What's up with Lana? A secret admirer is leaving love poetry. Lana is intrigued and wants to meet him. She waits for him one night at the cemetery.
Who is Byron Moore? The mysterious poet Byron is the dark, brooding, artistic type.

Guest-star Sean Faris portrays "Byron." Sean has appeared on the WB before, in the series finale of past comedy "Maybe It's Me." His film appearances include a role as "Danny's" Gunner in "Pearl Harbor," among others.

Goth-boy gets a bump on the head when Clark pushes Byron away from Lana at the cemetery, feeling he'll hurt her as Byron knocks a flashlight from Lana's hand. They take him to the Talon to recover, where he starts quoting Shakespeare to Lana. Clark notices slash scars across Byron's wrists. Before dawn they rush Byron home. His strict father greets them with a shotgun. Byron is secretly kept locked in the home's cellar, shackled to the wall.
What's up with Clark? Lana and Clark tell the Kents about Byron, and their suspicions that he is being abused by his parents. Jonathan, Clark and Lana accompany the sheriff to the home, where the Moores claim their son died in a drowning accident 8 years earlier. After some investigation by Chloe, the gang suspects that Byron's death was faked. They find out Byron was treated with experimental drugs for depression. It seems Byron has been melancholy for a long time.
What's up with Martha? Despite Jonathan's objections, Martha accepts a job as Lionel Luthor's Executive Assistant. Even Lex is against the arrangement, warning his father of eviction if this hire is due to another agenda.
How it ends: Instead of waiting for the sheriff's warrant, Clark and Pete go to the Moore house. Despite Byron's objections, they free him. Outside in the sunlight, Byron turns into an angry "incredible hulk," flinging Clark and Pete across the yard and running off to find his revenge for 8 years of a freakish life.
Lana finds him at the cemetery, and lets it slip that they are seeking help for him through LuthorCorp, the owners of the now defunct pharmaceutical company that produced the drug still effecting him. Byron freaks when Lana pulls away from him, and runs off enraged.
Meanwhile, Martha and Lionel are about to lift off in the company helicopter from Luthor estate, on their way to a meeting in Metropolis. Hulk-Byron holds the helicopter back from take off. He throws Martha from her seat inside to get to Lionel for his revenge. Clark watching from a window, now tackles Byron into the darkness of an underground well, where he changes from hulk-Byron to gentle-Byron.
At the hospital, Byron is affectionate to Lana and sorry for his hulk harm.
Martha convinces Lionel to rearrange his priorities to fund medical research to help Byron.
Alone together later, Clark and Lana talk in circles about differences, risks, and secrets, as Clark tries to understand Lana's acceptance of Byron.
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We open on what looks like the set of the Beauty and the Beast TV show, with fog, gravestones, and tinkly fairy-tale music. I'll say it right now and I don't care who hears it: Lana's no Linda Hamilton. Lana clomps in on a horse, as is becoming her primary mode of transportation. I wonder if she's got a horse-hitch post in front of The Talon. Lana places some flowers on her parents' grave. They demand constant attention, including ritual sacrifices and that their names and memory be invoked every hour on the hour. Lana even had to give up movement in her upper lip for them, the poor girl. Atop a Lang gravestone sits a letter. The envelope says, in fancy-schmantzy script, "Lana." The "L" is all cursive and pretty. On the back is a wax stamp with a "B" on it. It's from Danny Bonaduce! Lana hears rustling in the foreboding thickets of this dark wonderland. "Hello?" she calls out. "Look more scared! It's supposed to be more foreboding!" the set designer whispers. Lana looks around. This place is so creepy that even Creep Creepfearmonster, the noted Creepologist from Transylvania, would have given this graveyard pause. (Then he would have fast forwarded past it like I have the urge to do.) Lana is about to open the letter, but stops as she hears a wolf howl. Watch her stay immobile even as entrails and bloody babies start falling from the trees. More close-ups on the letter and the wax stamp. "B." Yes. Let's move on. Another wolf howl.

Somebody's hauling ass through the woods! And he's got stringy, starving-artist hair. And he's wearing a long coat. This is totally someone's idea of a Tim Burton-esque sequence. It's barely LeVar Burton. Artist Boy falls. We hear a dog barking at him. Suddenly, a hefty old guy is standing up above the Boy. It's Richard Moll from Night Court! I always wondered what happened to him. He's holding the dog back on a leash and points a big-ass shotgun at the young man. The man fires. The kid's been Moll-ified!

Poster of some far-off tropical paradise. Wish I were there. The boy with the stringy hair is thrown roughly to the ground inside a dank room. "Dammit, boy, what were you thinking?" says the gruff man who shot him. Guess there was no harm, no foul. "I was thinking I'm in a LeVar Burton sequence, by way of Buffy?" the boy wants to say. The boy apologizes for whatever he did to "Father," and says it won't happen again. The scary older guy asks what the one rule is they live by in the house. "Goth before beauty"? "No driving the fog machine without permission"? "No shooting back"? The rule turns out to be "Byron stays in the cellar." Oh man. "Byron." That name always makes me think of that Mr. Show sketch about the Racist in the Year 3000 and when Bob Odenkirk as the little sidekick, Dougie, finds David Cross in the desert and yells, "Bye-RUN!" Shotgun Daddy asks why they have that rule. "Because Father knows what's best for Byron," says Byron. Hee hee. That gets me every time. Spooky music plays at that last bit. In very tight close-up, Shotgun asks how the Hell Byron (hee hee) got out. Dad really needs to get on a muscle relaxant or something. He's so stressed. He yells that he wants an answer. Byron (ha!) pulls out a little metal rod and instead of stabbing his dad, just says that he pried open the lock. The combination lock? Dad takes the rod, and says that next time there'll be more than a tranquilizer in that gun. First off, Byron (heh heh) seems pretty lucid for somebody who just got tranqued. Second, who uses a shotgun that blasts like a gun to shoot one of those? Doesn't it just make a "snkkkt" sound and not a loud "band"? But who am I to ask? I just work here. Dad exits the basement, which looks just like every other basement in Smallville. We zoom up the nostrils of our cellar-dweller. He's got really pale skin and dark eyes. He so belongs in the White Stripes.(more...)
-- Omar G (TWoP)

Clark is concerned when he discovers someone has been leaving love notes for Lana at her parents' grave and warns her to stay away from the mysterious poet. Fed up with Clark's over-protectiveness, Lana follows the dark and handsome stranger to his home and discovers his parents keep him locked in chains. Unable to leave him like that, Clark and Lana break into the house to save the boy, but soon realize why he was locked up in the first place. Michael Rosenbaum, Sam Jones III, Allison Mack, John Glover, Annette O'Toole and John Schneider also star.

Lex: If your agenda contains plans to harm the Kents in any way, this amiable father and son detente will come to an abrupt end.

Tad: (to Lionel) So as you can see, sir... well, you can't actually see.

Tad: Are you letting me go?
Lionel: Never lose that grasp of the obvious, Tad. It's one of your strongest attributes.

Lex: (to Lionel) I'm glad to see your condition hasn't softened your paternal side.

Pete: Being part of this family should come with a group health plan.

Pete: This place is like the NRA petting zoo.

Chloe: I think I know why our prospective Shakespeare went all pro-wrestler.

Lex: My father's the poster boy for family strife.

Clark: My family doesn't fly much.
Lex: Trust me – that's about to change.

Lionel: Lex? I can feel your smirk from here.

It struck me as a somewhat sympathetic parody of adolescent angst, kind of clumsily executed at time. Byron, much like early first season Clark, doesn't like Lana because of her sparkling personality or quick wits or anything, because he doesn't even know her; no, it's all because "She walks in beauty like the night/ Of cloudless climes and starry skies/ And all that's best of dark and bright/ Meet in her aspect and her eyes." That's definitely the stuff of teenage "love." It might seem funny to at least the older (only slightly older, mind you) members of the audience, but it is conveyed as feeling very real to the teenagers involved, much like all the pain of Chloe's feelings for Clark were put on heartwrenching display last season. Incidentally, Chloe has been sadly neglected this season, but perhaps this episode wasn't the best showcase for her, as she seems to have a bit of snarky cynicism about adolescent angst, even while experiencing it.

But there is a darker side to this kind of Gothic love, something that makes it very entertaining to read for literature classes but not so fun to live. A girl doesn't need to like every part of a guy who attacked her, in a scene with definite rape overtones. Love does not really mean that anywhere outside (usually badly written Gothic) novels and teenage notions, often fueled by those novels. The writers might perhaps have stressed that point a little more, rather than going with Lana's "all is forgiven immediately" attitude, especially given how upset with Clark she was last week. They did end by distancing Clark somewhat from the over-the-top, angsty elements of Gothic Romanticism, because, after all, Clark, and later Superman, is a basically sunny-tempered, good guy not likely to deal with his pain by writing reams of poetry and fainting at the sight of blood.

The other Gothic-influenced story introduced in "Nocturne" seems likely to continue, and is welcome to do so, if only as an opportunity to see more of John Glove, Annette O'Toole and the two of the best actors on the show together. Everything that happened at Casa Luthor seemed drawn from a kryptonite-irradiated copy of Jane Eyre, in which Jane "Martha" Eyre (rapidly transfigured from a plain girl into Annette O'Toole) married platitude-sprouting St. Clair "Jonathan" Something before meeting a blinded Mr. "Lionel" Rochester. Okay, Lex isn't a nine-year old French girl, but he's not that far from throwing his arms around Mrs. Kent and calling her mommy. Anyone watching can fearlessly predict that it won't end well, but doesn't make it any less fascinating to watch, particularly as a backdrop to the Luthor investigation of Clark. Actually, the same can be said of the central Smallville relationship between Clark and Lex.

Next week: Jane, um, Martha's estranged father comes to town at her request to bail out the financially-troubled Kent farm. Wait a minute, how much money does Lionel Luthor's executive assistant make?
By Kathleen O'Shaughnessy