So Lois & Clark. It would be hard to make the case that Lois & Clark is a good show–it’s got too many glaring flaws for that–but could we say it’s charming? By charming, I mean it’s got some elements that work, but also that its limitations and failures also somehow make it endearing without actually making it good. Basically what I’m saying is that Lois & Clark tried to do something that hadn’t really been done before (or since) and didn’t manage to pull it off. But the question is: does its ambition and intent help elevate it, along with what does work, to an enjoyable (if bumpy) watch in 2021?

Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman came into the world in the fall of 1993. It was hardly the first attempt to build a primetime TV show around a superhero, but it was also in a world far different from our modern comic-infused one. Its closest comic-adaption-cousins were the single season Flash show from 1990 and the syndicated Superboy that ran from 1988 to 92. But while The Flash tried to capture the gothic Burton-vibe of Batman 89 along with its legions of fans, and Superboy aimed more for children, shut-ins, and people who couldn’t figure out how to work the dials on their televisions, Lois & Clark decided to try and grab an audience that was historically underserved by comics: women. Lois & Clark was, first and foremost, a romantic comedy that foregrounded the will-they-or-won’t-they relationship between Lois Lane and Clark Kent and the lives of their workplace colleagues over spectacle, cackling villains, and punch-em-ups. It inverted the classic Superman structure, turning the B story into the A story and vice versa. It remade Clark into a charming 90’s cool-guy far removed from the geeky bumbling square who was already twenty years behind the times fifteen years earlier in 1978’s Superman: The Movie and cast Lex Luthor as a sleek, dangerous corporate raider who was also a credible romantic rival for Lois’s affections. Even Jimmy Olsen is sexed up; in Lois & Clark he has a little Jason Todd in him–he can boost cars and knows his way around the back alleys of Metropolis. Cat Grant is a man-eater who dresses like Sue Ellen Mischke. We’re lucky we weren’t subjected to Sexy Perry White.

In modern day Dean Cain’s weakness is vaccinations.

If Lois & Clark had a direct model, it was 80s hit Moonlighting, which ran from 1985 to 1989. Best known now as the launching pad for Bruce Willis, Moonlighting was devised as a vehicle for Cybil Shepard and was a legitimate sensation for a couple of years before spinning out of control and completely falling apart. Moonlighting was a whip smart show that melded glossy 80s action mysteries with 30s and 40s screwball comedies. The scripts were so dialogue heavy that they were often literally twice as long as an average script, and the production used old fashioned cameras and techniques to give the show a more period feel. It also acknowledged that it was a television show by periodically breaking the fourth wall and addressing the audience about the script and story beats and even at one point ended an episode with the camera following the characters as they walked off the set and went to their cars to drive home. Add to that Bruce Willis emerging as a legitimate generational superstar and you have a once in a lifetime hit. But it didn’t last. The ridiculously dense scripts and rickety filming equipment made for extremely difficult productions and long gaps between installments (no season topped 18 episodes); Shepard and Willis had a notoriously difficult relationship; and, most importantly, the show fizzled once the will-they-or-won’t-they tension was resolved. It was a television high point and cautionary lesson all rolled up in one.

Lois & Clark was no Moonlighting, but it had similar ambition and arc. Both were high concept dramedies that attempted to fuse two disparate genres around a romantic comedy in a workplace setting and lived and died on the question of just when the sexual tension between the two leads would resolve.  They even aired on the same network and ran the same number of seasons. But where Moonlighting soared, Lois & Clark only managed to hover, done in by wobbly writing, budget constraints and good-not-great leads. It’s not fair to compare Teri Hatcher and Dean Cain to Cybil Shepard and Bruce Willis, but there’s really no other choice. Wild ambition needs wild talent to support it, and while the solid chemistry of the two leads kept the show going for a while, it just wasn’t enough. That’s why Moonlighting is a touchstone of 80s television and Lois & Clark is a footnote, a weird misfire that introduced the world to Teri Hatcher, Dean Cain and inadvertently led to the Death of Superman story in the comics when editorial had to whip up an elaborate stall in the Lois and Clark relationship so their wedding would coincide with the wedding on the show.

And that brings us back to our original question: what’s it like to watch Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman in 2021? How does its giant ambition and clumsy execution look twenty-five years removed from its inception and context? How does its rather unique attempt to build a romantic comedy for girls out of what’s traditionally been presented as an action fantasy for boys work in world that consistently shits out formulaic superhero soap-opera television shows by the dozen (including of course, Superman & Lois, boring audiences on the CW at this very moment)? Is it still possible to enjoy Dean Cain as Clark/Superman even a little now that he’s outed himself as a right-wing thumbhead?

Let’s find out.

I’m Chris Ludovici, and when Lois & Clark premiered I was fourteen years old and into comics in the way that only fourteen year olds in the mid 90s could be. I had multiple copies of Superman #75 along with copies of the first appearances of Cable, Deadpool and Venom. I was the worst. I watched the first two seasons of Lois & Clark and really dug them both before losing interest. I re-watched the first season when it came out on DVD around 2005 and was… less impressed. Joining me will be Law & Order expert, Criminal Minds podcaster and all-around Rhymes with Nerdy iron man Ronnie Gardocki, who was considerably younger when the show premiered and therefore has far less patience and nostalgia for the era. Outside of seeing the pilot once under less-than-ideal circumstances, he’ll be experiencing all this for the first time. We hope you’ll join us on an odyssey that promises to be long winded, filled with silly digressions and niche references, and will probably be, at best, only intermittently entertaining.

I’m excited!

RONNIE: Unlike Chris, I grew up on a different flawed but charming-ish Superman TV show, Smallville. I can’t say I enjoy The ‘Ville (that’s what us cool kids call it) unilaterally, but I do enjoy it ironically. Anyway, my experience with L&C besides a vague awareness that it existed (commercials, adverts, the like) was watching the first two episodes during college when I was pretty drunk. The show didn’t keep my inebriated attention so I quit it and moved onto something else, like that Jimmy Smits rogue Supreme Court justice show or whatever. Since then I’ve not watched a minute despite buying all the DVDs secondhand. (What can I say, I make a lot of poor financial decisions.) Watching it now, in the year of our lord 2021, I can see why I stopped that first time.

I’m going to first start with the positives. I think casting is more or less stellar across the board. Yes, that even means Dean Cain. Loathe him all you want, it’s foolhardy to judge his past performance by his current abhorrent, stupid beliefs and actions. Teri Hatcher embodies the headstrong brassiness a Lois Lane needs while also sporting a vulnerability that fleshes out the character, and John Shea does a passable job as a smarmy businessman version of Lex Luthor. The supporting cast, such as Lane Smith as Perry White and Eddie Jones and K. Callahan as Clark’s parents provide comic relief and grounding, respectively. Sure, you’d probably be able to cast it better, but you could also do it worse.

This is bald erasure and I won’t stand for it.

The double sized pilot covers a lot of ground, starting with Clark Kent’s arrival in Metropolis and ending with the creation of Superman and the public debut of Superman. In the interim we meet the cast: Daily Planet chief Perry White; annoying asswipe Jimmy Olsen; Clark’s parents; the evil but well coiffed Lex Luthor; and of course Lois Lane as played by Teri Hatcher. I think Lois & Clark is interesting because it takes substantial inspiration from John Byrne’s post-Crisis Superman revamp. To summarize for anyone who isn’t a massive nerd: John Byrne rewrote Superman’s origin and status quo so that, among other things, Superman’s parents were alive, Lex was a corrupt businessman as opposed to a mad scientist and, most importantly, Superman was an extension of Clark Kent and not the other way around. The purpose of a pilot is to serve as a proof of concept for the show. Basically it shows you what to expect on a week to week basis. I think “Pilot” does a good enough job at that. There’s scenes of Superman stopping threats and rescuing people, there’s several Daily Planet scenes, and both Lois and Clark receive home lives with supporting cast members unique to those. The 90s was highly concerned with space shuttle malfunctions, for obvious reasons, and so that’s what this episode is about.

The biggest problem with the show is that it doesn’t know how much of a romantic-comedy it wants to be as opposed to a straightforward action/adventure show like the George Reeves Adventures of Superman. Several characters exist for the sole purpose of either ratcheting up sexual tension or romantic tension. Cat Grant, played by Terry Scoggins, literally throws herself on Clark and instead of coming off as a temptress who rivals Lois she seems more desperate than anything. Lois Lane lives with her sister who suffers from an advanced case of RomCom Buddy Disease, which means her one goal in life is to get her buddy (Lois) laid. Lois tries to interview Lex Luthor but it turns out to be a date. Making the Superman/Lex enmity also based on the affections of a woman seems like a terrible idea to me, especially because there’s no realistic chance of Lois actually ending up with Lex for a prolonged period of time. If this show is to work, it will have to balance out the romance and the action, because mixed together the two can create something pretty fuckin’ dumb.

CHRIS: Yeah, I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised this time around. “Pilot” wasn’t great, but it wasn’t bad either. It moved well and had a pleasant energy about it. Some of the characters absolutely feel extraneous or forced, but even then (or with Cat anyway, I don’t think we see Lois’s sister again) it’s in the service of an idea that feels like it could go somewhere. Pilot episodes are notorious for being clunky exposition machines that have each character sort of step into the spotlight, say who they are and what makes them interesting, and step back for the next character.  In Lois & Clark most of the characters already feel comfortable and lived in in ways that other pilots don’t often manage. Like, you get the feeling that Lois and Jimmy were already a pretty good team before Clark showed up, and Martha and Jonathan seem like they’ve lived with each other for fifty years.

But what really struck me this time around was how off-brand the show felt. There’s a checklist quality to even the best comic adaptations these days, you can feel the filmmakers laboring to hit all the required marks of the genre. Insert Reference A to comic here, follow-up with Nostalgic Shout Out to Previous Adaptation B with High Profile Cameo C there. Make sure to feature a tasteful number of minorities and women so it feels progressive (for extra credit, gender or race swap a beloved supporting character and wait for the tweets to do your advertising for you). Tack on some message about inclusivity or whatever and make sure there’s a few street signs or buildings that name check prominent writers and artists so the fucking nerds in the audience can elbow each other and liberally sprinkle ironic quips throughout and the whole thing practically writes itself. Lois & Clark doesn’t care about any of that; it’s playing by an entirely different set of genre rules. You’re right that it’s a show that hasn’t yet found the balance of romantic comedy to action, but the simple fact that it’s not a slave to Comic Adaptation Machine feels positively anarchic.

Yep, that’s how you react to Cat Grant.

Little things, like Lois laying in bed and watching a soap opera after work and Clark pacing around his shitty little apartment and floating up to the ceiling and fixing a flickering lightbulb are humanizing in a way that really works. Other things, like the insipid human interest piece Clark writes to get a job at the Planet that feels like an unironic Bart’s People and the bizarre scene where Lex stares down a venomous cobra in front of his fireplace are less successful. Ultimately the episode is at its best when it focuses on the two leads. Cain especially does a great job capturing just how enamored Clark is by Lois without tipping over into weird or creepy. There’s a great little moment where they’re all at a big gala where Clark unconsciously floats a foot off the ground, just so he can get a better view of her across a crowded room. The show was adapted for television and written by Deborah Joy Levine and she shows a natural feel for writing about two people who are very different but could believably grow to care about each other.

RONNIE: There’s a pretty clanging gay joke that I think bears mentioning. Perry almost catches Clark about to Superman out of a storage closet and what follows is a long, awkward scene of the two interacting, all in service of Perry ultimately asking Clark when he plans on coming out of the closet. See, cause Clark’s in a closet, haw haw. There’s also a mention of a royal family sex change story that will remind the more astute social justice libtard contemporary viewers that it was, indeed, a different time.

While I’m on the subject of Shit That Bothered Me, Clark levitating struck me as odd. It looks weird. You don’t think of Superman as a levitator. Contrastingly, the rest of the special effects look fine for the time. Of course, my main point of comparison is the syndicated Malibu Comics adaptation Night Man, but still. One more thing–the “Holding Out For A Hero” montage of Clark trying out all manner of costumes? Not a fan. Just as Lois & Clark needs to calibrate its action to romance, so too does it need to integrate its comedic moments more successfully.

Again, better than Night Man.

Your point about how spartan the comic book references, such as they are, is dead on. Dare I say I’m nostalgic for it? Like, in the good old days we’d get a Toyman reference once a season and we’d like it. J. Jonah Jameson saying the Dr. Strange name was “taken” in Spider-Man 2 was a huge fucking deal. Nerds like me pored over those X2 Weapon X database listings, excited to find a “Remy LeBeau” or “the Maximoff Twins” in there. Nowadays not only are C-listers like Shang-Chi headlining their own films, the Arrowverse shows are practically fan service first, hot people second, narrative sixth or seventh. The scarcity of references made them pop more, I’m trying to say.

If I’m to give credit to Lois & Clark, then I appreciate how the show lived up to the title. It’d be very easy for Superman to overwhelm proceedings, what with him being Superman. But they take care to introduce Lois and Clark first, give them personalities and hopes and dreams, and then bring out the Man of Steel. Clark Kent is so often an afterthought, or believed as a facade for Superman to fool women with, that I appreciated Lois & Clark making him an actual person who became Superman instead of the other way around. Again, I see the John Byrne influence here, with characters’ interplay owing to the Richard Donner movies. As someone who spends way too much time thinking about this shit, I like to figure out what choices the creatives made when bringing the character to network television.

CHRIS: That gay joke is totally weird and I admit I spent more time than I should have trying to unpack it. Like, what is the joke exactly? In a standard gay joke, the hetero character is caught in a compromising position that suggests that he might, in fact, be a homosexual and everyone gets real nervous. The humor comes from the misunderstanding and the discomfort that misunderstanding causes, right? Ha ha, he’s acting like a gay but he’s not a gay. But there’s nothing explicitly gay about literally hanging out by yourself in a closet. It’s not like Jimmy was in there and he’d gotten his tie stuck in the copier and so he was bent over and Clark was standing behind him with his hands on Jimmy’s hips, trying to yank him loose and then Perry was like “GREAT SHADES OF ELVIS, WHAT GOES ON HERE?” He’s just a dude standing in a small dimly lit room. The metaphor is clear, but what exactly does Perry think is happening at that moment, and what does Clark think Perry thinks?

But I digress.

I would say that ultimately, the biggest red flag about “Pilot” is the exact thing that makes it distinct and interesting, the foregrounding you mentioned of Clark over Superman as the central character. Because, while it’s an interesting and valid angle to take in a story, it also underlines how hard it is to buy that a smart woman like Lois (or anyone really) wouldn’t immediately recognize that he and Superman were the same person. Putting aside the fact that Superman is a Depression Era creation that existed in a world where cameras weren’t everywhere, there’s a poetic logic to the idea that Clark is a bumbling stiff that no one would connect to a dynamic man-of-action like Superman. Clark makes himself boring precisely so no one looks twice at him and he can do what needs to be done. All Star Superman did a great job of physicalizing that by having Clark slumped over and rumpled and messy as opposed to Superman’s more stomach in, chest out, design. In that book you believe people could be fooled. Reeve of course was also amazing at really looking different depending on which identity he was playing, Clark always scrunched his shoulders and had his hands close to his chest, Superman’s shoulders were always back and his hands were on his hips. And of course the hair, Clark’s hair is greasy and slicked back like fucking Alfalfa from The Little Rascals, and Superman’s had more body as well as that glorious spit curl.

“You’ll have to speak up, I’m wearing a towel.”

Lois & Clark‘s Superman doesn’t even change his hair! The Clark in the show has to be handsome and charming in order for him to be a credible love interest for Lois (and because it’s not like they had the budget or tech to have a lot of Superman action on a weekly basis in 1993); but it also kind of torches the useful distinctions between the two personas and salts the Earth so nothing can ever grow there again. 1993 Clark Kent smiles and flirts and walks around in front of Lois in just a towel and isn’t afraid to bust into a warehouse and throw hands if necessary. Really the only difference between him and Superman is the glasses. While we’re on the subject, why exactly does he have the glasses there at the beginning of the episode? All the other Superman origins specifically say that Clark adopts the glasses specifically so he can look a little different from his alter-ego, but in this show Clark comes to Metropolis with no plans to establish any kind of secret identity then what’s the specs? Is he just a poser?

All that said, I’m more optimistic moving forward than I would have predicted. Just taken as a standalone Superman movie, it would be a middle of the pack entry for me, behind the first two Reeve movies and ahead of the Snyder films and Quest for Peace. I’d put it in with the lumpy, fascinating, intermittently entertaining but now unwatchable Superman Returns and half-assed Superman III. Television is the most character driven of the popular mediums, you have to want to return to the people for it to really work and “Pilot” manages to present a bunch of well realized characters that I enjoyed spending time with and wouldn’t mind seeing again. Again, if memory serves, I’m gonna be disappointed, but there’s only one way to find out.

That’s one way to get your picture in the paper.

RONNIE: You make a good point about the lack of distinction between Clark and Superman and I’m curious how that’s going to play out for the rest of the series. The writing will have to acknowledge it at some point, either making the similarities a plot point or consciously distancing the two personas from each other. I also want to see where Lex Luthor is going, because I know John Shea leaves the show after the first season and Lex makes infrequent appearances after that. Looking on Wikipedia to the list of guest stars suggest a number of interesting choices, from Sherman Helmsley as Toyman to Bruce Campbell as Morgan Edge. I don’t know if Lois & Clark will actually be good, but I think I’ll have a fun time watching it. If nothing else it’ll provide a window into how bad things were for comic book fans in 1993. Those suckers–and by they I guess I mean you, Chris–only had, what, this and Batman: The Animated Series?

Next time we’ll be covering two episodes, “Strange Visitor” and “Neverending Battle”, both of which interrogate Superman’s alien heritage more thoroughly than is addressed in the “Pilot”. Here’s a factoid I have no place for but wanted to include anyway: Lois & Clark would regularly lose out in the ratings to SeaQuest DSV yet would do better than FOX’s Martin. Remember that for bar trivia, folks, that SeaQuest DSV drew more eyeballs than fucking Superman.