pull the lead car with it, and the timing for the crash was practiced several times during rehearsals. Finally, after the car was smashed by the bus, Kreuk was positioned on the ground to give the effect that she was actually in the car wreck. During filming, artificial snow had to be continuously shoveled on the sets because the cast and crew kept trampling through it. Steve Oben, the costume set supervisor for the series, jokingly called the Fortress of Solitude the "Fortress of Styrofoam" and explained that a huge hurdle for the scenes in the fortress was to make sure that the synthetic snow would not stick to the actors during filming. Broadcast and reception "Reckoning" originally aired in the United States on January 26, 2006 on The WB. The network promoted the episode with videos of "snowy coffins" suggesting that either Lana or Jonathan would die. The episode earned a Nielsen rating of 2.2, meaning that roughly 2.2 percent of all television-equipped households were tuned in to the episode. It was viewed by 6.28 million viewers and ranked as the seventy-first most–watched episode of the week. The episode was the second-most watched fifth season episode, after the earlier entry, "Aqua", which was seen by 6.40 million viewers. It aired in the United Kingdom on E4 on March 27, 2006 and reached 375,000 viewers, making it the fourth most–watched program that week. "Reckoning" received mostly positive reviews from commentators. Various critics felt that the death of Jonathan Kent was a poignantly emotional choice, although others expressed their desire that Lang would have died. Michael Ausiello from TV Guide wrote, "Watch ['Reckoning'] because it's one of the best hours of TV this season and I'm not even a big Smallville fan." Vic Holtreman from Screenrant gave the episode a largely positive review and called it "a great episode overall". He called the scenes leading up to the funeral "quite moving" and noted that the loss of Jonathan Kent was a blow, not only for the series' main characters, but also for the audience itself. Omar Gallaga from Television Without Pity gave the episode a B and wrote that the death of Jonathan Kent "still stings". Chris Carabott from TV Fanatic named the episode the second best Smallville episode (coming after ninth season entry "Absolute Justice"), and he wrote that "The death of Jonathan Kent is one of the most pivotal