When I’m not at the gym watching Bravo or VH1 on the elliptical trainer, I’m at the gym watching The CW on the elliptical trainer. Last night I happened upon an episode of Smallville, which is not a show that I have ever watched in my life. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever watched anything on that channel, with the exception of America’s Next Top Girl Who Was on That Reality Show About Models, but even then I watched the first season only, and that was on The WB. ANYWAY, I’m watching this episode of Smallville, and I missed the first couple of minutes, but the scene I see is Clark in the kitchen saying “Do you want orange juice?” and then there is this long pause and he goes “This would be easier if I spoke Spanish.” Then they show this kid sitting at the kitchen counter and he’s like “I’ll have orange juice,” and then Clark is like “You speak perfect English,” and the kid is like “I watched a lot of American TV.” So by now I have figured out that a) Clark doesn’t know this kid, and b) this kid is from Mexico. So far, so hilarious.

Well, Clark not only has the power of flight and x-ray vision, he also has the ability to ask extraordinarily perceptive questions that get just the kind of answers one would need to, say, construct an expository story about an illegal immigrant whose mother was working without papers in the United States to save money to bring her son up North in the hopes of giving him a better life but when he finally did ride across the border in the dark back of an unventilated immigrant smuggling van he was dropped off not in his mother’s arms as expected but on a Kansas farm where the owner employs illegal immigrant labor under prison like conditions so severe that when the young man in question tried to escape with a friend they were shot at and the friend has gone missing, all of this happening just a couple of clicks from where a young SUPERMAN is growing up.

You know, it’s annoying enough when Law & Order does their ripped from the headlines shit–speaking of, how excited is everyone for the inevitable “The Cops Shot Someone Outside a Nightclub 50 Times” episode?–but I seriously do not need an examination of the complicated and controversial illegal immigrant issue as told through the story of an adolescent superhero on a channel that’s primarily known for Tyra Banks dressing up as a bum just to prove that she’s beautiful even when she looks like a fucking bum.