Just when you thought it was safe to watch TV again after Tara was killed on Buffy, Det. Greggs was almost killed on The Wire, and Jessie and Original Cindy disappeared along with their shows last year...Smallville resurrects the dead/evil lesbian cliche--with a vengeance.

The Tuesday night WB drama follows the trials and tribulations of the teenage Superman Clark Kent (played by Tom Welling) as he learns to live with his superpowers and wrestles with his love for classmate Lana (played by Kristin Kreuk). Now in it's second season, Smallville has developed a strong fan base and consistently good ratings, emerging as one of the WB's strongest shows this season.

In an inexplicably homophobic episode of Season Two called "Visage" which aired on January 14th, Lana is stalked by a young woman named Tina (played by Lizzy Caplan), a teenager who is in love with Lana and has special powers that allow her to impersonate others.

Tina was previously committed to a mental institution after killing her mother and then trying to kill Lana in Season One. She arrives back in town in the form of Lana's ex-boyfriend Whitney (played by Eric Johnson), a Marine who has been missing in action for several weeks (and is actually dead). Tina/Whitney proceeds to kill a lieutenant, tie up Whitney's mother, critically injure Clark's friend Pete (played by Sam Jones III), and try to kill Clark--until she is ultimately impaled on the end of a sharp stick during battle with Clark over Lana and dies a gruesome death.

Tina is described by the others as a dangerous "freak" and a "monster" who is obsessed with Lana. Tina is never actually referred to as a lesbian--in fact, the word is never uttered--but Tina's interest in Lana is clearly communicated through her statement that she wants to "be with" Lana, her jealous rages at Clark's friendship with Lana, her attempt to persuade Lana to marry her (while she is impersonating Whitney), and the freaky scene in which she rifles through Lana's underwear drawer.

It is more explicitly conveyed in a scene in which Tina impersonates Lana's friend Chloe (played by Allison Mack). Lana comes out of the shower wrapped in only a towel, and Tina/Chloe moves in a little too close behind Lana. Lana is clearly horrified, even though she thinks it is her best friend Chloe who is putting the moves on her, and Tina/Chloe responds by removing her hands from Lana's shoulders and taking a half-step back, shrugging unapologetically with a half-smile on her face.

Although there are no overt homophobic statements in the episode, the whole storyline is a throwback to the sick-and-unstable lesbian stereotype of the 1950's and 1960's (demonstrated most frequently at the time through lesbian pulp novels) and the lesbian-killer stereotype from the 80's and 90's (e.g. Poison Ivy, Heavenly Creatures, Basic Instinct, Diabolique etc.). Tina's lesbianism is not incidental to her psychosis, it is central to it: Tina's murderous instincts are clearly driven by her desire for Lana, as she makes clear when she explains to Clark that she has to kill him because "I love [Lana] and I'll do anything to be with her."

Smallville has never featured positive lesbian or bi characters who don't kill people to balance out Tina the Psycho Lesbian. Since Tina is the only lesbian or bisexual character ever on Smallville, "freak," "obsessed" and "killer" are the primary concepts the show's (largely teen and twenty-something) viewers will associate with "lesbian." Oh, and "gruesome death."

The episode also subtly reinforces the idea that lesbians are women who want to be men (or at least, women with some kind of gender confusion), since Tina spends most of the episode impersonating male characters (besides Whitney, she also morphs into Clark's father at one point, and then Clark). This is further supported by the mention early on in the episode that in faking her suicide in the mental hospital, Tina left note saying "she didn't know who she was anymore."

Indeed, Tina as herself is largely invisible throughout the show, appearing primarily in disguise as someone else--an apt metaphor for the experience of closeted lesbian teens, but probably not intentionally. The ending further renders Tina invisible by showing Clark and Lana rhapsodizing about the tragedy of Whitney's death and the importance of their friendship with each other--without saying a word about Tina's death, the fact that she tried to kill them, or her obsession with Lana.

Many TV shows do special "gay" episodes these days--in fact, it's so common now it's almost a requirement. And while not all of these depictions of lesbian and bisexual women are positive, most shows at least try to be somewhat fair and balanced in their approach--which makes Smallville's decidedly one-sided and negative approach all the more glaring. Tina has no redeeming qualities whatsoever, she's just out-and-out evil.

What makes this episode stand out as particularly bizarre is that it relies upon and reinforces such horribly outdated stereotypes about lesbians that few but the most bigoted Americans profess to believe anymore--and worse, it does so for a young and impressionable audience.

Which means in Smallville's battle of Superman vs. the Lesbian Psycho Killer, it is the viewers who ultimately lose.