100 Reviews: 67
This is one I’ve been meaning to do since Man of Steel came out, because this is *my* Superman story.
Lois & Clark: 1x01: Pilot
On the other hand, I didn’t intend to review another pilot so soon, with all the pilot-y weirdness issues I discussed just the other day. Added to the issues of it being a pilot, it’s a dated pilot now, going on 20 years...and I kind of remember when it was new. My real memories of the show don’t really start until later seasons, but I seem to recall this was on opposite Seaquest in the early days and I was more interested in watching that. Why I remember that who knows, but I would have been about ten at the time.
So this show has the odd duality of making me feel old when I think about how dated it’s getting, with making me feel young because I’ll always kind of watch it as a middle school age girl who thought Dean Cain was just dreamy and...that’s one of my main memories of watching this show back then. Dean Cain is still pretty dreamy, tweenage me.
But the inspiration for this review is more to do with more recent stuff. Then again, there is a fair amount of female gazing going on here so I don’t feel too bad for engaging in it myself. Then again, again, this was a superhero show really geared more towards the female audience so the female gazing should probably be expected more than male. Anyway Dean Cain is pretty dreamy.
Moving on, returning to this familiar ground I find the version of the Superman story that works for me. I think there are a lot of reasons for this.
For one, I am more drawn to the style of storytelling found in TV shows over movies, and this is definitely a TV pilot rather than a movie. It doesn’t need to answer all the questions because it has the show to develop them over; the goal of the pilot is to give you a taste of the characters and situations you’ll see in the show and in that this...is a decent start. Oh it’s rough; the writing isn’t exactly stellar and the acting is uneven at best, and the characterization - partly owing to each - doesn’t seem very finalized yet. Special effects that I don’t even think were great for the time but look really awkward now; decidedly TV direction; some scenes that seem like they could have been cut with others that could have used more development; and all around just on the level of a decent start.
Another reason this works for me more than any movie probably could and definitely more than MoS did, is the focus on Clark Kent over Superman. This is tied in with it being a TV show, where it’s not an action movie or where people are going to expect to see lots of Superman action, right there in the title it tells you this about Lois and Clark and it delivers on that. He doesn’t even put on the costume until the last 20 minutes if that (probably that back when it had commercials) and only has a couple of Superman like things before that that accounted for only a few minutes of the story. This is the story of how Clark Kent became Superman and it being entirely about his journey as Clark.
Which is not to say the episode isn’t also about Lois, but she’s not really on a journey here, she’s a well-established force to be reckoned with in her world and the one that Clark is looking to join. She definitely has room to grow as a character, but her role here is to be the driving force of the plot rather than the character on a personal journey. And here’s the thing, for a movie that would be kind of uninteresting, but as a starting point for the character of a show it works.
Anyway, so you can say it’s an origin story in a sense, but it’s not about Krypton or how Clark discovered his powers (the Krypton stuff will wait and gets its own focus, and the amnesia ep later on fills us in on enough of how he discovered his powers). It does have elements of fearing how the world would react if they knew about his powers, but Clark does have the drive to use what he has to help people and the story is him finding a way to do that. (It amused me to see the scene here where Jonathan is warning Clark about being found out and Clark answers with “What should I have done, let him die?” and Jonathan pulls up like ‘...as worried as I am about you I can’t say that’ after the MoS version of that where movie-Jonathan was like “Maybe.”) Clark is an adult, he’s traveled the world but he’s still trying to find himself and that’s not something to be found by some magic voice from the past telling him where he was born, it’s about who he chooses to be now. But it doesn’t take a lot of effort to establish his care for all people he comes into contact or just people in general, it’s not hard but it was missing from MoS.
While one can claim it’s because this was the first version I saw (or at least paid attention to, I might have seen the movies earlier), so therefore it’s the way my brain assumes things should be, I really do like the symbology of the suit here. It’s not about his connection to Krypton, it’s his connection to Earth. The S is left over from Krypton, but his mom makes his suits (including that she must replicate the S later on), and later in the series (the end of the New Krypton arc) the suit will be explicitly about who he is to the people of Earth over his Krypton roots. (Although apparently Martha has a thing for spandex and external underwear (which kind of makes them...not underwear).)
The S does stand for Superman, it’s Superman that means hope
I suppose I haven’t really talked much about the other characters besides Clark, but that’s mostly down to why I decided to do this review rather than not being decent characters. Although even as a kid I thought Kat could have been a lot better character than she actually is, it’s just no one really cared to make her one which probably why she left after the first season (and I always kind of regretted that because I thought she could have been more). Basically all the actors on this show are forever imprinted on my brain as these characters; no matter what other roles they have to me they’ll always be Clark-Lois-Lex-Perry-etc. (Kat being the closest thing to an exception because a. she was only in one season, b. was only kind of a character for that long, and c. also appeared in my all time favorite show, admittedly as a character I wasn’t as fond of).
One time I remember watching this while I was still in a Smallville mode (either before I stopped watching it or shortly after) and there’s some stuff that takes on a somewhat different flavor when you have that show’s canon in the not distant back of your mind. The interactions between Clark and Lex in particular, and actually helps slightly some of Clarks early behavior to Lois if he already had reason to feel anti-Luther (he’s not borderline stalking Lois, he’s suspicious of Lex because of Smallville reasons). I pretty much ignored Smallville Lois though so I didn’t get quite the same odd reading when it came to her stuff.
I suspect I’ve rambled long enough and probably coud ramble more, but I feel like stopping. Until next time.
Next time:
Probably back to something more normal for me to review, but we’ll see.
Suggestion box this way
Lois & Clark: 1x01: Pilot
On the other hand, I didn’t intend to review another pilot so soon, with all the pilot-y weirdness issues I discussed just the other day. Added to the issues of it being a pilot, it’s a dated pilot now, going on 20 years...and I kind of remember when it was new. My real memories of the show don’t really start until later seasons, but I seem to recall this was on opposite Seaquest in the early days and I was more interested in watching that. Why I remember that who knows, but I would have been about ten at the time.
So this show has the odd duality of making me feel old when I think about how dated it’s getting, with making me feel young because I’ll always kind of watch it as a middle school age girl who thought Dean Cain was just dreamy and...that’s one of my main memories of watching this show back then. Dean Cain is still pretty dreamy, tweenage me.
But the inspiration for this review is more to do with more recent stuff. Then again, there is a fair amount of female gazing going on here so I don’t feel too bad for engaging in it myself. Then again, again, this was a superhero show really geared more towards the female audience so the female gazing should probably be expected more than male. Anyway Dean Cain is pretty dreamy.
Moving on, returning to this familiar ground I find the version of the Superman story that works for me. I think there are a lot of reasons for this.
For one, I am more drawn to the style of storytelling found in TV shows over movies, and this is definitely a TV pilot rather than a movie. It doesn’t need to answer all the questions because it has the show to develop them over; the goal of the pilot is to give you a taste of the characters and situations you’ll see in the show and in that this...is a decent start. Oh it’s rough; the writing isn’t exactly stellar and the acting is uneven at best, and the characterization - partly owing to each - doesn’t seem very finalized yet. Special effects that I don’t even think were great for the time but look really awkward now; decidedly TV direction; some scenes that seem like they could have been cut with others that could have used more development; and all around just on the level of a decent start.
Another reason this works for me more than any movie probably could and definitely more than MoS did, is the focus on Clark Kent over Superman. This is tied in with it being a TV show, where it’s not an action movie or where people are going to expect to see lots of Superman action, right there in the title it tells you this about Lois and Clark and it delivers on that. He doesn’t even put on the costume until the last 20 minutes if that (probably that back when it had commercials) and only has a couple of Superman like things before that that accounted for only a few minutes of the story. This is the story of how Clark Kent became Superman and it being entirely about his journey as Clark.
Which is not to say the episode isn’t also about Lois, but she’s not really on a journey here, she’s a well-established force to be reckoned with in her world and the one that Clark is looking to join. She definitely has room to grow as a character, but her role here is to be the driving force of the plot rather than the character on a personal journey. And here’s the thing, for a movie that would be kind of uninteresting, but as a starting point for the character of a show it works.
Anyway, so you can say it’s an origin story in a sense, but it’s not about Krypton or how Clark discovered his powers (the Krypton stuff will wait and gets its own focus, and the amnesia ep later on fills us in on enough of how he discovered his powers). It does have elements of fearing how the world would react if they knew about his powers, but Clark does have the drive to use what he has to help people and the story is him finding a way to do that. (It amused me to see the scene here where Jonathan is warning Clark about being found out and Clark answers with “What should I have done, let him die?” and Jonathan pulls up like ‘...as worried as I am about you I can’t say that’ after the MoS version of that where movie-Jonathan was like “Maybe.”) Clark is an adult, he’s traveled the world but he’s still trying to find himself and that’s not something to be found by some magic voice from the past telling him where he was born, it’s about who he chooses to be now. But it doesn’t take a lot of effort to establish his care for all people he comes into contact or just people in general, it’s not hard but it was missing from MoS.
While one can claim it’s because this was the first version I saw (or at least paid attention to, I might have seen the movies earlier), so therefore it’s the way my brain assumes things should be, I really do like the symbology of the suit here. It’s not about his connection to Krypton, it’s his connection to Earth. The S is left over from Krypton, but his mom makes his suits (including that she must replicate the S later on), and later in the series (the end of the New Krypton arc) the suit will be explicitly about who he is to the people of Earth over his Krypton roots. (Although apparently Martha has a thing for spandex and external underwear (which kind of makes them...not underwear).)
The S does stand for Superman, it’s Superman that means hope
I suppose I haven’t really talked much about the other characters besides Clark, but that’s mostly down to why I decided to do this review rather than not being decent characters. Although even as a kid I thought Kat could have been a lot better character than she actually is, it’s just no one really cared to make her one which probably why she left after the first season (and I always kind of regretted that because I thought she could have been more). Basically all the actors on this show are forever imprinted on my brain as these characters; no matter what other roles they have to me they’ll always be Clark-Lois-Lex-Perry-etc. (Kat being the closest thing to an exception because a. she was only in one season, b. was only kind of a character for that long, and c. also appeared in my all time favorite show, admittedly as a character I wasn’t as fond of).
One time I remember watching this while I was still in a Smallville mode (either before I stopped watching it or shortly after) and there’s some stuff that takes on a somewhat different flavor when you have that show’s canon in the not distant back of your mind. The interactions between Clark and Lex in particular, and actually helps slightly some of Clarks early behavior to Lois if he already had reason to feel anti-Luther (he’s not borderline stalking Lois, he’s suspicious of Lex because of Smallville reasons). I pretty much ignored Smallville Lois though so I didn’t get quite the same odd reading when it came to her stuff.
I suspect I’ve rambled long enough and probably coud ramble more, but I feel like stopping. Until next time.
Next time:
Probably back to something more normal for me to review, but we’ll see.
Suggestion box this way