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Thursday 18 June 2020

Episode 3.18: Truth

When Chloe breaks into Luthercorp in search of proof that Lionel has blacklisted her dad from finding other work, she gets caught in a lab accident that sprays her with a kryptonite-infused gas. The gas gives Chloe the power to make anyone tell her the truth by merely asking them a question. Chloe's reporter instinct goes into overdrive and she makes enemies all over the place, pulling the darkest secrets out of everyone she meets, including Lionel Luther.

The concept for this episode is brilliant. It allows us to get to the heart of some of our main characters by bringing things out of them with a level of clarity that we are just not used to seeing, whether it's Lex admitting that the only thing he wants is for his dad to tell him he loves him, or Pete coming clean about how he really feels about Chloe. The standout scenes in the episode are between Lionel and Chloe. Glover is particularly on form and the way he subtly intimidates and manipulates Chloe, just with his body language and tone of voice, is brilliant.

My big problem with Truth is that Chloe is just so damn unlikeable in it. No matter what dark roads the character has taken up until now, I've always still managed to empathise with her and root for her. There's usually a good reason for those dark roads to be taken. But here she just comes off as a mega bitch! That's not something I would personally expect to be saying about the character as she is one of my favourites. I blame the writing here though. They just make her run too wild with her power, to the point that she doesn't care who it hurts, which doesn't ring true of a character that once removed the "wall of wierd" from her office for fear that the information on there was risking lives. Chloe IS a truth seeker, but she is NOT reckless with people!

There are a couple of scenes that are pretty laughable too. One is the opening in which Chloe is gassed, just because the whole set up seems very contrived. I don't know what she was hoping to find in the way of proof that Lionel was blacklisting her father. The other is the scene in which Clark gets the antidote. He finds the man who used to run the lab that produced the gas. He's been unemployed for years and appears to be living out of a camper van. And yet he pulls out a syringe from his fridge like one of the hosts of Blue Peter. "Here's one I made earlier!". It's just so... convenient.

These issues aside, I can still enjoy many of the other scenes throughout, like Martha blurting out info on Jor-El, Pete almost giving up Clark's secret, and the real sting that comes from getting Lionel to confess to the murder of his parents before finding out that he has erased the recording of that very confession. Where does Chloe go from here?

6/10

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