Hey guys! How's it going? I'm pretty good for a Wednesday. It's absolutely gorgeous outside so I'm going to do my best to get this review done before lunch so I can spend the afternoon outside. As you can guess I'm reviewing this week's episode of Superman & Lois, which is season 1, episode 3, "The Perks of Not Being a Wallflower". So let's get right into it.
Before I get into specifics about the episode itself, there is something that I would like to talk about, and that is the lack of Superman stuff going on in this episode in comparison to the previous two. As long as I can remember, there has always been this embargo on Superman in different mediums. For example, the reason Smallville was made the way it was, with it taking the entire series for Clark to don the Superman suit, is because there has never been able to be a live-action Superman TV show while a movie has been in production. Lois & Clark was lucky in that, while a Superman movie was in development, it wasn't in active production until after the show had gone off the air. Which is why it took so long for Lois Lane to become a more prominent character on Smallville, because Superman Returns was in production for the majority of Lois's early appearances on the show. Which is why I suspect we won't see Clark in the Superman suit as much in the next few weeks, as Zack Snyder's Justice League is coming out next week and Superman plays a pretty heavy role in the film.
Despite there not being as much Superman action going on this week, with not even a mention of Captain Luthor, this was still a really good episode. With Jordan wanting to play football despite Clark's misgivings, reminiscent of Clark's desire to play football in the first season of Smallville, it really delves into the problems with having super powers and having to hide them from the world. Which is something that Pixar addressed in The Incredibles back in 2004, while Smallville was still in it's early seasons. Especially with Dash. In fact one of the lines either Jonathan or Jordan says in this episode is similar to in the movie when Helen tells Dash that everyone is special with Dash replying, "Which is another way of saying nobody is". Which is pretty cool.
The weakest part of this episode is the drama with Lana and Sarah. Not that it's bad, and I'm glad that we're getting some stuff with these extra characters that really haven't done much up to this point, it's just the stuff we did get in this episode is the most typical teen drama stuff we've seen hundreds of times from Thea and Moira in season 1 of Arrow and going all the way back to Julie and Marissa's relationship in the first three seasons of The OC. The saving grace of this material is the fact that Lana actually admits to Sarah that there is a problem and that there are days where Lana doesn't know how to make it better, but that she'll back off a bit from being that small town, overbearing mother. Which is a far cry from the Lana Lang we saw on Smallville.
What separates this show from the teen drama shows that have been coming out since the 80s, is that when there is an issue between characters, so far it's been resolved within the episode and doesn't become an issue for an entire season, like the Supergirl/Lena thing that happened last season due to Lena discovering Supergirl's secret identity and that Kara, and everyone at the DEO had been lying to her for the past four seasons. Even when Jonathan and Jordan get mad at their parents, both Lois and Clark take the time to understand where their sons are coming from and then they decide how to best handle the situation. And I hope that Lana is beginning to learn that in this episode too.
As with last episode, my favourite thing in this one, is all the stuff going on with Lois at the Smallville Gazette. Lois Lane is probably one of my favourite comic book characters of all time, aside from Batman, Green Arrow, and Superman and it's great seeing her have her own story arc in this show. I mean, yeah, there ended up being a classic Lois getting into danger with Superman needing to rescue her scene, but this is a Superman TV show, you can't not have at least one of them in the show. As long as it doesn't become a regularly occurring thing like it did in the later seasons of Smallville or the entirety of Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman. Because that would be dumb given how capable this version of Lois is.
Even though Clark wasn't in the Superman suit for very long, I love that we're getting at least one scene in each episode that is a classic Superman scene. In this one, Superman prevents a bridge from collapsing with a bunch of people on it, and then saves Lois from that really strong dude. That's Superman. The situation doesn't always have to be this massive world destroying event for Superman to face. Sometimes it can be just this small, local trouble, like a bridge collapsing or a cat in a tree. Which is something I really feel like we've lost in today's comic book based entertainment. Not to mention the comics themselves, but that's an issue to be discussed another time.
Were any of you severely creeped out by Stacey Farber's character's eyes suddenly glowing red and then emitting heat vision like a Kryptonian does? According to the Arrowverse Wiki page on her character, Leslie Larr, she is a character from the comics. In fact she was a Supergirl villain named Lesla Lar, one of the surviving Kryptonians from Kandor who originally appeared in Action Comics #279 from 1961, during the Silver Age of Comics. Also, according to the DC Comics Wiki, she has appeared as recently as DC Rebirth in like 2016 or 2017. So we'll see how things play out with her here. I'm excited to see the rest of this season.
Overall this was a pretty great episode. This easily could've been stupid given that Zack Snyder's Justice League comes out in eight days, and with Superman playing a prominent role in the movie, it would've been really easy to just make this Smallville: The Next Generation, which could still end up happening if the writers weren't really careful when writing the scripts for this season. But so far the writers and showrunners seem to have a good handle on this show, and it's really cool so far.
Alright guys that's going to be it for me for today. I'll be back tomorrow though with this week's comic book review where I will be talking about Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys: The Death of Nancy Drew #5. So until then have a great afternoon and I will talk to you later. Take care.
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