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"Tomb" is the fourteenth episode in the fifth season of Smallville, and the one hundred-second episode overall. It aired on February 9, 2006.

Summary[]

The spirit of a young girl is released after Clark finds a corpse in the walls of the Talon. Clark must follow the trail of the spirit and find her killer, who has been preying on girls in Smallville for the past 10 years. When Lois is suddenly kidnapped, Clark has to come to the rescue.

Recap[]

→ see also Category:Screencaps from episode 5x14

Tomb0044

Lois finds Chloe with her wrists cut asking for help.

During a thunderstorm, Chloe is taking a shower at Lois' Talon apartment when the power goes out. (A ghost can be seen peering through the shower curtain while Chloe is still in the shower.) She gets out of the shower to light a candle, and turns to see a bloodied young girl pleading for help. Chloe screams in fear and Lois rushes into the bathroom. She doesn't see anything, but finds Chloe crouched in a corner, her wrists cut, asking for help.

At the hospital, Clark meets Chloe's psychiatrist, Dr. Sydell, who theorizes that Chloe might have cut her wrists due to too much stress, perhaps from keeping a secret she feels she can't share, or family history. Lois denies any family history of mental illness. Dr. Sydell states his intent to treat Chloe aggressively.

Tomb2

Clark visits Chloe after her scare.

Clark talks to Chloe, who claims she does not remember anything and that she did not try to kill herself. She tells Clark about the girl she saw. Clark asks Chloe if she wants to tell the doctor about her mother's mental illness, but Chloe insists they don't.

Martha is studying budget reports when Lionel Luthor drops by unexpectedly, letting himself in the back door. She asks him to use the front door next time, or call first. He asks if she is considering taking Jonathan's Senate seat, and Martha is unnerved by his questions. Lionel offers his condolences and leaves.

Chloe hears a voice begging for help coming from the bathroom in her hospital room. She gets up to investigate and sees the girl again. Lana arrives just then and Chloe asks her to help her find the girl. She sees bloody footprints that Lana can't see and tries to tell her doctor. Chloe gets upset and insists they listen until they sedate her.

Tomb3

Chloe tries to get the doctors to listen.

Lana is visibly shaken by Chloe's behavior and goes to Lex's, where he is on the phone, angrily insisting that the caller locate Professor Fine. Lana tells Lex that Chloe tried to kill herself and asks if Lex could do anything from when he was in Belle Reve. Seeming genuinely concerned, Lex agrees to get her the best doctors available. Clark visits Chloe again, but this time she is in restraints. Lex arrives and announces his intention to transfer her, because he doesn't think the hospital will offer the best care. Clark protests and when Lex leaves, he breaks her out.

Clark takes Chloe to Lois' apartment, where Chloe tells him again that she didn't hurt herself and she did indeed see something. He listens patiently but is still skeptical. She sees the girl again and follows her into the bathroom. The girl's spirit disappears into the wall and Chloe insists that Clark look. Clark uses his X-ray vision and sees a skeleton behind the wall. He breaks the wall open, exposing a body, but it is wearing a bracelet with a large kryptonite gem. When Clark stumbles out of the room, Chloe touches the stone and the girl's spirit is transferred into Chloe's body. Chloe looks in the mirror and sees the face of the dead girl.

Tomb4

Clark breaks Chloe out of the hospital.

Clark takes Chloe to his house. She is acting erratic and nervous, fidgeting and biting her nails. She starts talking about how the girl must have suffered so much and that they need to find the person responsible. Clark looks worried and leaves her to rest in his bedroom. Chloe rifles through her things and finds a license to carry a stun gun and a Met U ID card. Lois tells Clark what she found out about the body, that it belonged to a girl named Gretchen Winters. They go to tell Chloe, but find Clark's bedroom empty.

Tomb5

Michael holds Chloe and Lois hostage.

Lana is asleep when Chloe arrives at their dorm room. She asks Chloe where she's been and Chloe asks if she can borrow her own stun gun and leaves abruptly. She runs into Lex, who insists she go with him to receive help. Chloe hits him with the stun gun and runs away. Clark arrives shortly afterward and Lex argues with Clark because he suspects Clark broke her out.

Lois is in her apartment when the hospital orderly, Michael Westmore, is standing at her door. He claims he is concerned for Chloe and Lois gets suspicious. Michael muses that his father used to manage the Talon when it was a theater and Lois ushers him out. She tries to call the sheriff, but Michael forces his way back in and drugs Lois until she passes out.

Chloe arrives at her destination, Michael's house, where she confronts him about Gretchen Winters, whom Michael killed ten years ago after gaining the girl's trust. Michael attacks her and she stuns him, but is distracted by Lois' cries for help, who is tied to a chair in the basement. Before they can get away, Michael knocks Chloe out too. He terrorizes them and talks about how his father used to make bracelets with green gemstones. He puts one on Chloe and gives Lois a knife, instructing her to slit her wrists, or he will shoot Chloe. Lois throws the knife at Michael. He knocks her down and she falls unconscious and he stands up to stab her.

Clark uses the Daily Planet archives to find information on Gretchen Winters and recognizes Michael in a photograph. He gets the address and superspeeds into the basement just as Michael is about to stab Lois. However, he is weakened by Chloe's kryptonite bracelet and Michael knocks him out. Chloe pleads with him, calling him Mikey until he softens and approaches her. He touches the bracelet and Gretchen's spirit leaves Chloe and flies into Michael. She then stabs Michael's body, killing him and freeing her spirit.

Clark is doing his farm chores when Lana arrives. They talk about the state of their fractured relationship, but do not resolve anything. He enters the house and he and Martha talk about whether or not she should take the senate seat. Clark tells her that she should because it's what Jonathan would have wanted.

Tomb0661

Clark tells Chloe to visit her mother.

Tomb6

Chloe visits her mother.

Chloe is back at work and she and Clark talk about her ordeal. Chloe doesn't understand why Gretchen chose her to help her. Clark suggests it is because Chloe cares so much about other people but Chloe muses that maybe she really is crazy like her mother. Clark asks what is wrong with her mother. She confesses that she doesn't know; she knows where she is, but is too scared to visit. Clark urges her to visit before it is too late. Chloe takes his advice and goes to visit her mother's facility where they embrace wordlessly.

Cast[]

Starring[]

Guest Starring[]

Co-Starring[]

Uncredited[]

Mentioned[]

Title[]

  • A tomb is "a vault or chamber for burial of the dead".
  • In this episode, it's revealed that Gretchen Winters had been killed and entombed in the wall of the Talon apartment bathroom.

Notes[]

Chlarktomb

Clark rescues Chloe.

  • Antagonist: Michael Westmore
  • Clark uses the following abilities in this episode: super strength, super speed, X-ray vision, and heat vision.
  • Jonathan Kent does not appear in this episode, despite still being credited as a main character.
  • This episode contains two deleted scenes on the Season Five DVD set.
    • In the first deleted scene, Clark sneaks into the hospital room and undoes Chloe's restraints, saying that he will not allow Chloe to be sent to Belle Reves. Heavily drugged, Chloe tells Clark that he's her hero as he carries her out.
    • In the second deleted scene, Lois explains to a new sheriff (whose actor is uncredited) how she discovered the corpse after pulling the tile off the wall (Clark has already left the apartment to take Chloe to the Kent house). At Lois' insistence, the sheriff tells her the dead girl's identity and that another similar crime scene has been discovered just weeks prior, that Chloe shouldn't be "playing fugitive" and advises her to call his direct number. The sheriff is named "Sheriff Carson" by a fellow officer (credited as "Detective Berg"), and Smallville's producers have not clarified whether this is the successor of the late Sheriff Nancy Adams, who was killed on duty three episodes ago in Lockdown. However, the character himself claims "I'm the sheriff, Miss Lane", and Lois describes to Clark in a later scene that "the new sheriff is a little green". When Lois is later kidnapped, she is just about to make a police call, presumable to the very number that Sheriff Carson gave her.
  • Chloe states her mother left when she was 12, but in Lineage, she told Clark her mother left when she was five. This was later clarified in Smallville: The Visual Guide: her mother left when she was five, but had been institutionalized since she was 12. Though, this was retconned by Progeny, where Moira is shown to be institutionalized, when Chloe was eight-years-old.
House blooper with rain

rain blooper at the male nurse's house

  • After Westmore dies, Clark is again able to approach Chloe, yet the bracelet is still visible on her wrist.
  • Chloe uses her taser on Michael while he is clearly still touching her. This should have shocked them both, but it doesn't. (Tasers do not work this way.)
  • When the psychotic male orderly has Lois and the inhabited Chloe right before he "gives them their treatment" they show his house outside and if you look closely only one side of his house is being rained on.
  • The article at the end, while titled "Smallville serial killer commits suicide", actually talks about the Michael's arrest, and appears to be a somewhat edited article about the real-life serial murderer Dennis Rader, who killed ten people between 1974 and 1991 in Wichita and Park City, Kansas and sent taunting letters describing the details of his crimes to police and newspapers, under the alias "BTK Strangler". After a decade-long hiatus, Rader resumed sending letters in 2004, leading to his 2005 arrest, and he is serving ten consecutive life sentences at El Dorado Correctional Facility in Prospect Township, Butler County, Kansas.
  • Lex keeps going with his "divide and conquer" plan, and he manages in this episode to create a fracture in Clark and Lana's relationship. After Lana relies on Lex, he carefully marks this with Clark by making him notice that Lana turns to him instead of going to her boyfriend. We can see the result between the 2 of them at the end of the episode as well as in the next one.

Trivia[]

Continuity[]

  • Lana references Lex's time in Belle Reve, which occurred in late 2003/early 2004 in the third season episode Asylum.
  • The next year in the Season Six episode Progeny, Chloe's mother temporarily comes out of her catatonic state for 24 hours due to a drug given to her by Lex.
  • The last scene in this episode parallels the last scene in the preceding episode Vengeance.

Allusions[]

  • Lois refers to "Daffy Duck". Daffy Duck is an animated cartoon character in the Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons.

Quotes[]

Clark: Lois, you don't know what goes on in there. You really want Lex and his doctors getting inside Chloe's head?
Lois: If it makes her feel better, I don't care if Daffy Duck whacks her with a mallet!
Chloe: (waking up) You guys, I've been drugged, I'm not deaf.

Clark: ...not to mention the kryptonite in her bracelet.
Gretchen-as-Chloe: Yeah. The krypto... thing.

Clark: How's she holding up?
Lana: She's ok, considering that she was possessed and almost chopped up by a psychotic orderly.

Martha: There's an awful lot of your father in you.
Clark: I hope so.

Chloe: Why was I the only one that could see her? I mean, why did she choose me?
Clark: Maybe because you care more about other people than anyone else I know.

Chloe: What if I look into her eyes and see myself?
Clark: What if you wait too long and you never get the chance to look into her eyes again? She's your mother, she always will be, that's not gonna change no matter what.


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Minor CharactersSeason 1 · 2 · 3 · 4 · 5 · 6 · 7 · 8 · 9 · 10

Screencaps: Season 1 · 2 · 3 · 4 · 5 · 6 · 7 · 8 · 9 · 10

CategoriesMain Characters · Relationships · Villains

ComicsThe Comic · Season 11 · Miniseries


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