A scary-looking soundstage/government lab. The pointy ship is being studied by scientists. A guy in a suit tells a very bored-looking lady scientist that there's no sign of alien life near the site. "Open it," he tells her. She looks just bored enough to do it. Lasers try to cut the ship open or scan it or something. Really, I just see a bunch of bar-code scanners lighting the ship up and hear loud noises. The lasers borrowed from the Pink Floyd show at the planetarium are employed to highlight the Kryptonian symbols. Welcome...to the machine! The scientist, not so bored anymore now that she has lines, says the temperature is rising. The suit tells everyone to evacuate and says they don't have much time. So...this was all a mistake, then? Can I put that in my report? The guy in the suit just stands there. I thought you were supposed to be evacuating.

Commercials. Claire from Heroes is the new Neutrogena girl. Save the cheerleader's pores, eh...I'm already tired of this joke. I wonder if Kristin Kreuk is jealous or if they write letters to each other, like the Sisterhood Of The Traveling Bar Of Facial Soap.

Daily Planet. Boy Editor is in his very spacious and beautiful corner office, putting on a black bow tie to go with the rest of his tuxedo. He's got an odd lamp that has octagonal mirror panels on it. He uses one side of the lamp to adjust his tie. As he throws on his tux jacket, Lois walks into the office, her hands sheepishly pressed into her front pockets. Boy Editor (he should say, when people come into his office, "I Grant you entry!") is impressed that Lois works so fast. You should see her date superheroes. He asks if she has pages for him. She says she has to talk to him about that. Boy Editor's not interested in talking; he wants to read. Lois tells him that Chloe is the one who should be writing the spaceship story. Boy Editor goes to a very ornate box and pulls out a very satiny handkerchief. His snot deserves only the best. That box looks like it could hold some meteor rocks. Boy Editor says that Chloe lost her journalistic mojo and is now developing carpal tunnel as a hack writing about Fourth of July parades and City Hall. It would be nice if they had a City Hall reporter, then. Or one who covers parades.

Weird close-up of Boy Editor grabbing his keys. Next to his keys is a Blackberry. Lois says her cousin's feelings mean more to her than a story. Boy Editor gives her a whole speech about how stories, not feelings, sell newspapers and pay the bills. He asks if she thinks he's being honored by the Publisher's Guild because he's a nice guy who gives a damn about feelings. He says he breaks stories, any way any how. Lois, pissed, walks out as she tells him he's going to have to break this one with someone else. Boy Editor follows her, taunting Lois by telling her that it's not about Chloe; he thinks the story is just bunk and she wants to bail out on it. Lois, gullible, takes the bait. She tells "Bow Tie" that she has an Air Force contact who scored her some photos. She shows him satellite photos of a caravan of trucks driving from the dam to a grain silo in Granville. Boy Editor says it looks like Lois has some passion after all. He tells her this is her fork in the road; in a dozen years, she'll either be Lois Lane, star reporter for The Daily Planet, or some housewife with four kids and an extra forty pounds. Wow, those are very different lives. Maybe she can have the best of both worlds: forty extra pounds while being a star reporter. Lord knows hardcore journalists don't have the best diets. Boy Editor tells her she won't be able to look at a newspaper without thinking of what might have been. That's a lot for Lois to think about. Luckily, she doesn't really think.