7.19 Confession (Part I) by TW and JG

as retold by Bill C

[The writers' room. Everyone is present.]
JG [hands out scripts]: Okay, let's get started.
ED: Someone's missing...
JG: Tom will be along in a minute.
KK: I suppose it'll be all Clark, all the time? He gets to be all heroic and so on?
JG: Not quite. I...kept him in line.
[TW enters]
TW: Okay, sorry I'm late.
JG: No problems?
TW: Nope.
MR: Come on, let's get this going. I've got to get back to Guitar Hero: Aerosmith.
JG: Okay, fine. We open on a fade to a big, luxurious, wood-paneled office. The kind of office you'd see some old-school CEO living it up in.
TW: Lex walks into the shot from behind the camera's POV, wearing his white suit and one black glove. He looks around as if he owns the place.
MR: White suit...it's not Sex, is it?
TW: No, no Sex.
AoT: You always say that, Tom.
MR: Drat.
JG: Lex walks over to the obligatory huge oak desk and runs his non-gloved hand along its surface, past a golden nameplate simply reading "LUTHOR" and to a small globe sitting on a holder. He picks up the globe, and the camera pans up to him holding the globe in focus while he's slightly out of focus--but smiling.
MR: Even in his dreams, Lex owns you all.
TW: At this point there's a loud noise from offscreen followed by a thump. Sort of like an ax hitting wood. Lex looks offscreen, and we cut to a shot of a pair of slender legs sticking out from the corner of the desk.
AM: Lex kills Hope in a dream?
JG: Too easy. Cut back to a from-below shot of Lex as he walks around the desk and looks down, shocked at whatever he sees--and then he looks up and around as he hears what sounds like dialogue, only with some massive reverb and echo going so it's not all that understandable.
KK: Lex is having a Jabberwocky dream?
TW: Jabberwocky didn't have a spreading pool of blood in it that Lex drops the globe into in slo-mo.
JG: We then get one distinctly clear echoing piece of dialogue--Chloe's voice. "C'mon, Lex, you know what happened."
TW: Lex turns around in a circle, looking for Chloe. "What happened? I don't understand!"
ED: He's not the only one. Is this a dream or a mindfuck?
TW: Yes. We do a couple of speed-ramped shots of Lex turning around, alternating with the legs on the floor, until we get to a shot of him looking towards the door of the office--where Clark and Chloe are standing there, looking confused. And Hope is nearby, picking up a piece of crystal or something off the floor. Clark looks over at Hope, then off-camera right, then grabs Chloe and super-speeds out of the room--and we cut back to Lex seeing this, and looking rather surprised.
MR: The hell?
KK: Wait a minute...legs by a desk? Is there a torso with that?
TW: Yes.
KK: Oh, wow. Lex is dreaming about Lana's murder.
AM [winces]: Involuntary manslaughter, dammit!
KK: Potato, po-tah-toe.
MR: Lex finally finds out Clark's a freak and it's a dream? Bullshit!
JG: We hold for a beat on Lex looking stunned, and then we hear another voice. Lex's voice. "Kneel before Zod."
MR: Great, flashback hell?
TW: It's not like we have a budget for anything else [looks at KK] after the last episode. Lex stretches out his hand towards the camera, almost involuntarily, and then we go to the actual flashback from Zod with Lex, Clark, and Zod's essence being drained from Lex's body. And we see Clark during the whole thing, at the point where Lex/Zod is holding the House of El seal and Clark looks up at him--the rest of the time there's just this big blur and wind noise.
JG: And just as Zod screams we cut to Lex's bedroom at the Luthor mansion as he wriggles around and then sits up in bed in a cold sweat. Shirtless, of course.
MR: Of course.
JG: Zoom in on Lex as he gasps for breath and calms down, then reaches for a glass of water on a nearby nightstand and downs half of it. We then cut to a side shot of him as he looks across the room and off-camera left, tangled in blankets.
TW: And at this point a woman's hand pops out of the blankets and slowly caresses Lex's chest, accompanied by a faint sigh.
MR: Lex finally chucks the widower thing? About time!
ED: I suppose it's high time someone else got a love scene on this show. I can't carry the torch single-handed, you know.
AoT: Well, if someone [looks at TW] wasn't opposed to it, Martha and Lionel could show you kids a few tricks...
ED: Hey, I saw the webcast, Annette. You win there.
AoT: As well I should.
TW: The woman under the blankets speaks, though her voice is muffled.
AM: ...too easy.
TW: "Lex? Honey, what's wrong?"
JG: Lex puts the glass back on the nightstand. "Nothing. Just...just a bad dream."
TW: "I'm sure I can help get those dreams out of your head, baby." Cut to Lex looking down at the woman as she pops her head out of the blankets, and then we cut to a reverse shot so we can see--
MR: A supermodel? TV star? Race car driver?
AM: Yeah, I can see Lex banging Jeff Gordon...calling him Clark...
MR: Danica Patrick, thank you very much!
AoT: Who actually looks a lot more like Clark than Jeff does.
AM: Ouch.
JG: And the woman is......Lana.
KK+AM+MR+ED+AoT [after a few seconds]: What?
JG: The reverse shot shows a smiling, slightly made-up, Lana in Lex's bed. Only she has red hair, which is done in an overdone curled flip to one side.
KK [shocked]: Wait a minute! Lana's dead!
TW: Yes, she is.
JG: Explains the bad hair.
TW: And she's in Lex's bed as Lex smiles down at her, leans over, and--
AoT: Um...ew?
KK: So what the hell is this, a dream-within-a-dream?
TW: No, Lex is entirely awake at this point.
KK: Then what is Lana doing alive? Is he hallucinating?
TW: Nope. Lana continues to smile that almost creepily beatific smile at Lex, and we cut back to Lex for a split-second as he looks briefly thoughtful--then back to Lana, and we zoom in a little bit on Lana to show that she has a small beauty mark on her right cheek. Looks sort of like a tiny heart.
KK: Whaaat?
JG [smirks]: And then she sort of pauses, tilts her head, and blinks in a very slow and deliberate manner--and when she does that, there's a very quiet clicking noise.
MR [stunned]: No. Way.
ED: What?
MR: It's a Lanabot!
KK: Lex is sleeping with a Lanabot?!?
JG: It's a unique way of coping with your spouse's death. But I totally endorse this method of Lex dealing with his loss. [snickers quietly]
AoT: And she'll never leave him for Clark.
KK: Shut up! Lana died months ago! Lex should have moved on!
MR: Okay, I'm actually with Kristin on this. Lex would never sleep with a robot!
TW: You wanted Lex to have robots, Michael. You've always wanted Lex to have robots. You're getting a robot.
MR: Lex already had robots! He blew them all up!
TW [icily]: Not all of them.
[MR sulks]
JG: Technically, it's a cyborg...you know, part organic and part machine. But hey--it's all Lana.
KK: And what's with the hair?
JG: ...okay, so it's not all Lana.
TW: Lana--
KK: It's a Lanabot!
TW: --continues to look up at Lex, still stroking his chest, and purrs. "Well, baby?"
KK [outraged]: "Baby"?!?
JG: And Lex smiles briefly, pushes Lana down into the mattress, and lays a big kiss on her. Cue the love scene music.
KK: You can't do this! Lana's dead! She's not supposed to be here! God damn it, Tom!
TW: It's how it goes, Kristin. So, as--
KK: I'm not going to stand for it, dammit!
TW: Let's table this for later, shall we?
KK: Hell no!

TW: As Lex and Lana--
KK [frantic, voice cracking]: Lanabot!
TW: --get hot and heavy, we crossfade to a tracking side shot of some unidentified blonde running through an alley of some sort, carrying some sort of package. Cut to a angled shot of her running past the camera, as some fat guy shuffles into the background and yells "Bring those back, dammit!"
JG: Another tracking shot of the blonde, who appears to be fairly dirty and scruffy-looking, as she keeps running and comes to a dead end in the form of a brick wall.
AM: She's about to get whacked by the freak of the week?
TW: In a manner of speaking. She looks around frantically, then closes her eyes and concentrates for a moment--and then she turns transparent and walks through the wall. Cut to a completely different alley wall as she walks through it and turns solid again--and as she looks into the package she stole we see a familiar armored arm reach in from camera-right and grab her hand. Then another one comes in from camera-left and takes her other hand.
ED: Spartans on patrol? No crime too small?
JG: We pull back to see two Spartans in full armor holding the struggling woman in place, and we notice that these two suits of armor have a crudely painted symbol on their chests--the silhouette of a dove.
AM: Huh? Lex wants to give peace a chance?
MR: Peace sucks!
TW: And then we hear Chloe's voice: "Sorry to interrupt your crime spree, Olivera Twist." The woman looks up and we cut to a long shot of Chloe standing on the roof of a building over her head.
AM: What's Chloe wearing?
TW: The white dress she had on in Bounty.
AM: Budget cut?
TW [nods]: Budget cut. Chloe steps off the roof and floats down to ground level. "Hello there."
JG: The woman isn't exactly happy to see her. "Who the hell are you? What are you doing?"
TW: Chloe sighs. "Don't worry. I'm not going to turn you in or anything. I just need you for a minute."
JG: "For what?"
TW: "This." And Chloe reaches out and takes the woman's upper arm, and the instant she does that her eyes roll back into her head and she goes slightly limp in the Spartans' arms. The usual glowy effects pop from under Chloe's hand, and after a few seconds she removes it; for a second or so the dove symbol appears on the woman's arm, as if tattooed onto it, but then it fades away.
AM: Okay, what the hell is Chloe doing?
TW: After that? Nothing. The Spartans let the woman go and she slumps to the ground. Chloe looks at them. "We're not doing very well this week, girls, but every bit counts. Let's go."
JG: Another tracking shot as Chloe flies off, with the Spartans following a second later, and we cut back to the unconscious woman and her dropped package before cutting to the credits.
AM: Chloe is...huh?
TW: It becomes clear later.

Continued...