Sunday, April 18, 2010

Smallville - Checkmate - Season 9 Episode 16 - CW

I thought this was one of the best episodes this year. Well . . Absolute Justice was the best, but this one is a close second. Pam Grier was perfect as Amanda Waller. She's had spot roles in a couple of episodes now, but in this one . . I thought she was perfect. Apparently she doesn't know about the Kryptonians . . yet. But . . she is sure that there's an alien presence out there. And, being an agent of the US Government, she's convinced that eventually they'll prove a threat to the United States' power and influence. So she's recruiting people with powers. Essentially she wants to put an army together so that once the threat arrives, they have sufficient force to deal with it. She starts out this episode by going after Green Arrow. Well . . not her exactly, but her agent, Tess Mercer. But after he breaks out, we find out that he wasn't their actual target. Just their opening move. We assume that she's after 'the Blur', Clark, but she's actually after so much more . . Watchtower. Amanda wants the hub of their communications, and the data-banks of all of their knowledge. She wants the names and address' of every one of their associates . . Black Canary, Impulse, Cyborg and everybody else. This episode serves to give Chloe, Clark and Ollie information about the organization that they never even knew existed. But Amanda's information is cut short. Clark comes to the Castle after Chloe is abducted. Amanda finds out who he is. But she's also got J'onn contained below. While Clark is trying to negotiate Chloe's release, J'onn gets out of his cell and destroys the blood-sample that they were basing all of these assumptions on. Plus Ollie, in an attempt to help out Clark, uses the Watchtower's computers to disable the Castle's power grid. In the confusion, Clark and Chloe get free, and J'onn uses his telepathic powers to erase Waller's memories. So . . the immediate threat is taken care of, but . . there's other players out there that they don't know about yet. J'onn seems to be working for somebody, but he won't tell Clark who. Just that . . 'Things aren't always as black & white as they appear.' And Amanda has to change tactics as somebody else has taken a move. When she returns to her office, she finds her chess board cleared with one Red King sitting square in the middle. That's a threat if I've ever seen one. Anyways, I thought it was a great episode, and . . no Zod. Well . . there was no Lois for that matter either. The rest of the year, I think, is just going to get more and more exciting, as we're down to the last 5 or 6 episodes of the season. I love this show. If you're interested, the best time to buy the DVD's is usually around Thanksgiving. That seems to be when Target or Best Buy puts all their seasons on sale. You can always find them on E-Bay, but . . they usually don't go for much cheaper than they do when they're on sale. And you get them brand 'spankin' new.

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