I’m not planning to blog about the CW’s new Superman & Lois because our schedule is packed enough right now, and also because I found the experience of blogging about a current series, Batwoman, to be remarkably unsatisfying and frustrating. Seriously, we quit watching the show because we liked the hero and were sick of the villain, so what did they do? Lost the hero and kept the villain. Honestly.
But as longtime readers know, I really enjoy Tyler Hoechlin and Elizabeth Tulloch as Clark and Lois and am glad they have their own show. Timelines got scrambled during 2019’s “Crisis on Infinite Earths” event, and now they have two teenage sons, played by Jordan Elsass and Alex Garfin. Confusingly, the actor named Jordan does not play the character named Jordan. Tonight we sat down to watch the pilot and I enjoyed it very much, even if reactions on the rest of the sofa were a little muted. We might cycle back to it in the summer when our Friday evenings are free again. (You may have deduced that I’m not posting on Fridays because we’re watching Marvel shows on Disney+ that night.)
If you didn’t catch the publicity, the premise here is that after what must be twenty-odd years of superheroing, Lois and Clark’s lives get upended when Clark gets fired and Ma Kent dies the same morning. Back home in Smallville, Lana Lang has married a deeply resentful fire chief who’s watched his town fall apart from meth and poverty and people going away to college and never coming back, and carries a grudge for Clark being one of those people, and also being Facebook friends with his wife. (Clark, dude, do not befriend old exes on Facebook.) Son Jonathan was looking forward to starting at QB on the varsity team, and son Jordan doesn’t like anybody, and at least one of them is starting to show evidence of powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men. The same creep who bought the Daily Planet has been buying up family farms in Kansas and making things far worse there – and he probably runs Intergang as well, but that’s just me speculating – and while Lois smells a story and Superman’s got a new enemy in a combat suit who speaks Kryptonian, they’ve really got to do something to keep this family together and that seems to be moving back to the old farm.
I thought this was a fine pilot, if a little humorless, and I was distracted by the middle third of the story having the dialogue out of sync on the CW’s stream, but the cinematography and the effects were wonderful and as I’ve said in this spot before, I really do like the actors. I wish the show huge success and visits from all the rogues gallery they can wrangle, and that we quickly get an answer about what links Jon Cryer’s recurring role in Supergirl with this dude in the Mechwarrior suit. Time travel? Infinite Earths? Something weirder? I look forward to seeing more in a few months.
Fire Breathing Dimetrodon Time 