Amy Adams plays Jodi Melville in “Craving,” the seventh episode of Smallville’s first season. Jodi’s attempt to lose weight with meteor-contaminated vegetables leaves her with a hunger she can barely control. When she threatens Pete Ross, Clark saves them both, and Jodi finishes the episode on her way to the hospital.

It’s a rough part to hand a guest star. Jodi spends much of her time ashamed or terrified, while the story eventually asks Adams to sell a very broad horror transformation. Her fear of hurting Pete gives the episode something to work with beyond the makeup.

Jodi Melville Comes Years Before Lois Lane

“Craving” first aired on November 27, 2001, more than a decade before Adams played Lois Lane in Man of Steel. Jodi belongs to the world of Clark’s school friends, with algebra study sessions and Lana’s birthday party occupying her thoughts before the meteor effects take over.

This is Adams’s single-episode guest role in the series. Erica Durance plays Smallville’s Lois, arriving in season four. Adams’s later work opposite Henry Cavill is a separate version of the Superman story.

The casting connection makes “Craving” an easy episode to remember, but Jodi has a fairly substantial story of her own. She knows Clark and his friends already, and she has a father who notices how unhappy she has become. By the time the attacks begin, we have spent time with her at school and at home, where her father’s attempts to help keep meeting the same resistance.

The Greenhouse Explains Her Sudden Transformation

Jodi’s vegetables come from the family greenhouse, where meteor rocks are mixed into the soil. The shakes she drinks produce a rapid physical change, followed by an appetite that ordinary meals struggle to satisfy. Soon she is feeding on the body fat of other creatures.

The deer she hits on the road becomes an early sign of how far things have gone. Her later attack on Dustin brings the danger back into school, involving the boy who had humiliated her. Clark intervenes, and Dustin ends up hospitalized. The episode establishes that he survives the attack.

The story uses kryptonite to explain the impossible speed of Jodi’s transformation and the distorted jaw she develops when she feeds. She expected losing weight would make school easier. Instead, she has to get through the day hiding an appetite that could put her classmates in danger.

Pete Treats Her Kindly Before She Changes

Pete stands up for Jodi when Dustin mocks her and knocks her drink over her clothes. His kindness comes before her appearance changes. When she later asks him out, she remembers that he defended her when doing so earned him ridicule too.

Sam Jones III’s Pete gets to be considerate here. Jodi thanks him for what he did, then asks him to Lana’s party. When he arrives to collect her, he brings flowers and compliments her dress. For a while, she has something to look forward to that feels quite ordinary.

As her hunger returns, Jodi tries to send him away. She tells him he has always been good to her and warns him that she could hurt him. Those pleas matter more to me than the transformation effect. She knows exactly why Pete deserves better, and the thought of losing control around him scares her.

Clark Saves Jodi As Well As Pete

The danger eventually brings Clark to the greenhouse, where the meteor rocks also make him vulnerable. Jodi is overwhelmed by what she has become. Her distress reaches the point of trying to end her life, and the confrontation ends in an explosion.

Clark carries her out alive. He later tells his parents that Pete is all right and Jodi is on the way to Metropolis General, where her father will meet her.

I’m glad Clark’s rescue includes her. Jodi has threatened his friend and attacked him, but he keeps trying to help her through the confrontation. The story allows her to survive the worst moment of her life.

The Horror Effects Complicate The Sympathy

Early on, Jodi pastes her face onto pictures of models. Her father tries to tell her she is beautiful, but the humiliation at school has given her plenty of reasons to distrust that reassurance. The episode makes her desperation understandable before it introduces the attacks.

I have a harder time with the cafeteria sequence. Clark and Chloe stare as she eats, and the scene makes her appetite another uncomfortable thing to look at. The supernatural explanation carries the plot along while the girl’s body remains the spectacle.

The exaggerated mouth pushes that problem further. Adams has to move from Jodi’s embarrassment into a creature effect, with her hunger becoming a reason for everyone else to recoil. The story is much more convincing when she is trying to protect Pete than when it stretches her face to frighten us.

The Ending Leaves Jodi’s Recovery Offscreen

After the news about Jodi, Clark’s attention returns to the birthday party he missed. He makes it up to Lana with a makeshift drive-in, projecting cartoons onto a barn for them to watch together. Their evening gives the episode a warm ending.

I would have liked even a brief conversation between Jodi and her father afterward. He has spent the episode worrying about her, and she has finally reached a point where she cannot hide how much help she needs. “Craving” gets her out of the greenhouse alive, then leaves that conversation for us to imagine.

For more on Smallville’s first season, read my look at Clark and Lex’s friendship in the pilot and Lex’s disturbing vision in “Hourglass”.