Smallville: Promise

Very powerful. The episode seems to be contradicting itself, then turns out to be presenting some of its scenes from different points of view. This is a technique more easily deployed in prose fiction. We see Clark receive a phone call from Chloe, then later see Chloe make that phone call. The dialogue is the same so we realize what is happening.

Lex commits murder on his wedding day. He is concealing some terrible secret about Lana's pregnancy. Lionel knows how to blackmail Lana to go through with the wedding, how to detect then cover up the murder and how to collect from Lex later. Lionel welcomes Lana into the family. When it comes to promoting the Luthors' fortunes at any cost, he remains as manipulative as ever. Lionel and Lex can live with a total contradiction between social appearances and reality.

The consistent theme of Smallville is dishonesty and deception, all stemming from the original idea of Superman's secret identity.

Smallville: Freak

Lana has deduced that Clark is super-powered and thinks that it is because he is a meteor freak - but that is a more plausible explanation than extraterrestrial origin. See here. Tobias honestly tells Lana that Clark is normal because he detects meteor freaks, which Clark is not, but Chloe is although we do not know her power yet.

Lana conceals information about Clark from Lex while Lex seriously lies to Lana. Lex has stopped being a good guy while Lionel has become one.

Smallville: Trespass

There is not a great deal to say about this one. It cannot be sufficient for Clark to say, "I wasn't myself. Sorry," about his behavior at Lex's and Lana's engagement party. Why was he not himself? This is part of the mystery about him. Both Lex and Lana know that there is a mystery about Clark but do not know what it is. Does that make any sense?

Chloe and Jimmy are back together. 

Smallville: Crimson

How will Clark rectify the fact that he behaved abominably at Lex's and Lana's engagement party?

Chloe seeks the Martian Manhunter and buys a bow tie for Jimmy. Jimmy senses that Chloe has a thing for Clark so he says that they should take a break.

Lois learns that Clark can leap a tall building with a single bound but of course forgets. However, Lana has evidence of Clark's invulnerability.

Continuities, Crossovers And Crises

After posting about J'onn J'onzz, I googled him. Amazing. It read like a more complicated version of a superheroes summary that I read shortly after the Crisis on Infinite Earths:

the original versions of the All-American and National Publications superheroes;
their Silver Age revivals;
the coexistence of earlier and later versions on parallel Earths;
the coexistence of other companies' superheroes on other Earths;
the existence of other kinds of characters, like anthropomorphic animals, on yet other Earths;
an Earth where no one has gained any superpowers;
an Earth where versions of DC and Marvel heroes exist;
the Crisis that destroyed most Earths and merged five, revising their histories;
a single DC Universe with new versions of all the characters.

Although each hero is a series character, his or her life and career become a single episode in an all-embracing narrative.

J'onn J'onzz

J'onn J'onzz, John Jones, the Martian Manhunter, seems to have all the Kryptonian powers except the ability to traverse space plus several more:

telepathy;
invisibilty;
impalpability;
metamorphosis.

In a British black and white reprint annual in the 1960's, I saw him exercise the power to extinguish a fire inside a building by liquefying the skylight above the fire with beams from his eyes. In those days, he remained invisible and operated in secret.

Next, I saw him visible, tangible and green in the Justice League of America and in a Detective Comics back up feature. Later, he rejoined his fellow Martians in their extrasolar colony on New Mars, a clear recognition that Mars is in fact not inhabited. Later still, we learned that:

his original Martian form was not as we see him;
he had not only teleported but also time traveled from an inhabited Mars in the distant past, just as Michael Moorcock's Michael Kane had had to time travel pastward to reach an inhabited Mars.

When J'onzz got his own series, his metamorphic power was developed fully for the first time, giving him multiple identities on Earth. In a black identity, he worked on the Kent farm to keep an eye on Kal-El, as he does in Smallville. In The Sandman, he sees Morpheus as a Martian deity.

Apparently it will emerge that he had been an inter-galactic manhunter working with Jor-El. Smallville: Labyrinth alludes to his Martian vulnerability to fire.

Smallville: Labyrinth

In "Mask" by Bryan Talbot, Bruce Wayne wakes up in a psychiatric ward where he is told that his costumed crime-fighting career is a delusion. In Smallville: Labyrinth, Clark Kent wakes up in a psychiatric ward where he is told that his Kal-El identity is a delusion.

A fellow patient whispers that he knows that Clark is extraterrestrial because he himself is from Mars. We think that the fellow patient is mad until we remember the Martian Manhunter. A Zoner mental parasite is responsible for Clark's illusion. Clark is relieved to see that his adversary Lex is not in a wheelchair with amputated legs at the end of the episode.

Alan Moore's Tom Strong has a similar experience. It seems that he is a drunk with delusions of super-heroism until the Tom we know sees through the illusion near the end of the story.

Is it possible for such stories to end instead with a hint of ambiguity? Or to be set in an alternative reality - Earth-Prime? - where it is the super-heroism that is the fiction?

The Manhunter shows more of himself but still does not stick around to explain himself. He will clearly be a major influence on Clark. Will he join the JLA or remain in the background?

This is the sort of episode where most of the action didn't really happen so the story-line has not advanced very much except that another Zoner has been eliminated and the Martian has come more into the open.