Genevieve goes after Lana, and in no mood to waste time pulls a gun on her and demands the artifact in her possession. Lana pulls some (weak) martial arts moves on her, and when she is overpowered the spirit which has been lurking within her comes out, kills Genevieve and erases that tattoo she's had on her lower back all season. I can only assume this means she's now out of "the loop".

Lex happens upon the murder scene and takes Lana in, of course with the intention of pilfering the stone. While Lex and Lana are back at the mansion, Lionel cleans up the crime scene and has whisked away Genevieve's body in order to extort the stone from Lex in exchange for Lana walking away free.

The military comes rolling into town right in the middle of graduation (where the gang notices Lana is missing) presumably in time to tell everyone to evacuate since the meteor shower hits in three hours.

Soon after Clark decides he has to do something about the meteors as he feels it's connected to him somehow and therefor his fault. He has a pow-wow with Jor-El who says "Yeah, it is your fault, get the stones already." Finally his parents acquiece and wish him luck. He then runs into Lana, who gives him one of the remaining two artifacts he requires and as she thinks she's going away forever she tells him she loves him and he basically says "back at'cha".

Back at the farm (I always wanted to write that) Jason shows up just as the Kents are getting ready to head out of town. He threatens to kill them if they don't divulge the location of the artifacts. They try to get the upper hand but in the end he has them at the point of a shotgun... just as a meteor crashes into the roof of the house.

To be continued, of course.

Clark gets the third stone from Lex's safe, which had been in Lionel's pocket (who lied about having it), and put Lionel in a coma when Clark activated it by putting the second one in it's place in the cave.

Are you still with me?

So... Clark gets all three pieces assembled and put into the "lock" where they turn into what looks like flattened diamond. Lex and Chloe are in the cave, Chloe diverts Lex from seeing what's happening, and the next thing you know Clark is in the middle of a frozen tundra, and then chucks the diamond ala Chris Reeve in the first Superman film.

Oh yeah, the helicopter which is transporting Lana to Metropolis "to keep her safe" crashes (in a pretty cool scene) in a field while still in Smallville. She drags herself over the lip of a crater to find a, you guessed it, spaceship. The ships happens to be a larger scaled version of the aforementioned diamond.

And there ends the episode, to be continued.

If I was talking I'd be out of breath. :shock:

The Good:

Plenty of action and suspense going on here, pretty much non-stop and there are a ton of cool special effects. We get to see some of the affection between Lois and Clark come out just a bit, as well as Chloe laying down a really heavy hint to Clark that she knows about his powers. We're also back to the good old Lex/Lionel dynamic and Lex seems to be starting to accept his role as "the bad guy".

The Bad:

Just when you think they're finally answering some questions or closing some doors, they open up more unknowns. Hence my opening statement about "closure". On the one hand this keeps the show from falling into the death of formulaic TV (Knightrider, A-Team, just about any other action show from the 80's), but on the other hand throw us a bone, will ya?

Sure, Clark finally assembled the three artifacts and he's probably in the Antarctic (you know, Fortress of Solitude)... although the writers have taken great liberties up until now with the mythos, so who knows? But they had to introduce another spaceship?? Who the heck is in that? And of course there's still the question of the connection between ancient Egypt, China, an Indian cave, and 200 year old witches.

I really enjoy the show, especially since as the season went on they got away from their "titillating scene of the week", but I said it once and I'll say it again: Please don't pull an "X-Files" on us with clues and sidestories that go nowhere and are just meant to keep us wondering.

I'm pretty sure I'll get more of the same when I watch the season finale of Lost.

P.S. Can someone explain to me the relevance of that countdown timer? At first I thought it had to do with the Batman Begins preview, but then I figured it must have something to do with the episode itself. Except that at one point after the military came in and said the meteors would hit in 3 hours the time still had 19 hours on it.

Anyone?