Superman on Television
Superman & Lois: Episode Reviews
Season 1 - Episode 3: "The Perks of Not Being a Wallflower"
Reviewed by: Neal Bailey
Premiered: March 9, 2021Written by: Brent Fletcher
Directed by: Gregory Smith
This episode seemed like it was designed to give parents a heart attack, at first, but then, over the course of the episode, it evolved into a subtle master class on what works and what doesn't work in terms of improving relationships with you kids, particularly ornery teenagers.
It never comes out and says it, but it shows it, in everything it does.
We see two contrasting visions of parenting, and the end results. Clark and Lois with the two boys, and Lana and (Kyle) with Sarah and her sister. I put the Kyle in parenthesis because, as is plain from the consequences this show highlights, he's not really parenting, and leaving it all on Lana, who is also, frankly, botching things more than a little bit.
At the same time, she's trying, which garners her sympathy, unlike Kyle, who you really just want to punch in the face more and more as time goes by. His motivations are still sensible, but as a person, you want to do what Clark did to the powered guy in the hotel room.
This is the first episode with any somewhat questionable story decisions, at least at first, but the good thing is, the story seems to acknowledge it, whipping back to making sense, and with sufficient speed that it doesn't pull you out of the story. We're still in solid television territory, something far too good for what it is in almost every respect.
It's such that I don't need the typical long prelude, which believe you me, is a relief. It's good to be short of complaints. So let's get to the blow-by-blow, after a wee bit of business. If you want to skip the business and go straight to the blow-by-blow, you should. If you take issue with my work, you might want to read the
BUSINESS
I have solved a problem that has vexed me for the better part of twenty years. And it's stupid simple, the solution, but nonetheless, it never occurred to me.
When I started writing reviews, lo these many years ago, I did everything I could to try and ease the pain of people who disagreed with me. I acknowledged their beefs in the reviews themselves. I put in a letter column to respond to them. I wrote them personally when they wrote me and tried to explain what I was trying to do. It never really sank in, and it was a bunch of wasted effort, predicated on the fact that I, naïve as I was, believed that people who want to tear apart what you're doing without doing much themselves act in good faith. I was a prime target for a sealion, the person who uses the illusion of civility to string you along and take your time.
Steve's been right there along with me, taking blows on the chin from people who want me fired or hate me or want me to shut up or whatever. He takes a lot of flak from people who think that somehow they know what's best for him or this site.
You don't want to respond to those people too much, but you can't ignore them, either, so what do you do? Well, I figured it out.
Whenever someone wants to tell me what I should do with my own words, or what Steve should do with his own site as it pertains to me and my work here, I'll simply post a link to the NEAL BAILEY REVIEW FAQ.
And that's that. On with the show!
BLOW BY BLOW
The show opens with a nice family moment, with the Kent Lane types painting each other as they try to decide what color to make the den or whatever. This isn't too incredibly compelling, but it becomes so when in an instant, Clark stops, time slows, and the noise of chaos, through his point of view, comes in. It's a chilling moment, and one of the better depictions of this sense I've seen, and it gave me chills.
It's a great little bit, and I like how the focus isn't on what happens (it doesn't matters so much, honestly), but what it means to Clark. Character.
It opens a can of worms, in that we now have established he can hear anything across the world if he's focusing on it (trust me, that'll come back later as an issue, I'm almost positive), but it creates a neat opportunity to show how Superman can be anywhere, and fast.
I also love the little bit where Lois continues painting, when Clark jets. It's very… her.
The effects in this rescue scene were rather clunky and subpar. And you know what? I don't care. It didn't pull me out of the story, because I'm not focusing on the bridge. I'm thinking about what it's like, the burden of that hearing. Also, the moment I started going "Hey, that's clunky." I went "Oh," instead, having that nice moment where Clark and the man in the boat share a moment over the paint on his hand. It's a human Superman, and he's grounded, even when holding up a million tons of bridge. Great little moment.
It proves a little bit of a theory I've harped on before, that effects don't really matter, as long as you're invested in the characters and what's going on. It's why Star Trek, the original series, is just as good for me with the old effects as the new. I don't give a crap what that vomit monster is made of. I care about the story being told, and how it's being told, and why.
The boys and Lois have a talk about keeping the secret, and what it means, and it's groundwork, prelude for what Jordan does this episode. I thought they would be repeating the Smallville beat from when Clark wanted to play football, and Jonathan didn't want him to, and there's a good bit of that in there, but they didn't turn it into a stomping irrational huff fest. It was always a dialogue between two adults and two near-adults, and consequently, all of the subsequent conflict played well, and rationally, and compellingly.
I have no doubt it's then intentional that they cut straight to the family in distress, the Cushings. Lana and Kyle, fretting over their daughter. Lana desperate to know why Sarah was suicidal, having still not found out (HINT: It's because you're desperate to know and not creating an environment where she can talk to you—but more on that later). Meanwhile, Kyle treats his daughter's mental health like it's an inconvenience on the way to the fantasy football draft party he's having with himself in his own head, where different versions of himself tell him how awesome he is all the time.
I picture Wile E. Coyote standing next to him with a sign that reads YOU ARE THE SOURCE OF YOUR DAUGHTER'S LACK OF FULFILLMENT AND GENERAL EXISTENTIAL MALAISE… YIPE!
Twice this episode, we had Jonathan mocking Jordan again, but it's lightened up a bit. It's starting to get repetitive, but it's also, I'm realizing, just part of his ongoing character. It's not bad writing, it's an annoying character trait, and I can see the difference. Still, it's frustrating. Teenagers are.
There are two responses you can have to a frustrating teenager. One, you can fight them. You lose, they lose. Two, you can ignore them. The Kyle method. You lose, they lose. Three, you can listen, be the adult, live by example, and be patient as you can. Then, if you can't, stay the adult, and punish reasonably. Remember that for later.
The next scene is a challenging one, and a lot of fun, honestly. Clark is doing the Dad thing, and he doesn't realize he's doing the creepy boyfriend thing. I'll have to unpack that a little.
I have a lad. He's a good boy. He thinks he's a lot slicker than he is. All young people do. I catch him in mischief. I see him when he's imagining. I comfort him when he's sad. I walk with him and talk about life.
There is nothing that brings me more joy than to vicariously watch him living life, enjoying it, learning. It's the greatest honor I've ever been party to.
I'll catch myself at the window pulling a Clark in this episode, watching him imagine. I wait for him at school (or waited, pre-Covid, I suppose), and heard him talking to his friends without realizing it.
This is being a Dad, and this is perfectly healthy and loving.
When he turns sixteen, it's an adult prying into the private business of an adult, more or less.
When he's fourteen, it'll be borderline.
When he's twelve, I'll have to start saying goodbye to that joy. But sometimes, once in a while, I'll open his door when he's talking to someone and I'll listen. I know I'm going to do it, because I'm sentimental, and he'll hate it, and I'll be mad at myself, but these are the joys and sadnesses of parenthood.
So my heart just ached to see Clark listening in, seeing where it was going. He was wrong. And of course, he later admits it. But I would have done it too. And I would have been wrong. If I could hear my boy when he's bullied, and I know it must happen, it happens to us all, and swoop in, it's hard to say what I'd do.
But it's Clark. And Clark is Clark. So he doesn't intercede. He wants to. You see it. But then he waits. And waits. And waits. Until it threatens the secret, until it's life and death, he lets Jordan handle his business. Then he must become a parent, though it ends badly for him.
Arguably, he should have trusted Jordan. But it's such a judgment call, it's just great conflict.
Clark and Jordan then quarrel, later, and it makes sense. Jordan is petulant, and says things he doesn't mean—we've seen this before. They love those moments for the previews, but they're hardly representative of his character as a whole. He storms off, but Clark quickly kens that he doesn't mean it, of course he doesn't, and anyone who knows or has parented a teen knows that they say a lot of stuff that's pretty terrible and extreme that they don't really mean. It's like a troll on the internet who knows every time you've made a mistake—and they'll remind you. But it's typically without malice. It's a child learning how to fight like an adult, twenty years from the logical and respectful conflict resolution Lois and Clark have arrived at, with time and maturity.
It's very real, and I admire the writing trusting us to see it instead of believing we'll just write either boy off.
Lois talks with him about what happened when she caught him, and how mad she was. Young adults—young men, in particular, can be obsessive about the person they're dating, and it's clear Clark learned that lesson. But it's not what it would have been in Smallville, it's mentioned offhand, as a lesson learned, not a hammer to drive home what a BAD DAD Clark is being!
And sure enough, it's followed by something you almost never see in a show. Clark apologizes. He accepts a failure as a parent, which many parents are disinclined to do (to put it politely) even when they're completely wrong, and thus begins the process of teaching the boys instead of dictating to them, and it's clear that both learn the lesson, given the outcomes at the end of the show.
The kids also accept the apology with maturity, something only kids taught by maturity can do. They are just good kids, all around, even with their failures.
Contrast that with Lana and Sarah. They shift gears rather quickly with Sarah here, in what I initially thought was just knocking chess pieces out of the way for the Jordan Sarah relationship, but it's clear that first impression is wrong. In the space of a scene, Sarah quits the cheer team, breaks up with her boyfriend, and has an emotional crisis. Out of context, this is a bit much. In context, when we learn (soon after) that her home life is a wreck, with Dad on the couch, and a mother who is more than half helicopter, it all makes sense.
I regret that I was primed by Smallville to expect the worst in that regard, because it takes me out of even this show, ten years later.
At any rate, the moment Lana shows up in that diner, we start to realize what Sarah is laboring under. Why she's making drastic changes, and why she can't control her temper or her behavior. Her mother is the cheerleading coach, and frankly pressuring her for something it's very clear she doesn't want to do.
I imagine, though we don't know, that Sarah has likely been doing cheerleading for years without wanting to, because Mom is living her failed life through her daughter. Or at least, what Lana lacks the emotional maturity to realize isn't a failed life, just not the life she wanted. And like a person who has trouble acknowledging a reality that differs from her own, she has no idea what to do when her daughter isn't in line with the narrative of small town life. Sarah clearly wants none of this place, and it's obvious to anyone with eyes, but her mother is absolutely blind to it, because she's made herself blind to it to survive, rather than change anything. The worst kind of denial—the denial you inflict not only on yourself, but your kids. "I can't change this, so neither can they."
Which is not to say she's half as bad as Kyle. At least she's trying. I have sympathy for Lana here. Kyle I just want to take out into the back alley and give a few pumps in the gut, maybe step on him as I walk away. It's all he wants from an employer, it should be good enough for communication. I'll just drop seven and a half bucks on him as I walk away, that's good enough for his ilk in Bezos' name.
Jordan trying out for the team as a lie of omission presses a lot of good buttons. At first you want to holler at the kid, then you realize that someone going off to do something they believe in without telling the rest of the family is exactly what Clark did for so many years.
And then you go, but it's different! He's there for glory!
But no. He's there to take care of the Pinball guy. To clarify, I mean that (and there was robust debate about this with Julian in the Ampersand & Sons podcast we're doing) when Clark, in the end of Superman II, takes the dude and throws him all the way across the bar and into the pinball machine, I don't see that as assault, I see that as a proportionate response to the man who beat the bejesus out of him, and one that, even better, teaches a lesson and assures that man won't pick on smaller people any more.
Yes, it's physical violence, but physical violence to minimize harm is kind of the Superman shtick.
So when, having squared off with the guy who beat him for kissing Sarah, he doesn't throw him half the length of the football field, he just gives him a good knock and then holds out a hand and apologized, teaching the kid that he can go toe to toe—but has chosen not to, to be the bigger man—it shows a person emotionally maturing, and someone a lot like Clark even when it seemed at first he was behaving impetuously.
And then to see that turn, quickly, into Clark being rationally upset at him for the lie, not knowing about the noble deed that sprang from it? That just ticks every good conflict box for me. It's full of "What wouldn't happen next?" with a healthy dose of "But what should happen next the audience wouldn't expect?" and makes for a great show all around.
Jonathan also acquits himself well, given where I thought he was going. He's unfairly punished by the coach, so I expected an attempt at revenge. He sees Jordan taking his glory, and I wrote a note about how Jonathan is used to being envied, and now he's had his thunder taken, how will he react?
Well, he concedes that Jordan playing football is good for him, because his brother's mental health is more important than his ego. Incredibly surprising, and honestly, it tells me that Jonathan's habit of calling names is as much being a teenager as Jordan's petulance when angry, but both have good hearts at their core. It's great character work.
Initially I thought he was manipulating Clark, trying to get him to think that because Jordan really liked and wanted it, it was unhealthy. Then I realized that, too, is a Smallville trick.
There is an ethical issue. Jordan playing is inherently unfair. But this is high school football, not the NFL, and it's a long line between an advantage that puts someone on an even playing field with larger kids and wanton cheating. Random genetics that make you larger are also inherently unfair, arguably, and being born Kryptonian is like being born larger—until you use your powers beyond "mortal" ability, which Jordan hasn't yet. I'll watch it, but I have a feeling that if Jordan could score a touchdown by using his powers, or instead had to let it pass and not, he would choose the latter. This episode works hard to establish that. It's complicated, but you can tell it's being thought about.
We did have our first example of something that would have gone in the Smallville Knockout Count. An entry for GEICO MUST HATE THIS SHOW! The Kent station wagon is torched. Since this is the first thing in three episodes, I'll just file it away in my brain for now. And plus, the story made it make sense.
This is also where the wheels started going off the cart a bit, only to be fixed later. If they hadn't fixed it, it would have knocked down the show's rating a full point, that's how glaring it was.
Lois Lane, reporter for a big paper, goes to Beppo and wants resources. She does so while drawing wildly inaccurate and irrational conclusions that make shlocky comic book sense, but not grounded superhero story sense (which Superman & Lois is, inarguably).
I feared they were going to hand her the idiot ball and have her run with it. The idiot ball is a term I just learned, believe it or not, that shortens my normally long "irrational behavior for the sake of moving the plot forward" complaint that Smallville was so egregiously and constantly afoul of. Clark deciding someone must be killed, randomly. Lana and her obsession with secrets and lies suddenly being fine with lying herself. That brand of bad writing.
But instead, this is acknowledged in the end of the show, when she blatantly admits that she was wrong instead of standing pat, and where Beppo says that she doesn't quite get Metropolis goings-on. It builds their relationship, and starts both toward mutual understanding. It's conflict with a purpose, where it could have been arbitrary drama.
Clark giving Lois flowers to remind her that he's grown and remembers a mistake while making better times to come is a beautiful moment.
Lois taking time to backstop Clark and tell her what he likely already knows, that he has to find a reason behind the anger Jordan is experiencing, not react to the emotional statements, is also Grade A parenting. Really great to see this kind of thing in a show instead of real life. We don't get enough examples like this in any show, really, much less a Superman show, and it's showing a person who genuinely has the power to do anything but instead chooses to always try to do what's right, and acknowledge when he fails—and the person he admires most for a reason.
And the solution, Clark as coach, plays. He's not listening in, he's participating with his son. He's there when he needs him, but letting him make his own choices. Great parenting.
Clark never got to play. And yet he encourages Jordan. We live in a world where people don't want student loans forgiven because God forbid anyone doesn't suffer like they did. This is a strong counterexample, showing how important it is that we pass along to our kids, and the next generation, a better life. Not advantage—but a chance to fix the mistakes we make, even when we're Superman. That's rad.
Jon is punished right along with Jordan—for lying. But the punishment is even and proportionate. Go to your room so everyone can cool off. Not shouts. Consideration.
I'm telling you, I'm halfway to writing a book "How to Parent the Lois and Clark Way—an Unofficial Guide."
I wanted to light into the idea that it's just plain unreasonable to ask a person who can hear everything not to want to check up on their sons or wife—before I thought it out. But then I realized that even this critique, flawed though it is, is addressed. Superman doesn't have to listen for his sons or wife if they have signal devices. When they're in trouble, they can call him.
This is no good if the device is removed from their hands, of course, but Superman can't save everyone, and honestly, I'm sure he's still attuned for a particular scream from anyone he loves, come what may. It'd be impossible not to be.
Whitty Banter—subtle, not hammered. Nice reference.
The fight scene—pretty well executed. Probably the best one so far. Clark being smart, an unexpected twist from the baddie, and fighting in character. He starts light, seeing how strong the guy is, then when he realizes that he's strong enough to take full-force Superman, he pops open the can of spinach and freeze punches the guy until he sees birds and has Xes for eyes.
This has far more impact than him lifting a whole bridge for me. I hope they stick to this kind of conflict, and move away from super feats. I know it's Superman. But this is also a TV show. It's okay if he doesn't sneeze the moon in half. We get the limitations. We want investment in the stakes, and Lois in peril is that, random people we don't know on a bridge isn't. I cared about the guy on the boat, because I knew him, even briefly, more than that entire bus, full of people I never met.
In real life that's being a sociopath, and people who won't wear a mask dismiss people as numbers readily when they're real deaths. But here, in a story, they're not real. You care about the moment, not the whole.
Perhaps the two are related, sadly. But then, I try and give people regarding story more credit than that. Then again, I tragically overestimate Americans, which is why I'll be in Canada as of April. Good luck. I'll come back when you're all sane, if that ever happens.
And then we come to the most frustrating part of the show, though it's all in character, the scene between Lana and Sarah where Sarah can't see past herself to see what her daughter is going through, damning both to the problem continuing instead of resolving.
Sarah spends the whole episode telling her mother she's okay now, Lana spends the whole episode not listening or accepting because it doesn't fit what her definition of her own daughter is. "But she's a cheerleader! She's suicidal!"
People don't turn to tissue paper because they attempt suicide. In fact, you need to believe they can move away from that instead of pidgeonholing them to make sure they do, in my experience. I'm not a therapist, but I did spend a night at the Holiday Inn contemplating my own mortality a time or two, and I've known a lot of people who have expressed desire to shuffle the mortal coil. I'm one of them.
Listening is a far bigger part of the solution than fearing a bad day that happened once.
"We used to be so close!" Lana whines. "Now there's this distance."
It's like Lana has no ability to understand what a kid reaching maturity is. They don't want to put on makeup with you or watch the Teletubbies because they are becoming their own people now. Celebrate it. Guide it. Listen to what they need and find it. Don't get mad because they're not wanting to dress up like Po to entertain a bunch of jockwads.
"I need to know why you did it!"
But do you? I mean, really, do you? Is it not more important to be here for your daughter rather than edify your curiosity?
And I get it, maybe with a reason you can solve the problem. That makes sense. But that's not why she's doing it, clearly. Because her next line is:
"You saw yourself turning into me!" in response to Sarah's legit concerns about, you know, small town America and its dead-end paths. Lana makes it about her, not the kid's needs.
And then she continues to turn the manipulation, bringing back up the way Sarah said she was the most full of crap person in Smallville. Note the difference between when Jordan says something hurtful, genuinely wrong, and cruel, and Lois and Clark's reaction, and Lana's reaction to Sarah saying something off the cuff both know she didn't mean.
It's a stark contrast in why the boys are growing healthier by the day and Sarah struggles. It's not Sarah. It's the example she has. Until she escapes it, yeah, she is gonna have to be afraid to end up like Lana. And that's exactly how that kind of stuff happens.
Nonetheless, I still feel incredibly sympathy for Lana. This isn't a petulant teenager demanding fealty for being beautiful and expecting to be treated like a whip-kicking business store genius forgiven all her misconducts ever. This is a mother struggling to get by in a bad situation.
Kyle, though he says or does nothing wrong in that scene, and literally hardly appears, is more present in all of this misery than either combined.
It's such that I was sitting there, watching a person literally heat vision another person to death right in front of me in a boss way that I would normally cheer, and instead I was feeling sympathy and compassion and love… for Lana Lang on television. I am so thoroughly uninvested in that external mystery and so interested in what will happen to Lana.
Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Or risen, I suppose. This is one hell of a show.
Rating - 5 out of 5.NOW, AN IMPORTANT NOTE.
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Until next week!
Neal Bailey
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