THE STEPFORD BOYFRIENDS COME TO SMALLVILLE -- Clark joins the football team at school and is immediately given the starting quarterback position after the old quarterback starts a fight with new coach Jason. Curious about the behavior change in his old teammate, Clark and Lois investigate and discover that the cheerleaders are poisoning the teams' water with kryptonite, turning the players into Stepford-like boyfriends.
David Carlson directed the episode written by Luke Schelhaas.

Afterward Clark and Lois are struck by how attentive the guys on the team are toward their girlfriends and Chloe goes to check out Denny. Lex is providing the jerseys for the team, much to Clark's dismay. Both Jason and Chloe drink the water that the cheerleaders provide, and Chloe is soon dropping the Talon to follow Clark. A suspicious Lois overhears the cheerleaders talking and sees one of them with a chemistry paper on "love molecules." That night Chloe is at Clark's loft and hits on him, although nothing happens. In the school Lana is puzzled by Jason's overly-devoted behavior and he jealously takes it out on Clark who is talking to Lana. And they discover that Chloe has joined the cheerleading squad.

Clark drinks the water as well and suffers pain from the kryptonite-tainted liquid, but it has no other effect. In his weakened condition, the players ordered by a jealous Jason take him down pretty readily. That night Jason visits the still weakened Clark in the barn and beats him up. Fortunately Lex arrives and drives him off. Clark doesn't admit to know it was Jason and his wounds heal up shortly thereafter. Lex turns over all of his files to Clark as a gesture of friendship.

Lois puts it all together and she and Clark set up an operation where Clark pretends to still be affected and goes to a pool party where the cheerleaders are holding court so he can cause a distraction while Lois grabs the notebook. Mandy takes off with him and the notebook into the weight room and Lois follows. Hilarity and hijinks ensue and Clark manages to slip Lois the notebook but then Chloe attacks her in a fit of jealousy. Lois knocks Chloe into a furnace and the heat dispels the effect.

Chloe and Lois bust up Clark and Mandy, but Mandy brings in some football players. Lois sticks around to fight it out and Clark secretly busts a steam pipe, "curing" the players. Clark meets back up with Lex who reveals he has cleaned out the room where he kept Clark's "evidence" and the two reconcile, and Clark asks Lex for a favor. Clark proves himself in the game by scoring the winning touchdown, reconciles with Chloe, and finds out that Lois is going back to college thanks to Clark's favor from Lex.

Clark and Lois team up to figure out what's going on. Apparently, the cheerleaders concocted their beverage with their advanced minds and chemistry skills. Remember: this show is "fantasy/sci-fi." (By the way: a tribute to Christopher Reeve amounts to a very short montage before the show and a title card at the end of the episode with his name and dates as well as the legend, "He made us believe a man could fly.") Clark lets himself be seduced by one of the cheerleader girls for a reason I haven't quite figured out except that it shows Clark making out with a girl. Lois discovers, in a really badly edited sequence, that heat foils the thirst-quenching spell.

One steamy gas pipe later, everybody's cured. Clark wins the football game with a Hail Mary pass, and Chloe admits that she still has feelings for Clark. Clark admits honestly that he doesn't return them. They're still friends, and Clark's still working for the newspaper. But it's all just decoration around a historic moment: in a bid to win Clark's friendship back (which he does by episode's end), Lex donates jerseys to the football program and ends up giving an inspirational speech in the locker room. With Clark. And shirtless football players.

Clark: You know, if you spent as much time studying as you did trying to leave, you'd be in college already.
Lois: And where'd you get that pearl of wisdom? The Farmers' Almanac?

Lana (to Jason): I've never been so happy and to not be able to show that is frustrating.

Lex (to the football team): In my life, I've learned that you can never give up on something important to you. Your team, your friendships - things that you've invested time and energy in. You have to finish what you started. Sometimes that means getting a fresh start... so please enjoy the new uniforms.

Clark (to Lex): I know what you're doing, but you can't buy back my friendship.

Chloe (to Lois): I finally understand why it never worked with Clark... I was never devoted to him.

Mandy: I wouldn;t give that geek rag a quote if it was the last one on earth... you want a quote?
Lois: Yeah.
Mandy: Back off, bitch.

Chloe (to Clark): Who needs the torch. Especially if you're not there... I want to make you my number one priority.

Clark (to Martha): Problem is i'm not over Lana yet. Sometimes I feel like I never will be.

Lois (to Clark about Chloe): Oh my god, she's taken the fast track to Stepford.

Clark: If this friendship is so important to you, why did you lie to me for so long.
Lex: There's a darkness in me that I can't always control. I'm starting to think that's my curse, why every relationship I have ends badly.
Clark: We all have a dark side, Lex.
Lex: Yeah, but I can feel mine creeping over the corners. Your friendship helps keep it at bay... i'm not willing to give up on that.

Clark: I'm looking for Coach Teague. He just attacked me in my loft.
Lois: After that performance on the field today, not surprised.

Lois: The cheerleaders are having a pool party tonight. How do you look in a swimsuit Clark?

Clark: I'm devoted to you.
Mandy (after pulling up his shirt): Yeah, I can work with that.

Clark: I'll cook. I'll cook you dinner.
Mandy: Oh that is so hot.

Clark (explaining to Mandy why he is nervous): I've never done what I think we're about to do before.

Chloe: I went through this with Lana and i'm not going through it with you.
Lois: What?
Chloe: Stealing Clark.

Lois: Do you know how pathetic it is that you have to resort to chemicals to control your boyfriends?
Mandy: I'm sick of being a distant second to a football.
Lois: So you create a bunch of psycho nutjubs. (looks at Chloe). No offense.
Chloe: None taken.

Lois (to Mandy): Yeah, what are you going to do? Cheer us to death.

Clark: You know, I thought you made a great cheerleader.
Chloe: Yeah, well let's never talk about that again, okay?

Chloe: (about Clark) Wow, superhero and journalist - what are the odds?

Lois: If you break (Chloe's) heart, I'll come back and I'll break your legs.

Lois: Don't worry, I'll come back and visit.
Clark: Is that a promise or a threat?

Clark’s on the football team now but the guys don’t like him much, even after he saves new assistant coach Jason Teague from being shotgunned by Danny the quarterback in the locker room. It seems Danny is a little more attached to his girlfriend, head cheerleader Mandy, since drinking the Gatorade with the extra green glow, and he thought Jason was looking at her. Chloe drinks some next and ends up letting her left-over feelings for Clark get the best of her, even showing up in his barn in nothing but his football jersey and trying to seduce him and dressing up in a cheerleading uniform for practice. The rest of the football team is acting the same way about their cheerleader girlfriends, to the point of forgetting about football. Jason makes Clark the new starting quarterback, but after he drinks the K-juice himself, gets obsessive about Lana and tries to kill Clark with his bare hands—and almost succeeds because Clark himself swallowed the stuff and, well, you can imagine what that did to him. But Lex shows up and boots Jason out of the barn just as Clark sweats out the last of the toxin. Since buying new uniforms for the team wasn’t enough to win back Clark’s friendship, Lex gives him all the files he had on him and tells him the investigation is over for good and he wants another chance to be his friend. Clark talks to Ma Kent about the Chloe situation and realizes he still isn’t over Lana, and he talks to Pa about football again.

Lois, who has to take over investigating the story for the now-psycho Chloe and too-busy-with-football Clark, discovers that Mandy, who has now set her sights on Clark, concocted a ‘love potion’ that didn’t work until they added.…yeah, you already guessed it, ‘meteor rocks.’ Clark, of course, figured this out as soon as he gagged and lost his powers after drinking it, so together they decide to crash the cheerleaders’ pool party (at the SCHOOL, no less), where Clark keeps Mandy ‘occupied’ in the weight room while Lois steals her notebook with the formula from her purse. Chloe shows up and tries to clobber Lois with a wrench because she thinks she’s her competition for Clark, but Lois knocks her back into a furnace, which miraculously cures her. It’s not over yet, though, ‘cause Mandy gets the whole football team after Lois, Clark, and Chloe, and they don’t stop until Clark uses his heat vision to bust open a steam pipe (since heat’s the cure). Clark goes to Lex’s that night, where Lex shows him that the only think left in the ‘Clark Room’ is the Porsche, now compacted into a cube to remind him of what he almost lost. The next day at the game, Clark throws a last-second Hail Mary pass and wins the game to delight of everyone—except maybe Jonathan, who seems a little suspicious that it wasn’t exactly all natural. Finally, Chloe apologizes to Clark and he says he’ll still make time for the Torch, and Lois says that she got into Metropolis U after all thanks to a mysterious call from Lex Luthor. But she’ll see him around…

This episode was definitely better than the last…which isn’t saying much in itself. It was fairly mediocre; I didn’t have many problems with it, but there just didn’t seem to be much there. I really wish they’d stop with the Kryptonite-as-magical-catalyst plots, but I guess I just need to accept them because it appears they’re here to stay.

I’m not sure how I feel about Clark and Lex apparently making up. On the one hand, their friendship is one of the things I’ve always liked most about the show; on the other, this is the fourth season and they should be moving towards their ultimately adversarial relationship eventually. The way things stand, it seems like every time they start in that direction, something happens to hit the rewind button.

The football subplot has kind of thrown me. I thought it was a good parallel to Clark/Superman’s entire life that he has to hold back and pretend to be weak when we all know he’s the most powerful being on the planet. It was shown so effectively and concisely in that one short scene in SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE where a young Clark is left to pick up the equipment and dirty towels while the team goes off to party, and after everyone is gone he kicks the ball into the stratosphere. That seemed to be a lesson that he learned early on in the series that he was going to carry on into adulthood, but it appears they’re going to attempt to get back into it and either drive the lesson home or skirt the issue. Either way, I think it should have been left alone. (more...)

The WB advertised this episode as "Thirst".

This episode begins and ends with a brief tribute to Christopher Reeve (Dr. Swann), who passed away on October 10, 2004, three days before the episode's premiere.

Clark quits The Torch to concentrate on football.

Moneca Delain returns as her "Mara" character from "Velocity."

John Glover doesn't appear in this episode.

Superman reference:
When Clark is wearing his football uniform, both Chloe and Lois tell him they're not really your colors.

Devoted (de·vot·ed) [adj.] - Feeling or displaying strong affection or attachment; to give or apply (one's time, attention, or self) entirely to a particular activity, pursuit, cause, or person.

We're not sure if these are spoilers for a new episode, or if this is "Facade" renamed. The teaser begins with some football action involving Clark at practice. We see Head Coach Quigley for the first time during this scene. A player named Dan is late for practice, after being with his girlfriend Mandy. Assisant (?) Coach Jason puts Dan on the bench util he gets his priorities straight. Lois and Lana go jogging together, after Lana asks her too. Lois makes fun of the cheerleaders, calling them "Barbie dolls." She then says cheerleaders are "the whole cruel popularity contest masquerading as school spirit... the sad, pathetic need to be on the arm of a quarterback..." Lana comments "Okay, wow, good thing I was never a cheerleader." Lois realizes her faux pas. "You were, weren't you? Oh, Lana. We were just starting to be friends." Dan accuses Jason of looking at his girlfriend, and then punches him. Clark is told that he is starting Friday as Dan is now out. Dan comes into the school with a shotgun, going after Jason. Clark stops him by blurring the room in superspeed. He then uses heat vision to explode the gun. Clark tells Chloe that he has to quit the Torch, to focus on football. The bright side to this scene? Clark tells *Chloe!* This means Chloe is alive and well! The football team gets new uniforms, which seem to be emblazoned with a LuthorCorp logo. Jason introduces the team to the man responsible for giving them the uniforms - Lex Luthor. Lex gives a speech. "In my life, I've learned that you can never give up on something that means a lot to you. Your team, your friendships - things that you've invested time and energy in. You have to finish what you started. Sometimes that means getting a fresh start." A message to Clark? Hopefully... Lois makes a comment, "I need a quote for the Torch." Isn't she in college? Of course, one of her interviewees makes a reference to her "repeating the twelfth grade," so, maybe this is a new development we just did not know before. Lois tells the girl that she's "one tragic backbend away from a Darwin Award," and calls the girl "Sunshine." She also makes a comment to needing a smoke. Chloe wants to speak to Clark in the Torch. Possibly in a scene preceding the one where he quits.