It has been 12 years since the meteor shower which all but devastated the rural Kansas community of Smallville in 1989. On that fateful evening, the parents of little Lana Lang were killed; Lex Luthor, son of billionaire business mogul Lionel Luthor (
John Glover), was rendered totally bald; and on the farm of Jonathan and Martha Kent (
John Schneider,
Annette O'Toole), a spaceship landed, bearing a child from the planet Krypton. Now it is 2001: Lana Lang (
Kristin Kreuk) is the high school homecoming queen; swinging bachelor Lex Luthor (
Michael Rosenbaum) is in charge of his father's local fertilizer plant; and the alien child who crash-landed on the Kent farm has been raised as the couple's own son, Clark Kent (
Tom Welling). Aware that their adopted son is possessed of awesome powers far beyond those of mortal men, Martha and Jonathan have raised Clark in a virtual cocoon, prohibiting him from participating in any sort of contact sports; as a result, the boy has the reputation of a gawky nerd, and is extremely self-conscious and full of trepidation about his place in the world. In this opening episode of the Superman-inspired TV series
Smallville, teenager Clark Kent becomes a close friend of Lex Luthor after saving the young playboy's life, and also endeavors to protect Lana and the rest of his high school friends from an electrified lunatic who was victimized by a Halloween "hazing" on the same night that the meteors fell. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide