Chris: Well folks, here it is at last. After three years and something like fifty entries, we’ve come to the end of Lois & Clark & Chris & Ronnie. It’s not the actual end, because we’re going to have a wrap-up piece that’s more broadly about the whole show, and we’re gonna write other stuff about terrible television shows that no one remembers, it’s not like we have better things to do. But this is the last L&C&C&R to recap and discuss two episodes of Lois & Clark. Feel free to play The End by The Doors while reading, that fucker’s eleven minutes long, so you probably finish the article before you finish the song. And it’s doubly appropriate because The End might be best known at this point as the music that plays over the opening of Apocalypse Now, and in a very real way, Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman has been our Vietnam. Ronnie and I entered this venture brimming with optimism, assuming it would be an easy, short campaign. That we’d be in and out of with no problem. But as the weeks turned to months turned to years, we were pushed beyond the point of insanity, and were forced to reckon, not just with the enormity of task we’d ignorantly taken onto ourselves, but with our very notions of self. About our basic concepts of morality, who we were and what it actually meant to be a responsible, loving, and productive human being.

But we’ve pretty much figured all that out now, and Ronnie wants us to write about this Debra Messing psychic-alien-serial-killing-chimp show that ABC replaced L&C with. At least I think that’s what it’s about, I haven’t watched it yet. So let’s just grit our teeth (teeths?) and get these last two episodes done and we can move on and never speak of any of this again.

Dr. Klein has so little dignity that being kidnapped by toys isn’t a low point for him.

Here’s a weird thing about “Toy Story”: it’s about an angry toy maker who takes his frustrations out on the world with boobytrapped toys. That sounds familiar, right? Because it sounds like the beloved (dimly recalled, six of one) Superman rogue Toyman? The same Toyman who appeared in season 2 episode 9 (and L&C high point) “Seasons Greedings?” Remember that one? Dean Cain wrote it? George Jefferson (Sherman Hemsley, Amen) is a bitter toy maker who creates toy rats that turn people into dickheads? Remember? Remember Louise Jefferson (Isabel Sanford, no relation to Fred) was his secretary and love interest? He’s back! I mean, he isn’t, because it’s a different character with a different name played by a different actor, but it’s basically the same motivation and plot, and that has to count for something! This time the salty toy maker is named Harold Kripstly instead of Mr. Schott, and he’s played by Grant Shaud instead of Sherman Hemsley, so instead of being the angry little black guy from The Jeffersons, they got the nervous little white guy from Murphy Brown. It’s a little confusing at first, but if you just shut your eyes and jam your fingers in your ears every time Kripstly is on screen you can get through it okay.

I’m not sure that they knew that Kripstly was a different character played by a different actor though? Because at one point Lois says that he (Kripstly) had designed the most popular toy from two christmases ago? Which would mean that was the same christmas from “Seasons” when Mr. Schott made the wildly successful hate-rat? Are they somehow the same people? Is this a kind of Lost Highway situation? It had only come out a few months before “Toy Story” aired. Maybe someone got inspired. Or maybe did everyone just forget about “Seasons Greedings”? Maybe they wanted to do a follow-up but didn’t want to go to the trouble of rewatching the damn thing because they figured they all remembered the gist of it so they just kinda went with that. I dunno. It’s weird though, because Dean Cain wrote two episodes of Lois & Clark, and they both got sequels/remakes in season four. Cain also wrote the Lex-Luthor-Secret-Son episode in season three that they pretty much erase, expand and repeat in season four. The two completely separate secret kids thing I was willing to let slide because Lex was a billionaire dog who probably had secret kids stashed all over the world just in case he needed an organ or something. But two bitter, vengeful famous toymakers? Was somebody angry at Dean Cain and decided to try and out-do him in the writing department or something?

Ronnie: I find it highly believable that the writers would straight up forget they already did a Toyman episode, or at the very least they had so little respect for the viewers that they’d try to pass off Toyman as an entirely new character for the Lois & Clark universe. I like to think had Season 5 actually happened they’d do that for others, such as Metallo and Prankster. This one pales in comparison to “Seasons Greedings” and not only due to a lack of George Jefferson. See, it’s all part of Lois & Clark clumsily building up the “Lois and Clark want kids” storyline. There’s a few asides between Lois and Ma Kent about how you’ll know when you know it’s time to have kids, as if Ma Kent’s circumstances weren’t wildly different from literally everyone else on the planet’s when it came to conception. Typically the adaptations go with the Kents being able to conceive and resigning themselves to it until they come across a baby in a spaceship. I’ve seen the movie Orphan; that is not how most people adopt. Then I guess at the end Lois is ready for kids because she and Superman saved some kids from Toyman II? I understand the premise that a case involving kids would compel Lois to believe she’s ready to take the leap, but it’s pretty sloppily done.

Just kill him. Do it. It’d be daring. “The episode sucked, but the recurring doctor dude got murdered!”

Speaking of sloppily done, let’s address the long simmering subplot of Perry White’s love life. I don’t remember exactly when they got divorced, but Perry’s marriage had been on the rocks for a season or two, with a couple references here and there about him having to move out, sleeping at work, etc. But like pretty much every subplot on Lois & Clark, it’s half-assed and you wouldn’t be wrong for forgetting it altogether. Jimmy decides to help Perry get laid by putting out a personals ad on his behalf, which could’ve led to some mild hilarity as Jimmy misrepresents Perry; that doesn’t happen. At best we get Perry accidentally reading an m4m entry, because it’s 1997, it’s like a month after Ellen came out, gays are a land of contrasts. One woman does respond to his ad and it turns out to be Bob Newhart’s wife on Newhart, also coincidentally Perry’s ex-wife Alice. (She had been an unseen Vera/Maris type until now.) I bet you’re thinking “wow, they got Mary Frann? I bet they gave her a lot to work with!”. Well, you’re wrong. She’s in the last maybe 2 minutes and she’ll never be seen again. What a waste of stunt casting. “What a waste” can be used to describe this episode generally, despite it featuring Dr. Klein being kidnapped by an army of toys. (Toy Story came out less than two years prior, though this does predate Small Soldiers.)

This whole episode puts too much emphasis on the elderly getting laid. There’s Perry and then there’s also the Kents celebrating their anniversary, with them not wanting to stay at the Kents so they can celebrate “privately” if you know what I mean, wink wink nudge nudge say no more. The thing is, with Superman’s superhearing, he’ll be able to hear them fuck whether they’re in the next room or at the Hilton. It makes no difference! This show has course corrected the horniness too much in my opinion. Season 4 Cat Grant would be that Chris Elliott Action Family joke where Chris’ eldest daughter decides to go nude on her date.

HYPNOTOAD

Chris: So I was reading about that show Prey that we’re going to do next on the wikis and they said that Prey was greenlit after L&C’s promised fifth season was canceled and ABC was scrambling to fill its time slot. And it’s a truth widely acknowledged that anything you read on the internet has to be true, so that puts the whole “did the people working on L&C know it was gonna be canceled” question to bed. The introduction of Alice and all the kid stuff leads me to think that they were less spinning their wheels and more building towards a future that someone had assured them was going to happen. Whoops. But it also works nicely as a farewell to Perry. I assume he’s in the next and final episode (update from the future: he is not), but yeah, pretty much the only thing we know about Perry’s life outside of work is that his kid is a piece of shit and his wife hates his rotten guts. Well, Perry got to make peace with his kid in whatever episode that was that he made peace with his son in, and now things are on the mend with Alice. Perry White is a delightful character in the comics and it’s a crime how little Lane Smith was given to do on the show, but I liked him just because I like Perry and I like Smith, so I’m glad he got some closure and didn’t end the show as a bitter, middle-aged divorcee.

And I too was puzzled by the behavior of the Kent’s in this episode. Why leave your empty nest home in Smallville Kansas and go see your son and daughter-in-law if all you want is to be left alone to satisfy your godless urges? It’s like they went all the way out of their way to make it clear that they wanted to be left alone so as to get to fuckin. It reminds me of that Simpsons where Homer becomes a teacher and he knocks on Flander’s door just so he could say “Can’t talk now, I have a class to teach!” and run off as soon as Ned opened the door. But, you know, sicker. And look, I’m no kink-shamer (that’s almost certainly not true, I’m very repressed), but if the Kents are into making the people around them uncomfortable by insinuating that they’re ruining their chances for sex, that’s their business. But maybe make some friends and keep your kid out of it? Like, remember that guy who drew Martha in the nude way back in season one? Or possibly two? Remember Jonathan thought Martha was stepping out on him but they “just had a cup of coffee” and it was obvious that the guy was going to be gay but someone at ABC got ahold of the script and was like “I don’t know what network you think you’re at or what year you think this is”? So instead he’s just a weirdo who wanted to draw an old lady in the nude? He seems like a freak, go bother that guy.

I feel like you’d have these misgivings earlier on in the child trafficking operation.

Ronnie: It’s hard to believe Toyman isn’t a pedophile, because otherwise his plan sounds like hell on earth. I like kids well enough, but the situation presented by Toyman is that he’s basically running a Chuck E. Cheese’s that never closes. He doesn’t seem to have any co-conspirators except the one, so guess who clears up all the mess? That’ll be on him. Toyman is a tough character to adapt on account of how stupid he is and how ill-matched he is in comparison to Superman. The comics have vacillated between throwback to the Silver Age to grim child killer. By those standards this Toyman is pretty anodyne, but he’s still not great. As depicted the character is whiny and entitled. Harold Kripstly isn’t a good enough actor to deal with the flaws in the writing.

Odds & Ends

-Eat ‘Em Up Burger should be a real chain.
-Hey! Remember that time Superman was blinded and at one point he fell out of a third story window, got up off the street as if it was perfectly normal to do that and hailed a cab? How great was that? I was reminded of it while looking up season two episodes to find “Seasons Greedings.”
-Dr. Klein is in fine form. Not only is he introduced to a truth serum that causes him to blurt out information regardless of desire, at one point he manages to combine a Dr. Demento reference with a reference to Arsenio Hall’s talk show. Robot Chicken could never.
-Welcome back Seinfeld alum counter! I see you’re making appearances in both of our last two episodes! First up is Wendy, the nice lady that helped Kripstly take care of all the children he kidnapped until he murdered her is played by Stacy Travis, who played Elaine’s cousin who constantly talked about their Grandma Mema and thought Jerry was effeminate because he didn’t like to eat red meat in “The Wink”.

Chris: It’d be kind of funny if we just stopped here, right? I’m not saying it would be belly-laugh-wiping-tears-from-your-eyes funny, but the idea of doing all this work and coming this far and then walking away at the very last moment has a certain nihilistic charm. And it would speak to the gloomy, incomplete thought that “The Family Hour” unknowingly closes the book of Lois & Clark on. As we recently definitively learned, L&C wrapped up its fourth season secure in the knowledge that ABC had picked it up for at least one more and so ended the year on a cliffhanger that ties up the themes of the season while also opening the door for what would come next. That was their thing. Season two ended with Clark’s proposal and Lois revealing she knew he was Superman, and season three ended with the bullshit looming threat of Clark having to leave Earth forever to establish a new Krypton and marry Mallory Keaton. So at the end of season four L&C definitively learn they can’t biologically reproduce thereby strangling the hope of genetic offspring in the crib, and are also gifted a baby from… someone.

In all other respects “The Family Hour” is a B- Lois & Clark insofar as it’s a bunch of nonsense that simultaneously addresses what the once-promised fifth season would have covered while also not actually having much of anything of consequence actually happen. Take the whole fertility subplot, a significant portion of the back half of the season was devoted to Lois and Clark alternately stressing over and getting excited by the prospect of having kids. The whole story culminates with the indefatigable Dr. Klein walking a confused Superman towards a porn filmed room, possibly (probably) to manually masturbate him into a cup. Well it turns out he and Lois can’t make a baby, so that was a big waste of time. There’s also a scene where they meet with an adoption agent who (quite correctly) informs them that, while Clark is a solid citizen, Lois is a Superman obsessed danger junky who comes within a hair’s breadth of dying on a weekly basis and as such is not a great candidate for adoption. But who fucking cares because some stranger plops a baby down in their living room and renders any need for going through official channels moot.

And then there’s the matter of Lois’s parents. Lois’s father Sam, as you will no doubt recall, is a world renowned cybernetics expert and pervert who once operated on Superman on the same trip where he introduced his ex-wife, daughter and future in-laws to his new girlfriend who was also a robot he built specifically for sex. When Klein gives L&C the bad news they decide to place their dreams of fertility in his weird, sweaty, presumably super-hairy palms. But to that they first have to reveal to him the secret of Clark’s dual identity. This newfound trust, along with a fervent wish to mend fences with the woman he once scorned for a homemade fuck appliance, inspires Sam to put aside his work on something called breasts-in-a-can and a thing that makes women forget they’ve been raped that has extremely upsetting implications and throws himself into the task of building himself a grandkid. Not only does he not find a way to conceive, but he also has his mind wiped by the Rape-B-Gone machine, thereby erasing his (and Lois’s moms) awareness of his son-in-laws secret. See what I mean about nothing of consequence happening? They can’t make a baby, can’t adopt a baby, and Lois’s parents forget Clark was Superman.The baby they end up with doesn’t appear to have anything to do with anything. You could have started the episode there and nothing would have to be filled in.

This is just what special effects looked like in the 90s.

Ronnie: There is information out there on the ever reliable Internet suggesting the baby on the doorstep would turn out to be Kryptonian royalty in danger from something, so he needs parents who get into danger every week. I have to imagine Season 5 would put Lois & Clark on a further downward trajectory. Quick, name five shows that improved or plateaued in quality after introducing a(nother) kid. The impulse to do some bullshit soap opera aging so the kid could drive plotlines would be irresistible. True enough, an interview with an exec producer on Season 4 states the boy would “grow at an abnormal rate, turning into a preteen in a matter of months”. So imagine we had the show as is but they added a smart alecky kid who the show tries to convince you is adorable and not obnoxious. So yeah, I’m glad it got cancelled in favor of Debra Messing hunting down Homo Dominant. I’m sure it sucks, but the pilot was directed by Tobe Hooper. He used to be a somebody!

Speaking of “used to be a somebody”, Harry Anderson looks like a porno parody of Frasier Crane and/or Ken Griffey Jr. after taking the nerve tonic as Dr. Klaus “Fathead” Mensa. He’s using 90%+ of his brain, as evidenced by how big his cranium is. The makeup is not great. The character is not great! He formed a cult that believed mindpower could do anything, so during his prison stint he thought so hard his head swelled into him being able to telekinetically move objects, such as a prison gate or a car or an exercise bike. The show namechecks Uri Geller the fraud and inspiration for Pokemon Kadabra as an example of what Harry Anderson’s doing. Eventually he kidnaps Superman’s parents and in-laws after learning his secret identity. In terms of final villains it’s not very good, especially because his powers and knowledge of Superman’s identity are resolved by him wearing a headset of Sam Lane’s invention called “The Bummer Be Gone”. Everybody else who needs to forget Superman’s secret identity is conveniently hit by the crappy special effects of the helmet too, meaning Lois’ parents learning was pretty worthless, although it was fun to see Lois’ mom just not getting it until the last possible moment.

“This has to be the saddest action sequence setup you’ve ever done.” “It’s been 87 weeks of shit, I’ll tell you…”

I like how the series ends, with a baby in the bassinet, flanked by a letter saying “Lois and Clark, this child belongs to you” and a Superman blanket. The parents come into the room to see their children holding a baby with no explanation. While you can explain things to the Kents, what about the Lanes? Are they going to learn about the secret identity all over again? If not, I wish we would’ve gotten the ass pull explanation to justify them staying in the dark vis-a-vis Clark’s secret. I also want to know what Lois and Clark think; this all occurs in the last 3 minutes so there’s no time for an actual reaction. But they have to wonder where the baby is from and how the fuck they’re going to explain to everyone (well, Jimmy and Perry I guess) why they suddenly have a newborn in their midst. When the Kents “adopted” Clark it was at least rural Kansas 30 or so years ago, a place where you can hide a kid in a farm or whatever indefinitely. Different case in Metropolis I would think.

In-laws are the living end, aren’t they, folks?

Chris: Okay, first of all, Lois & Clark already had a smart alecky kid who the show tried to convince us is adorable and not obnoxious. His name was Jimmy Olsen. Put some respect on his grating name. Second of all… I got nothing, really. I mean, what else is there to say? Like the vast majority of television shows Lois and Clark went out like Tommy Devito in Goodfellas, one to the back of the head that they never saw coming. So what we’re left with is less a finale and more of a real time exploration of why the show was never really able to get it together. I don’t want to get too into autopsy territory, that’s for next time, but suffice to say Lois & Clark was a show that tried to mash kiddy adventures together with adult themes,B- stunt casting and ten cent store special effects that was never able to coalesce into anything even remotely consistent for more than an episode or two. “The Family Hour” manages to check off all those boxes in characteristically disappointing fashion while also generating just enough charm to make me a little sad that we never got to find out what came next. But only a very, very, very little.

Speaking of disappointing, Harry Anderson. Man. Best known for his portrayal of Pulitzer prize winning humorist Dave Barry in the sitcom Dave’s World, as well as being a world famous traveling magician, Anderson is the kind of charismatic TV star who should be able to come in and give the show some extra wattage just by being himself. That’s not what happened. I can see the appeal of making the highly verbal Anderson a kind of fast talking Dick Tracy style gangster/freak, but they forgot to let him talk fast and instead you get more of a slurry, Frankenstein-got-stung-by-a-bee-on-his-head deal. It’s suboptimal. Instead of the charming conman who’d always one step ahead, Mensa is a lumbering, mumbling, doofus who gets outsmarted by a gaggle of retirees. He looks like he doesn’t want to be there and I can’t say I blame him. On the other hand, Hatcher is as committed as ever, selling the shit out of Lois’s devastation at learning she and Clark can’t conceive, as well as her shock at being declared unfit to adopt. I keep wanting to go broader and talk about the show as a whole, but there’s a whole other article coming about that, so I’ll just close by saying that Hatcher was wire-to-wire excellent and I’m relieved I never have to hear Dean Cain talk about “making love” to her again.

Better episode if the baby is the baby from It’s Alive. Start tearing out some throats!

Ronnie: Dick Tracy villain, that’s exactly what he is, right down to the insulting nickname that also serves as an apt description. The show never got around to having a good rogues gallery, partially because of network TV vagaries and partially because of incompetence. The show clearly floundered once John Shea left and didn’t come up with a backup plan. I think this is a pretty good place to leave it; I don’t think there’s anything to say we can’t say in our wrap up column. I’ll just say I watched Repo Man recently and it’s really swell. Harry Dean Stanton is a treasure.

Odds & Ends

-The county adoption agency gives scores to prospective parents; Clark received a 97 (out of 100) whereas Lois got a 19.
-Mensa is, of course, the world famous nerd club that only admits people with “genius” IQs and is ironically the type of broad, obvious reference that would seem clever to the mouth breathers who would have seen L&C to its bitter end. Also, my father went to a mensa meeting once, and never went back because it was a little too dorky for him. My father was a philosophy major who was captain of his high school debate and chess teams, made fun of my mother for liking Tchaikofsky because he was too common, and regularly, willingly attends renaissance festivals. Also, the man’s a stone cold idiot. Don’t ever let anyone tell you that IQ has anything to do with anything.