Smallville: Prototype

Chief among them was the fact that ... Ares is Helo from Battlestar Galactica! Tahmoh Penikett is a terrific actor who lives in Vancouver, where both Smallville and Battlestar Galactica are shot, but I have a rule of thumb that if one actor is on a fairly popular sci-fi show and then jumps across to another, it's going to rattle a few fanboy brain cells, mine included. If Helo suddenly appeared on say ... Law & Order, it probably wouldn't feel so jarring, but this was a bit distracting for me.
Still, having said that ... this was pretty well done. Ares turned out to not only be a nice foe for Clark to deal with (and possibly see again in the future?) but he also showed some subterfuge with Lex, a senator and Lana. He also had a tied to Lois that was an interesting subplot, and managed to give Ares / Wes a sense of humanity. After all, we'd seen his poor wife blow herself up, and we needed something to make him more real.
The super-powered fights between Ares and Clark were what really made this episode really rock. Frankly, Clark could be battling anything with super-powers and it would be tops in my book. Did you notice that when he used his heat vision on Area, it was the first time it looked like it did in the comics? Instead of pulses of heat blasts, it actually looked like rays shooting out of Clark's eyes. Nice one.
Between Clark apparently (almost) showing his powers off to Lana, and Lex's admitting that he knows Lana has been snooping around, there was a lot going on. That's not even counting those genetically-enhanced and Kryptonically inspired slugfests. Seeing Ares systemically take apart Lex's defenses is pretty cool to start things out with, but Clark and Ares sparring off was great. It's just too bad those scenes were so brief.
It's fairly obvious that the next supply of super-genetic material that Lex is referring to is going to be Clark. They used up some other source in making Titan (HA! I totally called that one) and Area, so he needs a new batch to fuel the fires of the tons of Ares models still on the showroom floor that we saw in this episode. Based on the previews for next week's episode, Lex is going to come gunning for Clark, and a lot of things are going to unravel. I'll be sitting in the front row, waiting to see how this season wraps upQuote of the show:
- After Clark peels off at super-speed -- Chloe: "Do you ever get used to that?" Martha: "Not really ... no."
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