Spoilers "Superman & Lois" Season 1 spoiler discussion!

[YLu]

Well, unless you count What happened to the man of tomorrow where...

I thought someone might bring that up

But here's the thing: the villains there don't *know* Pete Ross knows the secret. They just suspected because of his association with Superman. So if he hadn't known... they still would have kidnapped and killed him. He'd still have been just as screwed.

 

[Skipper]

I thought someone might bring that up

But here's the thing: the villains there don't *know* Pete Ross knows the secret. They just suspected because of his association with Superman. So if he hadn't known... they still would have kidnapped and killed him. He'd still have been just as screwed.

You have a point (even if we are not sure that they would have killed him).

 

[Skipper]

And, by the way, quite a bunch of pre-Crisis superheroes shared their secret identities with the loved ones (The Flash, Atom, Earth-2 Superman) and still the Man of Steel couldn't change his mind. Even his alternate Earth counterpart was like "Son, what the heck are you doing?!?".

 

[Jayson1]

Well, unless you count Whatever happened to the Man of Tomorrow where...

Spoiler: Whatever happened to Pete Ross

But yes, you are absolutely right, considering that Clark Kent and Superman had virtually the same friends at the Daily Planet and I lost the count of how many times supervillains kidnapped or threatened them only because they were the Man Of Steel's acquaintances. So the nebulous "it's for their own good" reason doesn't make much sense.

While I still think their is danger in knowing Supes secret the idea of kidnapping loved ones or friends have one flaw. Superman would do everything in his power to protect even a total stranger. In theory holding hostages seems like the best strategy in beating him. Because his heart can sometimes be a weakness just as much as it also is a strength.

 

[Skipper]

While I still think their is danger in knowing Supes secret the idea of kidnapping loved ones or friends have one flaw. Superman would do everything in his power to protect even a total stranger. In theory holding hostages seems like the best strategy in beating him. Because his heart can sometimes be a weakness just as much as it also is a strength.

I'm not sure about that. It seems that villains had very high standards about who to threaten and/or kidnap. In the 1983 Lois and Superman finally breakup. So when Luthor wanted to use Lois as bait for yet another evil plan and the latter told him that she and the Man of Steel were no longer an item, the former was like "Uh, never mind, my bad".

 

[YLu]

I half-expected that scene to end with Luthor going, "There's only one thing left to do: I must repair their relationship! and Only when they love each other again can I finally exact my revenge!" followed by some wacky sci-fi scheme where he's trying to play matchmaker. Feels like the sort of thing a comic of that era would do.

 

[Nerys Myk]

I half-expected that scene to end with Luthor going, "There's only one thing left to do: I must repair their relationship! and Only when they love each other again can I finally exact my revenge!" followed by some wacky sci-fi scheme where he's trying to play matchmaker. Feels like the sort of thing a comic of that era would do.

The 80's???

 

[Skipper]

The 80's???

Exactly. While we weren't in the post-Watchmen/post-DKR grimdark excesses, we certainly were a far cry from the Silver Age eccentricities. I mean, Luthor wants to take revenge on Superman because he believes that the Man Of Steel is responsible for the destruction of Lexor and its billions of people, including the only woman Lex has ever loved and their son.

 

[YLu]

I've read my fair share of Bronze Age Superman comics. I'm gonna stand by what I said. It wasn't the Silver Age, but it was still doing really bizarre plots. (One writer explained that this was largely a result of editor Julius Schwartz having gotten extremely jaded by that late point in his career. He was constantly demanding more originality, stuff that hadn't been done before, and to satisfy that the writers had to go to some really strange places.)

Heck, one of my favorite Bronze Age stories is about Luthor coming up with some master scheme to kill Superman that involves faking he's reformed. Only he knows he can't successfully fool Superman about that, so instead he 1) has his computers find the one woman in the world who is his soul mate, knowing that meeting her would get him to genuinely reform, 2) arranges events so that he'll bump into her, 3) erases his own memory of the whole plan so that he won't blab it once reformed, leaving his pre-programmed robots to implement it. It's ridiculous, and it's great.

 

[Skipper]

I've read my fair share of Bronze Age Superman comics. I'm gonna stand by what I said. It wasn't the Silver Age, but it was still doing really bizarre plots. (One writer explained that this was largely a result of editor Julius Schwartz having gotten extremely jaded by that late point in his career. He was constantly demanding more originality, stuff that hadn't been done before, and to satisfy that the writers had to go to some really strange places.)

Heck, one of my favorite Bronze Age stories is about Luthor coming up with some master scheme to kill Superman that involves faking he's reformed. Only he knows he can't successfully fool Superman about that, so instead he 1) has his computers find the one woman in the world who is his soul mate, knowing that meeting her would get him to genuinely reform, 2) arranges events so that he'll bump into her, 3) erases his own memory of the whole plan so that he won't blab it once reformed, leaving his pre-programmed robots to implement it. It's ridiculous, and it's great.

The breakup between Lois and Superman, the new look of Luthor and Braniac, the new romantic relationship between Clark and Lana and other little innovation were part of a mini reboot in 1983. They weren't so eager to return to the previous status quo so soon. (Not that all of this had done any good: sales kept getting worse and the character had become something of a joke among comic book fans.)

 

[theenglish]

Considering its 2022 second-season premiere, I'm guessing S&L will continue to have a reduced episode count, a la Black Lightning, instead of the ~22-episode seasons of, say, Supergirl.

(And there are those who will contend this is a good thing, because it supposedly cuts down on "filler," but as for me, I want more-more-more.)

I'm in favor of shortened seasons if it means improved quality. All the CW series are really firing on all cylinders this year, although Black Lightning and now Superman and Lois are far ahead of the others. Flash is the only show that I am having problems with this year.

 

[Skipper]

I'm in favor of shortened seasons if it means improved quality. All the CW series are really firing on all cylinders this year, although Black Lightning and now Superman and Lois are far ahead of the others. Flash is the only show that I am having problems with this year.

Hey, do you remember when tv shows used to have like 26 episodes for season? My God, now I can't even fathom the idea.

 

[Christopher]

Hey, do you remember when tv shows used to have like 26 episodes for season? My God, now I can't even fathom the idea.

In the '50s and early '60s, TV seasons were typically something like 35 or 36 episodes long, with a midseason replacement series taking over in the summer instead of just reruns, so there was new programming year-round. It started to shrink to around 30 by the late '60s.

I once read something that partly attributed the progressive shortening of TV seasons to the success of Star Trek reruns in syndication, because it proved that the audience had a bigger appetite for reruns than the networks thought. I'm not sure that's true, but it was in the '70s-'80s that season lengths consistently shrank to a standard of 26 episodes, and then in the '90s that 22 started to become standard (until the Trek shows were just about the only ones still doing 26-episode seasons).

Of course, it depends on the country. In Japan, TV series often run year-round, typically about 50 episodes per season, give or take. Though there are shows that have short seasons like only 6-8 episodes.

 

[Noname Given]

Hey, do you remember when tv shows used to have like 26 episodes for season? My God, now I can't even fathom the idea.

In the day TOS first aired, they had 30 a season.

 

[Marc]

Hey, do you remember when tv shows used to have like 26 episodes for season? My God, now I can't even fathom the idea.

and episodes were close on 50mins long.

 

[JD]

Even more than the seasons getting shorter, it's the episodes getting shorter that annoys me. Like @Marc said, back in the '60s and '70s episodes were around 50 or 25 minutes, but now they're around 40 and 19 minutes.

 

[Ovation]

Even more than the seasons getting shorter, it's the episodes getting shorter that annoys me. Like @Marc said, back in the '60s and '70s episodes were around 50 or 25 minutes, but now they're around 40 and 19 minutes.

Money (both the desire to make more PLUS the real increase in costs). Besides, the length of a story is far less important than its quality.

 

[Anwar]

I thought someone might bring that up

But here's the thing: the villains there don't *know* Pete Ross knows the secret. They just suspected because of his association with Superman. So if he hadn't known... they still would have kidnapped and killed him. He'd still have been just as screwed.

Same thing happened in 2000 or so, Lois had been acting strange for a while and grew colder and more distant from Clark (who was feeling weak all the time now).

Turns out that Lois wasn't Lois, she was the Parasite who had grabbed her months earlier because he figured she might know something about Superman. This was when she and Clark were married in the comics, so he accidentally got everything. He kidnapped her and fed off her just enough to assume her form so he could slowly suck the life out of Clark. When he was strong enough to try and attack him, he did and Superman realized why Lois had been acting so strange.

Same deal, Lois ended up in that position not because the villains already knew she knew his secrets...it was just her association with Superman.

Of course, the story side-stepped how Superman had sex with Parasite-as-Lois during this whole time. So did Lex Luthor.

 

[Enterprise is Great]

Sofia Hasmik (Chrissy Beppo) promoted to series regular season 2

https://deadline.com/2021/06/superm...ed-series-regular-season-2-the-cw-1234784070/

 

[The Realist]

Sofia Hasmik (Chrissy Beppo) promoted to series regular season 2

https://deadline.com/2021/06/superm...ed-series-regular-season-2-the-cw-1234784070/

Great news! She's awesome.