Smallville - ''Scion''

Spoiler Level: High

WOW.  Just wow, wow, O-M-what- the-G WOW.  That was awesome.  I did not see that coming at all.

The Superman comics actually had a storyline where Lex died and cloned himself a new body, so when Smallville brought in the young cloned Lex I was cool enough with it already.

But the fact that Smallville was showing me Conner Kent's origin while sneakily mixing it in with the Lex Clone story fooled me completely.  I never expected it to take this left turn into him being Superboy, but it fits so perfectly.  Out of all the actors they've had playing Lex since Michael Rosenbaum left the show, Lucas Gabreel seemed the least like him, and it struck me as kind of an odd choice-- until this episode, when he makes the perfect Superboy.  When I was watching it I though that was their plan all along, but now that I've looked the actor up, I see that he played Lex in a flashback episode in 2006, so they were actually going for consistency.  So the fact that he makes such a great Superboy is a very nice bonus.

And in another case of my being unobservant, I didn't realize he was the same actor that played Ryan in the High School Musical films until just now when I looked up his name.  This, despite the fact that my daughter has played those movies about a gazillion and one times.

It'll be interesting to see where the show goes with him from here.  On the one hand, they've set things up so he should be in the rest of the season; on the other hand, this is his fourth episode, and guest stars on shows seem to only be able to appear for four episodes.  (Why is that, anyway?  I've noticed it on a lot of shows, not just Smallville.  It's like if they appear more than four times a season, then they have to be considered semi-recurring characters, which I assume would also mean they get paid more.  Which is all complete and utter speculation on my part; anyone know if I'm on the right track, or is there another reason for it? But I digress.)  So will we be seeing more of Conner Kent, or will he suddenly be busy the next few episodes?

And lastly, we now have a month long break before Smallville starts its final five episodes.  It's looking more and more like we're going to get the Voyager ending, and not get to see Clark in the suit until the last scene of the last episode.  I hope I'm wrong; what I'd really like is for the Darkseid storyline to be wrapped up in the penultimate episode, and then have the final episode be all about Clark going public as Superman and the world's reaction to it-- the kind of episode that's usually a Superman show's first episode.  But even though they've been doing some fantastic stuff these last few years, this is still Smallville, after all, so I'm trying not to get my hopes up too high.