced herself as Cat Grant, I was both excited and confused.  Cat Grant in the comics is a fellow Daily Planet reporter and the town hussy of Metropolis who is responsible for throwing a momentary wrench into the Lois/Clark relationship.  She was briefly introduced in a prior episode of Smallville as a television reporter but this is not the same Cat Grant as this character actually states there’s no relation between the two, which is a huge WTF moment.  Why bother calling her Cat Grant at all?  It doesn’t help that she is quite possibly the most annoying actress that CW executives could find to fill an almost inconsequential role.  It’s hard to sympathize with her character when honestly every word coming out of her mouth was torture.  On the bright side, judging by next week’s previews Lois is back and we can wave bye-bye to the Fake Cat Grant.  This was a classic case of Smallville bait and switch…but you know what, I just keep telling myself “Farewell tour…it’s the farewell tour…let it go…”

Now the villain of the week in this episode was Deadshot who is a ruthless assassin with perfect aim.  While Smallville has always taken certain liberties with comic book characters, I’m curious to know why they decided to go the Jonah Hex route with Deadshot and make him the killer cowboy.  Although, if Jonah Hex was half as badass as Deadshot was in this episode maybe the movie wouldn’t have been a colossal failure at the box office last summer.  The sequence where Deadshot shot the bullet through all the traffic in Metropolis and got it to go perfectly into the tail pipe of fake Cat Grant’s car was worth watching the entire episode for.

The Hawkman/Lois interactions were probably my favorite part of the episode.  I’m glad that somebody knows that Lois found out that Clark is the blur.  Hawkman is such a bad ass and I love the grizzled vet role he takes on in the series.  He says in the episode that it’s almost time for him to die to be reborn again.  You have to wonder if he’ll make some sort of ultimate sacrifice in the finale.  I hope not as I was hoping for some sort of spinoff series in the future featuring him and Green Arrow (a nerd can dream…).

Now that our heroes are tagged by the Suicide Squad (including the return of Plastique from season 8), you have to wonder if they’re going to hunt the heroes or join forces with them against this ultimate darkness (the DC mega villain Darkseid who we got a smoke filled first look at in the premiere).  Next week brings the painfully gorgeous Laura Vandervoort back to Smallville.  Will we finally get to see Kara become the Supergirl we all know and love?  WHY ISN’T IT NEXT FRIDAY YET?!