Well, here we are, three episodes in and CW’s Superman & Lois is a settling into my schedule as quickly as the Kents are settling into Smallville. I don’t really want to beat around the bush with an intro this week because there’s a surprising amount to break down in this episode, so… let’s get to it.
Oh, and spoilers below. Duh.
1. A Day In The Life Of
God, this first scene. Screw the rest of the episode, let’s just talk about this opening scene because it’s genuinely perfect. Now, yes, I know, I am prone to hyperbole when I finally find something that appeals to my sensibilities, but I just… this is everything I wanted this show to be and I don’t even know how to process how perfect each moment is. The way the Kents are settling in, making the old farmhouse their own, those petty little family squabbles that escalate not into a fight, but into play when all of a sudden Dad’s gone like a shotgun blast. It’s just this perfect snapshot of this family and their bonds and everything is on point. All of the actors are effortlessly enjoyable to watch interact on screen, the direction is impeccable (especially for a CW show) and then it hard transitions in Superman saving people from a bridge collapse.
This show understands that these levels of disaster are run of the mill for someone like Superman. You cannot ring any drama out of a bunch of civilians in jeopardy beyond “Oh, I wonder how Superman’ll save the day this time.” Because of course he saves the day, right? So, use that time to be playful and have fun and show off the problem solving aspect of stopping a bridge collapse and allow the drama of the story to live elsewhere, in the characters and their conflict. I know this sounds like screenwriting 101, but I cannot stress how much this lowkey family drama about Superman feels like a breath of fresh air after decades of military funded greyscale apocalypses where cardboard cutouts of cartoon characters punch each other. Imagine what the world would be like if all superhero stories had people who gave a shit about making good stories like this one.
2. Small Town Lives
Life sucks. Let’s not beat around the bush. Living is never-ending parade of pain and misery and abject suffering and not one person who ever walked the face of this Earth lived and died without a single moment of despair. So we pretend like it isn’t. We idolise the past because there was a collective, societal agreement not to flinch in the face of armageddon. But here we are, decades into the end of the world as we know and we’re miserable. The idyllic middle American small town life of the mid-century? Gone. We’re never getting that back.
And, for it’s credit, Superman & Lois understands that in a way I was not expecting. Like, yes, I have lauded the show’s attention to character drama up until now that has largely stemmed from Clark’s naive assumption that just moving to Smallville would fix everything, but I wasn’t ready for this episode’s subplot that dove into the dynamic of the Lang family. Everyone’s neighbours always feel like they have a handle on things while your life is falling apart, right? We hide our pain from the world so we seem like we’re functional until we just break. Lana Lang has been hiding a lot of pain her entire life. This is the reality of small town America. It’s labour exploitation, it’s gentrification and inflation, it’s everyone moving to the big city and never coming back, it’s popping opioids to get through the day, it’s your husband watching the game on a portable TV at dinner, it’s your teenage daughter being in therapy every week because she’s a suicide risk and at some point… you just break.
We’ve all been there, especially recently. This show genuinely impresses me with how much it is willing to commit to the emotional core of the story being told. This is what Superman in the real world 21st century feels like. It’s still dreary and miserable at times, sure, but there’s a heart to it. Reach out and someone will take your hand. It might not be Superman himself, it might be admitting to yourself and your daughter that things aren’t okay right now. But they could be better. And that making things better is worth it.
Continued below3. The Responsibility Of Parentage
Superman’s boring, right? He always makes the perfect decision at the perfect moment to save the day and everything goes back into place, job done. He’s an incorruptible symbol for good and flawless example for the strength of compassion. Right? Well, sure, when the lives of millions if not billions of people rest in your hands on a daily basis, maybe it does some good to act like the benevolent arbiter of Truth, Justice and the American Way, but Clark Kent? Clark Kent’s just some guy. Good reporter, sure, grew up on a farm. He’s the guy you’d take home to meet your parents, but not the guy you’d tell your friends about. And now he’s a dad.
Tyler Hoechlin is a revelation in this episode, trying to balance the line between being a good dad and being Superman. Because you can’t be Superman for your kids. You don’t get to show up in their school hall to break up a fight on a whim. You have to let them fall from the next and fly for themselves. I wish I could write about this one point for the rest of this review, but watching Clark Kent grow into a good and present father means more to me now than any CGI smashathon of any superhero film I’ve ever seen. Superman & Lois is such a breath of fresh air, I know I’ve said that already, but it’s true. It just works for me. Every moment is followed through to the exact level that I can’t help but fall in love with these characters all over again. Will it break my heart? Probably, everything does eventually. But right now? I couldn’t be more in love.
4. The Irresponsibility Of Children
It’s a testament to just how much this show rules that watching Jordan try out for football can simultaneously be exhilarating and terrifying. It’s a pitch perfect scene putting you directly into the character’s perspective as he feels free, genuinely, for the first time in his life. Sure, it started as a shitty way to get back at his dad from being overprotective and secretive, but when Jordan’s on the field and he’s killing it and the needle drop hits and suddenly this muddy football field on a rainy day in Smallville, Kansas is a coliseum and Jordan the star gladiator. It’s everything he ever needed to break out of that neurotic shell and look the world directly in the eyes and say, “No, fuck you, I’m Jordan Kent.” It’s a genuine thrill to watch him fall in love with something for the first time in what must feel like forever.
And then the camera cuts to Clark on the sidelines. And your heart sinks. Because this is all going to be taken away, just like everything else. Sure, it was hotheaded and irresponsible, but you’re just a kid and you want to be able to make the same mistakes as everyone else. This is what the heart of this show is. A family coming together. Watching Clark not only come to accept Jordan playing football, but signing up to be assistant coach? Pretending like a water cooler isn’t like carrying a bag of feather? His dorky cap? God, I just love this show.
5. Playing The Long Game
You might be wondering at this point “Hey, isn’t there like… a Bad Guy™ in this show or something?” and you wouldn’t be wrong, but what works for me here is that the bad guy isn’t The Plot™. Yes, there’s a bad guy (Derek Powell) with superpowers and he and Superman have a brief, but flashy fight, but what’s interesting is that he’s just a cog in a larger wheel. He’s very literally just some guy who happened to have a run in with Superman and, unsurprisingly, Superman wiped the floor with him. Two things stood out to me about this whole subplot, though:
1) Lois has more involvement with The Plot™ and The Bad Guy™ and all the usual superhero story trappings than Clark does, and I love that. She’s forward thinking and investigative and tying that to a sort of grassroots activism against a multi-billionaire venture capitalist preying on a small town in middle America is perfect. It’s exactly the kind of stories Siegel and Shuster would have told. It not only brings a genuine human drama to the centre of the plot, but allows even the goofy superpowered bad guy to evolve naturally out of a plot that was introduced to us as a mother looking for her missing son. This is completely unlike the usual structure of your usual CW show and it’s nailing it.
2) We only see Superman in costume twice in this episode. Once, at the beginning, during the bridge collapse when being Superman feels like it’s easy. He’s smiling, waving, joking. During this fight, however, and maybe I’m projecting, but that’s the entire point of this, it feels like you sense the weight of the tension on Superman’s shoulders. The people making this show know they don’t have the budget for big Man Of Steel fights every episode so they’ve keyed into making the Superman moments feel effective and evocative. This is a no frills squash match. Superman immediately susses out how to de-escalate the situation and neutralise the threat. Because that’s what he does, right? But doesn’t it feel, just a little bit, like he had something to take out on Powell? Like this fight was just as much an extension of his subplot with the boys as it was Lois’s subplot about Edge? That’s good television.
And we get the reveal that some mysterious Kryptonian (I’m assuming) lady is out there working for… Edge? Presumably? It’s a solid tease and I’m excited to see where it goes, I’m mildly hoping someone on this show has read issue #9 of “All-Star Superman.”
