Smallville - S6E12

Labyrinth
First Aired: Thursday January 25, 2007

Something attacks Clark in his barn and we awakens in a mental institution. With no powers, he learns that the past five years have been all in his head.

Clark is in the barn with Shelby when she starts barking at something. Clark goes to see but is knocked to the ground be something. The next moment, he awakens on the floor of a common room in a mental institution during group therapy. The fellow patients mock him with Kal-El, Zoners, and other intimate details. Doctor Hudson tells him that as a child, he started to create another identity for himself after the tragic death of his real parent before being given to the Kent's. During his freshman year of high school, though, it became full blown pyschosis and he became a schizophrenics. Clark is unable to believe this and finds a way to escape. Returning to his home, he finds Lana is no living in the loft after she and Nell had bought the farm. She is madly in love with Clark and thought that he had undergone the treatment. Disoriented, Clark first goes to confront Lex. He reveals that Clark, thinking something was wrong with Lex's car, jumped in front of it, causing Lex to swerve and crash the car. He has lost both of his legs. Clark then leaves and goes to find Chloe at the coffeehouse. He finds her there, but she was also a patient at the mental institution, falling into family history of mental illness. As Clark and Chloe try to leave, some men show up and kill Chloe after she tries to pull a gun. Back in the hospital, Doctor Hudson shows Clark where he pulled all of his "memories" from and Clark sort-of comes to the realization that Chloe is dead. In his cell, the man next door, from Mars, tells Clark not to give up and that Hudson is a Zoner that will use the "treatment" to take over Clark's body. That man is taken away right before Clark is taken for the treatment. In the treatment room is Lana, watching while Hudson does the procedure. However, as the procedure starts, Lana disappears and Clark frights back, killing Hudson/Zoner. The Zoner is pulled into a crystal like Clark's but the person holding it is the Mars-man. His eyes flare up like the guy from Seattle, he calls Clark Kal-El, and then flies off into the night. The episode ends with Clark seeing Lana and almost telling her he is still in love with her, but Lex comes into the coffeehouse to find her so they can go to the wedding planner.

Following the awesome JLA episode, this was a very good episode. I like episodes that deal with what is real, what is not, and what could have been. Tom Welling does a good job acting both paranoid and still being Clark/Kal-El. One of the things I had hoped for was that everyone in his life were mad up and also in the institution. I think it would have been cool to have Lex, Lionel, Chloe, Lana, Martha, Oliver, Lois ... heck, even Raya, Jonathan, AC, Whitney, ect. be patients that Clark incorporated into his psychosis. However, they went the route where those people were really who they were, just twisted a bit. Also, we got our first real look at the "good" Zoner, who has now helped Clark two times and seems much more powerful than Clark. I am interested in finding out if this a DC character or totally new guy just for the show.

Score: 4 / 5