Superman & Lois is not an ironic television show. It’s too much of a straightforward, sentimental, family melodrama. The playful possibilities of irony, the serious but not too serious posture would threaten that core foundation and force the viewer perhaps to doubt the sincerity of Superman or Lois as people. That is the kind of scrutiny it seems obvious fans of the larger Superman property do not want to engage in. No, Superman must be a rock (but not The Rock). This makes the heavy irony embedded within the season 3 premiere “Closer” at once puzzling but also more than a little intriguing. “Closer” wasn’t the most engaging season opener I’ve ever seen, but it largely did its job. With that subtle tonal change and the possibilities of irony, I am more than a little intrigued by what is to come. Even if clear textual evidence of “what is to come” is less than a thread.
The irony comes at the viewer fast, but they don’t realize it yet. Episode scribes Brent Fletcher & Todd Helbing begin things with a standard table-setting exposition dump by Lois Lane. This exposition dump is a clever tool with the revelation that this narration is Lois writing an editorial for the Smallville Gazette. This isn’t smirking at the camera levels of reflexivity but the kind of subtle snark free modernism that works in a show like Superman & Lois. Irony doesn’t have to be snark and gauche pretending to be wit, it can be fun and still a little classy. The third season picks up 27 days after the end of season 2 and the latest near-world-ending event. Lois looks back four weeks removed from the second season with hopeful optimism insisting everyone has instead grown closer together with a renewed sense of community because of the experience. As the episode progresses, we see that couldn’t be further from the truth. Looking back on that opening montage of togetherness, it feels absurd that I didn’t recognize how overly idealized everything was.
Throughout the episode, the distance between characters is consistently highlighted. Lana finally gives Kyle the signed divorce papers. Sam Lane tries to get to know his granddaughter from another world, Natalie, only to reveal it as yet another Sam Lane protecting and serving the military-industrial complex operation. Jordan and Sarah are still navigating their relationship to one another. What should be a bond that is only growing stronger between Jordan and Clark is shown to be strained after Jordan tries to get involved and, like the Shazamily in Fury of the Gods, only make things worse when he tries to manage failing infrastructure. Alex Garfin does a good job of playing the slowly growing sense of weight his powers are having on him and the distance that creates with the people around him. Lois and Clark are as close as ever with trips to Rho’s villa. Their renewed physical and emotional intimacy appears to crystalize with the possibility of a pregnancy, but that too falls through, hanging on the mysterious thread of needing to run more tests.
The cast and crew do a good job of running through these fraying relationships. With the ensemble of the series set Superman & Lois is closer to the location-based drama captured in a title like Smallville than the show of the same name. The actors tend to have everyone’s general energy down, which is why Sam Lane’s apology to Natalie at his grandson’s birthday party comes off as approaching genuine. Sam Lane really does suck at interacting with people, so him lacking any self-awareness of what talking to Natalie about a DOD academy in Metropolis makes sense, or he could just be trying to recruit another asset.
The cast member who is still finding himself is Michael Bishop, who replaced Jordan Elsass during the production break. Jonathan isn’t given much to do in this episode; their plot mostly centers around obtaining a driver’s license. So far Bishop plays things flatter and straighter than the sarcasm Elsass generally inflected with his performance. It’s too soon to make a judgement one way or the other, but with the new actor, maybe it opens up more possibilities for the character who, due to their lack of powers, has been pigeonholed into a cheerleading support role like Lois – though mostly free of the petty sibling jealousy stuff by now (hopefully.)
Continued below“Closer” is an ironic title, and the episode does point out the gap between Lois’ idealistic read of things and live reality, but that doesn’t mean everyone is suddenly drifting apart. Characters are closer to one another in certain ways after Clark reveals his other side to Lana and Chrissy Beppo. It is a new level of vulnerability but also a necessary functional one for the show to operate as a show. Now Clark is able to jet off from the Gazette without any of the tired just stepping out routine. When he visits the high school on assignment, he is able to casually confirm to Lana that the school is infested with black mold everywhere. These are small moments that help the show get to the point and deal in the character dynamics instead of pushing confirmation off to another act.
Tom Cavanaugh’s direction in the season premiere was largely fine; he’s a veteran of these productions on both sides of the camera at this point. That veterancy and familiarity with the production apparatus is also why I couldn’t help but feel like the action sequence in this episode was a little just limp. Now it’s largely VFX driven so it isn’t solely his fault, but the blocking and general visual conception certainly had some input from him. It centers around the sudden reappearance of Henry Miller aka Atom Man who is now sporting surprising meta-human powers.
It eventually devolves into a cross city chase sequence that lacks the spatial coherence or weight to make any of it land with ferocity. The men of Steel and Atom’s burst through buildings that happen to be largely absent and without structural damage; people to this day complain about Man of Steel, but it at least had the ethics to remind you that people, even unseen ones, existed in their story world. Their chase through Metropolis lacks the verticality of the kind of sequence that frequently happens on The Flash it largely follows a linear left-to-right flow that, for all the smashing, lacks the spectacle to be engaging. The whole sequence is supposed to catch the viewer off guard. Why is Atom Man out of prison, and how does he have powers? Those are all questions that are textually raised but that doesn’t mean they have their hooks in me as a viewer.
The showdown with Miller is all table setting to reveal what appears to be the season’s main recurring villain, Bruno Manheim (Chad L. Coleman). Manheim was mentioned in the season finale and is someone Lois and Clark have tried to take down before, and who is a subject of renewed interest by the reporting couple. Coleman was excellent as the original villain Tobias “Charon” Church in Arrow season 5 and on The Expanse. What mad science he is exactly up to is unclear. The same goes for his mysterious masked compatriot. For some reason, the spiral-like design on the mask makes me think of the Invisible Mafia from the Bendis run on “Superman”. This being Manheim though it’s more likely to tie into the appearance of Lex Luthor or a new version of Leviathan, previously seen in Supergirl.
The use of irony in “Closer” has me more intrigued about the possibilities for this season than I imagined. By highlighting the distance between the cast of characters already it raises some interesting structural questions. The season is nowhere near a major defeat for a midseason finale, the kind of moment that would lay these gaps bear to the viewer. So where do we go from here and in what direction do we go?
