Dark Clark

Exile is the first episode of Smallville: Third Season. Clark and Lex are both exiled. Chloe looks better with longer hair.

It is Metropolis but, instead of Clark Kent and Superman, we have Kal and the Masked Man, who smashes open cash machines and interrupts a bank robbery so that he can rob the bank himself! As police bullets bounce off the Masked Man, Jonathan, Martha and Pete realize who he is. I thought that the bank robbing clowns worked for You Know Who from Gotham City but it is too early for that. They work for Morgan Edge, who is big in crime instead of in media - or is he big in both in both versions?

If Clark has had to conquer all this to become Superman, then Superman's heroism is in more than his powers.

What is going on with Lex and that island? - like Oliver Queen, unless this one is a virtual reality? Is Helen complicit? She seems to have told a suspicious story and to be amused rather than grieving. If Lionel is not moved by the belief that his son was murdered, then he is an immovable object.

The last disc of the Second Season ends with:

Christopher Reeve's character saying, "You must make your own destiny, Kal-El";
a discussion of the special effects;
the Chloe Chronicles.

"You must make your own destiny, Kal-El" summarizes a fictional history from 1938 into the twenty first century.