Smallville 7.10 "Persona" review

The beauty of Smallville has always been that it goes beyond the plot into exploring the burdens and questions that Clark Kent has to confront in his path to becoming Superman.

Perhaps this series will end only when our small-town hero embraces his destiny.

With last night’s “Persona“, once again, Clark is confronted with the burden of being a son of Krypton. We saw in Dax-Ur a life contented with wife and family, but giving up the power to do good for more, and fatally incapable of standing up to the force that destroyed his planet. It’s the same dilemma that Clark has to face – a life with Lana in Smallville, or the power to save all of mankind.

And then there is Lana. Are Clark and Lana really NOT meant to be? She actually fell more in love with Clark”s phantom persona. For the last month that Clark was trapped in the Fortress, Bizarro took over his life, and it seems, his place in Lana’s heart. Why wasn’t it a surprise that she didn’t recognize this disguise? She either doesn’t really know the real Clark intimately, or she’s too close to see clearly. But then again,  Chloe saw that there was something wrong with this Clark.

As for Bizarro, well. He certainly absorbed Clark’s weakness. Gazing up longingly into Lana’s face after a night in bed, you can almost feel his desire to be human, to be with this girl. So Bizarro sought the one entity he thought would give him the power to stay Clark Kent for good.

But, never trust a brain interactive construct, especially one called Brainiac. Milton Fines was hiding among the homeless as he tried to repair himself. Bizarro came just in time to give him a way out. Fines pointed Bizarro to Dax-ur, one of Krypton’s greatest scientist. Once Dax-ur is found, using a tracking device tuned to his DNA, Bizarro will have his answers.

As it turns out, Bizarro has no clue what that tracking device is. So he goes to the Fortress and demands it from Jor-El, who of course wouldn’t tell him a thing. But Bizarro’s appearance triggered Jor-El to free Clark from his trap. Freed, Clark immediately went to Lana, and unfortunately he realized in their reunion that Bizarro has been stealing his girlfriend’s heart. Now that’s something that would bother anyone. Once again, some thing drove a wedge between Clark and the love of his life.

Clark finds out that a blue Kryptonite belonging to Dax-Ur will help him defeat Bizarro. The real Clark manages to get the shield that Chloe has been hiding, all this time. Using the shield, Clark finds Dax-Ur and sees him living as a human, thanks to the blue kryptonite. The scientist lends him the stone and Clarks looks for Bizarro. Unfortunately, Brainiac also tracks Dax-Ur when Clark activated the beacon. Brainiac forked his creator’s brains with his metallic finger, downloading the information he needed to repair himself and effectively killing the scientist.

Meanwhile, Clark finds Bizarro with Lana, and she sees for herself that the man she lived with for a month was an impostor. Bizarro professes his love for Lana and she played along until she forced the kryptonite into his hands. The last words of a dying Bizarro was his love for Lana.

In a separate play of events, Gabriel Grant revealed his true identity to Lionel, at the possibility of being killed. To his surprise, Lionel wanted to get to know this clone of his son Julian. When Lionel confronted Lex about his depravity, the older son realized there was no way he could live with his decision. Later that night, a robber shot Julian point blank as he and Lionel were talking. A text message to Lex from the attacker confirmed his handiwork. The death of Grant just proved that sooner or later, Lex would have killed his own brother. More and more of Lex Luthor’s decisions seal his consciousness into wickedness. He doesn’t hesitate anymore, nor does he wait it out. Anything that stands in his way is being eliminated. His brother Julian would not have survived long against Lex. Will his father be next?