Smallville “Masquerade” 

Another episode down on the road to the series finale of Smallville and for the second week in a row, we get an homage (or rip-off depending on your point of view) to a Hollywood blockbuster as our plot for this week’s episode, “Masquerade”. Clark realizes that he needs to create a disguise for himself now that the Blur has gone international and we finally see the dawn of the bumbling Clark Kent we all know and love.  Meanwhile, Oliver and Chloe get mistaken for two FBI agents who are tracking a serial killer (that turns out to be Desaad, one of Darkseid’s minions) when they steal their dinner reservation at a fancy restaurant. Mistaken identities get a couple in trouble when they take someone else’s dinner reservation…sound familiar? It should, because that’s the plot of Date Night with Tina Fey and Steve Carell. 

I’m not sure where this trend started of adapting Warner Brothers movies into Smallville episodes started (The Matrix-like episode when the show returned from winter break, last week with Date Night, and this week seems to bring us Smallville’s version of The Hangover), but to their credit at least they’re making it work for them. If you hadn’t seen any of these movies the episode still feels really solid and there are enough differences to keep them from being poor knock offs. Still, after next week’s Hangover-inspired episode, I’d like them to maybe get back to some original (well, as original as you can be for having a show like this on for ten years) episodes.

I felt there were two really stand-out moments in this episode. First of all, it’s exciting to see Clark get closer and closer to being Superman. It’s what we all want and we all know it’s going to happen, but since the show has been on for so long sometimes it has felt like it was just never going to happen. It was fun to see him and Lois kicking around ideas for a Blur disguise and then Clark realizing that Clark Kent IS the disguise. Still though, it’s kind of humorous to see Lois and Clark in complete agreement that glasses make him a completely different person. Yep…put on a pair of glasses and run into someone every now and again…no one will EVER know…

The real star of this episode though was Allison Mack. In an attempt to get Chloe to accept the darkness, Dasaad challenges her spirit to take her over (think the last temptation of Chloe). Allison Mack really pulled out all the stops and made this sequence so engrossing and compelling that I forgot for a minute I was watching a “superhero show” on the CW. It’s moments like these where Smallville proves that it has the potential to be more than just a genre show. While the episode up to this point had been good not great, this whole segment really elevated “Masquerade” and kicked it up a notch.

No Tess or Lionel this week…kind of a bummer but I’m sure we’ll see them again in the next couple weeks. Something tells me the next episode will be somewhat of a silly one, which might be a good thing, since now that Oliver has been branded with the darkness I’m sure it’s going to get dark and intense really fast as the season winds down. It wouldn’t be a season of Smallville if Oliver wasn’t completely emotionally conflicted, right?