Live Tweeting the 83rd Annual Academy Awards

 

The baffling ordeal of watching the Oscars this year was made tolerable by three important factors: 1) alcohol, in my case a half a bottle of Crown Royal whiskey 2) Live Tweeting the show 3) Norm MacDonald live Tweeting the show.  Norm came out of Twitter exile on fire and ripped into the Oscars the way only Norm can. It seemed like everyone else's live Tweeting paled in comparison to what Norm was doing.  Certainly, I felt I was toiling in Norm's mighty shadow.  Here's my obnoxious, occasionally funny (I hope) Twitter take on the Oscars:

My #Oscars party tonight will consist of myself and Jameson's Irish Whiskey. My apologies in advance for the impending live Tweeting.

SirMartinGale 

I know how @BackoftheHead feels about T. Reznor's score for TSN, but I hope he realizes that Hans Zimmer wins at the #Oscars tonight. 

I won't complain if #Inception wins anything or everything. @SirMartinGale

Still bitter about @TheAcademy's unforgivable snub of @piranha3D as the 11th Best Picture nominee. @rileysteele @IAMKELLYBROOK #Oscars

Damn, Out of Jameson's. This is my substitute. #Oscars watching underway. http://twitpic.com/44jez9

Whoa. Warren Beatty's so old! What's old, pussycat? #Oscars

steveagee 

Tonight will the be the first time I've masturbated to an Academy Awards host (Anne Hathaway) since Hugh Jackman. #Oscars

If I find myself with a bag on my head later on, I'm not mimicking @banksyart, I'm just really drunk. #Oscars #Banksy 

The best possible conclusion to the winners of Best Art Direction would have been if that guy vomited from nervousness on stage. #Oscars

Best cinematographer Wally Pfister stole my line! "My master Christopher Nolan." I've been saying "My Master Alex Merkin" for years. #Oscars

Kirk Douglas coming onto Anne Hathaway is as inspiring as Kirk Douglas still being alive. #Oscars

Anyone not following @normmacdonald and his live #Oscars Tweeting is committing a cardinal sin against their own enjoyment.

That #Oscars stagehand is carting Kirk Douglas offstage because the horny old man is literally seconds away from whipping his cock out.

You know, I bet Hailee Steinfeld had a much sweeter, less rambling and obnoxious, and non-profanity-laced speech prepared. #Oscars

All I want to know from Josh Brolin and Javier Bardem is, is my table ready? #Oscars

Aaron Sorkin wins deservedly Best Screenplay for @socialnetwork. Surprisingly he did not walk and talk on his way to the stage. #Oscars

Christopher Nolan's face said it, but I'll Tweet what he was thinking: #Inception doesn't win Best Adapted Screenplay? B-b-bullshit! #Oscars 

normmacdonald 

well so far so awful.

Nice to see Reese Witherspoon had her chin sharpened for this big night. #Oscars

Christian Bale's beard is a different color from his hair. I hate to ask whether the carpet matches either of the drapes. #Oscars

Christian Bale is the #Oscars winner we deserve, but not the Oscar winner we need right now. So we'll hunt him. Because he can take it.

So many superheroes @ the #Oscars. Catwoman hosting, Batman just won an Oscar, and now Wolverine and the Joker are presenting onstage.

Academy Award winners @trent_reznor and Atticus Ross! I'm too happy to tell a terrible joke. Congratulations, sirs! #Oscars

What's that sound? It's the sound of the douchebag orchestra playing off the winners of Best Sound Design. #Inception #Oscars

Marisa Tomei is so brave to show her face @ the #Oscars after never returning the one she accidentally won for My Cousin Vinny.

As of 10pm, #Oscars winning films include Alice in Wonderland and The Wolfman. Non-Oscar winning films include True Grit and 127 Hours.

normmacdonald

that was very insulting saying oprah was coming up and then showing a giant elephant. shame on you academy 

I can't compete with @normmacdonald.

What a pop for Amy Adams name dropping George Lucas. #MrPopularity #Oscars

If Christian Bale,Melissa Leo and Aaron Sorkin look under their Oscar statues, they'll find Oprah just gave them a new car. #Oscars

Jack Palance on the floor doing pushups would still be taller than Billy Crystal. #Oscars #cityslickers

Oh, the jokes on @TheAcademy, that Asian woman who won for Best Documentary was actually Banksy in disguise. @banksyart was robbed. #Oscars

Damn right #Inception wins for Best Visual Effects. These mofos flipped Paris upside down! Who's ever seen shit like that before? #Oscars

Liked the shot of David Fincher's daughter stone faced while everyone else laughed at Randy Newman. He doesn't have a friend in her. #Oscars 

normmacdonald 

alright the dead guys are coming up. how come theyre always so much more talented than the live guys?

Geez, Matt Damon lost a shit load of weight. #Oscars #milliondollarbaby

I thought The King's Speech was a wonderful film and all that, but fuck this. Fincher, Aranofsky, Nolan, and the Coens were robbed. #Oscars

I wonder if Annette Bening looks at Warren Beatty and thinks, "Warren, you got so old." What's old, pussycat? #Oscars

After leaving the stage both Kirk Douglas & Eli Wallach chased @jamesfranco around backstage demanding he paint their chicken coop. #Oscars

No one saw Rabbit Hole so we're all taking Nicole Kidman's #Oscars nomination this year purely on blind faith. #Oscars

Impressed @TheAcademy actually chose Jennifer Lawrence's best moment in the Winter's Bone clip they aired. #Oscars

Just like the rat at the end of The Departed, the Black Swan symbolizes obviousness. Congratulations Best Actress Natalie Portman! #Oscars

Ironically Colin Firth is currently inspiring lonely young men hunched over their keyboards to complain about his winning Best Actor #oscars 

Again: Academy Award winners Alice in Wonderland and The Wolfman. Not Academy Award Winners: True Grit and 127 Hours. #Oscars #bullshit

Senor Spielbergo has arrived to welcome us all to Jurassic Park. #Oscars 

normmacdonald 

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Everyone in @TheAcademy deserves to find their Facebook accounts canceled by the morning. @socialnetwork got robbed. #Oscars #sucks

If we ever win an Oscar @Fivelion and I promise @normmacdonald that we will thank the computer. #Oscars #sorryaboutallthetweets

Norm sticks the landing! RT @normmacdonald you guys were the 83rd best hosts ever.

I bet David Fincher's glad he stopped filming The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and flew all the way from Sweden to LA for nothing. #Oscars

 

And that was the Oscars. I definitely would like to thank the computer. Same time next year, Norm?

Faster

FASTER

 

** SPOILERS **

Finally, The Rock has come back to action movies! Faster is a stripped down, violent, pulpy revenge picture struggling with its own conscience. Dwayne Johnson stars as a former wheel man sprung out of a ten year sentence in the clink on an unholy quest for vengeance against the men who murdered his crew and his beloved brother. Billy Bob Thornton and the fetching Carla Gugino are the detectives hunting down this one man crime spree systematically blowing thugs, goons, sex offenders, and telemarketers away in the dusty towns of Bakersfield, California and Henderson, Nevada.  Johnson is in fine form; he's a formidable physical presence on screen very much akin to Arnold Schwarzenegger as the Terminator. Unlike Arnold, Johnson does a powerful amount of emoting as Faster blazes ahead. The Rock sheds his impenetrable action hero veneer and effectively conveys the inner torment driving him into this quest for murderous revenge.  Several famous character actors pop up as Johnson's targets. The most stunning is an almost unrecognizable Adewale Akinnouye-Agbaje (Mr. Eko from Lost) as a reformed criminal turned preacher who pleads startlingly for Johnson's soul. Faster really ups the ante by introducing an intriguing third element into the scenario: Oliver Jackson-Cohen as an overachieving master assassin hired to take down Johnson. Jackson-Cohen is in love with Maggie Grace and struggles with his desire to pursue his career or surrender it for a chance at happiness with the woman he loves. The fact that Johnson is not only an evasive target who foils him at every turn but, much like The Rock's wrestling persona, hardly acknowledges his existence, drives Jackson-Cohen up the proverbial wall. The relationship between the supermodel-beautiful Grace and Jackson-Cohen is a pleasing divergence as Faster cuts between Johnson's manhunt and Thornton's unsavory home life. Faster really pushes past the point of believability in how Johnson can go on a five day killing spree and the police make no effort to catch him when he is hardly careful about his movements. Nor is he subtle, blazing across the deserts in an extremely conspicuous striped black Chevrolet Chevelle SS. The ultimate reveal of the conspiracy behind how and why Johnson's brother was killed and why Johnson went to prison was easy to determine using the Law of Economy of Characters.  Still, despite its preposterous elements, Faster is a grim, satisfying action yarn; a welcome throwback to 1970's grindhouse revenge pictures that inspired the similarly violent Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino films of the early 1990's.

Smallville 10x15 - "Fortune"

 

ROLL CALL:

SUPERMAN! LOIS LANE! TESS MERCER! THE GREEN ARROW! CHLOE SULLIVAN!

Special DC Universe Guest Stars:

EMIL HAMILTON!

AMOS FORTUNE!

With Special Mentions of:

ZATANNA!
BATMAN!
WONDER WOMAN!
And possibly:
BEPPO THE SUPER-MONKEY?

The bachelor/bachelorette parties of soon-to-be newlyweds Clark Kent and Lois Lane gave Smallville a prime excuse to crib from The Hangover this week. The result was an utterly bizarre What The Hell Did I Just Watch? episode peppered with a few comedic moments and a big surprise at the end.  

I barely understood the bulk of the plot. The Smallville crew were hungover from a zany night caused by Zatanna's enchanted champagne (unfortunately, no Zatanna appearance as Serinda Swan is off making Breakout Kings) and ended up in a zany caper at Amos Fortune's casino involving Lois' missing engagement ring, an armored car that ended up at the Kent Barn, Emil Hamilton dressed as Elvis singing (and banging!) Tess, Chloe and Clark thinking they got married, and Oliver Queen in drag as a showgirl. (Amos Fortune didn't realize he was a man and hit on him.)  There was also a monkey.

However, interspersed in that nonsense was a hilarious gag of hungover Clark Superspeeding right into a wall.  The scene towards the end of everyone watching Emil's video of the drunken night in question was also pretty funny, and also borrowed from the ending of The Hangover when they all watched the pics taken of their forgotten, drugged out night in Vegas. The moments between Oliver and Lois where Lois fretted about losing her engagement ring and they commiserated about the pressures of living up to Clark's perfection were well done.  I also enjoyed the homage to Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom where Lois was crawling on the floor chasing after her ring in the middle of a brawl in the Fortune showroom.

The romantic coupling between Tess and Emil Hamilton came out of nowhere, but the video doesn't lie: Emil scored! He got right in there. High five to Emil!  He got his ass kicked and tortured during the episode, but well done, my man!  Amos Fortune was bizarre: He looked like an evil doppelganger of Terry O'Quinn from Lost.  He wasn't an evil scientist but an evil casino owner.  And did he really not know that showgirl was Oliver Queen, a man?  Or did he?  Weird. So weird.  Also, what the hell was with the monkey?

Even though, as Clark said, she just got back, Chloe is gone once more, perhaps permanently.  Allison Mack may not be returning for the rest of the season, though a two hour series finale without Chloe seems like a strange proposition.  Regardless, Chloe and Clark, the last Smallville Originals standing, had a sweet, sunlit farewell scene in the Kent Barn where Chloe announced she has taken a job as a reporter in Star City and will also spend her time mentoring other superheroes.  Because, in her few months away with the Suicide Squad, she's met others like Clark.  Including "a billionaire with high tech toys" and "a wondrous woman who'll throw you for a loop." Whaa-?!

Finally, the big surprise: Chloe and Clark didn't get married - Chloe and Oliver did. They're actually married. And apparently, they're both off to Star City together as man and wife.  Wait, so Green Arrow is leaving the show too?  Justin Hartley is gone too?! How does Smallville work without Green Arrow? (And how weird is it that the thought of Smallville, a show about young Superman, without Green Arrow seems unfathomable?) He can't be gone. Oliver still has that Omega symbol on his skull, even though he showed absolutely no effects of it this week.

I'm so confused. I feel like I also drank enchanted Zatanna booze. Did any of that really happen?

V 2x7 - "Birth Pangs"

As a public service, I thought I'd get everyone caught up a bit on V. This is an admittance that I am still watching V.

No one's more surprised than me that I was generally pleased with the last couple of episodes. Oh, the show is still dumber than a pair of snakeskin boots, but seven episodes into their second (and final?) season, business has picked up. Might be too little too late; I mean, these major events should have actually started unraveling in season one, but better late than never.

Okay, so, here's where we are in V:

1) The Fifth Column is now an army, and Erica Evans is the leader. The V miniseries took about an hour for Julie, their blonde heroine, to become leader of the Resistance. In the 11th hour (literally) of the new V, Erica has finally become the leader of the global army fighting the Vs. The former leader was a man named Eli Cohn (Oded Fehr), who handpicked Erica to succeed him and was killed in a siege last week (titled "Siege").

In that very same seige, Erica's ex-husband and Tyler's father was killed. Erica is currently on bereavement leave from the FBI, which conveniently allows her time to travel the world and assert control over the Fifth Column. The good news is loss and command have turned Erica into a snarling, violent bad ass all eager to skin lizards and blow motherships out of the sky. It's sexay.

Father Jack was defrocked and is no longer a priest.

Chad is now working for The Fifth Column and is routinely surprised by things the audience has known for months, like Lisa working against her mother Anna.

2) Betrayals. Ryan betrayed the Fifth Column to Anna to protect his baby in Anna's thrall, but for some reason he's still trying to make nice with his former Fifth Column buddies, and for some, even harder to explain reason, Erica and friends haven't skinned him yet for betraying them.

Meanwhile, Hobbes has also secretly betrayed the Fifth Column because of a sudden backstory involving his wife-he-believed-dead-but-isn't. The Vs know where she is. Unlike Ryan, no one yet suspects Hobbes has been compromised even as he saddles up next to Erica as her second in command.

Speaking of betrayals, Anna is onto Lisa's wavering loyalty and ties to the Fifth Column.

3) Diana. So far, Diana has done nothing, just flitting about the bowels of the New York mothership. Anna goes down there to taunt her. Lisa also now visits for advice on how to betray Anna. But otherwise, there's been no point to Jane Badler being on the show. If neither Anna nor Lisa ever visited Diana to tell her what they're up to, Diana would have no impact on anything. In fact, it makes no sense Anna visits her at all; each time she does, she only shoots herself in the foot.

4) Red Sky, Phosphorous, Concordia, and The Soul. This is why the Vs are on Earth - try to follow along: Okay, so the Vs are a race that travels the universe with the primary purpose of leapfrogging their own genetic evolution. Decades ago, Vs were sent to Earth to infiltrate humanity and begin the process of getting humans ready for "cross breeding", so that the Vs can absorb humanity's best traits (like our hotness because we're not lizards) for the Vs evolutionary benefit. This involved selectively injecting pregnant women with high levels of phosphorous so that their children will have the capacity to breed with Vs. Erica Evans was one of those pregnant women and Tyler is one of those children.

There are 28 other children, however. We've been told by Anna in every episode that Tyler is "special" and thus was hand picked to mate with her daughter Lisa, but no, he isn't. There's a Tyler in 28 other cities, and the reason there are 29 V ships on Earth is each ship is docked over a city with one of the special children like Tyler. Does that make any sense?

When Anna unleashed Red Sky and Red Rain, the purpose of that was to condition humanity around the world to the higher phosphorous levels. We are to believe everyone in the world was red rained on. Plus, if you recall (or maybe you don't), when Anna unleashed Red Sky, she did it ahead of schedule. But that plot point doesn't matter one bit. In fact, nothing involving Red Sky-Red Rain makes any sense. But hey if you want not making sense, look no further than...

The Vs hate the human soul. Actually, not all Vs do; many, like Lisa, appreciate having human emotions. Anna hates it because the soul and human emotions counter acts her Bliss and ability to control the Vs. (Although Anna also secretly feels human emotions and hides it.) So Anna wants to destroy the soul and she thinks V science can isolate it and destroy it. In this belief and plot point, Anna - the smartest character on the show - is retarded. None of that makes any sense whatsoever.

But there's also Concordia. Concordia is the first of the V Cities Anna wants to build on Earth where humans and Vs can live together in perfect harmony. Except Concordia's real purpose is to be a docking station for the cloaked V ships in our solar system. I shit you not, Anna basically explained that the V Master Plan is for humans to populate Concordia while V ships secretly dock, then the Vs will come up, grab humans, and make with the sweet, sweet lizard on human sex.

This is the slapdash hodgepodge of inanity of V in a nutshell. Though again, the last couple of episodes actually stepped up the action and moved these ridiculous plot points forward, as opposed to the previous episodes involving Anna twirling her supervillain mustache plotting on her ship while the Fifth Column hem and haw in a basement.

Now that I've attempted to summarize V's story, I'm not sure what the V writers have been on since the series began, but I suspect it ain't phosphorous.

Unknown

UNKNOWN

 

** SPOILERS **

Unknown could have used a better title. I have one idea: Nothing Good Comes From Being Married to Betty Draper. In Unknown, Liam Neeson is Bourne again, after a random accident where his taxi drove off a bridge into a river, placing him in a coma for four days. Neeson had arrived in wintry, photogenic Berlin with his wife January Jones for a biotechnology conference.  After the accident, Jones claims she has no idea who Neeson is, and Aidan Quinn has taken his identity, his place in the conference, and his wife. Is Neeson crazy? Is he who he believes he is? No and yes. And no. A desperate Neeson eventually finds Diane Kruger, the woman who drove the cab that went off the bridge and saved his life, and together they blaze a bloody trail across Berlin, bashing skulls in bloody brawls and smashing cars in chaotic car chases, seeking answers for Neeson. Kruger, a veteran of running across the United States with Nicolas Cage hunting for National Treasures, is quite at ease on the run for her life with a guy who could be crazy. Bruno Ganz is terrific as an elderly former agent of the German secret police whom Neeson enlists to help him. When Frank Langella appears towards the end of the picture, Ganz and Langella have themselves a crackerjack scene that ends with cyanide.  (Like Sir Ben Kingsley, I no longer recall a time when Langella can appear on camera and one didn't automatically suspect him as the villain.) Unknown takes the elements of The Bourne Identity - an American amnesiac in Western Europe, shadowy agents trying to kill him, a conspiracy he must unravel his role in, and a down-on-her-luck ex-pat German girl who becomes his ally - and jumbles them around in a preposterous but entertaining fashion.  Neeson is no Jason Bourne; he's not a deadly weapon questioning his existence, he's just an ordinary man trying to make sense of an impossible situation. Or is he?  Unknown has its cake and eats it too.

I Am Number Four

I AM NUMBER FOUR

** SPOILERS **

In I Am Number Four, aliens walk among us - aliens who look like they were torn from an Abercrombie and Fitch catalog. In an ill-defined backstory, sexy blonde alien teenagers with superpowers are hidden away on Earth. Their planet was conquered by a race of bald, tattooed, grotesques with gills on their faces, and now they're on Earth killing the sexy blonde teenagers - in numerical order, for some reason. For it was foretold that only the sexy blonde teenagers have the necessary superpowers to stop the gill-faced grotesques. The sexy blonde teenagers' superpowers are called Legacies; their legacies involve having super strength, super agility, and high-powered flashlights in their hands. (If I had those powers, I'd draw a bat symbol on my palm and flash it up into the night sky. Maybe Batman would show up.)  Our sexy blonde square-jawed, monosyllabic hero is Alex Pettyfer. He is Number Four. He is also a big bore. Like all of the sexy blonde alien teenagers, Pettyfer has a guardian, Timothy Olyphant, who's constantly sneering and as impatient as I was for the movie to be over. (At least he got to leave early.)  Olyphant's job is to watch over Pettyfer and drag him around America to keep him hidden from the gill-faces, but apparently, it didn't mean he likes or even has to talk to the kid. Olyphant withholds vital information about Pettyfer's origins and powers from him, and also us, the audience. We have to watch Pettyfer learn the potential of having flashlights in his hands as he romances the hottest photographer girl in his high school, Dianna Agron of Glee, while dealing with the school bully and keeping his true sexy alien nature from being discovered.  He blows the last part royally. Agron and Pettyfer have a chaste, by the numbers teen romance - complete with the notion that the aliens from Pettyfer's race only love one person their whole lives - cue calculated swooning from the Twilight audience. Meanwhile, there's an even sexier blonde teenage alien out there, Teresa Palmer. She is Number Six, the sexiest of the sexy. She is also from the Australian continent of their homeworld, judging from her accent. Palmer is already fully trained in her powers, a motorcycle-riding, seasoned ass-kicker, and has mastered the art of walking away slow-motion from an explosion. Palmer only has two brief scenes in the first 90 minutes then shows up at the end for the big showdown between the sexy blondes and the gill-faces, complete with giant CGI alien lizards and dogs slugging it out.  How much more interesting would this movie have been if it were I Am Number Six, following Palmer around instead of Pettyfer?  Perhaps the sequel they rather confidently set up will answer that question. What will they call the sequel, anyway - I Am Number Four 2?

Smallville 10x14 - "Masquerade"

 

ROLL CALL:

SUPERMAN! LOIS LANE! TESS MERCER! (Absent this week) THE GREEN ARROW! CHLOE SULLIVAN! (Who Has No Name and No Identity)
Special DC Universe Guest Star:
DESAAD!

With several mentions of:

DARKSEID! GRANNY GOODNESS! GLORIOUS GODFREY!

Set against the backdrop of DeSaad, the master torturer of the evil New God Darkseid in classic DC comic books, re-imagined Smallville-style as a serial killer stamping Omega symbols on the skulls of the people of Metropolis, "Masquerade" is primarily concerned with the question of identity.  Clark deals directly with the dueling identities of how to present "Clark Kent" and "The Blur" to the public, after blurry images of his face make worldwide news when he was hanging out on the Big Ben clock tower in London for some reason.  For Chloe, the question of who she is now is even more confounding for her.

Continuing their tradition of haunting the aisles of their local Blockbuster for episode plot ideas, this week, Smallville decided to do a riff on the recent Steve Carell and Tina Fey movie Date Night. Oliver and Chloe, both out incognito, as it were, engage in some sexy romantic role playing at the Ace of Clubs. They pretend to be "Mr. and Mrs. Jones" so they can glom a dinner reservation (I was hoping a certain Martian Manhunter would show up), and wouldn't you know it, a desperate phone call and a kidnapping later, they're in deep, deep trouble.  Turns out their kidnappers are FBI agents tracking a serial killer, who's been leaving a trail of bodies around Metropolis.  Chloe and Oliver beat up the feds then blunder around a bit trying to figure out what's going on, and when Oliver goes all Spider-Man on Chloe and leaves her in an alley while he parkours up a building, Chloe is captured by DeSaad.

Meanwhile, Clark is tracking DeSaad as an investigative reporter and we find out that Clark Kent carries a lot of weight in this town.  Police officers practically genuflect at the sight of Clark's Daily Planet press pass and he even has a sycophantic Jonah Hill in Forgetting Sarah Marshall-like photographer following him around. Clark even nearly blows his cover, showing off his Super strength by saving his life. At the morgue, Clark runs right into DeSaad without realizing it. Clark's more interested in his new found power of "Micro Vision".  (Doesn't he mean "Microscopic Vision"? Even Lois thinks "Micro Vision" doesn't sound quite right. Clark: "It's my power, I can call it what I want!") Prior to all this, Lois takes a break from planning their wedding to chide Clark about his handsome headshot appearing under his bylines in his news articles; hardly the low-key approach for someone who wants to run around without a mask as the Blur.

Captured by DeSaad, the Date Night references stop entirely and Smallville shifts to riffing on the 1995 Brad Pitt-Morgan Freeman serial killer classic Se7en. Chloe is tempted by specters of Clark (coming onto her), Oliver (asking her to run away with him), Lois (accusing her of jealousy), and herself (here's a Marcellus Wallace Pulp Fiction reference - "That's pride fuckin' wit' ya. Fuck pride!"), and DeSaad preying on Chloe's vulnerabilities Seven Deadly Sins-style. This is DeSaad's M.O.; you either succumb and get Darkseid's Omega symbol in your skull, or DeSaad just kills you and moves on. (It seems like a pretty inefficient method, one guy doing all this recruiting/killing solo, but no one thinks to ask DeSaad about the logistics of his evil mission.)  

Clark saves Chloe and Blurs her away, then confronts DeSaad. We learn that whatever darkness that was in Clark earlier this season is gone. Clark is now "incorruptible".  So DeSaad traps him in a swirling mass of black whatever-that-was, and nonchalantly strolls to his luxury vehicle for his getaway, only to find a green arrow in the tire and Oliver Queen waiting to pound the crap out of him.  Clark escapes from the black swirlies and stops Oliver from beating DeSaad to death, which I guess is what DeSaad wanted?  I'm not sure.  It gets even more confusing when Clark tells Lois later on he "buried DeSaad under Blackgate Prison". Say what? 

The important thing is Chloe's okay, and to Smallville's credit, as Chloe looks through her Smallville High yearbook, the show directly addresses how unrecognizable the Chloe character has become since she was "Chloe 1.0" a decade ago. Chloe's had almost as many jobs as Homer Simpson - she's been a long-suffering sidekick, intrepid reporter, Watchtower, leader of the Suicide Squad, and now she has no identity.  In defining her character yet again, Chloe decides to start by calling herself Oliver's girlfriend. Little does she know, she's the girlfriend to a Disciple of Darkseid as we see the Omega symbol glowing on Oliver Queen's forehead! 

As for Clark, he makes a pivotal decision and decides that from now on, Clark Kent can no longer be seen as a swaggering, handsome, macho ex-football star-turned-reporter.  Since he doesn't want to wear a mask as the Blur and accepts that people should see the Blur's face, "Clark Kent" has to be the mask.  And thus, Tom Welling dons the famous glasses, and does his best (poorly) to be the bumbling buffoon version Clark Kent Christopher Reeve mastered when he was Superman.  We must now accept unfailingly that Everyone In Metropolis Who Has Seen Clark Kent Over The Past Decade Is Now Fooled Instantly By The Glasses And Won't Recognize Him As The Blur.  See?  It's just that easy. Just do it.

Hey, whatever happened to Tess and Alexander? No mention at all of them, no follow through on the whole, "nothing less than a bursting shell can penetrate his skin" moment.  Is Tess still shacked up in the Kent Barn?  I guess we'll find out next week during the Kent-Lane engagement party.