Smallville 7.17 "Sleeper" review

Smallville episode 7.17: Sleeper
Aired: April 24, 2008

This week, it’s all about spy games between Jimmy and Chloe.

Ever since Lana got decommissioned, Chloe took over the Isis Foundation and use it’s resources to find Brainiac, the entity responsible for turning Lana into a vegetable. Clark pushes Chloe to get every lead she can, including hacking into government sites, to trace the whereabouts of the interactive construct.

Unfortunately, Jimmy feels left out by Chloe’s hush-hush operation, and a government agent, Vanessa Weber recruits him to spy on Chloe. Agent Weber insinuates that Chloe’s secret activities – tracking places with high-energy bursts, canceled dates, strange phone calls – are signs that she is a spy for terrorist organizations. Why the government thinks recruiting Jimmy Olsen as a counter-spy will work is anybody’s guess! I would never for one second think he is cut for the job. But this is Smallville.

So Jimmy spies on Chloe and successfully uses high-tech spyware to open the Isis office and piggyback on Chloe’s files. Unfortunately, Chloe is a better spy (and has more training as a snoop) so she catches on to what Jimmy did. She thought way ahead of him and tricks him into copying useless data. But not before the duo does a tango dance ala-spy movies… which, IMHO, would never even get them a slot on Dancing with the Stars in the first rounds! It was actually very funny to watch. Chloe hacks into satellite data and finally found what could be Brainiac’s and Kara’s flights into intergalactic time travel. But the Agents catch Chloe and interrogates her bloody. Jimmy realizes his girl is not a spy and the government had it all wrong (DUH!). He saves Chloe and gets to kiss the girl! Typical spy movie, all the way to the end.

Wait! There’s more. We find out other things too, with Lex and Clark. Lex finally gets to Zurich and opens the box. He finds what looks like a device that coordinates into a latitude and longitude. Someone also tried to kill him in Zurich, and Lex wants to know who. From spoilers, we know this coordinate points to the Fortress and it’s only a matter of time (in future episodes) when Lex finds the Traveler’s lair.

Meantime, Clark goes back to Dr. Schwann’s journal and finds a page that wasn’t there before. It translates into a message about Lana and the Fortress of Solitude. Now, the question is – who placed that message there? And why would 1989 notes from Schwann mention a future event concerning Lana? Clark goes to the Fortress and hears a garbled message by Kara about saving Lana, and that Brainiac tried to kill Kal-El. When Chloe shows Clark the space images, she figures that Brainiac and Kara may have gone back to Krypton, and back to the past. That Kara’s message may have to do with saving Kal El’s life as a baby. Kara had warned that if the young child Kal El is not saved, there will be no Clark Kent on planet earth.

Clark will have to go back in time, back to Krypton, to save his own existence on Earth.

Next week, the episode 7.18 is “Apocalypse” and it’s a glimpse of a world without Clark Kent.