Season 3, Episode 13: Velocity

 

"Velocity"

Episode 13

Air Date: February 11th, 2004

Oh Pete!!! Smallville's resident stand in cast member just keeps getting the worst of it.  Now honestly, this episode had potential to really explore Pete as a character by exploring his insecurities and fears as being Clark's constant side-kick, finding his own identity and not just be a tag along secret keeper he's been since "Duplicity" last season.   It had so much potential to finally give Pete a role on the show that felt essential and productive; making him a much more interesting character than the writers have made him out to be.  While "Velocity" explores most of that......sigh.....unfortunately, we are stuck in a direct and honestly insulting rip-off of The Fast and the Furious franchise.  I mean seriously, this is almost feels like a sequel with the cast of Smallville replacing Vin Diesel and Paul Walker (R.I.P. :_() The hip hop inspired soundtrack, the sexy girl who wishes Pete good luck and of course, the criminal who needs his money back and needs to be raced to get said money back.  Ehhhhhh, it's all so predictable and boring honestly.  Feeling cheap and just a way to cash in on the franchise blowing up at the time by getting the teens watching the show into it as well by copying and pasting the storyline for Pete.  Not to mention, it doesn't make Pete look like the best character here.  Sure, the point was for Pete to turn a very important lesson about his reckless search to be special and putting Clark in the middle of it but even the way the situation with Dante (of course!) is so conveniently resolved with him suddenly losing control and getting into a fatal car crash while racing Pete.

Of course Clark comes in for the last minute save barely because of kryptonite powering Pete's car (seriously, what CAN'T kryptonite do in the Smallville universe!) Not to mention, the fact that it's conveniently everywhere Clark is when he's about to save the day all the time, it will get even more absurd and insane further down the line in the show.  But I'll give credit where credit is due in Sam Jones's performance as he does the best that he can with the material but it doesn't progress Pete or really enlighten Clark as well as Chloe about what's been going on with him.  Maybe an intervention type scene would have worked better than Clark having to call the sheriff and find other various ways for Pete to survive being killed by Dante.  Sigh.....even at the end, I'm more on Clark's side at being too upset with Pete to even play basketball with him.  Also, I wish the writers hinted at this previously but you can just tell they were really scrambling to make Pete a valid character on this show.  Once again, I'm sure after this episode, they just gave up and that's why Pete would leave the series for good until a guest appearance in Season 7. But onto the more interesting aspect of the episode.

Lana finally confronts Adam about what she learned from Jorden last episode and it turns out he did in fact die before she met her and should still be dead.  Also, one of his eyes is dripping red blood! Yikes! O_o It turns out Adam is taking some kind of serum with blood platelets unlike anything that is here on Earth as Chloe discovers and tells Lex.  It leads him to a biological specialist named Dr. Teng who apparently has been visiting Adam during his stay at the hospital.  Of course Lex uses this as an opportunity to fund the project for himself and manipulate Dr. Teng in working for him for double her funding if she finds out the origin of the blood platelets.  Hmmmmm, but what could the origin of the blood be??? Seems Adam is willing to threaten Lana over it as when she asks for an explanation about his death, she is left terrorized by what exactly he could be hiding from her.  Other then that, you're not missing much here as "Velocity" misses it's mark heavily when it comes to developing Pete and putting the spotlight on him which rarely happened during his three season tenure on the show.  It's shame like I said, but let's just move on to more, MUCH MORE interesting storylines this season! :)

Final Kryptonite: D-