Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman-"We Have a Lot to Talk About"

This is a review of Lois & Clark's third season premiere.

By the end of its second season, Lois & Clark was becoming more of a ratings hit. One reason for this was that the title characters were starting to become more romantic with each other by this point. The only snag was that Clark had to tell Lois the tidbit about him and Superman being the same person.

In the second season finale, the Man of Steel had to contend with a bad guy who knew he was Clark, and to that end he kidnapped Clark’s parents and even ordered him to kill Lois. Of course, things worked out and the villain ended up in jail. But Clark still had yet to reveal his super-identity to Lois. The episode and the season ended with the lovebirds walking, but rather than tell Lois that he’s Superman, Clark instead pulls out a diamond ring.

Not surprisingly, this gave fans much to digest over the following summer. Many were actually clamoring for Lois and Clark to take their relationship further, and indeed, the comics by this point had them in a relationship, with Lois in the know about Clark’s penchant for wearing a cape and tights when trouble arises. So why couldn’t this series follow suit?

The third season premiere “We Have a Lot to Talk About” (which, I must note, is also when we started seeing the episode titles on the screen) begins with Lois responding to Clark’s proposal by asking if it’s he or Superman who’s asking the question, and taking off his glasses. After the title sequence, the two get out of the pouring rain, with Clark drying Lois off with his heat vision, and he asks how she figured it out. She says that she put two and two together in the previous episode when Clark touched her cheek and Superman later on did the same thing in the same way. The rain stops and Clark continues to pour his heart out, explaining why he kept Lois in the dark in the two years they’ve known each other.

Lois says she understands, but still feels the need to vent. That’s when they hear a cry for help. In a nice touch, Clark smiles as he turns into Superman in front of Lois before darting off.

He goes to where the screams are coming from and asks some guys (who are dressed like the title characters in Men in Black) to let go of the guy they have pinned down. But another guy nearby tells him that the guy on the ground actually tried to mug him until the gentlemen wearing the suits showed up to subdue him. As the mugger is carted off, they identify themselves as members of the Church Group, headed by former criminal Bill Church (Peter Boyle). They say that Church is now trying to make Metropolis safe.

After they leave, Lois tells Clark that she needs time to think before they take the next step. Clark is a tad miffed at this and goes off to make sure there’s no more trouble, while Lois sulks on her way home.

At his house, Church greets his arriving son Bill Jr. (Bruce Campbell, after Evil Dead but before Hercules and Xena). Father tells Son that his recent heart surgery has given him a new lease on life. This includes getting a new wife, as Bill Sr. introduces his son to his nurse/wife Mindy (Jessica Collins). Junior is naturally taken aback by this, but Senior says he wants to scrap Intergang, the organized crime syndicate he built, and make the world a better place now. Junior understandably hits the booze when he realizes his old man is serious.

At the Daily Planet the next morning, Lois attempts to smooth things over with Clark. But he brushes it off by focusing on the Church Group, and to her annoyance, he heads off when he tells her he hears a police siren. Lois watches the news reports coming in that say the Church Group is becoming more popular by not only fighting crime but doing other good things, like setting up fundraisers and making sure food is good enough for people to buy.

Bill Jr. sees Mindy crying at Church’s house. He asks what’s wrong, and she says that she’s tired of her hubby always darting off to places like art exhibits. They both express their desire for things to return to how they were before, which (that’s right) leads to them kissing.

Meanwhile, Perry White is bummed out that the Church Group’s activities are basically depriving the Planet of any juicy news they can report. Lois says that she’s still suspicious, and Perry says that since he knows Church, he can arrange a meeting between him and Lois and Clark to see if they can find out anything. When he and Jimmy wonder about Clark’s whereabouts, Lois assures them that they’re just trying to get their facts straight… about the Church Group.

Another broadcast asks the obvious question: With the Church Group so prominent, is there any need for Superman? As it turns out, Superman is being an umpire for a group of kids playing baseball. Alas, their annoyance with him being a stickler for the rules leads to even the kids telling the Man of Steel to piss off.

At an art auction, Bill Sr. is still giving his son an earful of the good he plans to do. Junior feigns his approval, informing his dad that Mindy has helped him see the light about this new agenda. After Senior darts off, Mindy tells Junior of her plan to frame Senior by planting a bomb at a museum where Church has planned a fundraiser. Her stepson is naturally all for this.

On their way to their meeting with Church, Lois and Clark continue to express their frustration with how different their relationship is now. Church greets them and quickly tells them about his plans. The googly eyes he and Mindy make at each other annoy Lois and Clark, but this doesn’t stop Mindy from asking if they’re an item. Afterward, Lois is frustrated that she and Clark didn’t find out anything interesting, although Clark says that he x-rayed the place and saw machinery being taken apart, suggesting that Church could be honest about his intentions.

This leads to them venting their frustrations about each other again, with Clark saying that he needs to know if Lois would be willing to actually marry him even if he didn’t have superpowers. They go their separate ways and Clark takes out his engagement ring and tosses it into space, although he quickly catches it before slowly making his way back to Earth.

Clark is soon calling his parents Jonathan and Martha, who tell him that all this is natural, because Lois has a lot to process. Clark also expresses that he’s basically bored, because the Church Group is doing his job for him. Martha tells her husband to pack their things, because they’re going to pay their son a visit.

Lois gets informed by her contact Bobby Bigmouth (Sal Viscuso) that people connected to Church have been talking with an explosives expert, and gives Lois the guy’s address. She decides it would be easier to investigate without Clark, given their current frustration with each other. Disguised as a maid, Lois gets inside and goes through the expert’s equipment, coming across a map of the museum. But she doesn’t notice the camera that’s photographing her. Sure enough, these pics are seen by Bill Jr. and Mindy. They decide to cause a nuclear power plant in Philadelphia to go crazy to keep Superman occupied, while rigging a workout mat at Lois’s apartment to blow up if Lois doesn’t increase her speed on it every 10 minutes.

Not surprisingly, Superman fixes the reactor and gets rid of the rigged mat just in time. I guess Lois’ frustration with Clark is greater than any exhaustion you’d think her extreme workout would’ve given her, because instead of thanking Clark, she wonders if she’s just another statistic now.

As Church finishes up his fundraiser, complete with balloons for the children, his wife and son take their failure to off Lois in stride by inviting her to the doomed event. Lois tells Perry that the explosives expert is no longer at the apartment, but she informs him of the map she found, and that she and Perry have been invited to the fundraiser. Perry says they should go, while he also invites the Metropolis PD’s bomb squad.

Martha goes to Lois’s place and they have a heart-to-heart, while Jonathan and Clark do the same.

At the fundraiser, Clark informs Lois that he’s found a bomb under a table. Unfortunately, a message only he can hear tells him that his dense molecular structure has activated the bomb, meaning it will go off if he moves. Fortunately, this doesn’t apply to Lois, who’s able to go under the table and whisper to Clark and figure out how to disarm it. At the same time, Bill Jr. lures his dad outside under the pretense of showing him a special painting; after all, his dad has to be alive in order for the cops to throw him behind bars.

Clark raises eyebrows when he has to shout Lois’s name in order for her to hear him, but eventually she disarms the bomb. They celebrate with a kiss, while Mindy ponders why there’s no boom.

Outside, Bill Sr. is admiring the painting as the police show up. Alas, both Churches are taken by surprise as the cops put cuffs on both of them, with Junior realizing that Mindy set him up.

As Mindy announces her own plans for Intergang (well, it can’t be worse than the current government in DC), Superman disarms the last member of the Church Group as he’s about to mug Lois, Jimmy, and Perry in an elevator.

Afterward, Clark takes Lois for a romantic flight. She tells him that he’s not alone anymore, as they kiss in the moonlight.

The episode was a great start to the season that introduced the dynamic that would distinguish this series from previous TV/movie incarnations of the Man of Steel. Later episodes would do a nice job exploring this further before some incredibly misguided decision-making behind the scenes would cause fans to become disenchanted with the show by the end of this season.

Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman-"Sex, Lies, and Videotape"

This article looks at one of Lois & Clark's most interesting episodes.

With Harvey Weinstein’s career still in ruins and the #MeToo movement now being targeted by Donald Trump (although I guess that was inevitable), I felt prompted to look at an interesting episode from Lois & Clark‘s fourth and final season, “Sex, Lies, and Videotape”, that also centers on a celebrity involved in a scandal.

By this point in the show, the title characters are actually married and have their own place. Also, along with Clark’s parents Jonathan (Eddie Jones) and Martha (K Callan) Kent, they’re the only ones who know how super-unique Clark is. Anyone else who discovers this (on this show, at least) either dies or gets tossed in jail. Either that, or they’re a time traveler, as episodes featuring H.G. Wells demonstrated.

The episode begins with Lois Lane (Teri Hatcher) and Jimmy Olsen (Justin Whalin) among a group of reporters and fans awaiting Superman’s arrival at Metropolis’s Hall of Justice. Yes, this show had its share of inside jokes. It seems Superman has just won the International Peace Prize, which I guess is the Nobel without Alfred’s input. As Superman mostly works in Metropolis, the face that someone from his home city is receiving this honor is naturally a big deal, along with the fact that he’s the first extraterrestrial to get the prize. When Jimmy asks why Lois didn’t go to (yep!) Stockholm with Clark to cover the event itself, she brushes it off, saying that her hubby is closer to Superman than she is.

Superman flies in, apparently just back from Stockholm. He stands at a podium before all the news cameras, announcing that he’s graciously giving his award and the prize money to the people of Metropolis. As he praises them, one person who isn’t smiling is news tycoon Randy Goode (Jack Wagner), who’s watching this event from the TV in his office. Goode rants, wondering why Superman gets all the awards Goode thinks he deserves. When Goode asks his staff why he hasn’t gotten any such prizes, one of his aides, Johnson, makes a snide remark that Goode is the king of sleaze, giving the others a brief laugh. When Johnson quickly apologizes, Goode asks him to get a reporter named Samantha (Downtown Julie Brown) on the horn, because she’s at the event.

Samantha tells Goode that there’s nothing juicy they can use. But Goode orders her to get her ass back to work and then tells everybody in his office to do the same. However, he wants Johnson to stay (uh-oh!). He politely calls Johnson out on his crack, while clandestinely opening his elevator, revealing an empty shaft that Johnson has his back to. Goode offers to shake hands before pushing Johnson bye-bye. I guess Superman’s super-hearing is too far away to hear Johnson’s terrified screams.

At the event, Lois quietly tells Superman she’s missed him. He politely reminds her that Clark doesn’t officially return until midnight. But Lois obviously doesn’t want to wait that long, leading to her giving him a romantic rub on his arm. Alas, this touch is recorded with delight by Samantha, and cue title sequence.

We return to Goode watching a report on LNN (yes, Lex Luthor still has that damn network named after him, even though this was well after he was exposed as a murderous criminal). The report states that Superman’s next good deed is to negotiate peace talks between the fictitious countries of Ladislan and Padansk. As the Man of Steel greets their leaders President Kasparov (Tony Amendola) and General Navance (Alan Charof), Goode is annoyed once again. Samantha pops in and shows him the footage she got.

This perks Goode right up as they both deduce that Superman is getting his super-groove on with a married woman. But Goode quickly and reluctantly adds that, as this is Superman they’re dealing with, they need actual proof to back up their guess.

At the Daily Planet, Clark gives Lois an idea on how he can secretly destroy Ladislan and Padansk’s hidden nuclear arsenals once he sweet-talks their leaders into revealing their locations. Didn’t Superman IV already cover this ground? Lois likes the idea and then gives Clark an even better suggestion: spending a weekend together at the prestigious Chateau Roberge. Clark is impressed, as it apparently costs a lot to get into the place. When he asks Lois how she did it, she doesn’t say, while attempting to hide what Clark thinks is the hotel’s confirmation letter. Lois quickly and playfully takes the letter to a paper shredder, but is annoyed a moment later when Clark takes out the shreds and reconstructs them with his super-speed and some scotch tape.

Upon reading it, Clark sees that it’s not a confirmation letter, but rather a thank-you letter from the hotel in response to Lois’s request to do a story on the place. Clark is a tad annoyed that Lois lied to get into such a place, but is still open to going there. He even reassures her that he can keep Kasparov and Navance quiet long enough for such a weekend.

Once Clark leaves, Samantha pops up, saying she works in research, and wastes no time gushing over Lois. When she asks her what Superman is like, Lois quickly bolts. This allows Samantha to look at the letter. Apparently, she’s so in the zone she doesn’t wonder how a shredded letter was put back together perfectly.

That night, Superman arrives at a second floor window of the Chateau Roberge, where Lois is waiting for him. They waste no time getting down to business, while Samantha is seen emerging from a bush on the ground floor. She carefully scales the snowy side of the building and reaches the lovebirds’ window. Her grin increases big time and she snaps away at the two making out. But one of her heels causes her to lose her footing and fall down with (presumably) the snow breaking her fall. Superman briefly pauses and uses his x-ray vision to scan for trouble, but he finds nothing, and he and Lois resume.

Samantha returns to Metropolis and calls Goode to inform him of the photos she took. But a passerby inadvertently knocks her bag off her shoulder. Samantha quickly picks it up, briefly exposing her camera’s film. She tells Goode that she’ll get the photos developed, and after hanging up, looks up Hank’s Photo Lab in her pocket book.

There’s a montage of tabloid magazines with a picture of Superman and Lois making out on the front page. We see news reports saying that Superman is not exactly super-heroic now, while merchandise related to him drops 75% in price.

But Lois and Clark obviously had a nice weekend, and they arrive at the Planet taken aback by the glares everyone is giving to Lois. Jimmy shows them the picture that two tabloids have published. Despite Jimmy voicing his support for them, the lovebirds are obviously horror-struck by this. Perry White (Lane Smith) calls them to his office and gives them his support as well. But he adds that the Planet will have to make some sort of statement about this, and is open to suggestions.

Meanwhile, Goode is laughing up a storm while every news outlet is smearing Superman, with Goode noting the internet is getting in on the action as well, which was a medium just beginning to rise in popularity at the time. He rewards Samantha with a promotion while saying that they have to keep up the anti-Superman momentum, which he predicts will lead to him winning those prizes.

Lois and Clark are at home watching tabloid reporter Barry Dunning (Archie Hahn) talking to a priest, wondering how children will view morality now that their one focal point in that regard has committed adultery. They also see some people denouncing Superman and Lois, although one guy says he’d get it on with the ladies if he had superpowers.

Lois understandably shuts this off and says she and Clark just need to work this mess out. But Clark understandably points out that there’s really no mess to sort out in this case. The truth is that Superman and Lois were making out in that hotel. Lois becomes suspicious that the photo itself isn’t credited, but Clark says that they can’t say this didn’t happen. When Lois suggest flat out denying it, Clark is taken aback at the suggestion that Superman should lie, which reminds Lois of the lie she told for them to get into the hotel, which led to this mess. When Clark says that they screwed up big time by failing to take into account that the rest of the world doesn’t include Superman in their marriage, Lois agrees to just say “no comment” if anyone asks about it.

But this matter turns out to have even more repercussions, as a news report says that the peace talks are off now.

At the Planet, Clark is trying to lift Lois’s spirits as she gets nothing but contempt from other employees. The fact that Clark himself is getting fudge as a condolence gift probably isn’t helping either. But Clark darts off when a news report comes in saying that the two countries have exchanged missile fire. As Superman takes care of this, Lois gives Jimmy a list of places to look into which could have potentially gotten a photo of her and Superman. Jimmy says that he’s doing the same and will get back to her as soon as he can.

Upon leaving, Lois runs into Dunning, who asks about the affair. She attempts to brush him off, but eventually becomes pissed enough to say it’s no one’s business but her own as she runs off.

In Goode’s office, he’s brought Kasparov and Navance together to thaw the ice. Despite their suspicions, they agree to the buffet that Goode has put together, and then Superman comes in demanding that they end their military actions. They reply that he must first explain the picture with Lois. Superman says that the photo isn’t what it looks like, but Kasparov says that everyone will need a more concrete explanation. Goode’s aide comes in and whispers something to him. This leads to Goode turning on his TV which is broadcasting Lois telling Dunning off. Goode gloats as Dunning says that Lois is indeed having an affair with Superman; she just can’t admit to it in so many words.

Kasparov and Navance pledge to resume their conflict, but Superman convinces them to wait until noon, when he’ll hold a press conference that will answer all their questions, and hopefully, convinced them to continue the talks.

After they leave, Samantha arrives with Goode, who’s angry that Superman may have found a way around this dilemma. But she says she has an idea that will ensure the talks fail and Superman takes the fall.

Lois arrives home, surprised to find Jonathan and Martha here. Clark says he brought them over to explain his plan, which is for Clark to reveal he’s Superman. Both his parents and wife are shocked by this news, with Jonathan and Martha pointing out that making such a revelation would ruin his and Lois’s lives. Lois takes their side, saying that Superman revealing that he has the same needs and desires as everyone else would destroy the unique appeal he has to the world. Clark says that this decision will assure Superman remains a symbol of integrity. Seeing there’s no changing Clark’s mind, Lois sets to work getting to the bottom of things before that press conference.

Working late at the Planet, Lois’s attempts to gain info go nowhere. But Jimmy arrives, saying that he’s discovered that Hank’s Photo Lab got a big payment the day before the picture was published. Lois is excited at the possibility that the picture could be a fake, which briefly confuses Jimmy before they head off to Hank’s. With the the lab’s door conveniently unlocked, Jimmy uses the computer skills—that, for some reason, Perry won’t let him use at the Planet—to flawlessly recreate the scandalous pic. At the same time, Lois finds the invoice with Goode’s name on it. She tells Jimmy to download their findings while she goes off to find Superman.

But once outside of Hank’s, men pull her into a car with Goode and Samantha inside. Goode spills the beans to her that he plans to tie her up to explosives that will also set off a bomb at his office that will kill both Navance and Kasparov, and then he knocks her out.

At the press conference, Goode excuses himself from his office and the two leaders, so he can secretly arm the explosives. Superman arrives, but before he can begin making his announcement, he’s given an envelope saying that Lois is tied to TNT at Chateau Roberge. He rushes off to the confusion of everyone. While Goode attempts to settle everyone down, Superman arrives at the Chateau but Lois, who’s gagged and tied to a bed, has to use charades to tell him that the explosives will also kill Navance and Kasparov.

He quickly frees her and hears the sonic signal the explosion emits. But Superman tosses a broken piece of a mirror into space and uses his heat vision to precisely hit the satellite dish on top of Goode’s building, saving the two leaders.

Goode and Samantha try to make a break for it, but Superman stops them while Jimmy arrives with the downloaded content. Police take them away, with Goode in shock that the picture was a fake. Superman stands at the podium and assures everyone that the picture isn’t real. When someone asks why Clark isn’t here, he replies that he is, via Lois’s wedding ring, and that their marriage is strong because of the trust between them. Everyone is all smiles as Superman flies off to resume the talks with the two leaders.

The episode ends with Lois and Clark back at the Chateau, promising to be more careful in the future just before they (that’s right) make out.

While Samantha ruining the real photo was a bit too convenient, this is actually one of the series’s most interesting episodes. This is because it tackles a subject I was wondering if the show would take on once the romance between the title characters took off. The looming prospect of war nicely adds to the dilemma of a secret that two people are keeping, and what if the only way to avert disaster was to reveal it? And how would society react in the aftermath of such a reveal?

Jack Wagner also makes a good, slimy villain, which isn’t surprising, as he had plenty of practice being one on Melrose Place by this time.

I plan to go more into this in a later recap, but this episode, as good as it is, suffered from bad timing, as by its air date, the bulk of Lois & Clark‘s fans had given up on the show.