Ok, that’s how you do an episode of Smallville, people. When I first saw the movie set on the Kent Farm, I worried we were in for Miss Sweet Corn Pageant 2: Electric Boogaloo. Instead, we were treated to a fairly interesting debate (Must a superhero exist in isolation?), some excellent mythological beats, and the return of the baddest mutha this side of Shaft, Lionel Luthor. While not perfect, I’m on record as saying “Action” is by far the best episode of this young, seventh season.

And I’m saying this even though the villain of this week’s episode was an insane blogger. Yes, Smallville, we get it: we on Al Gore’s Internets regularly complain and criticize and mash-up your characters’ names into stews of fanfic goodness, and so we were ripe for the criticizing. I’m sure more than a few message boards have openly commented about “accidentally” setting off a gas leak inside the Talon just so Lana might explode while making a macchiato. We complain about continuity and nitpick on details and continually mention that you’re killing our childhood. So sure, make the PA our stand-in: that’s fine by me. I’ve long wanted to taze Lana Lang, and tonight’s as close as I’ll ever get.

But beyond that lay quite an interesting meta-conundrum. The movie on which the PA is working, “Warrior Angel,” has an arch-enemy named Devilicus, a man who in essence made Warrior Angel into the hero that he is by killing off his girlfriend early on in the comic series. The movie version strays from this by allowing the girlfriend, an actress named Rachel Davenport (herself played by actress/singer Christina Milian), to live. The PA thus seeks to kill her, thanks to his obsession with Warrior Angel that soon transfers into an obsession with Clark. Just as Warrior Angel needed to be isolated in order to fulfill his true potential, so must Clark, in the PA’s eyes.

This tension, between isolation and companionship, haunts nearly every super hero. And in this case, adds a new level to the doomed relationship between Clark and Lana. Lana seems to recognize that her window with Clark is very limited. On one hand, she realizes that his abilities give him a responsibility far beyond the boundaries of Smallville. And on the other hand, she’s pretty darn sure than Lionel Luthor’s about to unleash a ginormous can of you-know-what on her coutured self in the very near future.

Yes, in a move that surprised maybe six of us (and yes, I didn’t see this coming until last week’s episode, because I’m dense like that), Lana Lang was behind the kidnapping of Mr. Awesome himself. I love me some Lionel Luthor, people. If Lionel Luthor ever met Chuck Norris in a dark alley, Chuck Norris would instantly wet himself with fear. John Glover’s presence on this show invariably raises the level of excellence, and let me tell you, it was fantastic to see him in action again, even if the majority of his scenes had me thinking, “How on earth did that get past The CW’s Standards Committee?” Slowly pulling off the bear trap around his wrists? Beating his would-be captor to death as blood flew into his face? Yes, yes, and more yes.

As for said would-be captor: aaah, Marilyn. We hardly knew ye. You could grow yourself some pot, but you sure couldn’t bolt a Luthor to a bed. Apparently, ten million dollars from the Luthor accounts buys you a ticket to Shanghai and a Marilyn. Um, OK.

Lionel gets liberated thanks to the detective work of Lois Lane, which I know should make me like her character more, but given her track record, I am sure someone just gave her the land permit because he or she thought she looked cute while buying a burrito at the local Qdoba. She breaks into Lex’s office suite (completely unlikely), gets immediately aught by Lex (infinitely more likely), yet doesn’t get instantly arrested (so unlikely it eclipses the chances of Justin Timberlake agreeing to get back with *NSync). While confronted, however, she shows Lex the signed permit, with the initials “LL” signed at the bottom. Well, great, that only narrows it down to four hundred people in Smallville, Lois. Brilliant work. (At this point, I’m waiting for the Martian Manhunter to tell Clark all about his distant cousin, El-El.)

More interesting than Lex’s attempts to save his dad (dude, give up, he’ll never love you the way he loves his Clark) was his affinity for “Warrior Angel.” What seemed like a convenient narrative plot point conceived merely to give Clark easy answers may in fact hold the key to his overall development on this show. After all, he and the PA, while in some respects miles apart, are in many ways quite similar. Lex may in fact couple his obsession with Clark and his love of “Warrior Angel.” However, instead of conceiving of himself as Devilicus, Lex may in fact fashion HIMSELF as Warrior Angel, with Clark in the antagonistic role, pushing him to achieve his ultimate destiny. His failed experiments in Project 33.1 can be interpreted as a misguided attempt to save humanity from external (read: intergalactic) attack, and as such, Lex fashions himself a hero to the human race. He’s a Superman, but in the George Bernard Shaw sense, not the Jerry Siegel sense.

Lex may have resigned himself to a life spent alone in order to fulfill his destiny, but Clark’s nowhere near ready to resign himself to such a fate. His attachment to those around him serves as his greatest strength and greatest weakness. (No real unique insight here, I know.) After all, such attachment can leads to fear. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. And hate leads to suffering. (I think Aristotle said that. Or Dick Cheney.)

The time is rapidly coming for Clark to leave Smallville. As mentioned earlier, even Lana realizes this, and she’s the one who hired a hippie to kidnap Lionel Luthor. So, not the brightest bulb in the Home Depot is she, and she recognizes his fate lies well beyond the borders of his farm. Oliver Queen got Clark thinking globally last year for the first time, and he resisted the notion equally then as well. And the main thing tethering him to the only life he knows? Lana, of course.

And here’s the show’s biggest failing right now: Clark’s sole reason for not starting his life he’s meant to live centers around a relationship that we as an audience simply can’t buy. And it’s not simply because many of us want to leave Lana in the log cabin with the bear trapped hand, but because everyone on the show keeps telling us how in love these two crazy kids are but absolutely nothing onscreen justifies such claims! It reminds of the biggest failing of the recently-departed show Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip: the sketches written by supposed comic genius Matt Albie were terribly unfunny. That ruined the credibility of everyone in the show. Even if I didn’t root for Clark and Lana as a couple (which I don’t), I’d go along more with this central premise (Clark wants to live the simple life with the love of said life) if I got even an iota of that from their performances.

Instead, what I get are two people who pined for each other for years, more in love with the IDEA of each other than the actual person, who decide after one date to move in together, and then find out things like, “Clark snores,” or “Lana has more Jethro Tull albums than anyone in their right mind should ever possess,” only now they are stuck with each other and have to pretend they are both happy. Even when they give this pair the “You’ve got me…who’s got YOU?” scene from the Richard Donner movie, I still felt nothing between these two. Clark should be delighted to leave the farm, to be given the green light by Lana to go save the world. His facial and body language suggests his desire to flee. But instead, we get lines from Rachel telling us, and I’m only slightly paraphrasing here, “When I look into Clark’s eyes, all I see is you, and you are the center of his universe, which means you are the sun, the yellow sun from which he derives all of his powers. You are his alpha and omega of awesome.”

Needless to say, Rachel’s gift, the prototype for the eventual Superman cape, gave me more hope than his words. That cape is just another step for Clark on his path away from Smallville and onto his greater destiny. It’s one without Lana: the only question is, will she willfully remove herself from Clark’s life, or will someone forcibly remove her?

What did you make of this week’s episode? Will Clark ever learn about Lana’s dark side? And can any trap, bear-related or otherwise, ever contain Lionel Luthor?