Kneel Before Zod!

Tonight saw the sixth season premiere of Smallville. I really enjoy Smallville, but the crappy thing is that if I watch it, it means I have to miss My Name Is Earl. Why couldn't NBC just put Deal Or No Deal on at 8:00 and My Name Is Earl and The Office on at 9:00 and 9:30 like last season? It wouldn't have been so bad, then. But I guess if I have to choose one or the other, I can wait for summer reruns to see what I miss.

So let's recap the episode:

• Clark is stuck in the Phantom Zone with Raya, a former assistant of Jor-El. Also in the Phantom Zone are Zod's two goons from last season and actual phantoms. No, really. Phantoms in the Phantom Zone. Yeah. It's as weird as it sounds.
• In Metropolis, Chloe and Lionel get away from the unruly mob. Chloe goes back to the Daily Planet and runs into Jimmy Olsen, while Lionel goes back to Smallville to get the anti-Zod dagger Clark used to kill Brainiac in last season's finale.
• Also in Metropolis, we learn that Lex/Zod wants to fire up some genocide on the human race, and is only keeping Lana alive so she can have millions of Zod's babies. Must everybody on this freaking show want to knock boots with Lana?
• Martha and Lois's plane has crashed in the Arctic near the Fortress of Solitude. Jor-El tells Martha the details of the situation, and that somebody's gotta kill Lex/Zod since Clark is up in the Phantom Zone. He poofs her and Lois back to Smallville, where both Lionel and Lana show up at around the same time. Lana says, "hey, Zod likes me," so she figures she's gonna try to introduce Lex/Zod to the pointy end of the dagger.
• After a battle that sees Raya slit the throat of Zod's goons and get into a knife fight with the other, Clark escapes the Phantom Zone.
• Lana starts seducing Lex/Zod, then tries to sneak a good stabbing on him. Lex/Zod is all "not today, honey" and breaks the dagger like a twig. He fires up a piece of Kryptonian technology that begins causing worldwide earthquakes, then goes to snap Lana's neck before he's interrupted by Clark. Clark smashes the earthquake machine, then ends up brawling with Lex/Zod up into the air and out into a forest, where Lex/Zod gets the upper hand. He orders Clark to swear allegiance to him, but Clark ends up tricking him into grabbing this protective amulet that Raya gave him in the Phantom Zone. The amulet - which looks like the Superman logo, believe it or not - sucks Zod's presence out of Lex's body and sends him back to the Phantom Zone.
• At the hospital, Lex runs into Lana, who's got fresh bandages covering a wound on her hand caused when Lex/Zod pinned it to a wall with a sword. He asks if it's his fault, since he's blacked out pretty much everything since he got imbued with Zod's essence. In short, her response was, "Kinda, yeah." They kiss and make up, and really, this whole relationship has "abusive boyfriend/meek girlfriend making excuses" painted all over it.
• Also at the hospital, Lois recalls her half-unconscious journey to the Fortress of Solitude, which she believes to be a near-death experience. She and Clark share an awkward moment when they catch one another holding hands after he tells her he's relieved that she's okay.
• Speaking of awkward moments, there's another one when Clark goes to check on Chloe at the Daily Planet. They start talking about her kissing him at the end of last season's finale, but get interrupted by Jimmy, who is apparently going to be her love interest this season.
• At the barn loft at the Kent farm, Clark realizes that everything he knows is different now, and finding his place in the world is going to be much harder. It doesn't help him that apparently, Jor-El no longer inhabits the Fortress of Solitude either. Why, I do not know.
• As the episode comes to a close, we are left with three things. We learned earlier in the episode that Lionel's connection to Jor-El's consciousness had been severed, but we see him translating Kryptonian symbols in his office (specifically, the symbol for power). Secondly, Lex discovers a broken piece of the earthquake machine on his desk. Thirdly, we see one of the phantoms from the Phantom Zone flying out of a canyon in Argentina.

So Clark's fought freaks hopped up on Kryptonite steroids, other Kryptonians, witches, vampires, and now a ghost from the Phantom Zone? Can't we just save that for a throwaway Halloween episode like when Lana was a vampire?

In other news, Jimmy Olsen made his Smallville debut, as played by Aaron Ashmore, twin brother of Shawn (Iceman from the X-Men trilogy). It makes me wonder what other DC characters they can bring in. The Green Arrow is set to be in seven episodes at least, there's talk of Michael McKean showing up as Perry White (reprising his role from a few seasons back), and there's even a rumor going around that Aquaman, The Flash, and Cyborg are going to show up one more time to join Clark and Green Arrow as a quasi-Justice League. Yeah, Cyborg is a Teen Titan, not a member of the Justice League, but when did Smallville's producers ever let the comics get in the way of them telling a story?

But the episode was not bad. Not great, but not awful. It wasn't one of the best episodes I've seen, but for an episode that tried to wrap up last season's loose ends and establish something new for this season, I can't complain. We'll see where this goes next week.