"The Phony Alibi"
...
So they're kinda sorta doing the Atom's telephone gimmick a few years before that version of the character came along. In this version, it seems like it would make a lot more sense if there were a chamber on the opposite end, though that wouldn't be nearly as convenient for the crooks.
I dunno, it kinda makes sense, within its own nonsensical parameters. Presumably being "de-atmosphere-ized" or whatever is an unnatural state, and the body would tend to revert to normal density automatically on exposure to air. So the chamber would be needed to remove the air, but the body would naturally restore itself once it came out the other end. Sorta like a squeezed sponge when you let it go.
This schtick of benevolent scientists inventing things that get put to corrupt use by crooks gets kind of old...it's too bad they didn't just have a regular scientist who was also a crook...why, he could be Superman's arch-foe....
Yeah, but the crooks on this show are always shifty-looking people with lower-class accents and not much edgamacation. Surely they'd never get accepted into a scientific institute, because you can tell they're crooks just by looking at them.
Lois certainly could with the hoods in the next episode.
I dunno, maybe there was some kind of note from the studio about not portraying the sciences in a bad light, lest children be discouraged from pursuing technical careers. Although, wait, that doesn't really work, since the dimwitted old mad scientists in this show aren't exactly aspirational figures. So I dunno. I agree that I'm getting a little sick of the eccentric scientists.
The radio series had a number of evil scientists, usually with Nazi affiliations. But it also had plenty of friendly absent-minded geniuses whose inventions caused trouble, though generally more by accident than by criminal intervention.
The context in which Clark said that San Francisco was hours away made it seem like he meant by car in that instance. I've been wondering if the intent of the show was for Metropolis to be analogous to L.A. rather than New York. This would seem to point in that direction (along with other features like cliffside roads just out of town).
Well, as I've mentioned before, the
Daily Planet building is LA City Hall.
Metropolis has usually been portrayed as being in or near New York, going as far back as the second issue of Superman's solo title in 1939; one of the Fleischer cartoons explicitly put it on Manhattan Island. It's sometimes been treated as New York City by another name, not only in the Christopher Reeve movies, but as far back as a 1950 comics issue which mentioned the Statue of Liberty being in Metropolis Harbor. Some later comics sources put it in Delaware. But it's occasionally been placed elsewhere, for instance in
Smallville, where it was placed in Kansas so as to be adjacent to the title locale.
That phone call to Alaska sure traveled slowly...slow enough for the Professor to wake up from his nap, and Clark to come over, figure things out, and intercept it as Superman. Lois and Jimmy must have been stuck in the pattern buffer....
Yeah, that was kind of sloppy. The whole premise of the episode was that the tele(phone)portation was near-instantaneous, allowing for perfect alibis; but Lois and Jimmy had been traveling for at least two hours (since Pepperwinkle's nap was from 3 to 5) and yet were still within local bus range, evidently.
I was wondering if there was some way for the crooks to send them somewhere that would kill them. I guess there aren't a lot of phones placed in unsurvivable locations. But what if you dialed a disconnected number? Would they not be transmitted at all, or would they get stuck in limbo?
Another one where Superman's foes are really penny-ante operators, hardly worth his attention. We got a bit of Superman-worthy action with the dam disaster, but they didn't have the budget to make it all that impressive.
Throw in the old man saving Confederate money thinking it still had value...
Yeah, that's kind of weird. Let's run some numbers... This was a 1957 episode, and the Confederacy was dissolved in 1865. So that money had been worthless for 92 years. And yet the great-grandfather said that he himself, not his father, had owned that coat and placed his life savings in its lining. Meaning he must have done so as an adult, late enough in life to have accumulated $10,000 dollars. How could he have
saved up 10 grand in Confederate money decades after the Confederacy dissolved? Or are we supposed to believe he was 130 years old or more? (The actor, Raymond Hatton, wasn't even born until 1887.) For that matter, if Confederate currency was only valid for 4-5 years, how high an income would he have needed to save up that much money? That would've been a fortune back then.
Gee whiz, a dog whistle....Better bring that along, kid...considering who you're traveling with, it's likely to come in handy.
Hard to believe that Jimmy didn't know what a dog whistle was. But as soon as they had the kid explain it, it was obvious that he'd end up using it to summon Superman.
And I love it how Superman willfully inflicts unnecessary property damage just because he finds it spectacular.
I guess it's true what they say!
The actor was wearing the coat and he couldn't tell that it was laden with something?
I wondered that too, but it turned out that there wasn't that large a wad of bills (must've been in large denominations), and it is possible to lose track of things in the lining of a heavy coat, as I've found from time to time.
) -- she believably projects goodness/kindness and strong smarts at the same time. It's the writing that's mediocre, particularly the dialogue,and the cheezy jokes that remind us that people don't know Diana is WOnder WOman, despite the hint. 
