Adventures of Superman No Holds Barred Television 

Five Thoughts on Adventures of Superman‘s “The Secret of Superman” and “No Holds Barred”

By | June 29th, 2018
Posted in Television | % Comments

It is amazing how my reactions to the second and third episodes of the show remain consistent as the season has moved along: the show is surprisingly watchable, and surprisingly not focused on Superman. These two episodes are the most early 50s of the bunch, dealing in stereotypes that didn’t age well at all. Let’s dig in.

1. The life of Perry White

I’m trying to figure out what exactly Perry White’s life is like. I know he’s a newspaper editor and, especially, at the time, that was a grueling profession. But Adventures of Superman presents his life as a Quixotic nightmare, of which there is no escape. In both episodes, White is in his office until incredibly late at night, often times entertaining guests to watch professional wrestling (?!).

But the weirdest part is where he lives, which is described as the “Newspaper Club,” and appears to be an ersatz apartment building/hotel. The name implies that it is some sort of career-based dormitory for newsapaper men, but all we really know is that he can get room service at 1am, and I guess that’s pretty dope?

2. Truth serum

Is truth serum, or some variety on that theme, the most overused concept in genre fiction? Here, the truth serum doesn’t just loosen your lips so you tell the truth, it puts you in a near catatonic state – actually, not dissimilar to what the ‘mind machine’ from last week did – and forces you to mumble out your deepest secrets. But it also somewhat adds some clarity to you mind it seems as, once she takes it, she and her kidnapper can pretty easily ascertain that Clark is Superman. This, more than anything, seems to be what has Clark worried this week. When Lois comes out of her spell, Clark shakes the shit out of her to wake her from her stupor, and then asks a few times too many if she remembers anything. He seems totally unmoved by the idea that Lois and Jimmy were almost just shot in the back, as long as his secret is safe.

3. Dr. Ort is dumb

So, Dr. Ort is the kidnapper/truth serum dude, and he wants to find out who Superman is. He begins asking Lois a series of questions to try to get to the bottom of this, and one of his questions is, I shit you not, “Is Superman a woman?” Now, aside from the name giving it away, his physical appearance is pretty masculine. This is also the 1950s, when gender identity was, at least in the public sector, pretty straightforward.

But let’s not bury the lede here. Do you know why Ort thinks he may be a woman? Because he shows people compassion. To Ort, only a woman would act like Superman does, and so that’s why he follows that line of questioning. To be fair to Ort, he does figure out who Superman is but, drats, gets shot dead by the cops before he can tell anyone.

4. WWE, this is not

The second episode is based around professional wrestling, and a wrestler named ‘Bad Luck Brannigan’ using a move called ‘the paralyzer’ that, you guessed it, paralyzes people. The Daily Planet wants to do a story on this guy, and so they hire a former college wrestler, Wayne Winchester, to write the piece. Well, because of course he does, Winchester decides to challenge Brannigan, for the reason that he thinks he can win? That part is not really established all that well.

But anyway, Superman discovers that the gym that trains Branigan has someone called ‘Swami’ locked up there. He’s Indian, and has seemingly unparalleled knowledge of the human body and pressure points, and is giving Brannigan his strategies. Well, it turns out that he can also undo the effects of the paralyzer, and does so at the end of the episode, and everyone gets off reasonably fine.

If you thought the female stereotypes in the last episode were bad, well, dig into Swami. Aside from the clearly offensive name, he is always shirtless, sitting with crossed legs on the floor, and is clearly a Latino actor literally painted brown. Even though this episode was one of the more fun, plot wise, so far, all the Swami stuff really hindered my enjoyment.

Continued below

5. Finally, a cool Superman move!

We’ve seen Superman stand down some bullets a number of times now, and that’s fine, but this week we saw the first time a Superman move looked really cool, aside from the old rubber bars on a window/cell move, which we’ve seen a few times now.

While raiding the gym to both save Swami and take down Brannigan and co, a crook throws a barbell with weights on it at Superman. This, alone, is a pretty impressively strong henchman. How much do you lift, bro?

But what Superman does is basically just put his chest into it, and the barbell bounces off of him, totally harmlessly. It was an easy stunt to do, and it looked legitimately impressive if you don’t think much about how light it must have been for the crook to toss it with such authority.

Anyway, let’s see more of that and less stereotyping!


//TAGS | 2018 Summer TV Binge | Adventures of Superman

Brian Salvatore

Brian Salvatore is an editor, podcaster, reviewer, writer at large, and general task master at Multiversity. When not writing, he can be found playing music, hanging out with his kids, or playing music with his kids. He also has a dog named Lola, a rowboat, and once met Jimmy Carter. Feel free to email him about good beer, the New York Mets, or the best way to make Chicken Parmagiana (add a thin slice of prosciutto under the cheese).

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