What's up with Pete? Pete finds Clark's spaceship in a cornfield when he goes to investigate a truck that's been run off the road. He convinces Clark to help him stow it away in the shed behind his house and wants to tell Chloe and the world about their discovery. When the spaceship is stolen and Pete sees Clark and his dad driving away from the scene, he confronts Clark about it. Clark decides the only way to save his friendship with Pete is to tell him the truth about his past, but when he reveals the truth to his friend, Pete says he can no longer trust Clark and storms off.
What's up with Clark? When Clark tells his parents that he's confided in Pete, the Kent's aren't happy and tell Clark he needs to make sure Pete won't tell anyone. Before Clark can talk to Pete, they find out he's missing and Clark enlists Chloe to help track down his friend.
What's up with Lex? Lex cuts all funding to doctor Hamilton, who's showing severe signs of his exposure to Kryptonite, saying he can't fund a project that yields no results. Soon thereafter, Lex's father comes to stay with him, after he skips out on his physical therapy, and Lex reluctantly offers him the run of his mansion for as long as he wants. When Dr. Hamilton is unable to get Lex to change his mind, he shows Lionel his newest find, Clark's spaceship, which he stole from Pete's shed.
What's up with Lana? She tells Clark that she broke up with Whitney and that the truth often brings people together. When Clark fails to open up to her yet again, she seems agitated and disappointed about being shut out of Clark's life. When she returns to the coffee house, she finds out Nell has accepted a marriage proposal.
How it ends: Pete is tortured by Dr. Hamilton to find out who the spaceship belongs too. Pete remains a good friend and decides to take a lethal injection of Kryptonite rather than give Clark up. Just as Dr. Hamilton is ready to inject Pete, Clark breaks in and uses his heat vision to destroy the syringe and free Pete. But, when he does some liquid kryptonite falls on him and he becomes sick. Pete fights off Dr. Hamilton and saves his friend. He takes Clark and the spaceship back to the Kent's farm and leaves Dr. Hamilton for dead. When Lex's father takes him to Dr. Hamilton's to see the spaceship, not only is the ship gone, but Dr. Hamilton is missing as well. Pete and Clark's friendship only seems to deepen and Pete joins the Kents as the only people who know Clark's secret.
[back to top]

We open on a woodsy interior, all nice panels and polished floors. Against the flat wall, we see a shadow. Ooh, it's Alfred Hitchcock Presents! Oh, wait...It's actually a much darker person, as evidenced by a hand that comes into frame. It's shaking and twitching. Wait, did they just rerun "Jitters" this week? Creepy music plays as we pan back and see a figure's back as he walks down a corridor. He grabs his own shaky arm with an opposite hand to keep it from getting jittery with it. It's not easy. He struggles and grunts, off in the distance of the long corridor.

Overhead shot of Lex Luthor, bastard-in-training, as he plays on his laptop atop the very nice glass-top desk. What's Lex doing? Well, as Bo might say, those Boys Gone Wild: Spring Break 2002 Edition DVDs aren't just going to order themselves. Somebody walks in to the least secure mansion in all of history. It's Dr. Hamilton! Hey, Dr. H! We sure missed you around here. Hammy says that he thought he and Lex had an arrangement; he's wondering why Lex needed a face-to-face. Why don't you just enjoy Lex's face and stop bitching, huh? Lex notices Hamilton's hand shake, which has taken on Soundgarden "Spoonman" proportions. Lex gives the Dr. a serious stare-down. "You don't look well," he says. Hamilton is shaking like he's going through withdrawal. He's annoyed that Lex pulled him away from his research. He also doesn't like progress reports. Lex says he hears there are some personnel problems at Cadmus Labs. Lex says that everybody quit when Hamilton started throwing lab equipment around. Damned test tubes! Stupid flat Bunsen Burners! Crap-ass electron microscope! Hamilton thought his and Lex's relationship was simple: Lex writes the checks and Hammy has free rein to do his work. Dude, what dream world were you living in? Hamilton Beach? In his super-smooth voice of deal-closing, Lex explains that Hamilton was supposed to be studying meteor rocks, but instead he's opened Lex up to lawsuits, and thus has become a liability. Oh, and your body odor? Funk'dified. Lex says, "I'm afraid we've reached the end of our road together." That is the coolest breakup line ever. Lex says now that he's Grand Poobah of his company, he can't afford to deal with projects that "don't bear fruit." I hope Hammy doesn't get mad and try to show Lex his angry banana. Lex offers the services of a doctor in Metropolis (Dr. Feelgood, the weird hippie guy?) who might be able to help. Hammy says he doesn't need a "doctor," and spits out the word as if it were "Nazi stripper." Hammy does a little song and dance about how Lex is too "myopic" to see his brilliance. He even shakes his bad hand at Lex, and then realizes the folly of his gimp. Hammy leaves. Lex is thinking, "The fuck was that?" But then Lex leans back and gives a long, penetrating glance right through the door.

Country road at night. A big red van is driving along; instead of the usual crap-rock, we hear some rockin' country. Are you ready for some football?! Red Bubba (as they call him on his CB radio) is wolfing down sunflower seeds by the bagful. He spits a bunch of shells out, but the window is rolled up, so he ends up hitting it instead. Hilarity! Red Bubba rolls down the window and tries again. Success! We glanced down to the side of the van; it says, "Ray's Lock & Key." I bet they fix flats, too. I don't care. Poor Ray will always be Red Bubba to me. (more...)
-- Omar G (TWoP)

After one of Clark's friends discover the spaceship in the cornfield, Clark goes against his parents' wishes and reveals his secret, but is shocked when the reaction he gets makes him question his friend's loyalty. Kristin Kreuk, Michael Rosenbaum, Sam Jones III, Allison Mack and John Glover also star.

Chloe: Love is rarely, if ever logical.

Pete: So you're some sort of... what? You're not human?
Clark: I don't know what I am. I don't know where the ship brought me from. I just know that I grew up in Smallville and everything that I care about and everyone that I care about is here.

Lex: Quit staring, Clark - you could burn your eyes out.

Clark: Hey, Pete. Look, man, I know you're freaked out. Don't you think I freak myself out sometimes?

Pete: Sure Chloe, I saw a spaceship. I even met an alien.
Chloe: Really? Would you like to describe it?
Pete: Actually, it looks a lot like Clark.
Chloe: I thought aliens were little and green?
Pete: I guess things aren't always what you think they are.

Pete: You want to talk, here's what I have to say: you take that needle and stick it wherever the hell you want because I'm not telling you a damn thing.

Lionel: We'll have some time for some father-son bonding that you've always told me I've been lacking in.

Pete: You didn't think I could handle it?
Clark: Can you?

Lex: I had to get out the manor for a while. It was getting crowded.
Clark: Doesn't it have, like, 75 rooms?
Lex: My dad takes up a lot of space.

Lana: Long story short, I'm a terrible liar so I've moved on to avoidance.
Clark: You've come to the right place.

Lionel: Never underestimate the value of eccentrics and lunatics, Lex. Every Arthur has his Merlin.

Jonathan: I hope you realize it's a big responsibility, Pete.
Clark: That's my dad's way of saying ‘Welcome to the family.'

Pete: So you're telling me you never once looked in the girl's locker room?
Clark: Well, maybe once.
Pete: That's my boy.

Pete Ross is the kind of guy who stops to help an accident victim in the middle of the night. And he’s the kind of guy who, when he finds something amazing, immediately wants to share it with his best friend (even if he didn’t have a convenient pickup truck).

None of which prevents him from being less than understanding when confronted with years’ worth of small and big lies. Just regularly nice guys like Pete don’t so much have a need to see the good in people, as a casual expectation that the good is there, particularly in people they’ve know and loved their whole lives. And to Pete, the truth is good and normal and expected.

Clark, on the other hand, lies. He consistently and casually lies about everything from where he came from to why he was playing basketball 500 feet from the net. Perhaps growing up being taught to lie by parents who are otherwise paragons of morality is what takes Clark beyond Pete’s assumption of goodness unless given evidence to the contrary to a insistent need to see goodness in people, like Lex, even after directly confronted with their deceptions. In any event, Clark’s lies have contributed as much to his loneliness as the reason for those lies, because Clark isn’t really a liar. There’s no malicious or even self-satisfied delight in having a secret, only a sense of an incredible burden he cannot put down, as he’s constantly being told by his parents and having demonstrated to him by the people who have discovered the truth. The opening basketball scene really underscored this point; Clark played by himself a lot when he was growing up, first because he was too young for his parents to trust he’d be able to conceal his true abilities and then because it was easier pass the ball to himself than to constantly hold back, lying in action as well as words.

"Duplicity" showed how much the two of them need each other. What Pete and Clark have in common and have had in common their whole lives is a lack of duplicity, in the sense that neither would ever lie about friendship or turn their backs on a friend. When push came to shove, there was no way Pete, even furious with him, would ever expose or hurt Clark, not even at the risk of his own life. He never even seriously tried to tell Chloe, much less hold a press conference, once he discovered the link between Clark and the spaceship. He also gained a new respect for his friend, who was willing to help even someone willing to kill him. Maybe he also grew up a little, out of the childish "truth is good, lies are bad" view of the world, when he saw the very real danger that, far from setting him free, the truth could imprison Clark or worse. (more...)
By Kathleen O'Shaughnessy