Chris: Holy shit, Ronnie, we did it! Wait, what did we do? I had this idea a couple of years ago, when we were all stuck inside because of the pandemic, that it would be interesting to revisit this old shitty superhero show to see how it played in an era saturated with superhero culture. Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman was a show infamous in comic book circles for how it tried to weld Superman (arguably the most epic and widescreen of all superheroes) to the format of a mid-budget network nighttime dramedy. It was an attempt to recreate the breezy, flirty thrill of Moonlighting with the best-known romantic relationship in comics. It didn’t go well. In hindsight, it would be hard to argue that a show that lasted for four years was the career launching pad for a significant television star (take one last bow, Justin Whalen) was a failure, but it would be even harder to argue that it was a success. At best it was an intermittently entertaining diversion that managed to break the surface of good frequently enough to make it frustrating that it couldn’t do it more consistently. It was, in a lot of ways, the worst kind of show: one just good enough to keep you watching because it might get better.

But then things changed. Superhero comics moved from a genre that was comfortably on the edge of the mainstream (“Hey, a new Batman movie? Cool! Some superhero that isn’t Batman? Fuck that and fuck you.”) to the undisputed center of the pop culture universe. People know who Ant-Man is. Nobody should have to know who Ant-Man is. Superhero shit was everywhere, and a numbing sameness had settled over much of it. The formula for how to make these things was obvious and grating, particularly on the CW where their Arrowverse churned out cookie cutter show after cookie cutter show that had a relatively small but super loyal fanbase. I don’t like any of those shows. I tried a couple and outside of the superlative second season of Arrow and Calista Flockhart on Supergirl, it all seemed uninspired and, frankly, community theaterish. But then that fucking pandemic hit and those of us lucky enough to be able to stay inside isolate from the rest of the world had all this time to fill. And none of us wanted to think about the world because it was basically on fire (thank god that’s over, right everybody?) and we all had streaming services and we all basically spent a year watching old TV. Again, those of us lucky enough to be able to stay inside and isolate.

So yeah, I had this idea. Superhero media had become so dull and routine that I wondered if the very elements that made L&C so mediocre back in the 90s would make it entertaining today. Would the stutterings and failures of this early genre exercise that were eliminated on the way to essentially perfecting and mass producing it give the show a depth and quality that the impersonal, assembly line IP content lacked? Basically, would what made it bad in the 90’s make it good in the 2020’s? This is the type of shit that occupies my mind in place of whatever skills are required to accomplish any kind of household chore more challenging than changing a light bulb, finding a good job, or showing up anywhere on time. But that’s what we did. We watched it all, and we wrote about it all. It took three years. We wrote thousands and thousands of words. And now we’re here and we can finally answer the question. Do the failures of Lois & Clark add a layer of charm and warmth to the show make it a better watch now then it was then? Is it good show? The answer, is no. No, it doesn’t, and no it isn’t. Lesson learned.

Ronnie: I don’t want to say that we wasted literal years of our lives watching and writing about this show, but we kind of did? I’m being hyperbolic of course, yet it’s difficult to discern what we learned from the endeavor, other than the Burn After Reading “not to do it again” sort of thing. I suppose the tack I’ll start out with is trying to place Lois & Clark in the overall Superman franchise trajectory. Lois & Clark is about as close a John Byrne Superman adaptation we’re going to get; Smallville, Superman & Lois, even Man of Steel to a degree have taken from his revamp but to lesser degrees. Lois & Clark has Clark as the “real” identity and Superman a persona he adopts. Lex Luthor is a corrupt businessman posing as a philanthropist. Ma and Pa Kent are very much alive and part of the supporting cast. In short, the show reflects the comics that came out concurrently, culminating in the comics and the show both marrying off the couple around the same time. That said, I think Lois & Clark has had a marginal at best influence on the character/franchise. It was a reflection of the times, and those times emphasized Superman as a man, not a Kryptonian trying to blend in as a man. Basically the opposite of what Bill says in Kill Bill Vol. 2.

The most noteworthy attribute to the series is its focus on romance. It should go without saying that most comic book writers abhor romance because they have no experience to draw from. Celebrated writer Jonathan Hickman, for example, has never even seen a woman before, much less kissed one. Comics also have an unlimited budget whereas Lois & Clark makes you think about the budget every time Dean Cain suits up. While the television writers did better at conveying a love story than the average comic book writer (remember Joe Quesada broke up Spider-Man and his wife because of a mid-life crisis), a lot of it coasts on Dean Cain and Teri Hatcher having decent chemistry. Their relationship over the course of the program is prone to fits and starts. The first three seasons are as sexy as the stock footage of the fat guy getting hit by the cannonball whereas the last season overcompensates by making the couple’s collective libido positively Duchovnyian. It’s especially weird looking back, that the show went from seemingly having no conception of sex to devoting screentime to a subplot about Lois’ sexual frustration at Clark’s Superman responsibilities preventing her from getting off.

As a corollary to the romance focus, Lois is a co-lead as opposed to a supporting character. Her name’s in the title, after all. That was a good choice and not only because Teri Hatcher is a better and more versatile performer than Dean “Bigfoot Skeptic” Cain. Lois is a fully fleshed out character with her own hopes and dreams and while she is regularly kidnapped and put in harm’s way, it’s almost always of her own volition and not just because she’s connected to Superman or Clark Kent. I think if this show has any lasting legacy it’s making Lois Lane more of a multi-dimensional character as opposed to a psychotic hellbent on marrying Superman, which is the enduring image of Lois Lane for several decades preceding Lois & Clark’s airing.

If pressed to ask what the show did well, I suppose I’d go with the character of Lois Lane. She would hold her own against Margot Kidder for sure. What about you, Chris?

Chris: Oh man, what does the show do well. What does the show do well? I guess I think the first season does a halfway decent job making Metropolis seem like a bustling place. There’s, what, two extra main characters in Lex and Cat and another two or three recurring with Lex’s various henchmen and that one contact of Lois’s who’s always eating? That’s something I think. And it managed to sustain over season two despite losing Lex and Cat by having more recurring characters like Tasha Yar, the Trent Reznor Cosplayer/Mad scientist trying to revive Lex from the dead, and Tony Baloney and Underused Woman From Wings as potential rivals for L&C’s affections. And while Intergang was never able to quite replace Lex as the primary villain, its tumultuous leadership and constant turn-over of leaders that were fun and played by fun performers kept the show feeling lively. And even the, oh let’s say racially questionable episode set in Chinatown offered variety and scope to the city.

I also think the show did a pretty good job keeping Lois and Clark’s relationship flowing in a (reasonably) consistent way. Like, their relationship at the beginning of season one is different from the end of season one, and there even seems like there’s growth between the end of season one and the beginning of two. Then the end of season two is different from the beginning and on and on. Like, if someone were to watch a random episode of the show with nothing but a vague understanding of the relationship arc they’d probably be able to figure out what season it was from pretty quickly. Which isn’t something every show like this can do. There are, of course, some all time bad stalls and obstacles thrown in their way, but you never get the feeling the show is doubling back on itself; once Lois and Clark are together, they’re together. No make up break up shit is thrown in to distract the writers that they have no idea what to do with the characters beyond high school level emotional drama. Each season has its own character and feel. And let me throw it back to you and ask what you think the best and worst seasons were, and why? Similarly, looking away from the two main characters for a second, and taking Lex and Cat off the board, what did you think of the way the show used the supporting cast?

Ronnie: Season 1 is the best season for me, because the show had more promise back then. We didn’t know it was going to be what it ended up being. John Shea as Lex, while he didn’t necessarily have a reason to be in a lot of episodes, was always entertaining. I’d give worst to 3, just because of the faux wedding cul-de-sac. The individual episodes may not have been the worst, but it killed the momentum of the series and it took a while into Season 4 for that momentum to be regained. But really, I think you could make convincing arguments for any season being the best or worst because of the consistent mediocrity of Lois & Clark. The best season has crap and the worst season has inspired jaunts, you know?

As for the use of the supporting cast, I think one word describes it: poor. Like, I think a lot of my affection for the supporting cast stems from the actors and not necessarily the material they were given. The Kents are great, but their plot utility consisted of showing up whenever Clark and maybe Lois needed advice. Their inner lives faded pretty quickly from the show–remember when Jonathan was jealous of Martha taking a painting class or whatever? Not the most scintillating plotline ever written, but it was something. Likewise, Lane Smith imbues a lot of Perry White that simply isn’t on the page. As for Jimmy, he’s the obvious weak link in the cast, because it’s evident the show never really knew what to do with him. In Season 1 the Michael Landes iteration was a little too cool for school and thus the program course corrected by casting the pervert kid from Serial Mom and Jimmy became, well, simple. We’ve had discussions offline about whether or not Justin Whalin’s Jimmy was “touched by the face of God”, so to speak.

But really the issue is there’s not enough of a supporting cast. Even if you’re doing a two-hander show as Lois & Clark is meant to be, you ought to populate their world. Who is Lois’ best friend? Her sister vanished after two or so appearances and they never hint at her having girlfriends. I guess Clark’s best bud is Jimmy, but there’s a real power and intelligence imbalance there–it’s like if your best friend was an organ grinder’s monkey. It’s for this reason that Season 1 is probably Lois & Clark at its best. Cat Grant may’ve been a crude and sexist caricature of a sexually liberated woman, but she was a straw that stirred the drink. Without her, without Lex, everything becomes a lot emptier. Subsequent seasons try out recurring characters, usually as romantic alternatives, but none of them stick. Dr. Klein is probably the most developed character not in the opening title sequence and we found out about his motorcycle gang and his perhaps inappropriate sexual liaison about three or four episodes before cancellation. You said earlier Metropolis felt bustling early on; by the end it felt like a ghost town.

I don’t know the culprit, either a cheapness inhibiting the ability to continue developing recurring characters or an outright disinterest in expanding the world much further than the people whose names are in the title. More characters means more potential character dynamics means more storytelling possibilities. The same applies to Superman’s rogues gallery or lack thereof. Most of his iconic villains are one-offs, leaving the likes of Tempus his most persistent foe outside of Lex. Which, fine, Lane Davies always brought his A-game to his performances, but it’s weird, right? Every time Lois & Clark feinted at worldbuilding, such as Intergang and the power shakeups within the organization, it pulled back.

Chris: Yeah, I’m with you for sure on that last part. I can understand why L&C didn’t have Peter Boyle money, they aren’t James Cameron. Also, Jesus, Titanic came out almost exactly six months after the last L&C aired. I know it’s unfair to compare an episode of television to what was, at the time, the most expensive most visually cutting edge film ever made, but imagine working for whatever rinky-dink, fifth rate, non-union Mexican equivalent of a Z grade FX house that did the L&C effects and going to see Titanic one day after work. I think I’d go home and slash my wrists. Working on L&C must be the FX equivalent of going out to Hollywood expecting to do a Kenneth Branagh Shakespeare adaptation and ending up being the guy who kills the women in snuff films.

But I digress.

I can understand why they couldn’t turn Peter Boyle into a recurring character, but they couldn’t pony up the dough for ten appearances by Bruce Campbell over a couple of years? They couldn’t have let the Hot Blond Who Acted Stupid But was Actually the Smartest Character in the Room just be a behind the scenes force who gets referenced a bunch and shows up sporadically? I’m not a guy who produced TV in the 90s so take everything I say with a grain of salt, but it seems to me that you could get a mileage out of taking a half dozen characters and slotting them into episodes every now and then to create the illusion of a rich supporting cast. Like your idea of Lois’s best friend, or a low level hood that’s comic relief and an informant like Turk in Daredevil, Pete Ross back in Smallville maybe. If everywhere they go there’s one character who pops up from time to time that the audience recognizes, and suddenly Metropolis seems much denser than it actually is.

But I actually think I might disagree with you about the first season being the best of the show, I think for me it might actually be the second. I pretty much agree with all your points about the expanded cast of season one, and that losing Lex and dumbing Jimmy down at least three shades were crippling blows that the show never quite recovered from, but I also think that there were some basic storytelling mistakes coupled with an almost schizophrenic inconsistency in that first season that caused it to veer widely in quality from episode to episode. Luthor was obviously the best villain the show had, and John Shea was one of the three best actors on the show, but making him the villain behind the scenes of so many episodes diminished him as a threat simply because he was always losing. The show itself seemed to be figuring that out as the season progressed, and Lex was used in more diverse ways. And if I were to think of my least favorite episodes I think a lot of them would come from that first season.

The thing about season two is it retained a lot of the zip of the first season while also being more consistent. That was the season that came closest to what we were talking about in terms of Metropolis having a thriving population. Tasha Yar showed up a handful of times, as did the above mentioned Peter Boyle, Bruce Campbell and Mindy the Smart Hot Blond. The Intergang formula also allowed for a reasonably healthy rotation of celebrity guest villains. They might only be in one episode a piece, but the idea that they were all working for the same mob roped them all together. Didn’t Robert Culp show up in a season two episode? And Raquel Welch (those aren’t buoys!)? And who could forget Robert Carradine as the Intergang tech dork who was immune to Mindy’s charms? And the romantic rivals were pretty lame, or Tony Baloney was anyway, but just the fact that they were both recurring for a while made things feel little more connected.

Ronnie: I’ll go to the mat for Mayson Drake, at least in theory. The idea of a character who liked Clark but disliked Superman is keeping in the classic superhero secret identity dilemma–see Gwen Stacy hating Spider-Man who is, unbeknownst to her, her boyfriend Peter Parker–and her job as district attorney gave her fairly organic reasons for being in an episode’s plot. I won’t argue the plot was well done or that the character had dimensions to her, but it was a nice idea. Lois’ potential beau I don’t even remember his name and I refuse to look it up. I think they could’ve done better in the romantic rivals department if their intention was for them to enter a serious relationship by the start of Season 3.

You may be right about Season 2 being a better refinement of the ostensible platonic ideal of the show. Part of my hedging comes from me not seeing those seasons in a long time and having no interest in revisiting them to confirm or fail to confirm my priors. Really, the difference between the two comes down to Lex Luthor and how much you value him. If you think the show lost a pivotal element once John Shea exited, you’re apt to go to bat for Season 1. That’s me. You seem to be of the opinion that while John Shea and Lex were great, the show mishandled the role by having him continually foiled in his plans. The powers that be agreed with you on that last point, albeit that Lex being a regular cast member diminished Superman because he wasn’t able to lock Lex up within 45 minutes. A good writing team could have found a way for Lex to be in all or most episodes without making him a repetitive presence or a diminished one. Smallville may have its problems, such as it “not being good”, but the Luthor plotlines are among the strongest of that series. Perhaps one approach would slow rolling his evil reveal or gradually depict his fall from grace like in the aforementioned Smallville. His departure left a hole the show never could bother to fill. In his stead were a cavalcade of mostly forgettable foes, some of whom were comic book characters as interpreted by people with as cursory knowledge of comic books as Ben Shapiro has of the vagina.

I suppose we could get into how the Superman aspect of the show ranges from “crappy” to “embarrassing”. Yet there’s a reason it’s titled Lois & Clark; the focus is on Clark Kent, not Superman. Clark Kent is the real identity; any time the show delved into his Kryptonian side it was usually pretty lousy. So how about this as a closer: best episode of the series and worst episode of the series? I think both will be difficult to pin down and for differing reasons.

Chris: So one of the few unambiguously good things you can say about L&C is that each season has its own distinct theme as it regards the relationship at the heart of the show. Season One was about L&C getting to know one another, figuring out their dynamics as coworkers then friends then as potential lovers. Season two is about the leap from friendship to romance and the difference in intimacy the two states require. Three is about a committed relationship and the ups and downs of being a part of a duo and four is about settling into a lifetime commitment. With that in mind, I want to look at the best and worst episodes of each season and then declare a winner from each of the top fours.

Season one is, I think, the easiest to parse on that level because it was the most creative and wildly uneven, which is pretty common with first seasons insofar as they’re the rubber meets the road moment when you get something up on its feet and see what you’ve got as opposed to what you think you had. L&C had a famously turbulent development and first season in that respect, so much so that much talent (behind and in front of the camera) left the show after it wrapped, and everything was retooled from then on.

My choice for best episode is a bit of a cheat because it’s a two parter, but this is all silly arbitrary shit that we make up on the fly so honestly who cares, and it’s the last two episodes of the season, “Barbarians at the Planet” and “House of Luthor”. That little arc is the closest we ever came to the peak of what Lois & Clark could have been and the only other time besides the pilot where the show managed to convey epic scope. They used so many characters! Oh sure, Cat had already been shit-canned, but we get Lex and his henchman, Jonathan and Martha, Richard Belzer’s recurring character shows up. I think that one snitch who ate a lot made an appearance! Remember Jack? The scrappy Dickensian rag-a-muffin crossed with a sassy 90s kid they brought in to out Jimmy Jimmy? Remember how trash he was from jump? They actually managed to find something useful for him to do. I think there’s another Earth out there in the multiverse somewhere where series creator Debra Joy Levine maintains control of L&C past that first season and the show manages to find its footing without losing it’s larger cast of characters and slightly more adult edge.

On the other hand, my least favorite episode from season one is “Pheromone My Lovely”, which wrestles with that adult edge and is the closest I think I’ve ever seen to seeing a show suffer an existential breakdown. Lois & Clark, as we’ve said many times, was a show that was conceived as a sexy night time dramedy about love in the big city that was retooled at the last minute as a G rated r-word fest for families who thought Ned Flanders was a mite too edgy. “Pheromone” manages to deconstruct that tension by introducing Morgan Fairchild as a scientist and ex-lover of Lex’s who sprays the Planet staff with a love potion that doesn’t make people horny so much as, like, I dunno, stupid and handsy? Like Perry falls in love with the Mexican cleaning lady and so he dresses up like Elvis, pinches her butt a few times and tries to serenade her. Lois decides to try and seduce Clark by putting on the least sexy belly dancer outfit that you or I or anyone else has ever seen and attempting to do the dance of the seven veils. It’s loathsome, but also a perfect encapsulation of what happens when you want to make a show about sex that can’t ever talk about sex. Also, Cat Grant spends the entire episode fucking a copy machine repairman in a supply closet and at the end of the episode is like “who got sprayed with a whatnow?” Because Lois & Clark tried to be a show where the female lead put on an ankle length dress and a fucking face covering to seduce the male lead, and the slutty coworker rawdogs a stranger in a closet at work for several consecutive days and everyone just rolls their eyes and goes “That’s our Cat!”.

Season two’s highpoint is clearly Lex’s only appearance “The Phoenix”, which both brings him back to life and closes the door on his status as a businessman and love interest for Lois. It’s one of the few episodes of L&C that manages to pull off any sense of cinematic atmosphere, it actually looks good and has a breakneck pace that, coupled with the alarm the cast gets to show at the knowledge of his return, gives the show an urgent menace that it was never able to recapture. It also has a genuinely touching conclusion where Lex realizes that Lois never loved him and never would, and gives himself up as a result. Most of Lois & Clark exists somewhere between a B- and a C, with occasional bumps to B or B+ and occasional dips to C- and even D (I don’t know if anything they did would warrant an F for no other reason that something has to be, like, morally offensive to warrant an F. It has to be committed. And nothing on L&C is committed enough to get that kind of reaction), “The Phoenix” is the only episode that would crack the A barrier for me.

And the worst? I dunno, like I said above, season two is too professional to really make any terrible episodes the way the other seasons do, but there were plenty of irritating missteps. “Chi of Steel” for instance, isn’t afraid to deploy racial stereotypes in ways that, uh, suck. But I think the episode I liked the least was probably “Bolt From the Blue” wherein Superman’s powers are transferred to loser nobody William Wallace Webster Walldecker, played by Leslie Jordan who had already played a completely different loser nobody in an episode in season one, who immediately turns prick that starts charging people for his services and tries to rape Lois. It’s not a terrible episode of television so much as a confusingly inept one that can be summed up by its decision to use the same actor twice to play two different characters and make one of his key characteristics his attraction to Lois Lane despite the fact that the actor’s whole persona was rooted in his being a small, effete, southern homosexual. The world is filled with gay actors who can play straight ladykillers; Mathew Bomer, I’m looking in your direction. Leslie Jordan just isn’t that guy. It would be weird enough for that to have been his only appearance on the show, but him having already appeared as a different character the season before makes his casting positively Lynchian (side note, I’m extremely proud of how many David Lynch references I was able to fit into articles about a Superman TV show.)

The best of season three is another multiparter, and it’s I think widely loathed by a lot of people, but those people are wrong. I’m speaking of course of Lois and Clark’s first attempt to get married which is thwarted by Lex Luthor kidnapping Lois and replacing her with a clone eating frog who’s a piece of shit but then grows a soul and dies helping Superman while the real Lois gets conked on the head and wakes up thinking she’s Wanda Detroit, the protagonist of a novel that she’d been working on for the last year or so, which is news to the characters in the show as well as the viewing audience in general. It’s a five episode arc that’s fucking berserk, careening from plot twist to plot twist with maniacal abandon. I understand why it wouldn’t be to everybody’s taste, but I was mesmerized not just by how much happened but how good Teri Hatcher and John Shea were in the midst of narrative anarchy. Hatcher plays four distinct versions of Lois over the course of the arc. She’s herself, her clone, Wanda Detroit, and finally a tabula rasa kind of amnesiac who doesn’t seem to know anything about anything. And she does a really good job with all of them, the clone especially, who goes from being a selfish, petulant woman-child to an honest to god tragic figure who is desperate to stay alive. It’s kind of astonishing. Shea doesn’t get quite as much to play, but he manages to pull just a little bit of humanity out of Luthor right before he dies. It’s genuinely good stuff.

The worst of season three is unquestionably “Home Is Where the Hurt Is” aka the one where Sam Lane comes to Metropolis to reconnect with his daughter and ex-wife and also to introduce everyone to his new wife, a robot woman named Baby Gunderson he specifically built to have sex with. If I start to parse how confusing and upsetting the entire concept of a robot built for sex named Baby is, this article will never end, to say nothing of how she’s used in the plot. So I’ll just say Jesus one more time and move along.

Season four’s high point is probably the two-parter “Meet John Doe” and “Lois and Clarks”. It’s not a coincidence that their best work tends to involve multi-episode arcs, or that superhero TV ended up focusing on those kinds of long stories almost exclusively in the 21st Century. It just gives the plots and characters more time to breathe. “MJD” and “LaC” combine for a brisk, ridiculous story that features returning characters President-Fred-Willard-No-I-Won’t-Look-Up-the-Characters-Name, an alternate “weiner” version of Clark that we met in a two parter from season two or three (not looking that one up either) and Tempus, the time traveling ham who somehow became Superman’s primary antagonist after Lex left the show. L&C worked best in the end as a hang out show, and the “MJD” “LaC” one-two punch is one of the last times we get to just kill time with all these clowns. I had a similarly good time with the three part Luthors-Other-Secret-Kid-Because-There-Were-Two arc, but those didn’t have President Willard drinking alone in a bar on the night he lost his re-election bid.

And the worst of season four is also my choice for worst of the whole series, episodes 03 & 04 “Swear to God, This Time We’re Not Kidding” and “Soul Mates”. I don’t want to relitigate these two pieces of shit or even think about them more than I absolutely have to, and we have a two hundred thousand word article that covers both these monstrosities if you want a deep dive so I’ll just say that I’m reasonably certain that there’s a character in “StG” that’s supposed to be Superman editor Mike Carlin and SM is about how L&C have an insane curse on their souls that says their having sex will immediately trigger the extinction of all life on Earth.

That’s it, Ronnie. I’m done. I’m satisfied that Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman was indeed a bad show and I regret all the time I spent watching, thinking and writing about it. That said, the end product is a series that I’ve enjoyed going back to and rereading over the years and will no doubt continue to revisit in the future. With that in mind, I guess it’s time for me to move on to our next  extended waste of time and energy, the beloved ABC smash Prey, starring TV’s Debra Messing as a doctor lady with fabulous hair who hunts down super apes. Or something. See you there.

Ronnie: It took me quite a bit of time to come up with my lists because it required remembering episodes of Lois & Clark; suffice it to say my brain is mostly Shield quotes and cartoon theme songs, so you can imagine the difficulty involved. For Season 1 I’m going to say the best episode, though this may be a cheat, is the pilot. It sets everything up competently and you could argue it suggests a better show than what we ultimately received. What we ultimately received was the likes of “Fly Hard”, my choice for worst episode of Season 1. It’s the one where they do Die Hard but with Jimmy Olsen, hence the name.

The problem with doing these, centrally, is that Lois & Clark is consistently underwhelming. The variance is, like, from B- to C-, so it’s rare there’s an outright disaster but similarly unlikely is an episode you’d recommend without a number of caveats. An episode has to be particularly good or particularly bad, right? In this vein I choose “Tempus Fugitive” for Season 2 on account of it introducing H.G. Wells and Tempus, two of the no doubt most perplexing members of Lois & Clark’s recurring cast. “Chi of Steel” is my choice for worst, Chris, because the racism overwhelms everything else to the point that it’s memorable. Memorable Lois & Clarks merit being called out.

“Memorable” aptly describes the Irish Dr. Doom conceived of in “When Irish Eyes Are Killing”, my worst of Season 3. I took some time deliberating on which Season 3 to choose for my best and wound up on “Super Mann”. You know, the one about Nazi supersoldiers waking up and trying to turn Metropolis into the Fourth Reich. I chalk up this decision to current events bringing our descent into fascism into sharp focus and Lois & Clark’s full throated defense of liberal democracy looks pretty good to me nowadays in an environment where companies are falling over themselves to pledge fealty to the president-elect.

Onto Season 4. “Twas the Night Before Mxymas” is absurd and adheres to the spirit of the holidays, and might actually be a show I’d recommend without burying it in qualifiers. I’m gonna give the ‘worst of’ to “Battleground Earth”; it might not strictly be the worst of that year, but it represents the New Krypton arc that is absolute death.

I think that pretty well covers it, Chris. Any final thoughts?

Chris: I actually don’t really think so? I’m going to go to my grave believing that we spent more time thinking and writing about Lois & Clark than anyone else on Earth. Oh I know that the show itself was in production for four years and working on it was a “Full Time Job” for the vast majority of the cast and crew, but I’m sticking to my guns. For one thing, you can’t tell me that the vast majority of those scripts weren’t written in a blind panic the morning of the day they were due. If each episode of Lois & Clark clocks in at around forty two minutes, then I’d put money down that the average script was written in around thirty eight. Try reading a script sometime, then try reading it out loud. Takes longer, right? And it can be even faster to type than it can to read. A really outstanding typist can type up to a hundred and twenty words a minute, and sure, those people are usually transcribing what other people have said or written, but that can’t too different from chopping up and sniffing up a bunch of caffeine pills cut with Pixie Sticks and spewing out whatever nonsense pops into your head. That’s a kind of transcription too, when you think about it.

Ronnie: I think that’s a good place to leave things. Fret not, readers, because this is not the end of Chris and my collaboration. Let’s just say it involves a man of the night who can hear the frequency of evil.