What's up with Chloe: Since Chloe was fired by Lionel, she packs up her belongings at the Daily Planet and as she's walking out her editor Max brings her into his office. She asks him to look at some stories she's working on, but he tells her he couldn't print her stories if he wanted to because of her fallout with Lionel. She tells him to print them under a pseudonym. She offers her cousin's name -- because she'd never be interested in journalism -- Lois Lane. When she gets back to the Torch's office, Pete tells her Luthor Corp has taken back all the Torch's computers. As she leaves school, a man in a truck tries to run her down. Chloe just escapes death, the truck door opens, and to Chloe's surprise, Clark is the driver!

What's up with Lex: Lex needs some help with his computer and meets Molly in the Luthor Corp tech department. The two flirt and after getting a disc from her he heads back to his office. When he returns, he learns that no one named Molly works there and that the hard drives from the Smallville High computers have been stolen.

What's up with Clark: At the hospital, Chloe tells the police that Clark just seemed to loose control of the truck and he's allowed to leave. On his way out of the hospital he runs into Lana and Adam. Lana introduces the two and awkward pleasantries follow, neither one seems impressed with the other. Later at the farm, Chloe shows up and tells Clark she knows he didn't loose control of the truck and demands to know why he tried to run her down. Clark says he can't remember what happened and the two try to piece together clues. They find a mysterious e-mail on his laptop from a sender named Brainwave, but it's locked and they can't open it.

What's up with Lana: Lana and Adam talk at the Talon. Adam asks if she still has feelings for Clark and she says that Clark will always be important to her, but whatever there was between them is gone. The next day at school, Lana gets an e-mail from Brainwave and after opening it attacks Chloe in the hall. She grabs an ax and is about to kill Chloe when Adam shows up and uses some impressive karate moves to knock her out. When she wakes up she doesn't remember anything after opening the e-mail.

How it ends: Chloe, Adam, Lana and Clark meet at the Talon and find out that Lana and Clark opened the same e-mail. Adam uses his hacking skills to find out that the message came from a Luthor Corp computer. Chloe tells them that she's dug up a lot of incriminating things on Dr. Gardner, a psychiatrist from Summerholt Institute and that the only other person to know about it is her former editor Max. When she calls Max, he tells her it'll be ok, but is killed by his secretary, who's opened a Brainwave e-mail, while on the phone. Clark decides to ask Lex for his help. He then confronts Dr. Gardner and tells him he knows what he's been up to, after he's escorted out of Summerholt by security, he uses his super hearing to listen to Gardner's phone conversation with Molly and find out where she is. When Clark shows up, he sees that Lex has already tracked her down. They learn that Molly was a super genius as a child and that Gardner has been treating her since she had a break down. She's very protective and didn't want Chloe's story to incriminate him, so she created mind control software that she's sent out via e-mail to everyone in Chloe's address book. Lex sees that the last one she sent was to Clark's parents. Clark is able to get to the farm just in time to stop his parents from killing Chloe and Lex sends Molly off to get "real" help.

Lex ends up giving new computers to the Torch, and Clark and Chloe mend their friendship and Chloe promises to stop digging into Clark's mysteries. Adam decides to stay around Smallville after he's released from the hospital, and despite her reservations about Adam's inability to open up; Lana rents him the loft above the Talon. Lex meets with Dr. Gardner, telling him it would be unwise to attempt any more attempts on Chloe's life. He also tells him that he won't run Chloe's article if he can get back the seven weeks that have been erased from his memory.
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Computers! Who needs 'em? Especially when some Lisa Loeb-lookin' computer genius who used to be at the same neurological institute that tried to brain warp that little Ryan kid is using them to brainwash people into trying to kill Chloe. Turns out that emails this woman is sending are encoded with "Kill Chloe!" instructions. And there's no McAfee VirusScan that's going to help. Clark, Lana, and even MamaKent and Bo Duke take a whack at Chloe, but she just. Won't. Die! The reason for the deadly emails? Chloe was working on a news story about Summerholt Neurological Institute that the owner isn't too pleased about. Seems he's on the verge of some sort of breakthrough with the brain and whatnot. Without too much fuss, Clark and Lex track down Lisa Loeb.com and that's that. Except Lex uses Chloe's unpublished story as leverage to try to get the seven weeks he lost from all that electroshock therapy back from Evil Neurological Guy. Meanwhile, Lana is still getting hot 'n heavy (minus the hot) with Poor Man's Wes Bentley, who's released from his phantom physical therapy and decides he wouldn't mind sticking around in town. Before you can say, "Is he really Bruce Wayne?" Lana's offered him a room upstairs in The Talon. Other surprises? Lana has a pink cell phone and Chloe really is Lois Lane's cousin.
By: Omar L. Gallaga (TWoP)

Clark and Lana each make an attempt on Chloe's life for unknown reasons after they receive a mysterious e-mail from the Sommerholt Institute. Clark must discover the source of these e-mails after Chloe reveals she has uncovered proof that they are doing mind-control research at the lab and realizes they must be trying to kill her in order to prevent her from writing an expose. Meanwhile, Lana decides to rent the apartment above the café to Adam even though she feels he is hiding something dangerous about his past. Michael Rosenbaum, Sam Jones III, John Glover, Annette O'Toole and John Schneider also star.

Chloe: She's my cousin. She's not at all interested in journalism.
Max: Lois Lane.

Molly (to Lex): Would you rather have a playstation addicted geek wearing a Star Wars tee shirt?

Sheriff Adams: Your family sure has its way of going through vehicles.

Adam: So you're Clark. Heard a klot about you.
Clark: I didn't realize thare was that much to tell.

Lan (to Adam): Clark will always be an important part of my life, but whatever there was between us is gone.

Chloe (to Clark): Don;t you think manslaughter is a little beyond eye for an eye.

Adam: Remind me again. What's your shool mascot? Oh, it's a bird.

Chloe: Lana what are you doing?
Lana: Killing Chloe Sullivan.

Chloe: So we can rule out paranoia. Somebody is definitely trying to kill me.

Adam: Wow, Clark must've really messed with your head.

Adam: I was thinking of staying in Smallville.
Lana: Why?
Adam: Oww – that hurt.

Adam: Smallville seemed a little less terrifying than going to Metropolis alone.
Lana: Crazy ninja girls and all?

Lex (to Molly): I'm starting to get a complex. It turns out all the women I feel even vaguely attracted to turn out to be psychopaths.

Lana: What do you think?
Adam: I think Norman Bates would be right at home here.

Lana: If you stick around long enough, I just may put you to work.

Clark (to Chloe): You have to understand there are some things about me that'll never add up.

Lex (to Dr. Garner): Anymore attempts on Chloe Sullivan's life would be ill-advised.

Lex (to Dr. Garner): I want those seven weeks back.

And though this script is storywise not much different from their "Nocturne," "Skinwalker," and "Prodigal," Peterson & Souders' growth as screenwriters can really be seen in the structure they used here. Third season is generally when writers have more leeway to take risks with their scripts, and this writing team did exactly that by extending its reach outside of Smallville, to focus on two guest characters integral to the plot completely independent of the regular cast.

They used Molly and Dr. Garner extremely well with the established characters, but also extremely well as individual characters. Compare (really, contrast,) that with the clumsy handling of guest characters in last week's "Whisper," where we knew absolutely nothing about the FotW or his friend, their motivations, or that they were anything more than props. Though Molly and Dr. Garner serve as gears in this story, they're treated as fully fleshed human beings, without their backstory playing like Exposition Theatre.

Likewise with Adam- his backstory comes in bits and pieces, as asides and part of progressive conversation, and again, the character is written with subtlety, with an entire range of emotion, as well as flaws and merits. His annoyance at Lana's vacillation, his frustration, the delightful alpha dog back and forth between him and Clark, and his fear of the unknown, and his need and hurt, all stemmed organically from the situations around him. This is the way guest stars should be used, and while it's wonderful to see that this production office has learned from the early missteps of the Lex and Helen relationship, it's really a shame the producers didn't clue in sooner and give Peterson & Souders a chance to salvage that storyline, because they could have done it effortlessly.

They also did a good job of progressing time with several offhand mentions in the dialogue, so that the audience understands that this story doesn't take place the day after "Whisper," which is incredibly important. Though the reconciliation scene with Chloe and Clark suffers from the mishandling of their blow-out in "Whisper," it's not because it isn't a strong, organic scene. This entire season has been about growing up, getting perspective, and recognizing fallibility- this is exactly the scene Clark and Chloe needed to have. It just didn't play as strongly as it could have, because the argument that preceded it was poorly written. (more...)
By Hope