Hmm. Johnathan and his father were always DUKING it out. They love slipping these Hazzard references in.

This episode was, to me, one of the most disjointed and frustrating I've ever seen.

The "Kiss" was terrible. Just horrible. You never heard two people scream in such horror. But beyond that nightmare...

So, what DID the deal between Swann and Lionel entail? Didn't Lana used to have a RED Jeep Liberty? How the heck did the key wind up with SWANN? Would the government really allow Luthor to tear up the caves (as he's apparently doing), for his "research"? Of course, there's no Pete and (shockingly!) no Chloe.

Something about this episode just annoyed me. It didn't really seem like Smallville. It was more like, "A Random Day in the Life of Clark Kent."

Sort of sad to see these boards getting smaller and smaller...

Anyways, about the mysterious deals going on between a few characters. My predictions have so far never been accurate, but oh well. Between Swann and Lionel, perhaps Swann believes the caves can sure him of his disability along with Lionel's illness? And as for Jonathan and Jor El, I suspect the deal may entail Jor-El trying to "ressurrect" himself through Jonathan's body at some point, or a merging of their minds. He can clearly embue Jonathan with Kryptonian powers, and he's hearing things from Jor El that even Clark can't pick up. And Jonathan's slip by calling Clark Cal El suggests at least something of Jor El is in Jonathan's mind.

The "Kiss" was terrible. Just horrible. You never heard two people scream in such horror. - Machiko Jenkins

Gee, you should really see a therapist or soemthing to deal with this, 'cause you're clearly far beyond any healthy Lana-bashing. There's obviously some very deep emotional trauma that's expressing itself here.

This episode was, to me, one of the most disjointed and frustrating I've ever seen. - Machiko Jenkins

I dunno, it didn't seem very disjointed to me; more like compressed. It left like they had more story than one 60 minute (well, 45 minute, plus comercials) episode could allow, so they had to stick to showing the important stuff. That would explain the rather dizzying jumps from one buisy scene to the next, and the lack of Pete and Chloe. (That said, I'm really wondering why they even bother putting poor Pete in the opening credits any more. At this point, Sheriff Adams has about as much screen time as he does) Well, onto the nits:

Wow, I am SOOOOOOOOOOO lost over this whole key buisnes. What on Earth and elsewhere did Lionel and Swann work out? And just how DID it get from the cave to Swann's office?

At first, I thought Swann told Lionel where to find the key (since the fake FBI bust happened shortly after), but that doesn't make much sence. It's not like Lionel needs anyone to point him in Clark's direction, after all. Frankly, I'm suprised that Lionel hasn't tried something like this before. Maybe Swann aranged whatever it was that got the key to his office (more on that in a bit) and planed to have Lionel come and pick it up later, which would technically allow him to avoid blabing about Clark. But if that was the plan, then Lionel would have known about it and wouldn't have been convinced that the key had wound up IN the wall. Other than that, though, I can't imagine what they've got cooking in their strange little heads.

But that's surely not what were REALLY wondering about. We want to know HOW THE &%(#&$* THAT KEY MANAGED TO WARP ITSELF FROM THE CAVE TO SWANN'S DESK! As far as I can remember, we've never seen a kryptonian device do any teleporting or whatever that was before. I mean, even Clark's ship had to fly places. Then again, it DID hit that sheet of glass/plastic/transparent aluminum or whatever it was right before the light show began. At first, I thought it was trying to melt through the sheet and get to the hole, then I thought that it was just warping space around it and the sheet ws just caught in the middle, THEN I think that maybe Swann rigged it to send the key to him, but all three of these ideas have problems. Obviously, the key wasn't melting anything since the sheet was clearly whole when Lionel toutched it. As for the key warping space, I again point out that I can't recall ever seeing anything transporting around like that on this show. If you know somehting I don't remember, please let me know. That leaves the idea that Swann set up the whole thing. He may or may not have had the chance, since Lionel promised to give control of the cave over to him in exchange for help. Since TPTB decided that their mysterious deal wasn't important enough to waste time showing, we don't really know if all the scientists down there were exclusively Lionel's doing or a colaboration with Swann. He might have been planing to swipe the key out from under Lionel's nose from the beginning, but that has a big problem too. How in teh name of Krypton could SWANN build a teleporter, never mind one that he could hide inside a sheet of plexiglass. I can buy the Kryptonians doing something like that (even though I still don't recall any signs that they did), but SWANN? Sure he's a genius and stuff, but that's by the standards of our little two-bit, back water planet. Even if you try to suggest that he stumbled onto some Kryptonian instructions for that sort of thing (why anyone on Krypton would have beamed that kind of information around is beyond me), how could he have build it? It's be like giving a jungle dwelling hunter-gatherer schematics to build a super computer; I don't think he'd get very far.

The sequence of events at the begining of the episode confuses me. Johnathan has his fall and Clark runs off to the cave, then Lionel gets a call (which I presume informs him that Clark is at the cave) and says to have his helicopter standing by. Next Clark is in the cave and he whips out the key, changing the wall, and suddenly Lionel is there! What? How could Lionel get there at the same time as Clark? This is CLARK we're talking about! How long would it have taken him to get to that cave? A few seconds at best if he was in a hurry (and it certainly seems like he would be). Now, how long would it take Lionel to get to Smallville? Well, let's think about it:
First, someone would have to see that Clark was there (more on that in a bit) and send that information to Lionel, and since Lionel tells the person on the phone to have his chopper ready and it seems unlikely that some lackey watching the caves in Smallville would be able to boss around his chopper pilots, that information must have had to go through one of his personal assistants before Lionel even got called, which probobly took 2 or 3 minutes. Then they would have to get it ready as Lionel ran down there, during which time he must freshen up, since he's got a tie on when he shows up at the cave, probobly taking about 5 to 7 minutes. THEN he'd have to actually fly from downtown Metropolis to the cave before running down th where Clark is! Yes, we know that you can see Metropolis from that tower on the edge of Smallville, but it doesn't look much farther away than Raleigh is from my little suburb. I'm no chopper pilot, but I have troubel imagining Raleigh being much less than 10 minutes away as the crow flies, and cince Metropilis is clearly much larger, we'd probobly need to tack on another minute or two, plus one or two more for Lionel to actually get in the cave (he's not winded, so it doesn't look like he ran). That makes for at least 20, possibly 30, minutes before Lionel can be there. What the heck has Clark been doing all this time?
MAYBE you could argue that he just walked all the way there (though that would make no sence), but it would give Lionel any time since there's no way he could have started comming until Clark actually got near the cave (actually, it sounds like Clark is already IN the cave when Lionel gets called, but that just makes things worse). If Clark slowed down when he got there, he might have taken 3 or 4 minutes to get down to the wall, but that still leave half an hour before Lionel shows up. Was Clark just staning around yelling at the wall for half an hour before he tried the key? Why would he do that?
It could also be argued that there were a lot of Luthercorp security drones hanging around that Clark had to sneek around. If they called Lionel as soon as Clark got near, and Clark had to spend half an hour sneeking around guards, it MIGHT work out. But Clark's never had trouble sneeking into guarded places before, ESPECIALLY not those guarded by those uber-incompetent Luthercorp rent-a-thugs. Besides, previous episodes have made it VERY clear that absolutely anyone can stroll into those caves whenever they jolly well please regardless of how much security there is, why should this be any different? Unless Lionel's got a transporter somewhere that he's nicknamed "helicopter" (built by Dr. Swann, I'm sure ^__^), I guess Clark really did stand there yelling at the wall for about half an hour before using the key!

During his conversation with Lex, Lionel says that Clark "discovered" the cave in the first place. Um, no. "Skinwalker" establishes that Native Americans had known about it for years. In fact, Kyla was in there then Clark fell in through the roof.

Swann seems to have moved out of the lab he was in when we first met him in "Rosetta".

Speaking of which, why is Dr. Swann sitting around in a LOBBY for this whole episode? When Lionel first came to meet with him, I honestly thought that Swann had coem out to meet him and they were standing around in the lobby, but that can't be in since Swann says that Lionel showed up unexpectedly. Besides, he's still in there when Clark shows up AND when he's looking at the key at the end. Plus he's got a computer screen in there, which seems unlikely for a lobby, and he's got the box with the key in it there, which seems VERY unlikely for a lobby. But if this is supposed to be his lab/office, then it's the worst desinged lab/office I've ever seen. For one thing, there's nothing in it! Aside from the table that the key is on, there's not one piece of furniture that I can see (true, Swann doesn't really need any chairs, but he had several desks and tables in his old lab), not to mention that there's absolutely no signs of any work laying around. Surely he's been doing SOMETHING since we last saw him. What's worse, there's no privacy in this place! All around there are these big giant door ways that open straight into stairs; no walls, no doors, not even a curtain. (no wonder he's not got his work out, any Tom, Dick, and Harry can come strolling in and take whatever they'd like) In other words, it looks exactly like a lobby. But if it really is one, why is poor Dr. Swann sitting around in there the whole time? Did he lock himself out of his office?

And, if that wasn't enough, take a good look at that lobby/office, what do you see all around? STAIRS! The guy is in a WHEELCHAIR and theirs flights of STAIRS everywhere! No wonder he's stuck in the lobby! He must have rolled out of his office and now he can't get back up the stairs!

My roommate had an interesting notion as to the key on Swann's desk. Maybe it's not the key that disappeared into the wall, but another key altogether. Swann does seem to know more about Krypton than he's shared with Clark, and he claims that there wasn't an additional transmission. Maybe he somehow got his hands on this other key, and... well, that's as far as the theory goes, I'm afraid.

My theory is, for whatever reason the key WENT to Swann of it's own volition.

Still, I have to ask HOW.

Pretty good episode, an excellent continuation of the saga of all the characters, with some really nice developments and revelations. Can we assume that Swann was the person that Jor-El was trying to contact on Earth?

---NITS:
Wouldn’t Jonathan have broken a considerable number of his bones in the teaser, even if Clark caught him (or considering how durable Clark’s body is, especially if Clark caught him)?

In Act 1, after Lionel tells Lex that the solution to his condition may lie in the caves, Lex is is skeptical, and Lionel tells him that men of vision have always been mocked, and mentions as an example that Galileo was sentenced to death for his discovery of heliocentrism. Well, not really. Close, but not exactly.
---Galileo was formally commanded never to teach that the Earth moved, and after he suggested that the Bible was intended as a moral guide rather than a scientific treatise, the Inquisition ordered him, on the threat of imprisonment, to renounce his heresy, and refrain from ever teaching or defending the principle of heliocentricity. Sixteen years later, after the current Pope died and was replaced by Pope Urban VIII, who was more favorable to Galileo, Galileo wrote a satire featuring a Copernican scientist named Salviati, an impartial and witty scholar named Sagredo, and an absurdly stupid Aristotelian named Simplicio. This was Galileo’s way of pointing out why Copernican theory was correct, and Aristotlelian teaching of the solar system was all wrong, but the Cardinals were furious, and convinced the Pope that he, the Pope, was the basis for Simplicio (he wasn’t). Galileo, frail and infirm at nearly 70 years of age, was summoned to the Inquisition in Rome, accused of heresy. For four months he was imprisoned and risked "rigorous examination" (the euphemism for torture), at one point kept for three days behind closed doors. There were no outside witnesses of what happened, and Galileo was sworn to secrecy, but he had developed a hernia when he was released, a common result of torture. He recanted, and was forced to kneel with his hand on the Bible and curse the Copernican principle, promise never to put into words or writing anything to promote Copernican ideas, and to denounce anyone who did. He was imprisoned for the rest of his life, and denied the right to receive visitors or teach. Many of his manuscripts were burned. But technically, he was not sentenced to death.
---Lionel may have confused Galileo with Giordano Bruno (1548-1600), who was burned at the stake for “heresy” similar to Galileo’s.

Blitz: As far as I can remember, we've never seen a kryptonian device do any teleporting or whatever that was before.
Luigi Novi: So? Why can’t it do so for the first time now?

Blitz: That leaves the idea that Swann set up the whole thing. He may or may not have had the chance, since Lionel promised to give control of the cave over to him in exchange for help. …How in teh name of Krypton could SWANN build a teleporter, never mind one that he could hide inside a sheet of plexiglass
Luigi Novi: Who says Swann did it? I just assumed the key teleported itself to him because Swann was the person Jor-El was trying to contact.