Note: Started watching season 3 on January 10, 2012

Season 3 started with quite a bang with Exile and I have to say that Tom Welling’s longer hair cut was quite sexy. Seeing Clark on Red K is still pretty sexy. It really makes me look forward to seeing season 6’s Crimson to see how he is like on Red K with Lois around him.

One of the things about season 3 than the previous seasons is that it’s exploring more about Clark’s origins and his destiny and how that impacts the people around him. The first two seasons, especially the first was more procedural than mythological with the freak of the week story telling and the Smallville gang trying to investigate them. However, there are still the occasional freak of the week episodes. I have no clue when these stop because I know for sure season 10 didn’t have any freak of the week episodes.

As someone who is firmly on team Lois and Clark (Erica Durance and Tom Welling), I want to continue on my trend in these blogs to compare their relationship with Clark and Lana (Kristin Kreuk).

The second episode of the season, Phoenix, had some conversations that parallel some of Lois and Clark’s conversations during season 10’s Harvest and Luthor episodes. In Phoenix, Lana wants to know Clark completely but he pulls away because he saw the way Lana looked at him when he was on his Red K high and she looked disgusted and said they would never work and that he tried to be the right guy for her. In Harvest, we have Clark giving Lois Dr. Swann’s journal so that she would know him completely with no secrets and in Luthor he said something similar about Earth-2 Lois looking at him thinking he was Clark Luthor with such hate but that Earth-2 Lois looked like she was going to give him a second chance.

Now I haven’t seen all of Smallville so I don’t know if Lana eventually knows everything about him and I understand that Clark is a teenager and what he has with Lois is more of an adult/mature relationship but I can’t help compare these two relationships at this point in time.

It is funny that in Phoenix Lana mentions how Clark tells Chloe (Allison Mack) everything and doesn’t do the same with her. Chloe says that is because Clark isn’t in love with her. But fast forward 7 years and Clark is very much in love with Lois and shares everything with her but I guess this comes with maturity or the simple fact that Lois is the one for him. He says in Fortune that Lois and him are good together.

In Slumber, even though it was in a dream, Lana mentions how her relationship with Clark is filled with pain and angst. I think there is some truth in that.

Phoenix is also the episode where Clark and Lana break-up for the first time. I am going to start counting how many times they break-up. As far as I know, Lois and Clark only broke-up once and then pretty much got quickly back together.

More interesting dialogue at the end of Extinction has Lana saying if you don’t open up to the people that you love, you will be alone. It makes me wonder and what I can’t wait to see is what changes. I mean this seems to be a massive theme between Clark and Lana, his in ability to truly open himself to her. What makes Lois different? What makes her the one that Clark can open himself to.

I think Lana has been very contradictory in the first three seasons. One moment she says she can’t be with Clark if he doesn’t open up to her and then the next moment saying it doesn’t matter that he has secrets. But the in Magnetic said she enjoyed the honesty that Seth displayed to her. I mean make up your freakin’ mind lady. During season two, she said that she would be freaked out if she found out someone she knew was an alien yet in Perry she said that it wouldn’t bother her that he was meteor infected. No wonder Clark is so confused as to whether or not he wants to tell Lana his secret or want to be with her. Again in Whisper Lana said that honesty is the only way a relationship would work.

I do find it interesting that if Clark had been in love with Lana since he was 5-years old why couldn’t he tell her his secret, I mean she hasn’t really displayed anything that would indicate that she would blab his secret and it sounded like if he was honest with her, he would have her and it did seem like she would accept him for who he was considering some of her dialogue to him. So why didn’t he? He only did in season 6 because she tricked him into revealing his secret. I really want to know what makes Lois different. I mean Lois gave no reason for Clark to trust her as far as I’ve been reading. Yet in season 10’s Isis, he willingly told her his secret because he wanted to share his life with her. This is the journey I am really looking forward to seeing. And enough with the writers pounding us over the head with Lana telling Clark in practically every episode for him to be honest with her. It is really getting tiring.

Alfred Gough and Miles Millar must really love Kristin Kreuk because it seems that every male and sometimes female characters are obsessed with her and truthfully I am sick of it. I have nothing against the actress at all (in fact I liked her arc on Chuck) but I can’t stand seeing another episode where a character fawns over Lana Lang as was in Magnetic.

There was a discussion at the end of Magnetic about the right guy for Lana and this was Lex Luthor saying this to her and I don’t know if the producers were foreshadowing their future romance. She mentions that the right guy will come along and she would want to be with him and that Clark has to accept that. I think she should have said something about the right girl coming into his life but alas I didn’t get that piece of dialogue.

I was also prepared to hate Alicia Baker (Sarah Carter) because Clark has mentioned that he thinks he finally found someone he could have a relationship with because she knew what it felt like to be different but when she turned out to be mentally unstable, it was hard to hate her. But I think we she re-appears in season 4, I will hate her.

Clark mentions in Whisper, which is a theme throughout the first three seasons is Clark’s fear of being alone. In Obsession, he said that because there was no out there like him that he thought that it meant he would be alone. That was one of the part’s of Clark’s wedding vows to Lois that I loved where he says that with Lois by his side, he will never be alone.

It just seems that every time there are Clark and Lana moments in first three seasons, Clark seems pretty miserable when he is with Lana and even when they were together there was a certain amount of angst and it is driving me insane. I can see why the producers needed to inject some new blood for season 4. I think there is only so much you can squeeze out of this will they or won’t they relationship of Lana and Clark. Even his relationship with Chloe is a angst-filled too and tiresome. Hence we get Lois Lane.

Season three has more foreshadowing of Lana’s dark side as she goes to Lex (her future husband) to help her get Perry White off her back. It seems that season three also foreshadows their future romance and it starts to establish their friendship. I have to say that Kristin Kreuk and Michael Rosenbaum do share a good chemistry that I think is lacking between her and Tom Welling -I feel no sparks between them at all.

Some new stuff was introduced in Perry where Clark and we learn that the source of his abilities is from the sun.

On the Chloe front, it seems that her deal with Devil Lionel Luthor (John Glover) is coming back to bite her in the ass and her investigation into his past is what obviously leads to her supposed death at the end of season 3. Also, I am kind of sick of reporter Chloe. But there was an interesting deleted scene in Shattered where Chloe confronts Lionel in his part of Lex going insane and Lionel mentions her self-preservation would make her an interesting ally. If I didn’t know what would happen with Chloe then I would think that it would be an interesting twist to have her turn to the dark-side. The thing with Chloe is that she is an original character to Smallville with no ties to the Superman universe so it makes her a blank canvas character so it would have been an interesting twist.

I thought that maybe in Truth we were foreshadowed to Chloe’s healing meteor power but now it was just a temporary power of getting people to tell her the truth. I guess that power is latent until we see it in season 6.

I feel sorry for Sam Jones III (and not for his recent legal troubles) but I am sure that when he signed on to be Pete Ross that he would be on the show for the long-run. I mean Pete is very important in the comics and eventually marries Lana but casting him and not someone who is Caucasian (as he is in the comics) probably meant that the producers weren’t going to go that route with his character. Making him know Clark’s secret during season 2 got Pete to be a somewhat important character but you can tell with his significantly reduce screen time that he was going to be written out.

I also want to talk about Lana’s relationship with the Kents, in particular Martha (Annette O’Toole). Over the past three seasons, they have numerous heart-to-heart conversations about Clark and Martha has known Lana since she was three-years old yet it is Lois who is like a daughter to Martha, which was said in a deleted scene from season 5 (I believe). I find that odd considering she had only known Lois for a year. You would think that Martha would bestow that honor on Lana considering that her son is in love with her at this point in the series.

More on the Kents. I am still loving them. I am finally getting to see how much of an influence they truly are on Clark, especially his father. I love how they help him develop each of his new powers. It is just awesome. I get to see the result of this in season 10. It is true that Clark wouldn’t be who he is without their love and guidance. And in Velocity we have a bit of foreshadowing of the heart condition that will take the life of Jonathan in season 5 and it is a death that would haunt Clark until season 10. I still think that Annette O’Toole and John Schneider have amazing chemistry and their relationship is very much like the one that Clark will have with Lois later on.

So after three seasons, I still have to say that I am loving Smallville. Sure it’s storytelling is fairly predictable but It makes me regret not sticking with the show when it was first on. I let my hatred of Lana Lang and the lack of Lois Lane be the cause of me not seeing this show in its original run. And yes even after watching the first three seasons, I still hate Lana Lang. If someone wants to hit the comments and tell me that I will eventually warm to her, please do and tell me why. The only reason why I like Lana is that she left the show in season 8 and never came back.

Favorite episodes: Exile, Phoenix. Perry has to be the best episode of season 3. First of all it introduced one of the most significant Superman character and that is Perry White (Michael McKean). Perry in the comics and Superman movies and other media is the editor-in-chief of the Daily Planet but we get kind of his pre-Daily Planet days as a journalist for a tabloid-type TV show. There was a funny part in the episode where Perry calls the sheriff (Camille Mitchell) Chief to which she goes to Perry don’t call me Chief. This is what Perry tells Clark and Lois all the time in the Superman universe. Perry is significant in this episode as he tells Clark that he has promise as a journalist to which Clark does become 5 seasons later. I was a bit disappointed that Perry didn’t share any scenes with Martha who is played in real-life by Michael McKean’s wife Annette O’Toole. I also find it interesting that Perry meets Lana here and then 6 seasons later when Perry comes back, he meets Lois. I loved how Clark when questioning Perry, said it is the journalist in him.

I liked Delete for the simple fact that we are introduced to the name Lois Lane. Whether it was a throw-away for Superman fans or this was a way for the producers to drop a hint that they are going to bring Lois to the Smallville universe.

I liked Memoria especially for the sweet mother-son scene at the end with Clark recounting to Martha his birth mother’s real name and that he wished that Lara would have met her.

Covenant was an interesting season finale. We get introduced to someone we think is Kara, who is supposed to be Clark’s Kryptonian cousin but in this episode is positioned to be a potential love interest since she and him are the last Kryptonians and it is up to them to keep their race going. However, we all know from the comics that Kara is actually his cousin. As well, Clark ends his friendship with Lex. Also, with the exception of Lana and Martha, a lot of character’s fate is left in balance. Did Chloe and her Dad really die in that house explosion? Did Lex get poisoned? What happened to Jonathan in the cave? What does Jor-el have planned for Clark?

Worst episodes: Slumber because it really didn’t add anything to the show where nothing new was introduced about Clark. I also hated Relic (are any of you surprised?). You all know the reason and that was the scenes between Joe (or Jor-el) and Louise. I think this episode was the producers way giving fans a love scene between Clark and Lana while not actually being them but his father and her great-aunt. I think it is also the producers way of planting false hope to fans that Clark and Lana were destined to be together because his father and her great-aunt fell in love so that means the next generation are destined to be together too. What I don’t understand is if Jor-el was so in love with Louise what about Lara? Did he truly love her? In season 10’s Abandoned when we see the video message from Jor-el and Lara, it looked like the were in love. I hope this gets explained later.

Two things I liked about this episode 1) Tom Welling in 1961 -his hair was like it would be in later seasons, which made him look gorgeous and 2) The fact that Jor-el chose the Kents to raise his son.

Things introduced in season 3 was Clark’s development of his super-hearing in Whisper. He did that head-tilty thing that Lois mentioned in Prophecy to use his super-hearing. In Hereafter we are introduced to the concept that Clark will live forever.

And I have been meaning to write about this but I have been watching Clark’s choice of plaid shirts that he wears throughout the first three seasons. I was only interested in them to see which ones that he wears that Lois eventually incorporates into her own wardrobe in later seasons. He also wears glasses for the first time and while the frames are more modern and he did look handsome in them, I prefer the dorky glasses that he has in the future. It may be geeky but on him, it is sexy and I love it when Lois wears them too.

Also, I find it interesting that several actors that appeared in season three would appear on Smallville again but in a different role. For example, we had Michael Daingerfield playing a Luthor bodyguard but in season 10 comes back as Godfrey, one of Darkseid’s Prophets. Then there is Chris Gauthier who played a Luthor Corp Tech but would be more well known as Toyman in  season 8 to 10. Tahmoh Penikett (better known as Helo on Battlestar Galactica) popped here as Vince Davis but would appear later on as Wes Keenan, Lois Lane’s first boyfriend.

And now finally I am on to season 4 and most importantly the introduction of Lois Lane!!!!