Clark discovers another superpower in the Smallville episode “Whisper”: his super hearing. He develops this power when his sight is lost in an attempted robbery of a jewelry store. Two guys pull up to the store where Clark is looking for a birthday present for his mom, and we know they’re bad because of the roaring engine and the fact that it’s a black muscle car. One of the guys has a Banshee-like ability (à la X-Men) to produce deafening and window-shattering sonic waves with his throat, presumably because of a run-in with kryptonite — or possibly a lot of vocal training. Celine Dion has the same effect on me, so I don’t see the big deal.

Anyway, Clark tries to stop Banshee’s armed partner with his heat vision, but a kryptonite piece of jewelry that’s flying in the air has the unfortunate consequence of reflecting back his heat vision and blinding Clark, though he does manage to stop the robbery.

After losing his vision, Clark begins to hear things at a supersensitive level. We know this because of the handy CGI that shows his inner ear. He realizes that Chloe has been investigating him for Lionel Luther and that Lex’s job back at Luther Corps is just a token gig. All of this leads up to Clark confronting Chloe and saying, “I may have lost my sight, but things are becoming much clearer now.” I’m pretty sure the entire episode was written around that line.

The problems really start to arise when Pete gets kidnapped and held for ransom — Pete’s mom, who is a judge, must dismiss the charges against Banshee’s partner, or Pete will be killed. Apparently, no one thinks this brings up a legal problem and Pete’s mom is simply left to do what she will. Once word gets out around Smallville about this, I predict a lot more kidnappings for Pete.

In an attempt to rescue Pete, Clark gets a blowtorch to the face. For some reason, this puts him on the road to recovery from blindness, albeit slowly, so Jonathan takes him to get glasses to adjust for the blurriness. Funny thing is, when he comes out of the opthamologist, it’s a totally different kid. I don’t know if they thought we wouldn’t notice this weird slip, but what the hell happened to Clark?!?!?

Oh. Wait. Later on in the episode the new guy took his glasses off and it actually was Clark. I just didn’t recognize him. My bad.

So anyway, new guy/Clark eventually rescues Pete at the last moment before he’s crushed in a large car compacter, and presumably before Pete’s mom has to let the bad guy go. Oh, and Banshee accidentally made a bunch of cars fall on top of him when he let loose with his sonic scream. Oops.

On other fronts, Clark loses the glasses, and Lana admits to Clark that she’s met another boy (pretty-boy Adam from “Asylum”). Chloe also loses her column at the Daily Planet and her dad loses his job after Lionel thinks she spilled the beans to Lex about his job and she stands up to Lionel and says she’s going to stop being his bitch. Man, I love John Glover. He’s so eeevvviillll …

It was interesting to see Clark a little helpless for once and see how he handled it. The funniest line was Clark, shortly after he became blind: “What’s the worst that could happen, go to school and walk through a wall?” Good man, for having a good attitude about the whole thing, Clark. And there was actually some minor plot progression, so woohoo!