Lex Luthor returns as The Fixer, the eighth episode of the first season of Superboy starring John Haymes Newton as Clark Kent / Superboy, Stacy Haiduk as Lana Lang, and Jim Calvert as T.J.White, also featuring Scott James Wells as Lex in an episode that suggests what Lex is prepared to do to increase his personal fortune.

Lex Luthor is back, and he’s scheming. His latest scheme is to “anonymously” bet a small fortune against Shuster in their upcoming basketball game while officially supporting them.

On an expensive golf course, he attempts to coerce the team’s lead player into throwing the game, but Stretch isn’t sure he wants to do that.

At a practice session, Stretch is understandably off his game. He doesn’t want to talk to the coach about it, and is even less keen to speak to Clark, who’s there covering the game. However, Clark overhears an unguarded comment and realises that Lex is behind the troubles.

Clark visits Lex at his father’s expensive house, initially to warn him off but then to discover proof of what he suspects. He discovers financial transactions on Lex’s laptop, proving his bets against the home team.

Later, Clark, T.J., and Lana are witness to Lex grinding down Stretch. Clark uses his super-breath to get Lex to cool off.

Lex slinks away, embarrassed, which allows the trio to try and help Stretch. Clark reveals that he knows about Lex’s scheme, and he tries to make Stretch see sense.

Lana gets Stretch to open up, and he tells them that Lex lured him to one of his parties and took some compromising photos of him smoking something he shouldn’t have been smoking. Now he doesn’t know what to do. Clark tells him that it’s his decision, and only he can make it, but Stretch knows he’s already made his decision and that doesn’t include Lex’s plan.

Back at the golf course, Lex is discussing a backup plan with another player, Moose. Moose is more than keen to help out, for the price of a Corvette. The game starts…

When it becomes clear that Stretch isn’t playing his game, Lex gives Moose the nod.

With the game going rapidly downhill, the coach benches Moose, but Clark puts him into the land of nod for sure. Lex has a third string to his fiddle…

All of a sudden, the referee is over-critical of anything Shuster do – in particularly, anything Stretch does.

Determined to keep the game fair, Clark uses his superbreath to have the ref chasing his whistle until he can warn him off. If he doesn’t leave and promise not to ref another game, Clark will tell the authorities that he’s on Lex’s payroll. The ref leaves.

Back at the game, Superboy replaces the referee and now there’s no one in Lex’s pocket. The game continues until there’s only one point in it and only seconds to go.

Lex intends to make Stretch pay for his betrayal, and sends his photos to the papers. Superboy sees this… …and destroys the photos.

With the seconds counting down, the only chance for the home team to win is Stretch. He throws… …it drops, and Shuster wins!

Lex has been thwarted, but he holds a brave face to the public. Superboy also tricks Lex into donating $5,000 towards a new school computer. Lex isn’t pleased.

When Clark returns, he tells his friends that the coach kicked Moose off the team for sleeping in the changing rooms.  Clark has also made Lex destroy any negatives he has of Stretch, on behalf of T.J. destroying the film he took of Lex soliciting Moose to throw the game … film they would have made if they’d needed it.

The Fixer betrays the “kid’s show” roots of this series.  Comparing The Fixer to something from the fourth season is like comparing chalk and cheese.  The episode doesn’t exactly do anything wrong, in that it portrays Lex as the money-grabber that just wants more and is prepared to do anything to get it, but the series has far more to give than that.  It’s almost as though someone just thought it’d be cool to have Superboy refereeing a basketball game and wrote the story around that.  This doesn’t really pull off very well, though, because the scenes of Superboy “flying” actually have him moving slower than the players who run from side to side.  It’s a bit feeble, to be honest.

This episode features Superboy’s super-breath quite a lot.  First, he uses it to hide his tampering with Lex’s laptop.  Then he uses it to blow Lex into the water, and finally to catch the referee’s whistle.  That’s a lot of breath (hot air?).

Fortunately, there aren’t too many more episodes like this one and, before much longer, Lex “matures” into a really nasty piece of work – leaving this “schoolboy bully” persona far behind him.