Ronnie: It took us over a year but we’ve finally reached the point the show was setting up, arguably, its entire run: the wedding. A lot of times TV shows have the trouble of knowing how to mine conflict when its main set of male/female characters becomes a couple. Fortunately, Lois & Clark is not susceptible to this trend because it never knew how to do anything with anything. I’m into any change because something new is better than the status quo, which is a sexless stalemate between the two actors. At least when married they’ll be sharing the same living space/set, right? This episode came out the same day as Superman: The Wedding Album, a special one-shot comic that married the characters in the comics continuity. This may shock you, but The Wedding Album is superior by almost every metric. But we’ll get to that later. First, the episode “Swear To God, We’re Not Kidding This Time”. Doesn’t the title instill confidence?

The episode starts with Lois feigning amnesia, which Clark doesn’t find funny. Man, wouldn’t it be great if they went through all that bullshit only for her to lose her memory again? Then I think the show would fully be a self-parody. I mean, it’s close. “At least the Wedding Destroyer isn’t coming after us”, Lois muses. Cue a woman’s cackle and an explosion and indeed the Wedding Destroyer escapes. I’m of two minds about these antagonists that have an existing history; it does lend depth to the world, but it also feels cheap. Why don’t you fucking show us the Wedding Destroyer before establishing her? The Wedding Destroyer stinks. Just because something is camp doesn’t automatically make it good or successful. Delta Burke was on seven seasons of Designing Women, which means nothing to me for I am not 60 years old. She is married to Hearst from Deadwood so she did something right. I will go and fucking turn this article into the Delta Burke Trivia Hour if I so desire, readers.

The Wedding Destroyer’s clinical diagnosis ends on a cliffhanger.

Look, it’s fucking stupid and a chore to watch but finally they’re married, that’s the important part. The marriage is what matters. No one really talks about the preamble to when Peter Parker and MJ got hitched, they talk that it happened and how later Joe Quesada undid it because he had a mid-life crisis and stunting the development of a beloved Randian superman was simpler than buying a new car. The Wedding Destroyer teams with her therapist, the absurdly named Voyle Grumman who is played by the voice of Roger Rabbit, and a paparazzo named Leo Nunk who looks like if Barry Bostwick’s career took a wrong turn. None of it really matters. Does any of this matter? Well, no, but this really doesn’t matter. Yada yada yada, turns out Roger Rabbit has been keeping from Wedding Destroyer that her fiance was going to call off the wedding and I guess that destroys her motivation and makes her not want to tase Lois to death anymore.

Chris: Listen, “Swear To God, We’re Not Kidding This Time” is better than “Battlefield Earth” which in turn was better than “Lord of the Flys”, but that really speaks more to terrible the start of the season was than any kind of compliment to the wedding episode. There were two things I genuinely liked about it, and I’m going to say them first so as to get them out of the way. Then I’m going to complain about how cheap and lazy it was and finally I’m going to address the most bizarre element of the plot and my theory of what’s behind it. Hint: it’s stupid and baffling. And I’m also going to ditch our normal you write a couple of paragraphs, I write a couple of paragraphs and you go again and I go again and just do all my writing now, because I want to get all this down and never think about the episode again. So the two things I liked were Lois pretending to get amnesia again (fuck you, Clark. That was solid) and the fact that Lois and Clark foiled Delta Burke and not Superman. Lois & Clark is supposed to be a show about two people who make each other better; the fact that one of those people is an alien god is almost beside the point. For the two of them to resolve their dilemma with logic and, like, investigation, was satisfying.

Remember when Superman fought threats? Yeah, me neither.

Other than that though, what the fuck, Lois & Clark? Seriously, what the actual fuck? The one thing you knew was inevitable about your show is that the two characters would eventually get married. It was such a forgone conclusion that DC comics put off marrying the characters in the comics for three years so that it could line up with the wedding on the show. Short of the show being prematurely canceled there was simply no way it wasn’t happening. So why does it feel like you threw the whole thing together in a blind panic the weekend before the episode was set to air? 1996 wasn’t yet the era of this season is really one long movie style stories, but come on, how could you not seed some of this shit in previous episodes? You had Bronson Pinchot on more than once, H.G. Wells shows up three times, you couldn’t have devoted an episode in season three to introducing Delta Burke? That whole season was about a goddamn wedding anyway! How did nobody stop at some point during all that wheel spinning and say “maybe we should set something up that pays off when Lois and Clark get married. That way, it will feel more dramatic.”

But nobody did, or, I guess if someone did, they were pelted with spitballs made out of pages of Action Comics lying around until they ran out of the writers room in tears. And the “hey remember her” backstory dump is so perfunctory and lazy that I frankly wish she’d just been a new character that we learned about along with L&C. Its “And eventually, they were rescued by, oh… let’s say Moe” level indifferent about the antagonist of the episode they’ve been building to for three years! It’s unbelievable! And the wedding itself, holy shit. So L&C know that The Wedding Destroyer is out to put the kibosh on their union, and they want to use that knowledge to draw her out. But being uncomfortable with putting people in danger, they plan on getting married alone, so that no guests are at risk. But of course the Kents and Lanes and Perry and Jimmy all insist on being there. Hey, that means the production doesn’t have to pay for any extras or day players to fill pews or play, like, the officiant or guy who plays “Here Comes the Bride”, Perry and Jimmy can do that. We didn’t set up the fact that Perry is ordained or that Jimmy plays the pipe organ, but fuck it, who cares, right? It’s 1996 so we all have to rush home and put on our flannel shirts, go see Michael Jordan play basketball and then dance The Macarena till dawn.

JUST LET THE WEDDING HAPPEN ALREADY FOR GOD’S SAKE

But Ronnie, it gets weirder, because all through the episode Lois and Clark keep running into a genial, cherubic, middle aged weirdo who says his name is Mike and he’s known them all their lives. He doesn’t really do anything for most of the running time, he doesn’t give Lois and Clark any crucial information about The Wedding Destroyer or swoop in to end her reign of terror at the end. He just kind of hangs around in the background, occasionally making encouraging comments until the end of the episode when Clark flies Lois to a tropical island that looks like it was made out of construction paper and paper mache and put up in someone’s garage and he pops up again to officiate the wedding. Like Burke’s Wedding Destroyer, Mike is a character who apparently was important enough to put at the center of what’s essentially the climax of the entire show, and they don’t bother to set him or suggest him in any previous episode. And what makes it weirder is the fact that all the characters suddenly recognize Mike, because he’s been in all of their lives for the entirety of their lives. Spooky, right? Like Lost Highway’s Mystery Man, but with CTE (which is also pretty spooky, when you think about it.).

So Mike, he’s this mystery character who shows up without explanation and then presumably disappears as mysteriously as he arrived. We never learn anything about him other than his name, and that he’s a kind of guardian angel to all the characters. Ronnie? I’d bet real money that “Mike” (played by OG Bosley from Charlie’s Angels David Doyle) is Superman editor Mike Carlin. Yeah. Lois & Clark went and pulled an Animal Man by inserting one of the creatives into the fictional universe they created. But again, super, super stupid. Mind. Blown. You almost have to admire the chutzpah. This show is written for middle school dropouts, ships at sea that can only pick up one channel, and crated dogs left alone in the room with the TV on. They cloned a main character and did an amnesia plot within another amnesia plot (technically known as a amducken), and now they’re throwing in the most inside baseball meta-commentary possible and I guess just expecting their viewers to either get it or kick rocks. Look Ronnie, they’re not going to compromise their artistic integrity. And I’ll tell you something else, this is the show, and they’re not going to change it.

Fuck all the way off.

Ronnie: I’m sure you remember Dana Gould’s bit about going insane as a gradual process. In it he likened eroding sanity to possession of a football going down the field, and by the end of it you’re in the end zone when you’ve run out of Cocoa Puffs. “No cocoa puffs…guess I’m gonna start cutting people up!” I bring this up to put you in my shoes when I read your Mike theory and came to the conclusion you’re more likely correct than not. I’m also here to share with you an even more upsetting explanation for Fucking Bosley in this hour of garbage. See, Lois & Clark was pitted directly against… Touched by an Angel. The thinking is, some executive said “you know, maybe Lois & Clark could use an angel to try to draw in the audience of that show that’s creaming us in the ratings”.

No one asked for more magical realism! No one!

There is a silver lining to all this, if you can believe that, and it’s DC can finally marry off their Clark and Lois. Maybe it’s due to getting older but Superman seems like a character who ought to be married. He’s always going to be linked to Lois, and he has no other depthful alternate love interest (unless you’re a eugenics weirdo who wants him to have a godbaby with Wonder Woman), so why? The Wedding Album, which came out the week this episode did, offers a much less stupid version of nuptials. I mean, it’s not perfect–Clark has a fucking ponytail–but there’s a supporting cast, things happen, and the wedding goes off without complications. Overall a perfectly cromulent jam issue–that’s a comic that features contributions by a number of writers and artists. What’d you think, Chris?

Chris: I pretty much think what you thought Ronnie, a solid oversized issue that tells a milestone story in a way that’s large enough to feel epic and small enough to have it’s own beginning middle and end so randos can buy it and not be too lost or need to stick around afterwards.It would be unfair though, to compare a comic that doesn’t have to worry about budgeting for sets, performers, shooting time, post production and music to an episode of television that does. But I already pretty much did that, so I just want to bitch about one more thing . Ronnie, L&C just spent four consecutive episodes on a plotline that went nowhere. It didn’t change the static quo in any way or force the characters to reassess anything. You could, I think, watch the first twenty episodes of season three, and then skip right to “Swear to God” and not miss a beat. That’s insane. There’s no reason they couldn’t have cut one of the episodes in the idiot New Krypton plot and at least made the wedding a double length episode. If DC Comics (motto: Honesty, Who Fucking Cares?) can pull it together long enough to deliver, you should be able to too.

Odds & Ends

-Clark suggests “The Wedding Destroyer” be called “The Happiness Destroyer”. It doesn’t go over well.

Ronnie: Well, here we go again. With the wedding over and done with, what next is there? The fucking, of course. I didn’t expect a triple X rated consummation of the titular pair’s love, but I certainly also did not expect this, this whole confusing hour of television. Chris, can we officially declare the wheels have fallen off the enterprise? The plane has crashed into the mountain? Well, you know what, it’s half my article series so I’m calling it regardless of your stance. Shit is fucked. So Lois and Clark try to have sex, but something interrupts them. Or should I say someone? Well, yes, because that’s more accurate. Terry Kiser’s H.G. Wells knocks on the door, introduces himself and explains the two can’t fuck because of a centuries old curse. I know I’ve flirted with ending this article series before–especially so in these last few installments–but you can’t blame me, can you? A curse that prevents fucking? What, are we in the MCU now?

It somehow becomes dumber. Notice the “centuries old” modifier on “curse”; yes, that means there’s time travel involved. Also, H.G. Wells has a Game Boy that detects souls and big surprise, Lois and Clark have intertwined souls. What a fucking surprise. I was expecting Lois and Ching to have a love story that transcends time and space. The pair must stop the curse from being cast or else they can’t have sex. H.G. Wells suggests abstinence but we all know that never works. This is all really a preamble to do what I called Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain but cheap. Think Kevin Sorbo’s Hercules show was throwing too much money around on sets and costumes and shit? Well, “Soul Mates” has you covered. Clark becomes all sorts of public domain heroes over the course of this episode and it’s embarrassing. Speaking of embarrassing, so is Dean Cain trying to sound horny. Teri Hatcher can pull it off, obviously, but he can’t. He sounds like a robot ready to bluetooth pair with a washing machine.

Dean Cain is looking around for a way out of his contract.

Tempus is around because you’ve got to have a bad guy and hey, this actor’s in the casting director’s Rolodex already. Tempus is a pretty good villain by Lois & Clark standards but the bloom is clearly off the rose with him; he was much more entertaining in previous appearances. In the first sequence, Clark becomes Robin Hood ripoff the Fox and you get the sense the writers of the show are as tired of this shit as we are. The next sequence makes him into the Lone Ranger–sorry, the Lone Rider. Now I’ve never been one to believe the revisionism that Gore Verbinski’s movie was actually good, but it’s a far sight more interesting than whatever the hell this is. Anyway, it’s a protracted bullshit hour that ends with Lois and Clark finally able to have sex and they don’t even have the grace to show it to us. What a slap in the face to longterm fans and also us, whatever the hell we are.

Chris: Okay Lois & Clark, you want to do this? Like, really? Because I’ve been trying to avoid actually talking about L&C’s sex life for at least two seasons worth of articles. Why? Because I don’t want to talk about two cartoon characters fucking. But you keep pushing and pushing, and now here we are, an episode of television made for adults(?) where the state of the universe is determined by Clarks virtue. I just… why? Why is this a thing? Why would you write this plot? All it does is make me consider the definitions of the word “sex” and what constitutes it. Like, if they’re not supposed to “have sex”, what does that mean exactly? Can they do hand stuff? Oral? There’s a whole thing in Christianity where some people apparently believe you can get around the whole “no sex before marriage” thing by just doing anal, which is like being told you can’t hit someone so you run them over with your car. I don’t want to be thinking about Lois and Clark doing butt stuff, television show, but if you have a plot that revolves around a legally binding generation spanning magic curse, that’s where my mind is gonna go!

Needs more Ted Raimi.

Because think about the curse for a second, whatsisbucket makes the other guy cast it back in Robin Ho- er, Fox times and so wouldn’t the terms of the curse be related to what the sorcerer defines as sex? Or is there some universal, basic definition of the word that I’m not aware of? Because, yes, obviously we all agree on some of what constitutes sex, but not all of it. Just ask Bill Clinton. Maybe I wouldn’t be so stuck on all this if the episode had anything interesting in it that was worth thinking about, but God knows they’re not gonna do that. It’s just weird subtext and cheap sets all the way down. Was Tempus ever interested in Lois before? Like, sexually? All I remember about the two of them is him laughing at her for not recognizing Superman because he was wearing glasses, which, fair, but is in no way related to a centuries spanning romantic obsession. I don’t even understand if that was Tempus, because when Lois and Clark go back in time they inhabit the bodies of their ancestors (or whatever, because Clark obviously has no Earth descendants), but their minds are still their own. But the Tempus is just whoever he is in that time, right? He doesn’t understand what’s happening or why, he’s just an innocent despot, then a harmless gang leader, fighting back against forces he can’t possibly understand.

Eh, just kill him. Have Superman be hanged, have that be the end of it.

It doesn’t make any sense, not even the goofy comic-book, Fast & Furious, kid smooshing his toys together and making something up kind of sense. It’s just a hopeless mess that’s too stupid for any adult person to enjoy, mixed up with time paradoxes and dialogue about sex and rape (because that’s absolutely what Tempus would have done had his plans succeeded) that no kid would bother to follow or consider, all presented on a budget that seems to be shrinking by the episode. Seriously, that Robin Hood pastiche looked like a dollar store Jack of All Trades. And when you look like a Bruce Campbell syndicated show but cheaper, you have lost your way.

Ronnie: Remember in Office Space when Peter says every successive day is the worst day of his life? I’m starting to get the feeling that each successive episode of Lois & Clark is going to be the worst ever episode of Lois & Clark until we finish this godforsaken thing. There are no superlatives I can lay on the foot of this episode that come close to describing how terrible it is. There is no imagination, no ingenuity, no spark, no wit, no creativity. It’s children who commit play acting, but even then children have a depth to their imaginary adventures. The closest comparison I can make is when Krusty’s out in the desert, acting out the Stingy and Battery Show. Over the course of it Krusty loses interest in the premise within seconds, disrupting it with “you know what I’m talking about”. That’s the exact energy in “Soul Mates”. “Clark Kent is Robin Hood but not called Robin Hood now, Lois is Loisette…you know what I’m talking about.” “Clark, Lone Rider, etc. You get it.” While technically those racist episodes about the scourge of the Chinese man in Chinesetown may be worse than “Soul Mates”, I have never had as bad a time watching Lois & Clark as I did during this one.

In case you give a shit, and I don’t see why you would, “Soul Mates” marks the final appearance of Terry Kiser as H.G. Wells. The older H.G. Wells does make another appearance, Hamilton Camp, remember? He voiced GizmoDuck on DuckTales and Darkwing Duck. Man, wish we could be watching one of those instead. Anyway, I’m done venting my spleen about this piece of shit. Awful dreck, creative antifreeze, don’t watch, not even as a gag. You can almost hear the producers committing money laundering as the episode progresses.

He’s wearing the suit? Is this a Nite-Owl fetish thing? Daring for mid90s ABC…

Chris: Yeah, this is all troubling. I said in the last article that watching a show deteriorate is a strange, gradual process, but four episodes into the season and it feels like they’ve pretty much already given up.It seems almost impossible to think that the show could actually get worse than this, and that somehow they’ll find some kind of groove to ride to the end, but I’m not getting my hopes up. That said, the vibes of this episode can best be described as Five-Minutes-Before-the-Jonestown-Massacre, and the fact that everyone seems to have survived the season intact suggests that morale must have improved, and that if nothing else should lead to more lively episodes. But it’s hard not to feel like the next eighteen episodes are going to erode whatever remaining goodwill I have towards the series.

If guest stars are any indication of the quality to come, yikes. Don’t get me wrong lots of people love Howie Mandell, and Antonio Sabato… I mean, I’m sure he appreciated the paycheck. But other than that, Christopher Titus shows up in one, but I’m pretty sure it’s before he really became anyone. Does Jasmine Guy count as a celebrity guest? Ronnie, do you know who Jasmine Guy is? I want to be optimistic, I like being optimistic, but there’s just not a lot of indicators that there’s anything to be optimistic about other than the fact that there are far more episodes behind us than there are ahead. Maybe the best thing to do is to lie back, close our eyes, and think of England. But no matter what, the end of this crazy experiment you talked me into is getting closer and closer, and that’s not nothing.

Odds & Ends

-Bernie Lomax got more action than Lois and Clark and he was a GODDAMN CORPSE!
-Lois expresses discontent that Tempus cursed them. “If it was Lex Luthor I could understand…” Well, sorry, but Lex Luthor ain’t ever walking through that door. Not again.
-Writer of the episode, Brad Kern, was investigated and fired for sexual harassment and discrimination against women when he was showrunning NCIS: New Orleans. He also reneged on his deal to share the Charmed Book of Shadows with Holly Marie Combs. So yeah, he’s a big piece of shit, so it makes sense he’d pen the worst ever episode of television.