jor-el

Clark's Kryptonian father Jor-El will be appearing on Smallville in Season 9, and he'll be played by Julian Sands. It'll be a flashback or time-travel plot device (much like his last appearance in season three when he was played by Tom Welling), so it's not as if the character is coming back from the dead or anything. This isn't Buffy.

The character has been voiced by Terrance Stamp practically since the beginning of the series and has only appeared once as Tom Welling, although his American accent at the time was never explained. Sands plays a younger version, as well, but at least the accent is correct. I wonder if Sands will be trying a Terrance Stamp impersonation the same way that Ewan McGregor copied Alec Guinness' accent for the Star Wars prequels. That would be kind of cool.

Sands is a good actor and I'm sure he'll do the part proud. I do wonder how this series will be affected by the shake-up at DC Comics. Time will tell.

(S05E21) Whew. I don't know how I feel about last night's episode. Basically, it confused the crap out of me, but I think that was the point. It was all just a tease for the finale, which is next Thursday.

Still, there was a lot of stuff that the writers could have tidied up a bit. Namely, the Kryptonian Alphabet.How come Clark can't read Kryptonian letters? Didn't he learn Kryptonian back in like Season 2? Here is Lionel handing him a treasure map of Kryptonian goodness and Clark just shrugs and goes, "What does it say? I don't know." That was just dumb.

(S05E19) If you ignore the blatant Saw rip-off, then this episode was super fantastic. But any episode that centers around Lionel is a winner in my book. This ep was a total incubator for cliffhangers. In this episode, Lionel is kidnapped by a masked tormentor who forces him to endure all kinds of riddles and physical challenges in order to live. Of course, Martha gets thrown into the mix, and several amazing things happen...