6x01 Zod, Spoilers Inside (US Pace)

This episode perfectly showed both what I love, and what I hate about this show.

Last season's cliffhanger was handled, and dealt with perfectly. I liked the character of Raya, I would have liked her to stick around, but hey, we can't have everything eh? The confrontation between Zod/Lex and Clark was interesting, though, I have now decided, only Terrence Stamp should ever be allowed to utter the words "Kneel before Zod". As much as I like Mr Rosenbaum's acting, he's no Stamp

The downside?

Well, the status quo resumed. Nobody could quite remember what had happened... Again Lana doesn't even ask about who, or what, could have stopped the uber powerful Lex/Zod It's just getting too much to bear really, every year, at least one character suffers inexplicable amnesia, you'd think that someone would notice

Lex has a new toy, a new clue to hack away at for the rest of the season, until it causes the next cliffhanger. Lionel is again writing in Kryptonian script, Lana's as clueless as ever, Chloe's giving out her usual mixed signals, Jimmy Olsen looks like Iceman, Oh wait, they're brothers. For a moment I thought the Superman franchise had stolen another X-Man

Overall, a good close to the story, but with the usual bad bits. I will be back for more though, as the prospect of having one of my favourite heroes (Green Arrow) running around Smallville soon, is just too tempting for me to resist.

have to admit, after the thrilling conclusion to last year, I found this one to be underwhelming. I only watched it a few days ago and I'm struggling to remember anything that happened during the episode.

Knowing what's coming in future episodes this season I'm not too concerned at this point.

Did anyone else cheer when Zod pinned Lana's hand to the wall And I almost groaned when she was thrown against yet another wall right at the moment when Clark was to save the day

I must admit to feeling a little bubble of excitement when Jimmy called Clark 'CK' You are right though Jamie, Aaron looks much more like his brother in Smallville than he did in Veronica Mars. It must be the hair

Brilliant - loved it right up until the last 5 minutes when the moralising took over, Clark backs out of another potential relationship and immediately gets jealous etc etc. I even - God forbid - thought Lana was rather sexy in this episode... until she started whimpering again in the last few minutes. Loved the hand holding scene between Lois and Clark in the hospital

I thought there was some wonderfully striking imagery in this episode, particularly in the Phantom Zone. Leonard Roberts still couldn't act his way out of a paper bag, but Raya was rather hot

I thought Michael Rosenbaum was surprisingly unconvincing, both as Zod and as Lex. It was almost as though he wasn't interested. The fight between Zod and Clark was great, very well filmed.

They were never going to be able to top Vessel, but I thought they did a damn good job of tying up the cliffhangers (and even giving the one I thought was weak - Martha and Lois - a good reason for existing in the first place) and setting new wheels in motion. You can't ask for much more from a season opener, imo

The final shot was intriguing, too. I was wondering what had happened to the other "phantoms"