What a jumble of a mess. I'm trying to piece this together from memory for the recaplet and it's like reaching into my brain and pulling out a big ball of tangled Christmas lights. Christmas lights and angry bees, for some reason.

So… John Corben survived as a field reporter on the war front in Afghanistan, then shows up in Metropolis for all of two minutes before he's smashed into a hundred crunchy, bloody pieces by a speeding truck. (He wound up in the road after trying to chase down some character motivation that had slipped out of his wallet: a photo of his sister, who was killed by someone the Blur saved.) Instead of dying, he wakes up in a grungy, makeshift lab of some kind. He pulls off his bloody bandages to reveal new mechanical parts in his left arm and a glowing, kryptonite crablike device implanted in his chest where his heart used to be. We find out later from Tess and her minions that Zod and his soldiers were apparently responsible for the Corben-to-Metallo upgrade, because (she theorizes) they're looking for a way to get their powers back. John gets himself to the hospital, where Emil is working as an ER doctor. He escapes, violently, thanks to new Krypto-powers, leaving behind only his Daily Planet keychain.

Clark, when he learns from Emil about the kryptonite and keychain from Emil, puts on his Blur voice and calls Lois for help ferreting out the Daily Planet's cyborg employee. He tells her not to get into trouble, but, of course, she does. She ends up getting abducted by John after he overhears her on the phone with the Blur. John is now convinced that his destiny is to kill the Blur instead of just writing nasty articles about him. They throw down a little when Clark tracks him to his grody hideout, but John's kryptonite enhancement keeps Clark from putting up much of a fight. Then John decides to kill Lois so that the Blur will know what it's like to lose someone he loves. See? A jumble. Clark manages to slap a melted piece of lead to John's chest and then John accidentally rips out his own cyborg heart when he pries off the lead. (He's only mostly dead, because Tess later says she wants to revive him.) Lois, by the way, was conveniently unconscious during all of this. When she comes to, she sees the Blur's shadow across the room. She begs him to show her his face, but he reluctantly speeds away.

In other plot lines, Lois has still been blabbing to Chloe about what a great confidante she is for the Blur, despite the Blur asking her last week to keep her trap shut about that. This leads to tension between Chloe and Clark -- something about picking and choosing what parts of his humanity he's leaving behind and melodramatic crap like that. But she helps him find Lois and it seems like they work things out in the end. Lois is still having her futuristic visions of apocalyptic nookie. She also has her old job back at the paper, because Tess wants to keep an eye on her. Clark gets his job back, too, because he wants to keep an eye on< Lois. Tess and her minions are still looking for Zod and company; to that end, they've found giant Kryptonian-like symbols all over the world where the escaped Kandorians are looking for each other.

Oh, and one of those symbols is the Superman S. Most importantly, though, we finally have visual confirmation that Shelby is alive!