If I go into an episode expecting the worst of the worst, I generally come out of it thinking "Well, that wasn't so bad."

I did that with Blue. I see Smallville on Sunday nights; my American friends see it on the preceding Thursday. So I have a few days of fan reaction before I see it. Generally, I avoid reading detailed posts as I don't want to colour my reaction to the episode with theirs. Just the same, I went into Blue with the perception that it was not one well received by some.

Excepting the absolute disaster that is the Zor-El, Lara and Jor-El storyline (more on that in a minute), it didn't take me long to realize why. Ironically it's one of the reasons I'm pleased with Blue's B-plot.

Make no mistake about it, the A-plot with Zor-El and Lara was indeed a disaster. The storyline of an evil Zor-El is troublesome enough when DC Comics is handling it. In the hands of Al Gough and Miles Millar it's a disaster of herculean levels. While Christopher Heyerdahl makes a wonderful Zor-El, the writing Smallville is giving him is terrible and indicative of a small problem with Smallville.

Smallville writes storylines and forces characters into them. Sometimes it works, most of the time it does not. It's not working with Zor-El; it's not working with Lara. (I still maintain that Helen Slater, though wonderful, would make a better Alura than Lara. Watching Blue, I had to remind myself who she was supposed to be.)

As much as I adore Jor-El and Lara, I have equal levels of love for Zor-El and Alura. DC and Smallville both seem to be forgetting that, yes, there are fans who enjoy the Supergirl universe on its own. We might have been fans of Clark, Jor-El and Lara first, but we've grown to love Kara, Zor-El and Alura as well. Needless to say, the evil Zor-El storyline is one that I would happily love to see retconned into oblivion. Say yesterday. This is the DC universe. DC retcons like I change socks. Next time around, can we go for a few shades of grey? The House of El as political movers and shakers with all sorts of grey areas is interesting.

This lesson in extremes, however, is not. I'm all for getting Clark in touch with his Kryptonian side, but seriously people. Right now the storyline is just this side of "who are these people and what have they done with Superman?"

I am willing to forgive and let it slide, but that's hanging on what they do next. Given where they left Kara and Clark this time around, I'm hopeful. Which reminds me, Laura as Kara? I may quibble with Helen Slater's casting as Lara, but Laura Vandervoort as Kara is pure gold. Anytime you guys want to spin her off into her own series? I am there with bells on.

You know, given how hard I've been coming down on them lately with Lois, it's both surprising and unsurprising how much I enjoyed her storyline in Blue.

With that said, I was very pleased with the treatment of Lois and Chloe in "Blue," especially as it pertained to their relationship. They behaved like actual family members and that's important. We haven't seen that in a while. Allison gets a lot of credit here for conveying the balancing act that Chloe is doing. While Chloe is naturally worried about her own career (the look on Allison's face when Chloe saw Lois and Grant and realized just how badly the deck is stacked against her sold it), she is also very concerned about her cousin's future. The conversations between Chloe and Lois were absolutely wonderful; both Allison and Erica did a great job with them. There was a marked difference to the last time we saw their characters together, and I was happy to see it.

I was also happy to see someone, for once, point out some actual consequences. Lois is flirting with career disaster here and Chloe bringing it up had me sitting up and taking notice. For all Jor-El's Fortress of Solitude grumbling, Smallville does not deal with consequences. They tend to mete them out when they aren't necessary, and gloss them over when they are, so Chloe's warning of Lois was surprising. It was also highly overdue and addresses a problem I've been having with the whole Grant/Lois storyline.

In contrast to the Lois/Oliver romance, the Grant/Lois one is highly out of character for Lois Lane. Lois and Oliver were on equal footing, Lois and Grant are not. When Chloe pointed out that Lois sleeping with Grant is the fastest way to kill a career possible, she was right. This is Lois Lane we are talking about and there should never be a perception that Lois Lane got her job flat on her back.

I may not be happy with the fact the storyline is continuing, but at least it is continuing with both eyes open. Lois knows she's making a mistake and she's choosing to make it. No one's pretending it isn't a huge mistake, Lois certainly isn't. Her expression at the end of the episode sold that for me.

In a lot of ways, this was the episode I'd been waiting for.

Mostly.

I'm not exactly sure what to make of the revelation that Grant Gabriel is Julian. The Smallville fandom refers to Lionel as the Magnificent Bastard, a title well earned, and just when you think the show's left that side of Lionel behind…

He let his wife go to her grave believing she'd murdered her own child, a murder his oldest child was terribly scarred by. Lionel knew Julian was still alive and let everyone believe that Lex was the one who murdered him. The Magnificent Bastard is alive and well it seems. Not that we're surprised by this.

This is a plot twist I am reserving judgment on. It's either the best one Smallville has come up with in ages, or it's the latest in a (long) line of moments in which we fans were left thinking: "What the hell was that?"