Episode 118 - My Adventures with Superman with Red and Blue from Overly Sarcastic Productions

It's exciting to reinvent a character as classic as Superman for a new generation while remaining true to his core. Case and Jmike are joined by Red and Blue from Overly Sarcastic Productions to gush about the first season of "My Adventures with Superman".

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Transcription

(AI Generated. Subject to Error)

00:00
Case
I know I promised it wouldn't be 3 hours. We just. We just crossed that mark, and I'm sorry.

00:06
Blue
Maybe to talk about. There's a lot. A lot to dig into.

00:10
Red
Maybe it'll get slimmed down in the edit. You never know.

00:12
Case
Yeah, but. But it was definitely like, we're gonna try to keep this under 3 hours. They didn't.

00:18
Red
The gang goes over 3 hours.

00:36
Case
Everyone. And welcome back to the men of steel podcast. I'm case aiken, and as always, I'm joined by my co host, j. Mike Falson.

00:43
Jmike
I'm so excited, case. Today is a special day.

00:45
Case
It's a special day. It's the day that we've been waiting for. And in fact, full disclosure, we are probably going to be waiting on this getting released a little while, because today we are talking about my adventures with Superman, animated work. And before the episode, were having a conversation of, is that struck material? Is it not? I don't know. We're in the middle of the sagstrike. I'm going to hold off on it, at least until we've gotten through other episodes that we have banked. But we are joined by people who most of you know as voices on the Internet.

01:15
Case
We are joined by the lovely hosts of the overly sarcastics productions YouTube channel. So we've got red.

01:21
Red
Hello.

01:22
Case
And we've got blue. Hey.

01:23
Blue
So excited to be here.

01:24
Red
We're staying in our comfort zone of being voices on the Internet for this one.

01:29
Case
So for people who are not familiar with overly sarcastic, give some quick explanation.

01:33
Red
We have a YouTube channel, which we basically split down the middle. I talk about tropes and literature and stuff like that. And I also sometimes talk about myths in the occasional classic.

01:42
Blue
And I've got the other half doing a lot of stuff on history, world culture, ancient literature, a little bit of architecture here and there. And together we talk about how cool the world is. And then also occasionally, little bits of media here and there.

01:56
Red
Just little two hour slices, two hour.

01:59
Blue
Discussions of our thoughts on superman media.

02:02
Red
Over the years, and occasionally other things sometimes.

02:05
Case
Yeah, I've been very happy to see the rise of that because your channel has always been like the perfect sliver of the Venn diagram of my interests. I was a classical studies major. I am a giant nerd. There is a theater sarcophagus lid from Joseph and the amazing Technicolor dreamcoat behind me.

02:21
Red
I was wondering.

02:26
Case
As well as a cutesy picture of Batman and a comic book rack and, like, a bunch of.

02:31
Red
You know, oh, wait, is that JL eight. Batman specifically.

02:34
Case
Yes, it is. Excellent.

02:38
Red
Thank you.

02:39
Case
So I've been a longtime fan of your channel, Red. You were awesome enough to come on my other show. Another pass a little while back. Oh, so fun talking about Valerian and the city of a thousand planets, which was a fun conversation about a weird movie.

02:51
Red
Yeah.

02:51
Case
But I've been very glad to have the two of you start doing your detailed dialogue tribes about Superman stuff over the years. It's been really fun to see that coverage. And then when you mentioned this show, which J Mike and I had separately been texting about, like, oh, my God, I love this show. And you mentioned it on the Patreon bonus stuff that you do for the spinoff podcast of your YouTube channel. So the Patreon spinoff of the spinoff podcast of the YouTube channel.

03:15
Blue
It's matureshka content after show, affectionately.

03:18
Red
Referred to as the Ass.

03:21
Case
I was like, you know what? I'm going to see if you guys want to talk about it some more.

03:25
Blue
Yeah. Get back in the saddle. Talk more about.

03:28
Red
Yeah. Yeah.

03:30
Case
So my adventures with Superman. So much fun. Oh, so good.

03:34
Red
Absolutely.

03:34
Blue
Out of the gate. I want to get Red's quote on this where I finished watching it the other day, and Red was like, I am so impressed by this show because I would never have written it myself on the simple basis that I would find it too indulgent for what I want. Superman.

03:51
Red
Yeah, that was basically it. I was like, wow. A Superman that's not just emotionally vulnerable, but actively a very nice and kind person whose core is sorrowful and trying to find his place in the world. Not angry punch man. Jesus figure. Like, this is a version I would feel weird about writing. It's too perfectly tailored for my interest.

04:11
Case
Yeah.

04:11
Blue
And after Superman videos we've done on our channel, where we're talking about, oh, man, there are various pieces of Superman media that get it, but we never really feel like there's one that just encapsulates it. And then here comes this show, and it's like, oh, no, it's this one. It's this one.

04:27
Red
You ever get an adaptation so good that you realize every other adaptation you've liked, you've just been settling for? That's where I'm at.

04:34
Case
There's a specific thing in this that I had that exact thought about, which.

04:38
Red
We'Ll get to eventually.

04:40
Case
But it's interesting right now because were inundated with a wave of Superman is evil kind of media, which is really annoying and kind of whatever, but I've been really enjoying a lot of the Superman as dad stuff that's been coming out recently. Superman and Lois is a lot of fun. I love the dynamic of Clark Kent, the goofy kind of Persona being played up as a way of embarrassing his kids. I think that's a really fun element there, and it nails a specific point in Superman's progression that I think hasn't been really explored very well. But I actually think this explores one that we gloss over a lot. Like the early days of Superman before he's established, but also after he's Superman. It's not Superboy. It's not him. And hiding.

05:19
Red
It's not small.

05:20
Case
Exactly. This is that window that is usually like, it's the pilot of the series, but it's the whole season.

05:26
Red
Yeah.

05:27
Case
And I think that they do a really good job of having that young Superman who lacks confidence in a lot of things, but is very true to who his core is.

05:36
Red
I had a realization about the show when I got through, like, the first few episodes. Clark Kent is the only person who doesn't know what Superman is going to look like, basically. But Clark Kent is by his very nature the kind of person who would create know. Anytime we see a Superman origin story, there's always this element of dramatic irony. The audience knows he's going to become Superman. Like, the whole time you watch Smallville, it's like, he's going to be Superman. That's a Superman thing. Or like, that's a Superman bad guy, or, that's a Superman power. And it's got all those like, oh, Leonardo da Vinci, that guy will never amount to anything. Like those kinds of jokes of like, oh, I see where this is going. We can be cheeky about it, but starting from the premise of, like, Superman doesn't exist yet.

06:15
Red
Clark Kent exists. He doesn't know who he's going to be. We know who he's going to be. But Clark Kent needs to be the kind of person who would choose to be that. And it's this kind of underrated component of his characterization in any story that treats becoming Superman as his inevitable destiny that he has very little control over. Like in the Snyder movies when it's like, here is your Superman suit. Put it on so you can become like, they do that a little bit in this show, but in the original comics, he's like, I'm going to be a superhero. And his mom is like, I'll sew your costume and then you can go and be a superhero. And at every step of the process, he's creating Superman. And we sort of lose track of that the longer we've had Superman for culturally.

06:50
Red
And I like how the show kind of got right back into that of, like, Superman doesn't have to exist. Clark Kent has to choose to make that happen.

06:56
Blue
Yeah, they really hammer into that in the ending of the season with the specific repetition of the idea of choices.

07:03
Red
It makes him such an interesting foil to Batman, who had no choice in existing. Basically, it's like, oh, clark Kent chooses to be Superman. Bruce Wayne is forced to be Batman. Basically.

07:13
Blue
Like, nine year old Bruce Wayne is like, well, buckle up, criminals.

07:17
Red
Yeah, I think. I don't remember which comic it was, but I saw one that was putting those two in parallel, and they were each talking about how the other one chose to become a great person and didn't have to. Like, Batman's like, he could have been a God.

07:28
Blue
But, oh, I think that was new 52. I remember it was from, like, a run that we did it, like, recent.

07:34
Case
It was when they were doing the Catwoman. Yeah, that thing where they introduce each other.

07:39
Red
I did think that one specific framing was very cool, where it's like each of them individually is like, well, I had to do the right thing. But from the outside perspective, they look at the other and they're like, wow, you could have fucked this up in so many ways.

07:52
Case
Well, that's because they can see the potential that each one has, broadly, but that inner core of who they are. While they might be questioning it, the recurring question that Clark has is, who am I? Throughout this whole thing. But that's not really in question in this whole thing. Sure, his origins are what he is, all those things, but Clark Kent is very defined from the get go, from the first scene. And at no point does that deviate.

08:18
Red
Which I think is a very bold choice for Superman. A character that every writer in the past 20 years has been like. But what's his moral breaking point that would make him stop being Clark Kent? It's like, he shouldn't have one of those. Why do you keep putting one?

08:30
Blue
Just give him a really bad day.

08:34
Red
As we all know. Reliable narrator. The Joker's thesis on humanity.

08:41
Case
Reliable thesis that was disproven in the issue where it was introduced.

08:45
Blue
Red, I think you had said this earlier. I'm pulling out all of your good points to frame the discussion before we get into the episodes themselves.

08:51
Red
But betrayal.

08:53
Blue
The title of my adventures with Superman. It's Clark's adventures with Superman. It's like, you read it first and it's like, what is Lois talking? But it's Clark's adventures with the notion of being the character of Superman.

09:05
Red
Yeah, that was my interpretation. I'm not 100% sure that was the intention, but considering that Clark is the main focus character and Lois is always a little bit on the outside of that, my read on that is that my. And that has to be Clark Kent.

09:18
Case
Another interpretation could be jimmy, considering that it's like, at the end of the episode and is the one kind of exploring everything. That's true, but I don't think it really matters because the three of them as really good friends is a really fun component, and seeing how each one of them takes something from the existence of Superman in this world. And while Clark, it's him, it still helps him define how he sees himself and what he thinks his role is.

09:42
Red
Yeah, I think that creating the Persona of Superman kind of gives him a way to exist where he doesn't feel like he's doing it wrong because he spends so much of the show being like, oh, there's something deeply wrong with me. I'm not sure what it is, but I'm definitely not normal. And then it's like, well, what if I just did that on purpose? What if I just committed to the bit, styled my hair a little different, and then it wouldn't be so weird that I could fly because I wouldn't be a normal guy who could fly. I'd be Superman who can fly.

10:07
Blue
Superheroification of lean in.

10:11
Case
One thing I wanted to bring up before we get into the overall show is that this is a reinvention of Superman in a way that I haven't seen a lot. A lot of things will be like, here's the twist that we're putting on it. Here's our specific take. But this one, so many elements of it are like, all right, well, what if we throw out what the conventions are? What if we throw out the norms? It's a lightning person who has lightning powers and they can turn into lightning. And what if it's tech? What if instead of parasite being the specific character, we manipulate it around so that we can have this larger thesis of the whole thing sort of work together?

10:45
Case
In this shared world that they're constructing, everything is rebuilt with this very anime esque kind of thing in a way, I think is really good.

10:54
Red
Yeah, I think that they've pulled off something pretty interesting here. And I actually think it's sort of consolidated in one of the early episodes, which brings in mixel picked or whatever, and brings up just overtly like, hey, there's a multiverse. And initially, I was like, oh, God, please don't. I've made my thoughts on the multiverseification of superhero comics very clear. But I actually think it was kind of genius, because what they do with that is be like all those other Superman. They're out there. They're fine. They're valid. They're not. This one, though, we're doing our own thing. And I think that's genius because that means it can be. We don't need to be like, oh, when are they going to hit this touch point or this touch point? Or are they going to do, like, Justice Lord Superman?

11:29
Red
It's like, Justice Lord Superman's just over there. He's being terrible. We're not going to deal with that. He's over there. They lost the coordinates for this universe. We're never going to see these guys again, probably. And I actually found that very during, because that means they were plugging a hole in the plot that I was a little bit worried about. Whenever you bring in something DC, it's like, how soon before we start talking about Earth two or Earth prime? And they were like, none of that. This is its own thing.

11:53
Blue
Yeah, shoot. Very conscious choice to say, like, we acknowledge this and we are not participating in it.

12:00
Red
And because that takes this story out from having to be the Superman story. Like, if you tell a story without acknowledging that there are other Superman stories, it kind of feels like you have to hit every single touch points. Like, he has to fight this guy. He has to fight this guy. He has to do these things in this order. We have to unpack this. And in this case, it's just like, no, those stories are all over there. This is this own thing. And I thought that was a very interesting, efficient way to tighten up the story in a very helpful fashion.

12:26
Case
Yeah, it feels very unfettered. We've talked a lot about how much we love the 90s animated series on the show, but that one still feels like we have to build all the big pieces and get to like, this is the classic Superman. Just our take on it versus this one is like, well, we can kind of just do what we want to do and sort of find the things that we like and put them in the right pieces and then interpret it all through a much more modern kind of pop culture lens than what the original Superman was coming out with, where his design is like a circus strongman kind of aesthetic to him.

12:56
Case
All the features of it are like, building on what was pop culture in 1938 versus here we're looking at in 2023 and it's like, okay, well, the pop culture we're going to reference is there's a lot of big tech stuff that sort of feels very specific. There's a lot of, like, here's how the military works. It's very specific. There's a Roswell kind of thing going on here. And then the designs for everything I mentioned, the anime stuff, it looks straight up mecca. It looks like Evangelion.

13:23
Red
Yeah, it definitely does. Especially Ivo parasite things.

13:27
Blue
Anime boy magical girl transformation, Superman fighting gundams and Kaiju.

13:32
Red
I like it a lot. I loved what they did.

13:36
Blue
Dragon Ball Z character.

13:37
Red
I know, it's so perfect. And I loved how it was like, oh, his little bowler hat. Oh, it's turned into a much more aesthetically appropriate crown.

13:44
Case
Right. Fantastic stuff. And then we also get a lot of updates that are appropriate considering a better representation of how the world actually looks. They do a lot of race bending in ways that I'm generally speaking pretty good with. Like, they make Lois Korean. I think that's a cool little step there. It doesn't feel out of whack, but it is definitely true. It's culturally appropriate. The outfit she wears. Great stuff. Jimmy. Being black has the one caveat that's a little bit weird, which is that the ginger is always the one that is made black. That's the only part I find a little bit weird about it, and it's only because that's a trip.

14:17
Blue
You know, I am instantly seeing into the matrix. There's a lot to unpack with that.

14:25
Case
Oh, God.

14:25
Red
Is that a pop through the code?

14:27
Blue
Oh, wow. I'm never going to unsee this in my entire life.

14:32
Case
That one. And the weird connection of black characters with lightning powers are, like, the two that are, like, kind of weird. And then you look at the recent redo of Legion of superheroes where Lightning lad, the ginger with lightning, was turned into the black character on the team. And it's just like, what? Don't actually, like, there's no problem with changing these. It's just weird that it always is.

14:52
Red
Yeah. What does it mean?

14:53
Case
The reason, frankly, is that the ginger was always, like, the minority in the group back when it was, like, all white.

15:00
Blue
Yeah.

15:00
Red
No, you're right, though, actually. Yeah.

15:02
Blue
I mean, because larger discussion until, like, the 1950s, Irish was not white.

15:07
Case
Yeah. So there's weird stuff going on there, too. But I freaking love this Jimmy.

15:13
Red
I love this Jimmy so much.

15:15
Case
Jimmy.

15:16
Blue
Easily.

15:17
Case
Nothing is wrong with any of this. It's just like. It's a weird observation.

15:25
Red
They did that in Supergirl too.

15:27
Case
Right?

15:27
Red
So this wasn't even their idea necessarily.

15:30
Case
Again, it's totally fine. It's not the first time either, but it's just like, oh, yeah, that's a little weird.

15:35
Red
Such a weird pattern. Why does it keep happening?

15:38
Case
I love the news kids being actual part of this. Like, the newsboy Legion is such a depression era Jack Kirby kind of thing, and they're updated in a way that's like, yeah, this is fun and works really well.

15:50
Red
Yeah. I like how it's silly, but it'silly in the way that a bunch of kids that came up with a club, it would be silly. It becomes diegetically dumb, and it's also.

15:58
Blue
Just extremely endearing where on the surface, it's like, oh, how know whatever. And even Lois is like, okay, guys, come on. And then they assert themselves, like, no, we're in this story, damn it. And it's like, okay, you know what?

16:11
Red
Fair enough.

16:11
Blue
Fair enough. They help.

16:13
Case
They help out a lot. The joke characters always help. I have a lot of notes about Jimmy constantly being the reason that the day is saved.

16:20
Blue
Yeah.

16:21
Red
I also like the running gag that everything Jimmy conspiracy theories about, he's correct. Every single thing he says is true.

16:30
Case
I mean, there's a couple tangents that don't quite match up because there's, like, where he'll throw out a couple theories about a thing, but almost everything and everything he's adamant about is absolutely correct.

16:39
Blue
Yeah.

16:40
Red
As soon as he was, like, super intelligent apes, I was like, oh, no, wait. I need to be paying attention because these are all correct.

16:47
Case
I do want to mention, before we get too far in the voice cast, I love Jack Quaid as this character of Superman. It feels perfect for this young Superman trying to find his place. But the one I really wanted to call attention to just because it's so weird but somehow is so perfect is Chris Parnell as Slade Wilson. People hated that one.

17:07
Blue
I had no idea that was Chris Parnell. Holy crap.

17:10
Case
Yeah. Like, fantastic use of an actor who has a very distinct voice but normally is playing such a different type. And to take it on, Slade Wilson, who. This is a very specific interpretation of deathstroke the terminator.

17:24
Red
I love everything about. Look, everyone who was losing their mind over this, you have to remember, this is early days of the DC universe. All of Slade's future nemeses are in diapers right now. This is the face of a man who is about to become aggressively divorced.

17:38
Case
But I love this idea of a smarmy Slade Wilson.

17:41
Red
Oh, yeah. Absolutely. It fits very well for his whole vibe, like Slade's entire gimmick is just being frighteningly competent and a little bit super soldierified. The only reason he works and can hold his own in the world of superheroes is that he's just too damn good. So introducing him young, cocky, and as anime pretty boy, I think is fucking hilarious. It's like, look, he's dangerous, but he's not where he's going to be later. Maybe dealing with Superman Day one is going to be what kicks him into high gear and makes him a credible threat.

18:10
Case
It's such a weird casting choice, but so perfect. And the design, they hint at the lost eye by having his hair over his eye. Anime pretty boy esque as it is. It's so good.

18:20
Red
As soon as I saw him, I was like, oh, God, tell me that's Slade, please.

18:25
Case
I love the takes on most of the characters in this. Like, Perry White, I think is fantastic as being like, you guys are interns. Just shut up and leave.

18:34
Red
Very reasonable authority figure. Go get coffee.

18:37
Case
Make me copies. Like, stop chasing stories.

18:39
Blue
It's so cute that he's trying to play tough, but he has such an endearment towards these three poor idiots who are in his care. As the interns at the Daily Planet were like, he can't help but respect them, even though he's like, oh, my God. Shut up.

18:54
Case
Leave.

18:54
Blue
Get out of my office.

18:55
Case
We're done.

18:56
Red
There's something very funny to me about how all of the older adults in the show look at the main trio and are like, oh, children. Cool, right? In terms of an interpretation of Clark, Lois, and Jimmy, that's very interesting.

19:08
Case
Yeah, I mean, like, Jimmy less so because he sometimes is, like a full on kid. But yeah, with Clark and Lois and having Jimmy be their same age and all of them being, like, 22, I think is kind of perfect because it's like, oh, yeah, you're supposed to be an adult now. But at the same time, no, you're right. The whole world sees them as kids. When I interact with a 22 year old, I'm like, oh, you child. When I interact with, like, a 25 year old, I'm like, oh, you child.

19:32
Red
There is also, I've seen a few people point out that back in the. It's like, if you were 22, you probably could have a reporter job. And that Great Depression did happen somewhere in there. But theoretically, outside of that, the way that the economy has completely shifted and the expectations of housing and employment means that 22, fresh out of college, you are going to be an intern. You are not going to be a reporter. Sorry. That's just how it works now. But that's not how it worked when the characters were initially conceived. So I think a few people were like, why are these guys so much less accomplished than their Great Depression era counterparts?

20:05
Blue
And I even like that they touch on that in the multiverse episode where Lois is like, what the fuck do you mean? These are the loises are doing all this stuff.

20:11
Red
You had a poliser at 23. How does that even happen again?

20:14
Case
The world is just very different from the way Superman was when he was first created. On that note, why don't we get into the actual episodes? Because we've got ten ish episodes. Talk about the first two are the one story pilot. So I've seen listings where it's like there's nine episodes, another where it's ten. It's that the pilot is a double linked episode. So adventures of a normal man. We open the episode, obviously with great symbolism of a Superman symbol. Kite being stuck in the tree, which I think is just kind of fun there.

20:42
Red
Cheeky.

20:43
Case
And then we set up the whole thing. That's going to be this recurring element that I know a lot of people online complained about but I freaking loved, which was the dragon Ball z esque like power surge moment.

20:54
Red
Yeah, I'm intrigued by that because it's definitely framed in such a way that it's supposed to invite question because it's not part of Superman's known repertoire of abilities. Seems like it's probably something weird that has not been explained throughout the entire season.

21:09
Blue
It doesn't show up in the entire back half.

21:12
Red
No, it does. Very briefly. Yeah. He gets one power surge in zero day part one. But it's not enough to. Yeah, you got to watch the eyes. But I think it's interesting and I have questions about it and I have a couple theories about it. But I think the fact that it hasn't been addressed or explained is good. They do a very good job of sort of slowly building up or answering questions that reveal more questions. And I think that's a big one that just Clark doesn't know enough to question what the hell is going on because we know that's not normal for Superman. But he doesn't.

21:42
Case
Right. And also, he doesn't necessarily even see the effect that's happening. Like, when his eyes glow blue. Does he even know? The way I took it was that this was sort of like a quantum leap, kind of where his actual power tier is kind of like breaking forth because he's not able to fly. And then all of a sudden, he can fly and he can fly freely. When he does the first jump there, it seems that with these power unlocks that occur. It's almost like in a role playing game, like a world of Warcraft or something, where it's like you leveled up and there's a big flash and then it kicks in. But in this case, there's a personal motive pushing that flash.

22:16
Red
It does seem like every time it happens, it's not like a temporary power up. It permanently unlocks a new level of power, which I think is a very cool way to frame it because traditionally, Superman has overall gotten more powerful as he's grown, starting off with no power and then getting more power. But I like how they're doing it in discrete leaps. And it is always motivated, usually by him trying to help people, which makes me think just my crack theory. I think Jor El did something. I think this is a Jor El scheme of some kind. I don't know what it is, but that's my feeling. It's like, oh, you only get powers if you do good things. I don't know. Feels like a dad thing to know. Yeah.

22:49
Case
Like some kind of, like, mental blocks or something on him to prevent him.

22:51
Red
Or it could be something else. It could be like, we don't know how strong the average Kryptonian is in this setting. We haven't seen runners, so we don't really have a baseline to compare to.

23:02
Case
So he saves this woman and her baby, who are, like, careening off the road with this burst of energy. And he stops the car. And that's where he asks himself, who am I? And then we see he's able to fully fly and grab the kite that he was having trouble with. And then we kind of jump forward to him actually trying to acclimate to the world. We set up the whole, like, he's living with Jimmy, which I think is a really fun kind of convention there that Jimmy officially doesn't know, quote unquote.

23:27
Blue
Yeah.

23:28
Case
Despite the fact that Clark is just destroying everything in their apartment in that first day sequence.

23:33
Blue
Yeah.

23:33
Red
This is a minor thing, but I actually really love how they did Clark's super strength in this show in that it feels like just a thing that his body does. This is something I've thought about on occasion. Like, anytime I pull a push door, I'm like, boy, it's a good thing I have normal levels of human strength so that as soon as I feel resistance, I can stop. Because if I were stronger and I just pulled this off the hinges every time I pushed something that wasn't supposed to get pushed. That's not a way that they normally frame Clark. And it got some lip service in the 90s. Justice League, of course, because he's got the world of cardboard speech. But in this case, you actually see like, oh, yeah, you actually do live in a world of cardboard.

24:06
Red
And anytime you push a button or turn a lever or open a door, there is a chance you're just going to completely flatten it because the difference in strength required to do those things is so fine.

24:15
Blue
I forget what episode it is. But it starts off there's like some heavy box in the closet at the daily Planet.

24:24
Red
You will believe a man can lie.

24:25
Blue
I think it's like, it's full of weights and nonsense. And Lois is like, oh, my gosh. And Clark's like, oh, here, let me get this out of the way. And it's like, crushes the filing cabinet. He sets it down on.

24:36
Red
It's because Clark didn't see her picking it up. So he doesn't know how heavy it's supposed to be. I like that it kind of makes his strength and his speed to an extent just feel like properties of how he exists and moves rather than something he can switch on and off. And I think that's really cool. It's a very solid way to do it.

24:53
Case
So then we get a sequence of him jogging and he's like talking about how he has to be as normal as he possibly can. And then they open the show with him saving a cat.

25:02
Red
I had to save the cat. I had to save the cat.

25:04
Case
Yeah, no, legit, you had to save the cat. But at the same time, the show had to show him save the cat.

25:08
Blue
Not the only time. I think they mention it in a later episode. In his rush of running around, you think he saved another cat.

25:15
Red
Superman saves a lot of cats, but.

25:16
Case
I just love it here because there's the save the cat screenwriting school of thought that I think was directly influencing that specific scene where.

25:24
Blue
No, I had to save the cat.

25:25
Case
Yeah, of course, because you're Superman. Like, you have to save the.

25:28
Red
Yeah, yeah.

25:29
Case
And then we sort of set up the initial. So he meets Lois first up buying donuts, which I love the setup of him having such a giant appetite.

25:37
Red
Yeah. I mean, he was also buying them for the office because it was his first day and he wanted to make a good impression. But also. Yeah, I mean, that whole burnt a lot of calories.

25:46
Case
That whole little scene with him at the shop was hilarious.

25:48
Red
Oh, Clark, did you get your bib?

25:50
Case
Did he get his bib?

25:54
Red
I like that. It was clearly contrived to be, like, the absolute most embarrassing meat cute ever, but also the most endearing from the outside.

26:01
Case
Oh, he likes the door for them. He does all the stuff for them. He has this great relationship with them.

26:05
Red
And I think that also, it automatically endears us to Clark because we're like, oh, he's just a big dork. But then it endears us to Lois because it's like, oh, she thinks he's a big dork, too. This is like, if she were me, her, she could have been mean about anything that happened there. And instead, she's just like, oh, this guy's adorable.

26:20
Case
And I love that we don't just mess around with her being disgusted by Clark. She's instantly like, no, he's this, like, six foot five Adonis who is super nice.

26:30
Red
Just this absolute hunk. Obviously, I'm going to be all over that 220 pounds of Kansas beef.

26:40
Case
Like, the meat cute element of it. There's a lot of shonen feeling on it, just in general in the show and the fact that they've got this sort of cute relationship, but they're not quite willing to fully commit to it until, honestly, they both have kind of bared their souls with each other. Like, really nice progression for this whole thing. And the fact that they both have reasons for the other one to be mad at them at various times, that kind of keep it working pretty well.

27:03
Red
Oh, man. Yeah. The way they handle their characters in conflict, I think, is incredibly interesting. I'm a big fan of when the characters are unconditionally on the same side and do like each other and still have points of crucial disagreement. And they manage to hit that with every single character duo in this entire show. And I think that's really good.

27:21
Case
Yeah. We first get our first real hint about Livewire, who they don't establish as livewire in this episode, but we'll find that out. And it's easier than me trying to remember that her name is Leslie. We get the hint about her stealing the garbage trucks. And this sort of sets up a thing that the show is very good about, which is a lot of setup and payoff. Like, there are so many sequences that we find out more or that they use as reporters to piece together the solutions, which has this investigative quality to it that I think some Superman material lacks, but is a really important part about him being a news reporter.

27:53
Red
Yeah, I think that there's a lot of stories that kind of gloss over the Clark Kent job stuff because it's less visually exciting than the Superman adventure stuff. Or we'll just kind of be like, Clark has super hearing and can see through walls. His investigative journaling is on easy mode. And I like how that's just not the case in this show. It's like, oh, you think those will solve all your problems?

28:11
Blue
No, it's like, know, Batman is the world's greatest detective, and the bad Batman media is the Batman media that forgets that. Or, like, what people love about Spider man is that the story is just as much about Spider man as it is about Peter Parker. And I feel like this show is maybe one of the only iterations or adaptations of a Superman story where Clark Kent as Clark Kent, who he feels more comfortable being, is just as important to what's going on in the plot as Superman. And what I was pointing out to red the other day is that it feels like a lot of times the plots that Clark is doing as a reporter are often in conversation with and in parallel with whatever's going on with Superman.

28:55
Blue
So, like, later on, we have the episode where the city turns on Clark for 15 seconds because he messed up a truck, which is in line with Vicky Vale wanting to write this expose. So the real person reporter plotline mirrors and supports the Superman plotline. Same thing happens with let's all go to Ivo Tower, where the reporter aspect of what's going on is fundamentally linked with that plot. And seeing the two of them always play together is always so satisfying.

29:24
Red
Yeah, I think that this version of the story definitely highlights that Clark Kent is the core of Superman and cannot be neglected in a Superman story, which I think is good. And it's interesting because we've gotten shows that kind of pick a side before, like, most of the animated ones, focus almost entirely on Superman and will only occasionally be like, clark is doing a thing. And then the live action shows, for probably budgetary reasons, often focus more on Clark or like Superman doing non Superman things that are easier to VFX up. And the show, being animated can kind of just do whatever it wants. So it's like, we got Clark, we got Superman, we got quick changes between Clark and Superman. Let's do it.

29:59
Case
I think they also do a good job of balancing the different types of reporter that Clark, Lois and Jimmy are because sometimes that's an issue, like Superman and Lois, I love. But Lois is the reporter on the show because that's her shtick. And she's a great reporter. She's a pro. She's such a good reporter that people love her and are excited when she shows up because she's this award winning reporter and, like, clark is, too. But no one really talks about that in that project here. Clark has his own type of thing. Lois is not that good of a reporter yet. She'll get there, but they're all nascent. And then Jimmy has the conspiracy theory stuff and the flamebird stuff, and, like, all.

30:41
Red
Jimmy Olsen. As soon as he said flamebird, I was like, I have to google this.

30:45
Case
I loved it so much. Okay, we'll talk about Flamebird for a second because, oh, my God, I love that they went with that. It's so good. All right, so for people who are not familiar with the lore of Flamebird, in Superman stuff, Flamebird is the superhero identity that Jimmy Olsen would go under when he and Superman would travel into the bottled city of Kandor, where Superman would take on a Batman style Persona because they were in a Krypton type environment, so he had no powers, and he went under the name Nightwing. Lambert was his Robin.

31:18
Red
And what I love about this is such a weird little cul de sac of comics canon that most adaptations can't do because it's like, how much explanation do you need to do to explain the bottle city of Kandor in the first place? And then be like, hey, you know, Superman. Here's Superman's other superhero. Like, there's so many layers. But this is why Nightwing is called Nightwing. He picked the name specifically to be like. Yeah. In homage to, like, civilian Batman superhero identity. And, like, without that, the explanation is just that Robin was like, I think Nightwing sounds pretty cool, guys. What do you think? Yeah.

31:55
Case
No, like, the Nightwing identity was always like, Superman was always such a role model for him. That's the whole world's finest Superman, Batman and Robin playing baseball kind of stuff. It's like, oh, yeah, no, it's like, it's my two.

32:08
Red
Oh. Because he's like, well, I can't call myself Batman. That would just be confusing. And I can't call myself Superman. That's false advertising.

32:16
Case
Well, it's better than, like, the weird Robin costumes of Earth two. That would show up like the Batman costume, but with a giant r on the bat with one. Or the weird adult Robin costume just never goes well. But the thing is, because Night wing is, like, one of the few successful handoffs of a secret identity for a major character, especially one who'd been around since the think is when Robin first showed up. But it owns Night wing in a way that very few other identity changes have and thus makes it really difficult to explain Flamebird, because it's like, well, what if you just had Robin but also kryptonian Robin as a separate, and.

32:51
Red
It was Jimmy Olsen, BTW.

32:53
Case
But I love it. It's such a perfect vehicle for a specific type of journalism. It's a discussion of social media in there. It's all the stuff going on there. It allows for the alien conspiracy stuff to be exposed, or at least to us exposed, I should say. It's so fun. I love the icon being a fiery bird. UFO.

33:12
Red
It's so cute. I love everything about it. And of course, we'll get to the episode later, but with hindsight, there's a lot of stuff about Jimmy that becomes very funny. And I do like one of the clips we saw off Flamebird where he was like, do aliens walk among us? And then Clark walks in, like, trips over something. I was just like, this is perfect. This is exactly what I wanted from Superman and Jimmy Olsen being roommates.

33:35
Blue
I also really like that whenever he says flame bird, there's the, but also just like, in the context of working on YouTube as our job, the episode where Jimmy's like, I got a million followers, I'm like, I'll have you know that takes years. Mr. Not that easy.

33:55
Red
Yeah, I had that little moment where I was like, oh, they got 5 million, we've got 2 million. I'm not jealous. That's fine.

34:02
Case
I mean, to be fair, if you got the only footage of Superman or.

34:06
Red
Something, God, I also just love that because Jimmy Olsen is the photographer. It's a good baseline for the character. And that's still true. But I also really like that they were just like, jimmy needs more stuff to do. Youtuber, the endless comedic possibilities.

34:23
Case
Yeah, I mean, it's a youtuber or TikToker, though, really.

34:25
Red
Flamebird is for YouTube, but he does go live vertical at the end of the show.

34:30
Case
Yeah, it's generic social media that for.

34:33
Blue
Whatever reason, has horizontal and vertical video on.

34:38
Red
Shorts and shit.

34:39
Case
Right?

34:40
Blue
I just forgot that YouTube shorts existed.

34:43
Red
Come on, man. Oh, gosh. Yeah. No, I love how they're doing Jimmy and everything about Flamebird is so funny. And just so much of this just adds texture to the show because it gives the characters more stuff to do because obviously Clark is always going to have stuff to do. He's the main guy. And hooking Lois into, like, the Superman questions, I mean, she always has stuff to do. And then with Jimmy, it's like sometimes he's intersecting with the plot. Sometimes he's off hunting Bigfoot, and I love that. That's genius. He's never on the shelf, and he's never bored.

35:11
Case
And everything he does actually does advance the plot at any given time, even if it is this off tangent and you're like, oh, that has to be something totally different. He finds where they're storing the robots. He's the one. Basically, every episode, there is a major moment where Jimmy allows for things to continue going forward. At no point is he ineffective in terms of moving the story forward.

35:31
Red
Yeah, the action economy in this show is great.

35:33
Case
It's so good. That's just one thing I absolutely love. So we cut to Livewire's criminal underworld gang having stolen all this military tech.

35:44
Blue
Yeah, military tech, as were learning.

35:47
Case
Yeah, well, and that's actually sort of a fun detail on this one, which is like, the military tech. Like, the world is advanced. The computers they have are all, like, tablets that project a screen up. Even Perry's desktop computer is like a stand that has, like, a holographic, translucent screen or something. But we see enough, like, floating screen tech in this that the world is, like, weirdly advanced. So we see these robots, and when the robots pop up, they activate it by accident the first time. It looks anime assault. Like I said, it looks like Evangelion. It looks like all this stuff. You know what it also kind of looks like in terms of its basic layout? It looks like the 90s kryptonian armor that Superman would rock around the death and return of Superman era.

36:27
Red
Full armor. Yeah, it's got that sort of angular.

36:31
Case
It was more rounded in the comics, but it's got similar kind of dimensions to it, which I find kind of fun. And it's just sort of like, it looks classically mecca, but it's also thoroughly Superman.

36:41
Red
Yeah, definitely. I think that the way that they sort of integrate everything stylistically in this show is really impressive, especially considering how much they use three D models, which can be very difficult to convincingly integrate into a 2d animated series. But later, when we meet Musumala and the brain, it's like, oh, brain is a 3d model. I didn't even notice until they zoomed in really close and I saw the edges of the polygons, that kind of thing. So that's the level of, like, oh, they're really pulling this off. That, I think, is very cool in.

37:06
Case
Terms of good setup and payoff. When later, Clark, Lois, and Jimmy find the bunker where they had been storing it beforehand, they find a jacket there which sets up where it might be. But that also sets up the jacket for Superman knows that they're at that location so he can grab one to be a disguise when he has to reveal himself is really fun. I rewatched the show in preparation for this episode, and I rewatched it all in one night. And it was like really fun just to be. I mean, it was like 5 hours on a Friday night. It's not like that crazy, but like.

37:35
Blue
Yeah, I watched Castlevanian at night a couple of weeks back, but especially because.

37:42
Case
I was like, in notetaking mode and it wasn't like in one sitting, but it was over the course of the night and it was like fun just being like, having already seen it, where it's like, oh, I know that he's going to wear that jacket later. Oh, they're setting up that he's aware of these details around as well. That building out this world was a really fun element for the show and that there's so much. We're going to set this thing up early so that we can pay it off later. We set up the way they accidentally turn on the robot and how she turns it off later so that we can set up that Lois will turn off the robot that exact same way so that we can keep having these actions. So it's not like, how do we stop the robot?

38:15
Case
I don't know. And then have to invent a scene for it. Like, oh, no, we already know how to do it. Again, were saying the economy of storytelling is really strong and they do a.

38:23
Red
Pretty good job of making it so that the solution isn't just hit it harder because they do convincingly make it clear that, like, okay, just beating one of these was really hard. So beating ten of them is not conservation of ninjitsu easier. It's actually going to be ten times harder, possibly more.

38:36
Blue
It's incredible if the show manages to avoid the conservation of the jitsu problem specifically because normally be like, oh, well, now that I found the one weakness, I can kick all these robots asses, no problem.

38:46
Red
Yeah, it kind of helps that Superman doesn't really have heat vision yet. Exactly. Not to a major degree, because usually it'll be like, oh, okay, ten robots. Let me just laser them all in half with my face. We're not there yet, and I think that's cool.

39:04
Case
Well, and the level up system that Superman has plays into that too, because he doesn't have all the super senses in the first episode, he doesn't have all this stuff going on. So in this fight, which is a very classic opening to a Superman series kind of fight. It felt very much like the Max Fleischer cartoons. The robot fights, the animated series from the episode it's Metallo, but he's in a mech. He's not in robot body at that point. If you look at the new 52, the Grant Morrison stuff, the first super fights he deals with are robots. Like, robots are very classic Superman fighting fair. But these are animes as fuck robots, which is great. And they're appropriately difficult for him to fight. And we find out why they're appropriately difficult over the course of the series. And that's really cool.

39:48
Case
It's a good threat that eventually is not the main threat because the tech gets better and Superman gets better. Everyone's leveling up this whole goddamn series. It's so cool.

39:57
Red
Yep. And I do like that because they introduced the level up system pretty early. It's like, okay, so if Superman starts getting overwhelmed, he might get a power up, but he also might not. And it might not be enough to make it trivial to win whatever he's doing. And it doesn't really feel like a soft magic system, as it were, because we don't really know what facilitates it, but it clearly has rules, which makes it seem like he can't just power up to get good enough to do whatever threat he needs to face, which is a big problem with a lot of soft power systems. It feels mysterious and poorly understood, not whatever the writer needs it to be, which is a very important distinction.

40:33
Blue
There's a very small and fundamentally simple set of rules. We just don't really know them.

40:40
Red
We can guess. It seems to be whenever he does a good thing to protect other people. But that might just be narratively, that doesn't actually tell us anything.

40:47
Case
I love when Superman makes his reveal to Lois and Jimmy. First of all, I love that we set up very early on, like him doing the Clark Kent faint of being knocked into some boxes. Then he gets up later, and it's like a good way of keeping the secret identity because they actually do a nice time having that little dance at the beginning of the series of like, oh, yeah, no, Clark Kent and Superman are totally different people, right? But when he catches the robot fist that's about to crush Jimmy and Lois, it is the perfectly timed comedic moment of Jimmy snapping the picture. And that just sort of reminds you that this show is going to be really funny all the like, even in these cool action sequences.

41:23
Red
Oh, yeah.

41:23
Case
During that fight, I really like one thing they do with how Superman flies he's got this kind of weightless kind of, like, floatiness to it. When he's, like, avoiding the laser blast, he kind of, like, spins around it. He does a barrel roll in midair. What I like about that is it's very different from the sort of, like, rocket powered kind of look that we see a lot in superhero stuff. He's not just, like, shooting about. He's literally floating around, like, evading things. In this weightless kind of sequence, which were saying, it's animated. They can get away with it with CG, Superman. With Superman and Lois, he can fly in and superhero land all the time, because that's like one stock animation that they just use.

42:02
Case
It's like a big blur effect, and then he's in the scene, but they rarely have him just kind of, like, floating around doing stuff, unless it's like, oh, I just floated up in the air to reveal that I'm Superman. And then they don't do more with the scene.

42:12
Red
And if you put him in the air, he's still going to be affected by gravity just because gravity works. Whereas in animation medium, you can just be like, his hair is floaty, his jacket is floaty. It looks like gravity is just not affecting him right now.

42:23
Blue
To your point case, it feels like in this version, Superman's propulsion almost comes from his core, which is why he's able to spin around in certain ways, as opposed to some interpretations of Superman. Kind of like in Justice League, where he basically flies as if he has rocket boots on, and that's a very different kind of trajectory and propulsion that he has. So I like this. More graceful, like he spins. It's a little more of a dance quality to it, which means he can do more interesting stuff in flight than just, like, go in a straight line wherever his feet are pointing.

42:54
Case
It's not propulsion, and it's not telekinetic because there are versions where it's like, oh, he's just kind of, like, lifting himself up. It feels like he's negating gravity and then having some kind of thrust. But the reason why he's flying isn't the reason why he's moving.

43:09
Red
Yeah. And I kind of like how this ties in with the thing I was talking about before, with the way they do his super strength, which is that this just feels like a property of his body, not something he remembers he can do. Exactly. If that makes sense, it's like sometimes he can just make it so that gravity just doesn't affect him anymore. And it's as easy for him, as walking across the room would be, which I think is cool because the more natural his power set feels to him, the more clark Kent's physical limitations feel like a strain to put on him as like, oh, yeah. To be mild mannered Clark Kent. I can't just fly another place. It would be really convenient for me to fly. I have to walk there because normal man Clark Kent has to walk places.

43:49
Red
Which I think is an interesting thing to bring up with this character. Because, of course, we're all like, yeah, Clark Kent is the real version, but Clark Kent has Superman's powers. Clark Kent is not a normal man. He is the real personality, while Superman is the job that Clark Kent does. But Clark Kent, in order to pass in polite society, does have to basically restrict himself from doing, like, 95% of the things that come naturally to him. Given that the primary theme of the show is basically what it means to try and pursue normalcy and to fit in and to want to be liked by people that are famously not great about liking people that are very different from them. I think that this is a very deliberate framing on his character.

44:25
Red
Which is why I'm kind of glad that this show bites the bullet pretty quickly on the identity reveal thing. Because this version of Clark, I think it's very important that he has friends that actually like everything about him, rather than just parts of him that he chooses to show.

44:38
Case
Yeah, no, there's a reason why the opening credits, it's Clark with Lois and Jimmy at a side. It's that trio. They're all important to this. They're all the main characters of the show, even if Clark is Superman.

44:49
Red
Right.

44:50
Case
So we have the whole fight. Lois is able to save the day, sort of by deactivating all the. Like, that's like a really fun thing that they set up pretty quickly. And then we get the whole thing with them showing the pictures to Perry and him being like, these are terrible pictures. I can't use any of them.

45:05
Red
Because.

45:05
Blue
You think it's going to be that triumphant first moment of like, oh, my gosh. And it's like, no, they do a similar thing in spectacular Spider man. Like, get a better camera, Parker, what are you doing?

45:15
Case
But then we also get this ultimate pilot kind of setup sequence right afterwards where they leave the office and it's like, well, we have to find out who Superman is. We have to hunt him down. We have to reveal everything.

45:27
Red
I love the way they wrote Lois in this show because she is so enthusiastic. She's a bull in a china shop. It is so funny. Everything that Clark has, like, trepidations about is completely understandable because Lois is like, I'm going to ferret out all of his secrets and expose them to the world. And Clark is like, but what if you didn't, like, later down the line when she's like, I can't believe you didn't trust me with this. She was like, you said you were going to tell everybody my secrets. And she's like, well, I wasn't going to. If it was you. I'm sorry. But he was completely right to not tell you. And I like that.

46:00
Red
Obviously, a lot of times when you're getting writing advice, it's like, make sure your characters are flawed and people are like, okay, take a character, make something wrong with them. And it's, no. This is a really good example of two characters who are perfectly nice and benevolent people who have conflicting character flaws that put them at ods with each other in this very subtle way where Lois has got this pathological hatred of lies and deception and truths being concealed even. It's like, oh, just not telling me the truth is the same thing as lying to me. Which is clearly a personal issue for her for reasons that we can probably infer based on things that show up later in the show. But she's not being framed as being 100% morally correct about this. She feels hurt that Clark did not tell her the truth.

46:41
Red
But the reason she feels so hurt so disproportionately from the situation is because of a character flaw of hers. And meanwhile, his complete unwillingness to tell her this, which would know, stopped her from feeling this way, is caused by his own fear of his powers and what they represent about his desire to simply fit in and not be alone, which is also a character flaw on his end. And I just think that's really interesting because they take these characters and are like, they have completely opposing personal issues. And the way they interact puts them at ods with each other through nobody's fault. And I think that's really cool.

47:14
Case
Yeah, I mean, it's set up when we first are introduced to Lois because we get Clark's whole, like, today's the day I'm going to be like a normal guy. And then it's like, I'm going to be extraordinary. Today is like when she wakes up and it's such a juxtaposition between those two.

47:26
Red
They're foils, your honor.

47:27
Case
Well, because how they even got into the whole robot situation in the first place was because she tricked everybody. Oh, yeah, we did. Into going there. It was always funny when she's like.

47:40
Red
Oh, my gosh, you lied to me.

47:41
Case
And he was like, wait a second.

47:45
Red
I loved the moment where Clark found out that she'd been lying to them because he got, like, the scary anime shiny glasses. And he was literally just like, lois, I'm very disappointed in you because, okay, this is something I didn't realize I needed until this show gave it to me. I don't think we ever see this version of Clark angry. He just gets it. Wasn't really disappointed.

48:06
Case
He was like a disappointed dad. Like, oh, Lois, you lied to me. I can't believe you did that.

48:11
Red
Yeah, exactly.

48:12
Case
You lied.

48:13
Red
Disappointed. But again, like, the 90s cartoon version, which we're all like, it's pretty superlative. It's like that version of Superman is angry a lot. And I, in hindsight, don't like that. I don't think that fits with the core of his character as much as I was okay with accepting at the time. And I think seeing this Clark get put through the absolute wringer and just get, like, slightly sadder and never crack. He's had a couple moments in the show where he goes like, all right, enough. People are getting hurt. And it's like, oh, is he angry? And it's like, no, he's efficient. That's a very different, much scarier thing. And I just loved that moment as kind of like, oh, he has reason to be like, lois, I can't believe this. Our jobs are imperil. But instead, he's just like, lois, you lied.

48:52
Red
Why would you do that? I'm so disappointed.

48:54
Blue
Again, it's not anger thing. It's not like he feels particularly affronted. It's a case of, like, how could Lois do this thing that was, in his mind, immoral?

49:04
Red
Yeah, I don't know. I think it's very cool that this clerk is not happy to be manipulated, but is mostly just like, oh, I expected better of you. That makes me sad. Which is much more devastating.

49:15
Case
And he's disappointed and he's frustrated, and then he's frustrated with himself. Like, the next scene, he's, like, recriminating. Like, well, maybe I wouldn't have helped her. Meanwhile, she's coming to the realization, oh, my God, Clark totally would have helped me because he's such a nice guy.

49:27
Red
Yeah, I do like that. Clark does not know himself at all in this show. He's like, what if I really am a monster? And it's like, no, you're not. It's fine. Calm down.

49:34
Case
Relax early set up, and then later. Yeah, sorry, we totally skipped that part. But that is such a good moment there of setting up like Lois does the classic lie to get them to go along with her plan and then get them into trouble kind of situation. But the way that Clark handles it is so good. And then everything that flows from, like, that's why they get separated, setting up that dynamic. So that then at the end of the episode where we get the whole, like, yeah, we're going to seven seasons in a movie sequence at the very. Yeah, yeah. The whole end of the episode of like, we're going to track down Superman. We're going to take this whole thing.

50:09
Case
And Lois and Jimmy are framed opposite Clark, and they have their hands raised up over him, and he just visibly is trapped within their frame.

50:17
Blue
Yeah, it's a good shot composition.

50:21
Red
This is a version of Clark that is not too far off the beaten path, but just framing him as like, hey, this is a person who can pass for normal if he's very careful and is very afraid of the consequences of being found out for his quote unquote abnormalities. That is fucking relatable for quite a lot of people. You could read a queer allegory into it. You can read neurodivergence into it. There's so many parts of that specific narrative of like, well, there's something wrong with me, and I don't know what it is, but I know that if people found out, they wouldn't like me. So I'm just going to be really good at pretending to be normal and everything will be fine. Is like, oh, that hits a little fucking close down.

50:57
Case
Like the masking component.

50:59
Red
Exactly. And especially because we've been discussing all these components of his power set are framed in such a way that they are so just foundational to the way he moves through the world. Like, he is constantly aware of how much of an outsider he is. And then the beginning of the first episode ends with his two new best friends being like, we're going to rip this guy open and show the old world what his insides look like. And he's just like, oh, good, I love this. I just think it's so powerful. And again, this ties in with the way that they write the characters as just completely true to their internal motivations in such a way that they are naturally brought into conflict with one another and then have to deal with that according to their internal conflict recoveries.

51:39
Case
Again, just excellent characterization. Excellent shot composition. We just keep on saying the economy of storytelling here in terms of the broader plot, but the internal monologues for all these characters is handled so well throughout the whole. Yeah, yeah.

51:52
Blue
I'm astounded that DC Studios can create something of this quality in the midst of, like, whatever the fuck the live action teams are doing right now. Like, the juxtaposition is baffling that this is basically the best Superman story that, to my mind, exists buried under. Like, the DCEU is floundering and we need a recast as, like, the same company is doing this.

52:20
Case
Really.

52:20
Red
I think it's, like, quick while they're distracted.

52:24
Case
Well, but I think that is also just the element of this is a show that clearly wasn't the main focus for anything aside from the team working on the show. Yeah, this is such a side. I said unfettered before. This is not supposed to be. This is our canon multimedia Superman. This is a sideshow that they're putting out there on adult swim in this sort of, like, weird way that just happened to be really fucking good.

52:48
Red
I think this was something where it's like, all right, this is little and weird and it's not going to cost that much. So if it crashes and burns after one season, we don't lose anything, it's fine. And then instead it was a breakout success. Because this is usually what happens when you take a chance on a creative endeavor rather than funding something you think is a guaranteed win in the field of arts, where nothing is a guaranteed win anyway. I'm happy it exists. I hope we get more of it.

53:09
Case
I mean, this is a show that feels like there are no studio notes.

53:13
Red
Yeah. There were a number of times where I was like, wow, they just really let them put anything into, huh? We'll get to some of those.

53:22
Case
Let's move on to the second episode because we don't want to be here forever. But I do want to talk about all this stuff.

53:27
Red
Let's do it.

53:28
Case
This is the second part of the pilot, so it picks up with Livewire's story now being kind of on the run from apparently the government, which is kind of a fun detail. But this is where the show really kicks in. Several big things that I think are important to why the show works overall. So for one thing, we get such a weird Jor El.

53:47
Red
I love how they do Krypton and everything. Krypton adjacent show. As we learned in tears of the kingdom earlier this year, backwards voice choir is the most eerie element you can add to any musical score. And they have it all over the place with the Krypton stuff. I love how desaturated and colorless. Everything is, it feels, like, unreal and ghostly in a very strange way.

54:07
Case
It kind of feels like the Phantom Zone.

54:09
Red
Yeah. I'm not entirely sure what's up with Jor El, but I'm excited to find out, hopefully. And I think what this all does is produce a version of Krypton that Superman has never been more separated from. And again, given that the whole purpose of this show is framing him as, like, this is the story of an outsider. This is the story of an immigrant. This is the story of somebody trying to figure out who he is. And it's like, hey, here is the last relic of your cultural heritage. It's in a language you don't understand, and it's the scariest thing you've ever seen.

54:40
Red
And I think that is such an interesting core to build his character around because Clark kind of goes through this little mini arc in the pilot where he goes from being basically terrified of using his powers to being like, okay, I can use them as Superman. Clark Kent will be a normal man, and Superman will actually help people. And this will be great. I can get the best of both worlds. But this doesn't completely eradicate his character flaw, of his fear of what it means to have these powers and where he comes from and all that stuff. It just kind of moves it, like one notch up. So instead of being afraid of himself, now, he's just kind of like this Kryptonian. He doesn't even know the word Krypton at this point.

55:13
Red
He's just like, all of this is weird and frightening, but fortunately, I don't need to deal with it. I can bury it in a hole and not think about it. And this is portrayed as a flaw that he doesn't fully overcome by the end of the two part pilot. And I like that because we, the audience who are expected to at least have a baseline understanding of Superman are like, oh, I know who that is. That is Jor El. That is his father. He's got all the information you might need, and then he starts talking. You're like, oh, no. Clark doesn't know what this guy's saying. And that is really fucking sad. Surprisingly, just this alienation. Know, his last fragment of his family, he doesn't even realize that's his.

55:50
Case
Yeah.

55:51
Red
And the thing is, there's dramatic irony there because if you watch it with subtitles, every line of Jor els is translated. The audience doesn't have to know what Jor El is saying, but it is an option which is just I don't know. There's something very sad about that to me. And I think that's really interesting of just this poor kid. Last remnant of this planet, as far as we know. And he can't even understand the words of the AI thing or whatever this joral is that was sent to help him. Yeah, I have a lot of feelings about this, apparently.

56:16
Case
I think you mentioned that on your show, and I forgot to turn on subtitles on this rewatch because I would have liked to. But that said, I don't feel a lot of difficulty understanding contextually from me knowing that this is Jor El, father of can.

56:33
Red
You can read into it. And they do a good job with his body language, too, because I think Clark says something that basically makes it clear. He says something like, I don't even know who you are. And like, jor El's hologram looks sad and says, I think, like Philo. And it's like, clearly he is saying, bro, you're my son. What are you talking about? Now I'm sad again. But yeah, I didn't watch the early episodes with subs, but I did watch the later ones. So I got the last bits but not the first part, given the philo.

56:59
Blue
And it's like, that's great. I was catching them, too. Vaguely what they're doing is they're just smooshing a couple different languages together. So no one person, even if they do speak those languages, would know what that is. But it's just kind of like a hodgepodge of different stuff that's like, you might subconsciously catch the connotation of a word if you're familiar with the language, but you wouldn't be able to listen to it straight. I mean, this is me pulling it fully out of my ass. I don't know if that's true, but that's kind of the sense that I got where I'm like, I hear a couple of greek words in here, but the rest of it is definitely other languages.

57:31
Case
Oh, God, it's minions speak.

57:35
Red
But yes, I love the aesthetic for Christmas.

57:36
Case
Yeah, I caught a couple of greek words in there, too, and I was like, oh, that's interesting because I only have the vague familiarity with Greek because I was mostly Latin focused in college, but it still stood out. And I was like, oh, obviously. There's so much language that goes into ours that. Sorry, small quick tangent. So long time ago, back before streaming was of, like, the default for everything, I was ripping a shitload of dvds just so I could have them on my computer. For trips, because at the time, I was living in New York, but I would commute back to see my family in DC a lot. And so one time I was, like, watching a movie on my way back, and I realized that watching dawn of the Planet of the Apes, it had not ripped the subtitles.

58:11
Case
So I was watching the opening in like 20 ish minutes, which are completely in sign language without any actual language. And I was enamored with how well I could understand what was going on. And I felt similarly watching this where it's like, okay, even if you're not getting the words, you're getting a lot of the impressions of what he's trying to say. You get that sadness from Jor El. You get him trying to convey things to Clark. And you have that spot where these two characters who, if they could understand each other, would be fine, just like, clashing against each other because they can't get across that divide.

58:46
Red
It's pretty clear that Jor El can understand everything Clark is saying, which I think makes it worse because we, of course, as the audience know, we have a fairly omniscient view of this. We have the dramatic irony. We want Clark to understand what Jor El is saying because we know that Clark has a lot of misconceptions about himself, his powers, and what they mean. And Jor El is right there, and it's like, come on, man, figure this out. Get your universal translator up and running already.

59:09
Case
And, like, it's not weird for Clark not to understand Kryptonian right when he first meets Jor El. Like, that has happened plenty of times, but usually it's, like, immediately followed by some kind of upload of, here's all the data so that you can speak kryptonian and that just doesn't happen in this.

59:22
Red
No, certainly not. That would be too easy.

59:25
Case
I like that. Also, they depict Jor El flying. And read what you had referenced before. We don't really know what kryptonians are capable of in this. Like, I wonder if we are getting rid of the whole they're not super when they're not on earth, or at least to the same, because, like, he's depicted flying. The other character that is implied to be kryptonian that we see later is shown also kind of in sort of a similar power level. So I am curious if that's going to be an element of this here, because that is like very old school Superman, where all kryptonians are super. And they just had to get rid of that because eventually was, like, wait, if they're all super, why did they die?

01:00:00
Red
Yeah. Also, this is the coolest Jor El has ever looked. Yeah, he's got the eye patch and the crown and the luscious locks. It's great. We need this Jor El more growing.

01:00:10
Case
White cape and beard and just he.

01:00:13
Red
They were like, oh, sorry, where did you want this marvel shoot?

01:00:21
Case
Got the rocket ship slip near. So anyway, so we pick up with Leslie on the run, and it's fun to sort of get the vibe that she is being stalked by some kind of force. And because whatever sort of government task force that is revealed to be Task Force X, the suicide squad, as it were, is sort of the main villain of this whole season. But getting that set up here is important because we need to be reminded that's going to be a thing going on. I love the way that she takes them down, grabs the earbud, talks into it, and then we set up the meeting with Deathstroke. Ultimately.

01:00:52
Red
God, this version of Deathstroke, I love. I can't stop looking at this man and thinking of his rapidly impending. The voice.

01:01:01
Case
Just remember, he's a bad dad.

01:01:03
Red
He's bad at most things, except fighting good guys.

01:01:07
Case
Sorry. Thinking about fighting. So we set up all that. And here's one thing that I think is really cool about the show, just in general set pieces. Yeah, we've kind of glossed over Clark going and getting his costume. I like that the costume is kryptonian, but Martha has input. That's great.

01:01:22
Blue
I love, it's a good marrying of the two various origins of, like, here's your prefabricated suit, and Martha's like, clark, kiddo, you need something nice to wear when you're running around.

01:01:34
Red
I love that they put the underpants back on the outside. That, to my mind, is one of the best indicators of a show that's willing to let Superman be Superman. Because if they're too good for the underpants on the outside, they're not going to let any of the other fun stuff happen either.

01:01:46
Blue
This is the Nando V movie school of does Superman need the trunks? And it's basically a litmus test for do the creators have on their end, the emotional vulnerability to make a character who's wearing his underwear on the outside.

01:01:58
Red
And also kind of very on brand for Superman's mom to be like, oh, yeah, we're just going to put a little more coverage on that. There's nothing to worry about. Oh, you want to run around in a. Okay, yeah, no, absolutely not. Here you go.

01:02:11
Case
Also, getting into theme of Clark, it's saying, like, this is what Superman is expected to be. This is what you're inheriting, but then you're also putting your own spin on it.

01:02:19
Red
Yeah. The trunks are actually a vital representation of his character arc and what it means that he's forging his own identity.

01:02:26
Case
But getting back to the livewire thing. So we set up that she has put explosives all underneath the area that they're in Metropolis, which becomes such a great detail for when the fight happens. That's additional stakes. And that becomes so important in every single fight going forward to have something else going on besides just the fight.

01:02:47
Red
We've talked about this a couple of times when we've been talking about Superman. It's like, if it's just, hey, Superman, you need to punch this thing until it breaks, then the fight choreography is inevitably going to be a little bit boring. No matter how interesting. The thing that needs to be punched until it breaks is. Which is why adding environmental stakes and making Superman rely on his strengths of rescuing people and dealing with environmental hazards produces much more interesting choreography. And the show is really good at doing that.

01:03:10
Case
Yeah, I have a note that the dungeon master rolling each of these encounters is doing such a good job with the setup because, yeah, if it's just, I'm going to roll if I hit, and I'm going to roll if I hit, and I'm going to roll if I hit. It's just like waiting down numbers. And in this scenario, we're actually getting stuff going on. You get livewire, you get Slade. You have Lois and Jimmy there. You have the explosives. You have so much in this fight, just in terms of circumstances. Also, this is where we're like, oh, fuck, that's livewire. Because I had no idea up until that moment.

01:03:42
Red
I figured as soon as they started having her do lightning stuff.

01:03:45
Case
Did she have lightning stuff before that point?

01:03:48
Red
I think when she. The tech that she stole gave her zappy powers.

01:03:52
Case
But I thought this was the first time we see her put that tech on.

01:03:55
Red
You know what? Maybe I might have just gotten it spoiled for me, but I was waiting for her to put the tech on and get the zappy powers. I don't know why I knew that.

01:04:03
Case
But either way, it's really cool. I like that she has the tech, but then it becomes integrated into her because it doesn't work quite right.

01:04:11
Red
Yeah, that's an interesting angle. I'm glad they did it, because I saw a few people complaining about like, oh, everyone's power set is just tech based. It's like, everyone powerset is starting tech based. Doesn't mean it's going to stay that way.

01:04:22
Blue
I do like, especially after this whole sequence that Superman cleans up after the fight. And that was the first moment when I was like, okay, not only is this just a good Superman story, but this is just categorically doing things that no other Superman media does.

01:04:41
Red
This is the equivalent of putting the shopping cart away in the parking lot. It's like, it's extra work for you, but it is a kindness that conveniences everybody. And Superman has the power to clean up. There were a few parts when I was watching the show where I was like, I think they wrote this in specific response to a thing that happened in a Zack Snyder. It happened a few times. There's one in a later episode where I was like, oh, this was the moral breaking point for Superman in Batman v. Superman. And this one just shrugged it off. Cool. I love this.

01:05:09
Red
But in this specific case, I was like, yeah, a superman who has the power to clean up post a disaster and chooses not to feels like a worse person than a superman who chooses to do know, especially if he's got time to spare, which as a very fast person, he usually does.

01:05:25
Blue
I remember watching the fight, like, oh, cool, like Slade Wilson, this is great. And then I texted you, like, he cleans up. And I was so impressed by that.

01:05:33
Red
It's like, yeah, deathstroke, whatever. Whoa, civic mindedness.

01:05:38
Case
Yeah, it's a great detail with the character.

01:05:40
Red
Also, I spotted the Ivo billboard in the background and I was like, what a cute little reference. And then three episodes later, I was like, oh, just kidding. Two actually set up two episodes. Two episodes. Sorry.

01:05:49
Case
Yeah, they might have had one in the first episode, too. It doesn't matter. Again, this show, they start dropping the Amazotech stuff early on, which I love for a bunch of reasons that we'll talk about in two. Yeah. And also the way he deals with Livewire is he's deliberately not trying to hurt her. He says he's trying to help her.

01:06:07
Red
I loved that moment. It was another little like, oh, this Superman doesn't get angry. He just tries to help people, even if they are at that very moment electrocuting him for some reason. And it really makes it clear that the way he's dealing with these people is from his perspective, these are not enemies for him to defeat. They are people causing problems. And he wants the problem to stop. And in this case, the problem is, oh, no, her power set is going horribly wrong. Let's fix that if possible. He truly does not see some people as enemies and some people as people that need saving. He just wants to save absolutely everybody.

01:06:39
Case
And I like that the livewire tech, that the way it goes wrong is they have that crystal power source thing, which is the same thing that you can use with the robots. So we're getting this sort of, like, consistent element across this all, which at this point doesn't seem to be related to Superman, but we know it will be.

01:06:56
Red
Wow. Crystal tech and highly advanced robots. That's probably normal and fine. Nothing to worry about.

01:07:02
Blue
I'm sure that's just some DARPA stuff. It's fine. The boys in Virginia are working hard. I don't know where DARPA is based.

01:07:09
Case
I assume one in 50 shots. So at the end of this all, we get clear pictures, we get clear information from them, but they're still interns, so they get denied the byline, which I think is a good detail, because, again, they're still interns.

01:07:22
Red
Yeah. They can't just have an unconditional win. It's episode two.

01:07:25
Case
This is not the secret of my success. I did find it kind of interesting that how whenever he takes down a tech based hero, when he touches their tech, he gets, like, a flashback of whatever the tech was involved with. And it's kind of like laying the groundwork for whatever happened with Krypton, which I have theories about later. Yeah, this flashback is the zero day one. Right? It's, like, from the other side of. Yeah, yeah.

01:07:50
Red
It has the Superman logo shaped hole in the sky and the brief shot. I actually think it's from the ground because, I don't know. It's been a little while since I watched the first couple episodes, but I do think that he basically just gets a couple of flashes of the armada and the big hole in the sky and is like, that was weird. And then kind of just moves on.

01:08:07
Case
Yeah, I love the zero day stuff. And we'll get to that further when we actually see what it is. But getting this kind of hinting again, like, setting it up well in advance. Before we get into episode three, I want to pause and talk about the credits, both the opening and the closing credits, because you don't get to see them when you're watching the. At least the opening isn't at the start of the pilot, and if you're watching it in two parts, you're not going to see it. I really like the opening again. It's shonen as fuck, in a way. That I just adore.

01:08:31
Red
Oh, yeah.

01:08:32
Case
Saying like, all right, we're going to take Superman and we're going to make it appealing to a modern audience who has grown up through the 20th and early 21st century. Watching all this kind of stuff, it feels very fresh. It's just fun. And it's a team thing with the three of them.

01:08:46
Red
It's great. Yeah, it's got big anime opening energy. I think the fact that it's just instrumentals with no lyrics kind of helps give that vibe.

01:08:55
Blue
Also softens it a little.

01:08:57
Red
Yeah, yeah, just a little bit. And also the outro is just really fun because it's just Jimmy talking and then it's photos of things that happened over the course of the episode.

01:09:06
Case
I love the outro so much. I think it's so good. My one regret with the outro is that they only have a few photos in each one that are unique to the episode. But the fact that they have any is just so fun. It's like, oh, yes. He's just reviewing his camera roll of everything he's taken in the episode is so good.

01:09:24
Blue
And then there's. What's the episode where it's one of the ones, like the last three where there's no Jimmy walking and there's no photos. It's just the credits rolling.

01:09:33
Red
I think that's zero day.

01:09:34
Case
There's two. So the first one, we get photos, but no Jimmy, which is when he gets kidnapped. And then zero day, it's just like this grim. Like, there's just credits.

01:09:43
Blue
Yeah.

01:09:44
Red
You always know it's bad news when they break the outro.

01:09:46
Case
Yeah.

01:09:47
Blue
Yeah. I really do like how the intro feels so fresh and new and exciting and in the right tone of what's going on in the show. Whereas the outro feels like very classic Superman with kind of more, like, know, trumpety instruments and just pictures and photos and Jimmy walking around and it feels like, okay, you get the new stuff. You get the old stuff. And they're still both totally consistent with each other. They're still very much part of the same show. But it's nice to have that balance with the two of them.

01:10:16
Case
Yeah. It's like this pop punk kind of soundtrack to the opening, which I really like. It's got that guitar. It feels very energetic.

01:10:24
Blue
It's butt rock. I'm sorry. It's butt rock.

01:10:27
Red
It's not butt rock. The instrumentation is distinct from butt rock. It would have heavier drums and more bass.

01:10:32
Blue
It would have heavier drums.

01:10:34
Red
You can't have butt rock without the lyricist losing their mind.

01:10:38
Blue
Fine.

01:10:38
Case
So the question is there a butt rock version of the Superman intro? There better be.

01:10:44
Red
Look, we could slap some crush 40 on there. Exactly. I was just about to say that. You don't have to. I'm just saying city Escape would play pretty good with this person.

01:10:52
Case
So let's move on to episode three, which is my interview with Superman.

01:10:56
Red
Oh, yeah, this one's interesting.

01:10:58
Case
I love the scoop. Troop, before anything else, just has an idea of, here's the senior reporters, and they are so flamboyant. Except for Ronnie.

01:11:10
Red
Yeah, I like though we have like two cartoon characters and then a normal professional adult woman.

01:11:15
Blue
Yeah.

01:11:17
Case
I always love Steve Lombard as a character. He's a recurring reporter with the Daily Planet, but he's not in every iteration of Superman. But it's kind of fun just to have, like a bro.

01:11:27
Red
I like that he's basically just buff. Seahawk from she Ra.

01:11:30
Blue
Yeah, exactly.

01:11:32
Case
This is a perfect cat grant.

01:11:34
Red
Oh, yes.

01:11:35
Case
She's flawless for how little that we get of her. This is exactly what we needed. Ronnie Troop is interesting because this is a gender flip, and Ron Troop is generally a younger reporter who looks up to Clark. So it's interesting that in this scenario, it's more the inverse of that, but that's fitting in the sense that, well, this is a young Clark. Lois and Jimmy, we needed another reporter. This is an established one. Aside from the gender flip, the characterization is pretty much on point in that Ron is like on point, very professional, good at their job. Reporter who everyone's like, oh, man, you're like the next Clark Kent. Is like, usually the vibe with the character.

01:12:12
Red
Oh, that's cool. I understand why they just flipped that. Because this Clark looks like he's a few seasons away from becoming a seasoned reporter, as it were.

01:12:19
Case
J Mike, if you recall when we did the death and return of Superman, Ron Troop is the reporter that is at the White House when the cyborg Superman shows up.

01:12:27
Red
Okay, I think I remember he's pretty far down the list of noted reporters that work at the daily portal, I think.

01:12:37
Case
But it's an established character, at least in the comics. Ron starts dating Lucy Lane at one point, and they actually have a baby together, and then they just forget about it.

01:12:45
Red
Wow, thanks.

01:12:47
Case
It was like a whole big thing in the early two thousand s, and then in the lead up to infinite crisis, it was just sort of like everything was reset and just like, God damn it.

01:12:54
Red
Everyone knows the whole too many cooks adage, except for comic book writers. We need more cooks. Damn it. The broth is splintering into another crisis again.

01:13:04
Case
But I thought it was an effective trio there. I thought it was nice having Ronnie being like, you're not getting the byline because you're not reporters. You're our interns. We were assigned to this. You're doing research. We're actually writing it up. Like, thank you. This is all the deals. Meanwhile, she's got these two cartoon characters with her. I love the murderboard element.

01:13:23
Red
I love that they call it a murder board.

01:13:25
Case
And then we get Intergang. I love it. I like the take of Intergang being, like, wannabes.

01:13:30
Red
This is the episode that brings in silver Banshee, right? Yep. Yeah, we heard about her on our subreddit because people are like, hey, look, red, it's you.

01:13:38
Blue
We got a lot of that. Like, some pretty compelling edits where someone just took the little paint bucket tool on Photoshop and just turned her hair red. Like, yes, there it is. And someone who photoshopped out the sleeves there. We got her in one.

01:13:53
Case
It's very good.

01:13:54
Red
A monopoly on that hairstyle guy.

01:13:57
Case
I thought it was interesting both with Livewire and then with Silver Banshee. Both of those characters have recently been big players. Big in quotes, but players in the current Superman books. And I was wondering if there was some thought put into that, and I'm not sure, timeline, if that's even possible. All of these take so long to put together in the first place. Livewire makes sense in that Livewire was created for the animated series. Kind of fits better in animated formats. Is difficult to really stand out amongst all the electric characters that are in comics. So it's nice to see here. And it's like, a good update here. It's just interesting that both of those are, like, characters that recently have been a big part of the world. Actually, Silver Banshee is dating Jimmy Olsen in the comics.

01:14:38
Red
Right. Huh. Okay.

01:14:40
Case
Which is kind of a fun element there. And is reformed.

01:14:44
Red
Yeah, I actually knew about that because I think I read through the Supergirl new 52 run, I want to say, which was overall very unimpressive. But I think that's where I ran into, like, oh, cool. Silver Banshee is a good guy now. That's neat.

01:14:55
Case
Yeah, I think that's where her kind of redemption arc started, because they were like, oh, yeah, we'll play up this detail where she can learn Kryptonian really fast because she's good with language or magically good with language. I forget what the. If it was.

01:15:07
Red
I mean, they very much play up that. It's like, oh, the, you know, from the old country, and it's, okay. I've got no objections for them being like, it's a magic helmet that makes her loud. Yeah, I think that's fine.

01:15:20
Case
Well, and this is also where now that Livewire indicated that she leaked all the tech all over the city. And you're like, oh, this is like the k meteor shower from Smallville.

01:15:29
Red
This powers up all the bad guys to produce threats of the week. I love it.

01:15:33
Case
Yeah. So I like these three, even though they're not that big.

01:15:38
Red
More by the end of the season because of one little background detail that happens that I thought was cool.

01:15:44
Case
Yeah. Because I took it as, like, the start because they're, like, lovable goofballs. They get the tech, and they start becoming a major problem for Clark later on.

01:15:50
Red
Yeah, I like that.

01:15:51
Case
That's awesome.

01:15:52
Red
I categorize that in the same group as, like, deathstroke is like, a young, hot 20 something. These guys are going to level up with time and become more serious threats.

01:16:01
Case
I like them stealing the badges from the scoop troop to go into the prison. I think that was really fun. I loved seeing them try to pretend to be the people. I loved Clark being like, steve Lombard sports.

01:16:11
Red
Steve sports. Just this poor boy.

01:16:17
Case
Fantastic stuff there. And then getting back to the whole set piece stuff when we actually have the encounter with Intergang, that we've got the ice machine going out of control. That's additional danger, additional stakes for this whole thing.

01:16:29
Red
I just think it's so funny how it is a complete crapshoot from story to story, how deadly getting frozen is in this one. It's like, oh, don't worry, we stopped the machine. So everyone who got frozen is fine. And then in some stories, it's like, no, you've been frozen solid. You are now instantly dead.

01:16:42
Case
Yeah, I feel like they do good setup on this one, though, because they immediately freeze the aquarium with the fish, and then as soon as it's turned off, the fish are fine.

01:16:50
Red
I thought that was good planting.

01:16:52
Case
Yeah. So I'm okay with how they played this one because they're like, weird alien tech freeze stuff. Oh, turn it off. Everything goes away. Okay, cool. They don't have to thaw it. It just gets turned off, basically.

01:17:02
Red
No objections. I just think it's really funny.

01:17:04
Blue
Yeah, I really do like how a lot of the fights are not just Superman versus one bad guy. In the first couple episodes, it's Superman versus livewire versus deathstroke versus bombs. And in this, it's Superman versus intergang. With the added danger of the ice machine, where there's always a little more than just a flat punch out going on, which makes all the fights more interesting.

01:17:31
Red
And again, it serves to highlight that Superman's objective is always to save people, whether that means stopping people who are hurting people or stopping thing that is causing problems.

01:17:40
Case
Yeah. And this is where his heat vision comes online. So again, we get more power ups, which is always fun. And getting back into the encounter sort of setting, the fact that mist is able to go invisible and is able to make the ice machine go invisible means that you're dealing with this whole element of, like, it's not just is Superman strong and fast enough to deal with multiple threats at the same time, but there's information being denied him at various points so that the fight remains more exciting.

01:18:04
Red
Yeah. It's also interesting that he didn't develop his x ray vision at any point in, I think, the entire season.

01:18:10
Blue
No.

01:18:10
Red
Which would have made a lot of those things with the invisible guy easier to deal with. But that's kind of what I like about this. It's clearly not just a matter of convenience.

01:18:17
Case
His vision powers start to kick in. I think this is the episode where he runs into Lois because his powers start to kick in, but that's the heat vision, ultimately. But later, he is able to see mist when no one else can. Or is that sonar? It's his hearing. They represent mist. He's able to spot mist running and almost getting hit.

01:18:34
Red
But I thought that was Mist's suit fritzing out a little bit.

01:18:37
Blue
We're talking about in the later season, in the truck. In the later episodes, yeah.

01:18:41
Case
I thought that was either combination of.

01:18:43
Blue
His suit frizzing out or hears the steps.

01:18:47
Red
I think that's how he finds him in the first case, but I think that when he briefly fades in and out of visibility when he's running, I think that's because his suit's on the fritz. And just most people didn't notice him because they were too busy looking at the extremely big, loud thing that had just happened.

01:19:00
Case
Right. I mean, suffice it to say, his powers are not fully online at any point this season. Even the stuff that mostly is working. He's clearly got room to grow in all categories. So even if he's able to kind of see or if it's like a daredevil, I can hear them moving and get a sonar kind of picture of it all, or he's just catching the ticks of frames between the invisibility field. If there's like a persistence of vision thing going on.

01:19:24
Red
His eyes are working at a slightly different frame rate than everybody else.

01:19:27
Case
Yeah, he's got octopus eyes, so it actually has to be very high.

01:19:30
Red
That would be so weird.

01:19:34
Case
I mean, that actually would make a lot of sense.

01:19:37
Red
He looks at a tv screen and immediately gets the worst migraine.

01:19:41
Case
He's got to look at HD in 4k, otherwise he gets a headache.

01:19:44
Red
Oh, God.

01:19:46
Case
Listeners, that is a thing, actually, that only recently were they able to observe octopuses watching video. Because octopus eyes are so advanced that they don't have the flaw of persistence of vision. That allows them to see things at 24 frames. It would just look like a slideshow, basically, which is just lots of fun. Anyway, so we ultimately do get the interview of Superman with Lois. We also have Superman save, like, from the blimp scene at the beginning, which is just more of him doing good stuff. But he gets the interview with Lois, which is such a classic Superman Lois interview sequence. And then at the very end, he leaves, and Clark comes in pretending to be all winded, and it's like, I just got it. He's a liar.

01:20:23
Red
God, that moment, I was like, oh, no. But then fortunately, they didn't play it in the direction that I was worried they were going to, which would have annoyed me a lot, because instead, this is just like Lois can sniff out when somebody's not telling her the whole truth, and she takes it, like, really personally.

01:20:41
Case
Okay, so moving on to episode four. Let's go to Ivo Tower, you say? Yes. This is a fun one. Okay, so Ivo with the Amazotech company I love so much about this. He comes off as kind of. He's a tech billionaire. Just generally speaking, a little bit more of like a musk in the school of just being kind of eccentric. I've got so many companies, I'm so of kind of thing. But the fact that they went with a mesotech, every single time I see a poster for it, I think it says Amazon first.

01:21:12
Red
Yeah, well, Bezos is a different supervillain.

01:21:16
Case
Exactly.

01:21:17
Blue
But it's just Bezos is much more of, like, the banality of evil kind of thing, where Elon Musk is very much an Ivo character.

01:21:27
Red
Ivo definitely seems kind of desperate to be loved. Doesn't parallel anybody I've heard buying any companies lately. Anyway, I think that the stuff with Ivo and Amazotech is really interesting, especially because I don't know what happened. A switch flipped in the last few years. And it feels like every contemporary cartoon has one of these guys because one of these dudes is in DuckTales, and he's also, like, the most insufferable character in that. It's really funny.

01:21:50
Case
There's a character just like in Legend of Korra.

01:21:52
Red
Oh, God, really? Yeah, really got to watch the rest of that show at some point. Obviously, I tapped out after season two.

01:21:58
Case
Just like, the big, kind of, like, showman kind of inventor characters who you end up hating them because they're so fucking annoying after being lauded for so many years in pop culture.

01:22:10
Red
Yeah. I also think this is the only episode where we actually see Clark get pissed at somebody. Very briefly, was this one of the.

01:22:16
Blue
People at the gala who was, like, talking shit to Lois?

01:22:19
Red
It was Ivo who was talking shit about Lois. And Clark immediately is like, oh, cool. How about we talk about your last three extremely unethical business practices that were borderline illegal? Want to tell me about those, big man?

01:22:32
Case
That was a really good moment there, because the three are sent as interns to go to this gala and just ask these stock questions. And then Lois is like, I'm going to do a really good job, but she is actually not able to get anyone to talk to her. Meanwhile, Jimmy is being dragged around taking photos of everything. And I love that they set up all the gear for him, which is, like, great stuff so that he's got stuff going on as his sort of, like, side project. And then Clark is trying to stick to the script, but then he gets mad at Ivo and really digs in. And you get to see the good, hard hitting reporter that he has inside of him, but he's afraid to be that.

01:23:09
Red
I'm so excited to see this Clark get more confident with time because that was clearly the moment of, like, oh, he snapped and didn't pump the brakes on his personality for a second, and it was awesome. And then he immediately regretted it.

01:23:22
Case
Yep. So, next up, I want to mention, in terms of the very nice, slow rolling setup and payoff of the series, Ivo's assistant, Alex.

01:23:31
Red
Yes.

01:23:35
Case
In a purple suit with red hair. We all know who he is, right?

01:23:40
Red
Imported from Voltron. But other than that, God, I can't wait to see what travesty takes his hair away from him.

01:23:48
Case
Yeah.

01:23:48
Red
Lex Alexander. Yeah. Oh, boy. And I like how he just seems mildly unpleasant. And then there's that one bit in the battle in the episode where we get the one shot of him with the full anime shiny glasses and the supervillain grin, and it's like, oh, if I had any doubts before, I certainly don't anymore.

01:24:06
Case
Yeah.

01:24:06
Blue
And that's a wide grin that he's got in that shot.

01:24:09
Red
Too much fun tormenting Superman. You know, he's developed a taste for it.

01:24:14
Case
I like that we set up that he is a little afraid of the machine kind of going off the rails ish. Or maybe he doesn't. Maybe he's just letting, like, do it, knowing that he's going to kill himself and that's good for his business.

01:24:25
Red
The read I had on that is that he recognized the danger, and Ivo was like, it's fine. And then he sees him immediately self destruct and is like, wow, that guy's an idiot. I, on the other hand, would be much better at this.

01:24:37
Case
So this is one of those spots that is kind of a big change. So Ivo becomes Parasite 1.0.

01:24:45
Red
Yeah, I think this is really interesting.

01:24:47
Case
So a few things. So first of all, professor Ivo is a villain in DC Comics who creates a mezo, which is a robot who can copy powers and has no connection to the parasite in terms of, like, storyline, tissue stuff. Totally different there. Parasite, super classic villain for Superman. Usually mutated human, not 100% all the time, but, like, usually human that's been transformed into this thing. In this case, robot suit, which also.

01:25:11
Red
Has a detrimental effect on the guy inside it. He doesn't know that at the beginning.

01:25:15
Case
But even later on, unlike Livewire, who seems to have the tech fully integrated into her, we don't see any element with Ivo that indicates that he's parasitic. Minus the suit. He still uses it later.

01:25:26
Red
You're right. I think that there's potential for it to have fucked him up more than we've seen, especially because at least one of his eyes is really wrong afterwards. And it kind of keeps that weird purple glow even when he's out of the suit, which I think is interesting. The vibe I got when I saw this episode was like, oh, so we're just fully ripping through Tony Stark this episode. Aren't billionaire with the goatee, makes himself a super suit, declares himself super awesome and badass, and then immediately gets his shit rocked.

01:25:55
Case
Cool. And I don't hate conflating Amazo with parasite. Like, while they are historically not connected characters, the original appearance of Amazo, he actually did steal the powers of the Justice League. He didn't copy them. So there is already that kind of a similarity. When we're dealing with Superman specifically in a world where it's like, superman's the only villain for him to fight. If it was like, amazo and he just copied Superman's powers, then it's just two Superman fighting each other, whereas Parasite has much better. Like, the sucking power thing is a much more interesting element of a fight.

01:26:28
Blue
And then not only is it like, oh, it's just not a mirror composition of two superman's fighting, but it's much more interesting of a problem where Superman cannot fight back without giving parasite more power. So it becomes much more explicitly a question of strategy and planning and cunning, rather than just like, okay, well, I guess I'll have to punch him differently.

01:26:53
Red
I guess I also like that the suit is sort of organic, and the vibe I got from Ivo is like, okay, this guy thinks he knows everything, and he definitely does not. And he did not know the limitations of the suit in either direction. He didn't know what would happen when it fully ran out of power. He also doesn't know what will happen to it when it gets way more power. Framing this as a sneaky Lex Luthor origin story is genius, because Lex's whole thing is that he is legitimately extremely smart. Like, he is actually a genius and a very careful planner. And having him working under this guy, who has a ton of money, but absolutely not as much brains as he thinks he does, is a really solid way to sort of plant that idea in his head.

01:27:30
Red
It's like, okay, well, that guy's plan went so horribly wrong that it literally couldn't have gone worse. I, on the other hand, actually know what I'm doing.

01:27:39
Blue
I would simply not get destroyed by my own parasites.

01:27:42
Red
You see, if I had the death note, things would be different. Yeah, I think that Ivo being a total tech bro, who know, buying his own hype until things go a little bit off the rails and immediately, catastrophically arrive for him is, I think, a really solid way to do it. And the fact that the suit is clearly not operating within his expected parameters at any point in the process, I think is a really good just sign of that and kind of makes it a little bit of a tragic mad scientist situation, rather than just, oh, somebody got mutated, and now Superman can't touch him or is bad.

01:28:12
Case
And the fight is so much more interesting than just the power levels too, because we've got the panic room going on, which traps everyone in there, shocks people, and sucks life from people who accidentally touch it, which I think is a nice detail also, so that Superman can't just flee. That's the thing with parasite where it's like, well, what is your solution here with this character? Just stay away from him. But in this scenario, he's trapped in a box, so it's Lois and Jimmy, just like with the robots where they have to be active participants in there to prevent that side of the fight. And Superman figures out, yeah, don't hit the, like, try to avoid all these things. But it's nice that Lois and Jimmy rush in to solve the situation.

01:28:49
Case
It's great that Jimmy solves the actual problem by having the blacklight to reveal the thumbprint for where the button.

01:28:56
Red
Oh, Lois punches Lex, right?

01:28:58
Case
Yeah. She rushes in. He's like, you can't be in here. She punches him. It's like here. Life seems hard, I think is what she said.

01:29:04
Red
Oh, my gosh. Making Lex an underdog success story is going to be so funny.

01:29:09
Case
So great. I love that they just do not reveal to anyone who's not paying attention.

01:29:14
Red
Yeah, I really hope that when he's established that is super wealthy and stuff like that, she gets called in for an interview and just doesn't remember him. He's like, miss Lane, lovely to see you again. And she's like, what?

01:29:26
Blue
Like a less hot version of someone I've met before.

01:29:30
Red
Let me guess, you used to wear glasses.

01:29:32
Case
Anyway, I wonder when we see that Amazotech again, but with, like, purple and green highlights all over the suit. Next time. A little refined. A little bit.

01:29:46
Red
Yeah. Nice big collar. Protect your nice bald head.

01:29:53
Case
We haven't really talked so much about the Lois and Clark romance that's happening in this. Like, this is really where we're really starting to see it. At the gala. Like, Lois for, like, sews Clark's jacket after he gets tossed out by Ivo's goons. Which is nice that he allows them toss him out because he has to keep the facade of it, of course.

01:30:12
Red
Yeah.

01:30:12
Case
And it's cool that Lois has the sewing kit with her because she's ripped jackets all the time. And then Clark ends up putting the jacket on her so that we can have a nice, warm scene. But then at the end of the episode, Lois is looking at the murderboard from the murderboard. And she realizes in her pocket is the page that Clark had ripped out of one of the tabloids because they were, like, looking into tabloids to see if there was any evidence of a Superman before. And she finds the one thing for, duh, it's episode four. We dealt with the Superman Lois Clark dynamic triangle up until this. Like, we actually get some good scenes with it. We get that really classic interview. So it's not just he shows up and she immediately clocks him, but we don't waste that much time.

01:30:55
Red
I also thought it was very funny how they did the full blur anime bubbles thing when I think it's when she took off the jacket and he saw her and was like, whoa.

01:31:05
Case
Yeah.

01:31:07
Red
Like, oh, cool. We're in a completely different genre of anime now. This is great.

01:31:12
Blue
We're not in shonen anymore.

01:31:13
Red
Yeah. All right. We'll get our fight the giant robot quota later in the episode, but for now, we're in Shoujo bubble land, right? Yeah.

01:31:23
Case
The relationship is very sweet when it is all on display. It has this warmth that I really appreciate.

01:31:29
Red
Yeah, they really pull it off. I think the character writing on it is extremely solid, in part because you get why each of them likes the other, which I think is often overlooked in a lot of romantic subplots where it's like, I buy that this character is into the other one. Don't really see it happening in reverse.

01:31:43
Blue
Yeah. Or it's the worst case scenario is like, all right, well, these are two opposite gender characters that are in a plotline kiss, like, come mean red. And I have more of an intolerance to that kind of writing, just our disposition. But seeing it in here, it's like, no, this is like a very well written romance because the characters compellingly like each other in that way.

01:32:07
Red
And there's additional stakes because it's not just like, all right, when are they going to kiss? It's like, boy, I hope that Lois doesn't really seriously hurt Clark by trying to unearth a secret that he is very sensitive about. And I hope that Clark doesn't seriously hurt Lois by keeping a secret that she's decided she's invested in and that kind of thing. Was this one of the episodes that gave us a hint about Lois's dad? I think it was, oh, yeah. And she just immediately closes it out. And I was like, okay, as soon as we meet a general hardass in this show, that's going to be Lois's dad.

01:32:37
Case
So I was know it's funny because I assumed it was general Eiling and that was in my head for a. And, like, it shouldn't have been because it's like, okay, well, we have asian Lois. We have an asian general, just in terms of those kind of setups. And Sam Lane has become much more important in Superman mythos over the years. The craziest thing about doing this show is I actually stopped and looked up when he first shows up. And the thing about Sam Lane being a general and Lois being an army brat is introduced in the man of Steel, the John Byrne miniseries from the 80s.

01:33:07
Red
Wow.

01:33:07
Case
Like, Lois existed for 50 years before the army brat thing was introduced. And now the character is the big bad of the season.

01:33:15
Red
Yeah, there was something really interesting about that because there's a ton of superheroes whose girlfriend's dad is the military guy chasing them. That was the whole thing with the Hulk. I think we see him at the end of the episode where Livewire is apprehended when she realizes that they aren't the government. Exactly. We're the good guys. And I think that's when we see Waller and the general over his shoulders. And I was like, oh, okay, well, I know who she is. And not sure that guy is, but.

01:33:40
Blue
I was telling Rhett about this. I forgot that Sam Lane was a character who existed because I had, like, my captain Stacy blinders on, where that's usually the people like, oh, no, Gwen Stacy's dad is the police captain. It's like one step up from police big guy when General Lane walks in for Thanksgiving later, like, what?

01:34:00
Red
What?

01:34:01
Blue
Oh, Sam Lane. Yeah, I have heard that before. And I'd completely forgotten that was everything.

01:34:07
Red
Whereas I, on the flip side, forgot that it hadn't been revealed in the show up to that point. There's a moment in a later episode, but before the Thanksgiving one where they say something about like, oh, maybe this reminded you of her. And I was like, oh, I wonder if Lois has, like, a dead mom or something they could be talking about. Because just the relationship with Lois was the twist.

01:34:25
Case
Yeah, we move on to you will believe a man can lie, which I fucking love as an episode title.

01:34:31
Red
Yeah. So real talk, this episode, I held off on watching because I just had the vibe. I knew it was going to be a dark night of the soul, like, miscommunication thing that was going to end on a downer, and I just didn't have it in me that week. So I just held off. And then the entire show ended, and I was like, well, now I can just binge it front to back. It'll be great.

01:34:47
Case
Yeah. So one thing I really like about this, the main villain, quote unquote, in this episode is Heatwave, who is, for one thing, wildly recontextualized in this piece from the Flash rogue that normally we're talking about. For one thing, it's a fire bruiser, which is kind of rare in comics. Like, fire characters usually are fast instead of, like, punch real good. And I love that we've got a rocket punch heat wave character. I love that it is a woman, or at least femme, presenting, like, different kind of character. Also kind of in general.

01:35:20
Red
Yeah. And she's voiced by a woman, so it wouldn't surprise me. We should probably check.

01:35:23
Case
Actually, my only question on that one is just like, is it she her or they them? But it is on the fen presenting side, which I think is really fun. And the fact that we get a big, strong lady character.

01:35:33
Red
Yeah. It's always a rare.

01:35:34
Case
It's always. It's always nice. And the fact that his fire is all right. So, like, back on Pokemon for the Game Boy advanced, I had the chimchar as my starter Pokemon, which was like a fire fighting monkey Wokong character. And I always liked that archetype, and I was so happy to see it kind of here. But heat wave is not that threatening to Superman, just generally speaking. And in this, it's not. But you know what makes it really threatening? Having Superman handcuffed to Lois.

01:36:00
Red
Yeah.

01:36:00
Case
And that's such a good. Again, the circumstances of the fights are always so interesting.

01:36:06
Blue
Yeah.

01:36:07
Red
What I think is funniest about that is he only stays handcuffed to her out of politeness. He's doing his best to keep her out of the fray, but also, he doesn't want to hurt her feelings. This is a really interesting episode because the stakes at play are not at all the physical component. It's literally just the emotional stress, the dramatic irony. We, the audience, know that she's figured him out, or at least thinks she has. And we kind of want that to resolve cleanly, but it looks increasingly unlikely that's going to happen.

01:36:34
Case
Yeah. And meanwhile, we have the issues with the two of them kind of ignoring Jimmy, which we set up at the end of the last episode, where they walk off romantically from the gala, and Jimmy's kind of left to watch them. And in this one, it's like, all right, we're going squatching. I love. It's like we're going to go hunt Bigfoot.

01:36:52
Red
So sweet.

01:36:53
Case
Yeah.

01:36:54
Red
But, yeah. As soon as they started doing the whole, like, oh, third wheel, ignoring Jimmy, I was like, all right, I don't want to watch this week. I want to wait until it's resolved, and then I'll come back.

01:37:04
Case
Yeah. So this is the episode where Jimmy then gets sent off to go with Lombard to videotape stuff for him. Or rather, Lombard pulls some strings to have a photographer assigned to him just to go do his own personal projects, which turns out to be.

01:37:16
Red
Nah. Yeah.

01:37:18
Case
The reaction channel, which I appreciate also, just because that's what social media is like.

01:37:24
Blue
Yeah. Lombard was a little bit unbearable to.

01:37:27
Red
Watch I'll be honest.

01:37:30
Case
So I don't actually watch that many react videos online. There's only been, like, two sort of big exceptions to that, which is, like, I used to watch some of the kids react, teens react stuff because that's kind of funny, but that's, like, kind of its own thing. And then when Invincible came out, I was watching a lot of react channels because I know the comics front and back and was super excited to see just what people who had no idea what they were walking into were going to be watching on that thing. But I don't actually really look at react stuff. Do you guys have react channels for your videos?

01:37:58
Red
Yeah, they happen semi regularly. The thing is, we don't watch them.

01:38:01
Case
Either because we don't like them.

01:38:03
Red
Best case scenario, they're like, I liked the video. And worst case scenario, I just get really frustrated about being misinterpreted or something like that. It's just a no win scenario, and there's no benefit for us watching it. And I don't think we really watch react content about anything else either, because it's like, I'd rather watch the thing and then form my own opinions. But the existence of, like, this guy only exists to do a little hate react to this one thing. It's very funny, but it definitely hit a little close. It's like, wow, here's a guy with free time. It's like, steve, you have a job.

01:38:40
Blue
Isn't the only parasite here.

01:38:44
Red
Yeah, there's a feature on YouTube where if your content gets reuploaded, you get a little copyright notification, and you could theoretically pursue action against the channels that do it. So we'll occasionally just go through and be like, okay, yeah, that's a react video. That's react video. That's just a wholesale reupload. That's react video. Okay, whatever. It's just like, all right, whatever.

01:39:04
Case
Well, interesting. It's just such a weird subset of the Internet that I'm glad that they here, and I'm glad that we get Steve Lombard to be the one to make Jimmy kind of doubt his relationship with Lois and Clark, or at least voice it, but also be, like, a character that Jimmy hates. So he's like, you can't be right. No, I'm going to go find my friends. They didn't show up. They didn't show up. All right, well, I'm going to go find Bigfoot. Yeah.

01:39:28
Blue
It makes him so much more interesting than just being, like, a one note, like, bully, idiot character where he actually makes a hard point to Jimmy that he can't just dismiss out of hand.

01:39:38
Red
Yeah, I like that. Absolutely no character in this show is completely flat. And that includes.

01:39:46
Case
Steve, even Steven. And so Jimmy goes off on his own while Clark and Lois are dealing with their own shit. Lois, ultimately, after everything, involves a fight.

01:39:57
Red
With deathstroke because the heatwave thing is almost secondary to that.

01:40:01
Case
There was a whole subplot of people.

01:40:02
Red
Disappearing too, because Heatwave thinks that Superman's been kidnapping people. Because someone's been zipping around super fast with spooky eyes. Because I guess deathstroke has a suit, which is fine. That's established.

01:40:13
Case
Yeah, I thought that worked pretty well. It's good set up for later. It's nice to have the way they use heatwave, where her flame gauntlets are jamming, allows for the different tiers of the scene to kind of play out. And we get time with the other moocs, who are just mooks. It's just, here's the first couple of guys. You fight on the level before you get to the final boss. And then we get the heat wave fight. We get the deathstroke stuff. We've got some just good scenes in general in here. The Daily Planet Dispatch scanner is so goddamn good as a comedic element where Clark keeps walking in, hears about an incident, it's like, I've got to go get a bagel. Superman fixes, and he walks back in. There's another thing. Cream cheese.

01:40:48
Red
Forgot my cream cheese. I do like how now that we're sort of seeing this through Lois'eyes, it's like, oh, wow, he's really not good at hiding.

01:40:57
Case
But also, this is such comedic gold with a character who is both able to do the job correctly and to do the right thing. Like, turning Superman into a comedic element is so good, and you never see it.

01:41:11
Red
No, it's really funny. But I also kind of like the tonal whiplash that happens when Deathstroke enters the episode because Deathstroke is a legitimate threat, because Superman doesn't want to fight him. Like, that's kind of the only reason it's working as well as it is for him. But obviously, he doesn't think that at this point. I think Waller even says something like, strange. Nemesis Omega is not representing anywhere near his total power. And it's like, yeah, because Deathstroke is just a guy. Yeah, they have the fight, and Clark is kind of getting pummeled. And then Deathstroke, like, slices through a support strut on the highway overpass, and it immediately starts collapsing. And Clark is like, okay, that's enough. And I think he basically ends the fight.

01:41:53
Case
He just one punches him.

01:41:54
Red
Yeah, he just one punches him. And it doesn't incapacitate him. Deathstroke is, like, prepping to go back, and Waller's like, yeah, fuck him up. And then the general is, no. No civilians, remember? We're doing this to protect people. We're not. Yeah, definitely not extremists.

01:42:08
Case
I love the Deathstroke armor. Having, like, two laser swords that come together to turn into a sniper rifle. Yeah, that's some good ruby level shit right there.

01:42:16
Blue
That's exactly what that is.

01:42:19
Red
Sword plus sword. Gun. Sword.

01:42:22
Case
So good. And it's like an energy snipe rifle. And it's, like, kind of like a railgun because it's like an exposed barrel.

01:42:28
Red
Yeah, it's weird, but I like it.

01:42:31
Case
I also like that we set up Sam Lane, even though they haven't established his name yet, as being someone who cares about civilian casualties a lot.

01:42:38
Red
Yeah, well, somebody has to. He's teaming up with Amanda Waller, right? Someone needs to remember the sanctity of.

01:42:43
Case
Human life in this, your top agent is deathstroke. The Terminator.

01:42:49
Red
That'S got big. Like, are we the baddies? Just like, I hope. No, certainly not. But it also means that Clark is, like, visibly injured when he gets back to Lois, which gives him even less plausible deniability for what the hell's going on. Right?

01:43:03
Case
He's, like, shaving.

01:43:07
Red
Yeah.

01:43:07
Case
So she jumps off a building so he has to catch her so she can be mad at him, which is peak.

01:43:11
Red
Lois Lane. She does that in every timeline. And it's always so funny.

01:43:15
Case
I knew it.

01:43:17
Red
Yeah. I love that this version of Lois is just as willing to be like, well, I'm, like, 98% sure, but, well, here. Because the fact that she says I knew it means, like, she wasn't 100% sure. She wouldn't have said it because she wouldn't have needed to.

01:43:30
Case
I mean, there's a difference between 99% and 100.

01:43:33
Blue
Yeah, I played XCOM.

01:43:35
Case
I know that difference.

01:43:37
Red
But, yeah, that's when that kind of just segues into a little dark night of the soul, like, break in communication thing, because she's really mad at him not telling her. And he's pretty upset with her forcing his hand and prying this out of him when he wanted it to be a private thing that he feels very insecure about. And meanwhile, in the background, poor Jimmy's just gotten ditched, so nobody's happy, so.

01:43:59
Case
He'S camping, and then what? Turns up a giant fucking gorilla.

01:44:04
Red
And I like how because this is DC, that doesn't immediately narrow it down.

01:44:08
Case
Yeah, no, it's totally true. Which of the many. And, like, honestly, with it being Superman, it's not obvious that it would be the one that it turns out to be first.

01:44:17
Red
That's true. Yeah. I feel like we'd probably anticipate it.

01:44:20
Case
Being grod or, like, ultrahumanite or titano, but, like, ultrahumanite would be probably where I'd go first. But the thing is, there's just a lot of fucking gorillas in DC.

01:44:28
Red
Yeah.

01:44:29
Blue
A weirdly large amount.

01:44:30
Case
Very quickly, when we start the next episode, my adventures with mad science, this becomes my favorite gorilla.

01:44:36
Red
Yeah, agreed. I loved everything about this episode, up to and including how quickly they resolve the emotional ramifications of the previous.

01:44:42
Case
Oh, yeah. So, Red, you mentioned in terms of, like, having the version where were just settling before. This is it. Oh, my God. Michir. Mala and the brain. I have never seen two characters nailed so hard in such a way that every version that has ever existed before is just second best.

01:44:59
Red
Yeah, this was pretty great. I also like how, with the flashbacks, we get, like, human brain can get it. They didn't need to make him that attractive with a deep, plunging vneck. It's like, what was that? The laboratory environment.

01:45:14
Case
They kidnap Jimmy, and it looks like they're going to do brain surgery on him. Murder him, whatever. He's just like, I'm fine with this. I got to meet a super intelligent french gorilla before I died, which means that I was right.

01:45:27
Blue
Yeah.

01:45:27
Case
And then Mala being like, you seem upset.

01:45:30
Red
Yeah. Mala immediately being like, would you like to talk about it already?

01:45:34
Case
Yeah. And then the rest of the episode is just like, first of all, this is just like Jimmy's episode. Everything about it is just great. But everything that is revealed inside of Project Cadmus is just so goddamn good.

01:45:45
Red
Yeah. I like how they keep moving the goalpost on, like, oh, yes. You say when were on scientists, we did this super dangerous thing, but now we are just living in peace, and it's like, why is there a black hole in the other room? Okay, so we also made the black hole again. It was really cool. All right, whatever.

01:45:57
Blue
What was it like?

01:45:58
Case
We got. But aside from that, we live a life of peace.

01:46:02
Red
You wanted us to sit around the science lab and not do science.

01:46:06
Case
Anyway, very funny, every part about this. So the brain mala kind of romance element is one that has been hinted at or even confirmed in some versions, but it never comes off nearly as sweet. As this one. They're just such a wonderful, older, mad scientist, gay couple that I just need this in every version going forward. If you do a version of this and it's not like a wildly different take where you're going really hard on it, I don't want it. I want this. Unless you make a really strong case for why it's not.

01:46:37
Red
This episode also has really good Clark and load because they basically have nothing to do but talk out their conflict from the previous episode, which is good, because the thing that frustrated me most about that conflict was that it was effectively just a miscommunication, like they'd gotten onto the same page, but in such a bad way that neither of them was happy with the other. And I like how in the following episode, they sort of both had to talk it out because we'd been following Lois the entire episode for you will believe a man can lie. We were sort of primed to be on her side with it a little bit. Like, oh, wow. Yeah. Clark was really determined not to tell her, and then she forced his hand, and now she knows and she's unhappy.

01:47:10
Red
And then in the next episode, clark is like, I don't like that you forced me to reveal my greatest secret to you. That makes me unhappy and feel bad.

01:47:18
Blue
Yeah. I like how clear he always is when he's laying out his feelings.

01:47:23
Red
Yeah. And also I like that Lois legitimately is like, she didn't want to make him feel bad. She just wanted the truth. And the fact that she equates not being told the truth with being lied to is a personal problem that she hasn't worked through yet.

01:47:36
Case
This is where I have notes about Sam Lane. So I'm assuming there was a line in this when she talks about being an army brat.

01:47:41
Red
Yeah, she says that she did, like, survival camp with her dad on weekends. And she mentions things that they did. And Clark's like, oh, that sounds pretty intense. And she's like, whatever, then ends the conversation.

01:47:50
Case
I think that really sets up why she's so hurt and such good drama there because we're building towards Sam Lane being the big bad of the season, which is so wonderful. I also like that they skip right past the whole he's Superman thing in the sense that when he comes to her because he's like, I can't find Jimmy. I flew over the whole area immediately. It's just like, yeah, no, you know, I'm Superman. I don't need to be like, oh, yeah, I went over, like, I can say I flew. I did all the Superman stuff. Like, you know what I can do. We're all on the same page here. Right? Okay, cool.

01:48:19
Blue
Yeah.

01:48:19
Case
He described the situation with her being like, he's revealed more to her than he has ever done to anyone else before. And I think that's such a good way of framing it where it's like, yeah, he's not giving her as much as she wants, but he is giving her so much more than he feels comfortable with.

01:48:33
Red
Yeah. And I think the fact that she's completely basically violated his boundaries is kind of taking center stage in this. Like, she's hurt, but also he's hurt. And they both have a right to feel that way and heal. And I like how most of this episode is sort of Lois kind of getting her shit together and being a little bit less kind of awful to him, which was kind of what was happening in the previous episode.

01:48:57
Red
I understand why she felt that way, but this version of Clark is such an overall just very sweet, nice guy who's just trying to do his best and find a way to belong that when Lois basically know, prize this secret out of him and then has to face the consequences of what she just did to this completely nice and genuinely harmless person who's just trying to live, is like, well, you got the secret. Are you happy? No. Great. Nobody's happy.

01:49:21
Case
Meanwhile, it's, like, juxtaposed with, like, while they're investigating, they're inside this red sun field that is causing Clark's powers to be on the fritz and a lot weaker. So there's some real stakes in terms of him, like just jumping in front of gunfire to save her.

01:49:34
Red
Yeah. Which perfectly disintegrates his shirt and nothing else.

01:49:37
Case
Well, he's got, like, scratch marks all over his body afterwards. But maybe that's from the previous fight.

01:49:42
Red
It polishes him to a mirror shine. He's shiny in the next shot.

01:49:45
Blue
I forgot the exact phrasing. But when Lois says, how did you know that you'd still be bulletproof? He says, I didn't.

01:49:52
Red
He says, I just knew that you.

01:49:55
Blue
Yeah, yeah.

01:49:56
Case
Just good moments there.

01:49:57
Red
Yeah, I like that. Clearly, what's going on with Lois is that when she figured out, like, oh, Clark is Superman. And her mistrust of Superman transferred over into a mistrust of Clark even though she knew Clark because when they were talking in an earlier episode, at one point Clark is like, maybe Superman just wants to help. And she's like, that's what you would do if you had powers. But we can't trust this guy. And it's taking her a little while to sort of have it reaffirmed. Like, no, this is still Clark. This is still how Clark works. I actually do know him and can trust him, even though this side of him is not a side that I knew was a part of him.

01:50:29
Red
So, like, while she's sort of warming back up to him and being okay with trusting him again, he's also sort of feeling better about their whole dynamic. Because I think one thing that sort of gets lost in these two episodes because they're so centered on Lois's perspective, is that for Clark, this is kind of the nightmare scenario, because he's like, okay, clark Kent can be a normal man with a normal life and friends, and then immediately, his first friend, who isn't Jimmy, is like, aha. I knew it. You're some kind of weird space alien thing. And he's like, oh, God, nightmare. And then she's like, I still like you. In fact, I think it's cool that you have space alien powers. And to him, that's probably a very welcoming surprise.

01:51:06
Red
Like, oh, actually, she's okay with my greatest terror being revealed, but it takes him a little while to get there.

01:51:12
Case
And then when they reunite with Jimmy, we get the reveal that Jimmy has known this whole time, which, on the rewatch makes so much more sense. When you rewatch it. The end of the first episode is the only spot where it's, like, a little bit weird, where he's like, yeah, we're going to figure out who Superman is. Blah, blah, blah. Like, earlier in the episode, all throughout, every time, there's a weird thing around Clark. Jimmy's like, why do you think that keeps happening? He is needling him to try to get him to open up, but he's doing it in a much softer way than Lois would. Yeah.

01:51:41
Red
And he's literally like, I figured you would tell me when you were ready. It seemed like a sensitive subject, which I love, because it's like, yeah, Lois. It seems like a sensitive subject.

01:51:50
Blue
Yeah.

01:51:51
Red
Gosh.

01:51:51
Blue
But also, it's like we, as the audience should known immediately. Like, the flamebird guy who's right about everything, wouldn't have figured this one out right under his nose.

01:52:00
Red
That's why it was so funny. It seemed like it was dramatic irony that, like, oh, Jimmy, he figures out everything except what's right under his nose, and then it turns out he's just being polite. And I thought that was so funny. Yeah.

01:52:11
Case
This is the episode that confirms that one. Jimmy is right about everything, but also, he's way more emotionally mature than we have been led to believe just by virtue of the fact that, yeah, he's goofy and is really excited about stuff, but that doesn't make him immature.

01:52:23
Red
Yeah. And I love that. That really cements him legitimately as Superman's best friend. It's like, they've been roommates for years. He's kept his secret the whole time they've known each other. It's like, yeah, jimmy, you are his best friend. You deserve that title.

01:52:37
Case
And then he saves the day by making best friends with Mr. Mala and the brain, who are awesome.

01:52:42
Red
He's just really good at connecting with people.

01:52:44
Case
I love it where it's like, we've been chased by robots, and it's just like, robots? We didn't have robots.

01:52:49
Red
Yeah. We didn't have to put that there. Oh, no.

01:52:52
Case
It's like, what about privacy? I'm sorry, but also, we're about to be attacked by robots. I love the brain has his own little mech body suit thing. Good redesign there. I love that the brain figures out very quickly the stuff going on with Clark because they never actually talk about it, and it's just like, they're clearly responding to you. And he's lower powered, so it's not obvious that he's Superman. So that's really fun. I wrote down the line. We were already riffing on it, but once they reveal all the Cadmus style dna aliens, where it's just like, what? So other than creating a black hole and an army of mutants, we live a simple life of peace. I love the black hole design for the damage.

01:53:31
Case
I love then later where we get the setup for the black hole as like, okay, we can create this portal. I love that it feeds directly into the next episode is so good. Just fantastic stuff with these characters who are such weird things to put into a Superman thing, but then are done so well.

01:53:47
Red
Yeah. I really like this episode. I think it was a very smooth bit of catharsis after how overall unhappy the previous episode was. Just like, nobody comes out of that feeling good. And then this episode, everyone comes out of it.

01:53:58
Case
I'm calling it. This is my favorite episode of the season. Really. It's not without strong competition, but it's really goddamn good.

01:54:05
Blue
Yeah. I think my favorite might be Ibo Tower.

01:54:09
Case
I mean, again, strong competition. Yeah.

01:54:10
Blue
No, for sure.

01:54:11
Case
Do like the fact that they call the robots omax in this episode. And I was like, interesting. And then at the end of the episode, we get the sort of lead into what will become then the back half of the threats where Ivo is formally recruited into being part of Task Force X. So that we know up the ante a bit as we go on.

01:54:35
Red
Yeah. Make more problems.

01:54:37
Case
Also, I love how much we set up General Lane as being terrifying to miss Yamala and the brain. I think that's also helpful in terms of, like, again, back half of the season, we need to set up the big bad that we haven't seen that much yet.

01:54:49
Red
I think that it definitely makes him feel more like a dreaded force of nature. And it's kind of interesting that he's in that role and not waller. But again, we're sort of seeing all the characters move into the position we expect them to hold later.

01:55:00
Case
So moving on to kiss. Kiss, fall in portal.

01:55:04
Blue
Yeah. Probably my favorite episode title of the whole bunch.

01:55:08
Red
It's an or in a host club reference. I don't know why they did that.

01:55:12
Case
So we do the multiverse thing. Has to get our Mr. Mixes Spitlic episode. All this is stuff I'm happy about. I don't even know where to start with this episode.

01:55:20
Red
How about, was I a crab? Yes. Okay.

01:55:23
Blue
I love how they showed all the other various supermans and crab. Superman as he's like, what?

01:55:29
Red
Yeah, his fucking face when he came back to being normal.

01:55:31
Blue
Clark, too panic.

01:55:33
Red
Something about the animation in you will believe a man can lie was a little bit rough around the edges in places. There were a couple more errors than I was used to. And then the next two episodes were gorgeous. So I was like, maybe they just put all the money in these ones.

01:55:43
Case
Yeah, possibly. I mean, you will believe a man can lie is just not the big moment. It's the space in between. It's the reveal and the fight between them. But then the follow up episodes are the ones where we really get just such good time with these characters.

01:55:58
Red
Yeah.

01:55:59
Case
So mixie, let's start with his redesign. We already referenced it a little bit.

01:56:04
Red
Goblin.

01:56:04
Case
I really like it. Unlike Monsieur Mala in the brain, where I'm like, I never need to see any other version besides that. Monsieur Mala in the brain. Side note, the classic Monsieur Mala is rough from the standpoint of like, yeah, we have a super intelligent gorilla, but he's dressed up like a French Congo commando. Is rough as a concept for a character. And making him this gentle, giant frenchman is a very nice update. This version of Mixed Espitalik is a really good update that fits this setting really well. I don't know if I need it for every version, but I think it works really well here.

01:56:35
Blue
Yeah, it's well suited to this particular interpretation.

01:56:39
Red
I think every version of Mr. Mixes Spitilick should look completely different from every other version. He's just mixing it up all the time.

01:56:44
Case
I'm down for yeah.

01:56:45
Red
Yeah.

01:56:46
Case
In the comics, they implied that Mr. Mixus Spitilick is also the impossible man, where they show a shot where he goes to deal with the Fantastic Four, and you only see their legs. And it's like the last couple panels of the first appearance of Impossible man, except his colors are reversed where he's purple instead of green, but it's like, clearly supposed to be the Fantastic Four. So I'm okay with him just being an agent of chaos everywhere. Like, is he a leprechaun? Sometimes, yeah. Is he a weird manga chaos demon also? Yeah. Power levels I thought were really good for this character. He's omniscient, very capable in terms of illusions and doing a lot of things, but he's not quite the level of terror. And then when he gets the hat, all of a sudden he's really fucking scary. Game changer.

01:57:24
Red
He's a nightmare. The legion of Lois's is so interesting because they are all so immediately ready to believe the worst about Superman. And I mentioned earlier in the podcast, I think that this is a really interesting way to just sort of quickly spackle over a hole in the plot, which is like, oh, man, can we truly trust Superman? Look, in other timelines, Superman has been bad. And that is why all these Lois's are immediately ready to fucking kill a kryptonite gun. Yeah, but I also like how a this is selection bias. These Lois's self select for like, your lowest league material. You also want to shoot this guy in the face. And they specifically have footage know Justice Lord Superman and like Red Sun Superman maybe.

01:58:08
Red
And just like a bunch of other like, oh, yeah, this one Superman went bad and this one Superman went bad. And Lois is like, oh, well, this Superman will never do that. And they're like, are you sure? Because what I like is that establishes the central question of the show. Because absolutely every threat, every antagonist in this show is like, oh, I don't know if we trust this guy who would try to just be good for no reason. It's like Clark Kent, maybe you've heard of him. And I just think that it feels like such a very deliberate response to the last, like, 20 years of popular Superman media because they're all like, oh, how naive to believe that there could be a good Superman. And it's like, that's just the mission statement of the entire character. What are you talking about?

01:58:53
Blue
What I also like here is how the various other Lois's have kind of like different levels of ratcheting up. Our Lois's core character flaw of completely hateful of mistruth know lies by omission. So their whole thing is like trying to figure out everything. But yet they also have this secret file is, oh, you can't look at that. You can't show it. And then, of course, Lois is like, well, that's not going to stop me because I can't read. She goes in and figures it out. So the intrinsic. We gotta figure everything out. Get to the crux of this Superman guy. It's cool to see that kind of like played up in these other versions of Lois.

01:59:32
Blue
Yet also we see the alternate version of Jimmy, who is the only person in this gang who is trusting enough to just send them back to their dimension, no questions asked.

01:59:42
Red
And I loved the part at the end where they were like, oh, we've lost the coordinates for this universe. I guess we can't come back. I was like, thank God. Keep the multiverse out of this, please. Now that we've established that it's not going to matter moving forward, please keep that true.

01:59:54
Case
Yeah. There's so much I like about how they handle things in this episode. Like, I like that it's the League of Lois's. It's not a league of Superman kind of situation. There are plenty of those out there in comics. But the fact that it's a character who's normally kind of ancillary character, at least towards the broader DC comic stuff, is really cool. That that's the unifying thing. I like how Mixy explicitly says that the way he handled things was part of his plan to make the lois's not trust superman and try to go after Superman and not him.

02:00:23
Case
When the lois that we've been following ends up on the ship, when he steals the ship, he's like, I deliberately tried to prevent this exact situation from happening by way of getting the lois to come and team up with their lois to go after this Superman. That's so great.

02:00:38
Blue
Yeah.

02:00:38
Case
I love the introduction of kryptonite that way. Those are really fun. Jelana Olsen. The fact that she is also a flamebird is so great. The fact that's how they bond. The fact that her turning on her slideshow of weird shit she's found and that it's comet the super horse.

02:00:57
Red
Yeah. Oh, man, she's great. That's the only multiverse I'll accept. If she comes back again.

02:01:03
Case
So good. God damn it. How are we going to get comet the super horse in here? I don't know. How about a multiversal version of, like, multiversal female black version of Jimmy Olsen reveals telepathic space horse.

02:01:18
Red
And I like how all the other loises are. No, not the slideshow.

02:01:22
Blue
Yeah.

02:01:23
Case
And then the fact that she's the reason they're able to escape and wipes the records so that, as you said, open and shut. Fantastic stuff. Very happy that this could have been, like, a much bigger thing. And instead, it does what it needs to and moves on. And then we get mixy coming in, being like, I'll still be around, but we don't need to. Specifically, it's like, were you in prison?

02:01:42
Blue
Oh, yeah, I didn't take.

02:01:43
Case
And then when he sees the green crystal and he's like, ooh, this is so, like, I love that. Mixie is kind of like this meta observer who's familiar with comics, like, watching it. There is a take that the fifth dimension is, like, the readers looking at comic books.

02:01:57
Red
Oh, so mixie is a self insert character.

02:01:59
Case
Exactly. Because when you get into the four dimensions that we're familiar with, including time, is, like, the way things are playing out. And this is an outside observer kind of, like, able to view and like you said, be a self insert. Like, it's really fun. And having this one be a little less powerful, but still very aware of all the tropes. He's like, yeah, superman's like, their, like, that's just how it, like, I know the deal. You're a kryptonian. It's like, I'm a Kryptonian. Is that where I'm from?

02:02:25
Red
I like that. Mixie is like, oops, spoilers. And also, it's just like, oh, I could tell you, but it would be so much fun to see you figure it out for yourself because that's so clearly know us in the audience watching is like, no, don't just tell him. Let him figure it out. It'll be more, yeah, it's great.

02:02:39
Case
Because she has no idea that it's going to do that to, like, she doesn't know that's the same thing that they were shooting Clark with.

02:02:45
Red
Yeah.

02:02:46
Case
Which, by the way, this version of kryptonite is fucking scary.

02:02:49
Red
Yeah, it looks so.

02:02:51
Case
Yeah, yeah.

02:02:52
Blue
That makes your veins, like, yeah.

02:02:54
Red
The crystallizing part is what really tips it over the edge because it's very normal for kryptonite to do the green vein, knock him out kind of thing. But in this case, it's like, oh, I believe that could kill him if it happened for even a little bit.

02:03:06
Case
Yeah. It's really painful looking, and it does a really good job here. And kryptonite's hard to sell. The first appearance of kryptonite was just, we need an excuse for Bud Clayton Collier to take a vacation. So we have a rock that makes him unconscious, and he's just moaning in the radio show for it to come to this point where, like, oh, man, that looks like just like poison in your veins, and everything is terrible. Yeah, really good. And we set it up here where it's an extra dimensional thing, and then we actually bring it into the main sphere of stuff just because the whole.

02:03:35
Red
Arc of Lois for the last few episodes has been sort of yoing on how much she trusts Clark, confronting her with the potential evil Superman. Question is, I think I'm glad that they got it out of the way as quickly as they did, and I'm also glad to see how she responded to it, because, again, it could have been very tedious because I think most of us here are, like, evil Superman again, for God's sake.

02:03:55
Case
And I'm glad that they didn't just do evil black suit Superman. Like, they went with Overman, which is, like, a very niche poll of.

02:04:02
Red
Yeah, is that.

02:04:04
Case
No, no, this was one. The only thing I've actually seen him in was in the Grant Morrison animal man run. They allude to the character, but it's like, more like fascist America. Like, he's got, like, big american flag kind of design for him. Goes too far. Like, world police level character.

02:04:20
Red
Oh, yeah.

02:04:20
Case
As opposed to, like, Nazi Superman or russian Superman or just black suit. He went mad. Superman.

02:04:26
Red
Actually, Overman does seem to be nazi Superman.

02:04:29
Case
There is a nazi Superman. Overman, which is a different Superman.

02:04:33
Red
Ugh. Comics.

02:04:35
Case
Yeah, I do like that.

02:04:36
Blue
They had the Justice Lords as one of them, though. That was a great Paul. I enjoyed that.

02:04:40
Red
And also putting them in the same style as the rest of the show rather than at the beginning when mixie just kind of snapped him through, like, eight different art styles and then crabs Superman. It makes it feel more grounded because that means Lois is seeing her dear friend Clark doing these things, and it's throwing her rather than just like, wow, that guy is in a completely different art style. What's going on?

02:04:59
Blue
Ooh, a 90s vibe. That's fun.

02:05:04
Case
So moving on to the two part zero day. Yeah, this kind of feels like best of both worlds from Star Trek, where the episode right after kind of is also part of the same arc. Yeah, a little bit like the family episode. In this case, zero day one and two. Yeah. But then, like, episode ten, hearts of the father, isn't this the same story?

02:05:22
Red
I was shocked that zero day part one and two was not the season finale. And then I saw also true.

02:05:27
Blue
Yeah.

02:05:28
Red
Like, when I was looking at the episode list, I was like, oh, yeah, zero day one and two. What do you mean there's another one?

02:05:32
Case
Okay, so Vicky Vale.

02:05:34
Blue
I think it was a clever choice. I kind of enjoyed them doing it that way. It didn't feel like they had to wrap up everything in the most dramatic fight of the season. It was nice that they had, like, there was this big, huge, crazy fight where we get this kind of moment and then afterwards we have this very personal Clark side problem that has its own. So I appreciate that they kind of split it out rather than trying to smoosh everything into one.

02:06:03
Case
There's a breather and then it picks up again for the very end of the season rather than just, like, one big confrontation because it's not a movie. You can actually have ebbs and flows.

02:06:12
Blue
To the story and then having, like, okay, this is like Task Force X on overdrive versus here's some kryptonian bullshit. And you can't mix those two things together. They're different problems with different emotional weights attached to them.

02:06:27
Case
So Vicky Vale. I was surprised when she shows up rewatching the season. There's allusions to Vicky Vale throughout the show. Like, Lois is set up as being a fan of hers. So that's not, like, a new thing when she shows up, like, monsieur Mala and the brain. It's weird because they're DC characters. Like, Vicky Vale is very clearly a Batman character. Like, she's the main female character in the first Batman movie. So it's nice that we set up the character. But what's also kind of fun is that the way they depict her in this feels like a classic Lois Lane as a way of juxtaposing. Like, here's what Lois idolizes. She looks at this character who is set up to be very similar to Bitsy Talak in Superman.

02:07:03
Case
And Lois, like, confident, able to get everything but muck raking in this, like, being kind of shady. As far as a reporter goes, I think that's a really fun situation. And it allows us to set up this whole, like, people are afraid of Superman simultaneously. His superhero kicks in and he's trying to do everything and he can't.

02:07:20
Red
Yeah, that was, I think that this episode, this is like the second dark knight of the Soul episode in the season, and it bothered me a lot less than the first one. Normally. It really frustrates me when I see an arc about like, oh, the hero has been framed or something, or absolutely everybody is turning on them for no reason, despite the good they've done, et cetera. Those stories are supposed to upset the audience. Like, they're supposed to feel bad, and they always work on me super well. So when they started doing that with this one, I was like, oh, no, I hope they resolve this quickly. And then they do, and I like it.

02:07:53
Red
But I think the combination of, like, vicky Vale is trying to stir up shit because she knows that the good story here is, well, surely this guy can't just be good again. This is thesis of the entire show. Like, what do you mean? He's just trying to help people for no reason. What's his angle? And I like that the thing that makes Superman mess up and sort of briefly scares people is that he's trying so hard to help everybody that he's not sleeping at all and he's just really off his game as a result. This is the part where I was like, this is on purpose because this is the exact thing that was his breaking point in Batman v. Superman is like, oh, people aren't appreciating me for being Superman.

02:08:30
Red
I'm doing all this Superman stuff and they're all mean about it and they're being mean about it on the tvs. So it's going to make me stop being Superman. And that drove me up the wall. I was like, what do you mean? Superman was never real. This is the most plain character assassination I've seen of this character in like, years. And I like that in the show. It's like, oh, no, people are afraid and they're upset about Superman for some. He's been working himself too hard and now he's getting sloppy and it's causing damage and people are afraid of that. And he's like, oh, that's upsetting. I'll need to work to fix that. And that's it.

02:09:07
Blue
It is really cool that it's not like, oh, we think Superman's evil, but it's like, what's the collateral damage? To puff up my own thesis for my detailed eye trap of Superman's. Most interesting in terms of problems with the city, when it's the question of not just Superman versus bad guys, but Superman versus bad guys and versus collateral damage. And this is essentially what's happening here where it's not like, what's the collateral damage of this fight? Which we kind of get through the journalism angle of, like, yeah, the Ivo fight, like, bankrupted a company. Thousands of people lost their jobs. But the collateral damage of what happens when he doesn't have the restraint to just stop and sleep, what's the collateral damage of that? And that's a completely different question. And I find that really interesting to see play out here.

02:09:49
Blue
So I am almost frustrated by how easily the city is like, oh, I'm suddenly scared of him now.

02:09:54
Case
Yeah, they're like, scared of him when he crashes into the ground. And that could have been anything. Yeah, sure, it is damaged. It would be a really big deal. But it doesn't appear to be like some sort of, like, I'm attacking everything. The truck is a different story because it looks like that. But even then, all he does is stop it. It's not like he's deliberately. We know he could do a lot worse.

02:10:14
Red
It is mildly frustrating how quickly and severely we see people turn on him. But I'm willing to accept that we're only seeing the absolute worst in the moment, specific to make him upset, because it's like, in the moment, I think if I saw a truck crash, I would probably be like, oh, no, I wouldn't be like, I'm sure that guy had a good reason. Maybe after, like, ten minutes, I'd be like, you know what? I really don't think that guy was at fault for getting hit by that truck. I think something else happened, but in the exact moment, I'd be like, oh, no. I will say.

02:10:42
Red
I think part of the reason why this episode didn't bother me is because I was bracing for a thing they could have done and then they didn't do, which is, as the episode kind of builds, Superman has a fight with the entirety of Task Force X in this big public park, and he does get a brief power up, which we haven't seen for a few episodes, and it looks like it turns the tables. And then he just continues to get pummeled. And I was so worried that they were going to pan out and have more scared people be like, oh, no. Superman busted up this public park just because he got jumped by eight supervillains in mech suits. What a monster. And then they didn't do that. So I was like, okay, we're fucking fine. We're fine. There's still some sanity in this world.

02:11:24
Case
Yeah. I mean, like, a big energy effect or a big Superman breaking thing would be scary in person. Even a person who's like, he just saved previously. Like, the little girl would be scared of the sequence, but give some distance and it's fine. They were still there with their phones, like, 20ft away, recording everything.

02:11:40
Red
Like, oh, my God, this is still happening.

02:11:43
Case
And he's getting punched around, and he slides up next to them.

02:11:47
Red
They're like, oh, my God.

02:11:51
Case
Let's talk about this fight. So Superman gets tricked into walking into this trap, basically because mist is on the run and says that it's the only way to save his sister, which is silver banshee. And Superman's like, I'm obviously going to help you. And this is that moment of like, yeah, no. They use Superman's innate goodness to set him up. And then everyone we have fought this season shows up, and it is such a brutal fucking fight.

02:12:17
Red
I think what's interesting is that they literally used his own innate goodness to trap him on the pretense that he is innately evil.

02:12:24
Case
Right. I know.

02:12:24
Red
Come on, guys. What the fuck?

02:12:26
Case
It wouldn't work if he's the Superman they think.

02:12:28
Blue
Probably the closest thing to a plot hole in this season.

02:12:30
Red
Yeah. What I liked most about this is that mist looks very guilty.

02:12:35
Case
Yes.

02:12:35
Red
Because clearly he's like, this guy has only tried to help. Like, obviously we're on opposite sides, but he's literally getting beat to shit because helped me, because I tricked him, and he's clearly not happy. And I thought that alone made me like him a lot more because he's kind of a non entity in the first fight. And this gives him actual personality.

02:12:52
Case
It makes him feel like a really brutal fight. Really effective use of all the different power types that I thought was so cool. Yeah, everyone contributes to it. Like, he's getting knocked around, and you can see, like, Superman is stronger than any one of them. But this whole group, again, getting back to that conservation of ninjitsu thing, this is just overwhelming him.

02:13:09
Red
He also hasn't slept in, like, six days, which I'm sure is contributing. Like, oh, the coffee's wearing off.

02:13:15
Blue
And he gets to a section when he's in the park where he can kind of neutralize a couple of the threats temporarily. So he throws one motherfucker into another motherfucker, but that only takes him out of the fight for a few seconds. Yeah, they're all armored 1015, and then they're kind of back in it. So he has that moment where he starts to turn the tables a little bit, but then I think Ivo jumps him, and it's like, all right, well, yes.

02:13:38
Red
Okay.

02:13:38
Blue
Everyone's got the upper hand again because you can deal with a few threats, but not all of them.

02:13:43
Red
Parasite kind of tips the scales because it's like, well, at that point, it's like a ticking clock for how long you can keep fighting. Anyway.

02:13:49
Case
Yeah, it's a death. Like, the longer he's fighting parasite, the more he's getting drained. And then this is a good use of setting up. Parasite is like wanting to go further. And then Lane stops him. And that's the only reason. It's not like a complete Superman gets killed in the sequence.

02:14:01
Red
Yeah.

02:14:02
Case
Moving on to part two. This is when we actually finally see what zero day was.

02:14:07
Red
Yeah, this one was really.

02:14:09
Blue
Yeah.

02:14:09
Case
So, okay, obviously we don't fully understand all of the events yet. Maybe it's a bit more revealed. If you have subtitles on for some of what Jord says in this episode. But we do see an alien invasion through a wormhole. We get to see young Sam Lane. We get to see young Waller.

02:14:24
Red
Young Waller is ripped.

02:14:26
Case
Yes, she is.

02:14:26
Red
She's so jacked.

02:14:28
Blue
Amanda. Wall to Waller.

02:14:31
Case
When we see the zero day flashback, there's, like, immediately a Wilhelm scream, which I loved.

02:14:36
Red
I saw that, too.

02:14:37
Case
But one thing I really like is that when we see the robots come through, they are clearly the same basic design as the military robots that we have been seeing throughout the season, but they are more advanced. Instead of being connected, they have, like, floating components that are magnetically attached to each other. I think that's so cool. Where it's like, this is our best approximation of what the tech that we got from this whole situation was, but we can't do it quite as well, which means that we're still dealing with bigger shit out there.

02:15:03
Red
Also, do they have the brainiac symbol on them?

02:15:05
Case
Yes, they did.

02:15:06
Red
Okay. Yeah. If I recall correctly, we see the portal open and the armada starts coming through, and this attack wipes out their entire squad. And then behind the armada, there's a big explosion. So I think we saw Krypton. Fuck.

02:15:22
Case
I think so.

02:15:24
Red
Which is interesting because it's like, okay, so what was the end goal of this invitation? Because clearly they seemed a little surprised that the planet went kaboom. So this wasn't like, a last ditch colonization effort, was it? What was the end goal here?

02:15:38
Case
I don't know. Because I guess it's possible that it was a colonization, but they didn't realize it was going to happen so fast. Or it's something else. I have a pet theory that the brainiac stuff. It's not animated series Superman, where Krypton created brainiac, but this would be one where brainiac interacted with Krypton. And then it was about to go, and then they were moving on and it blew up faster. Or something happened. Maybe Krypton was destroyed in an effort to prevent brainiac from continuing further.

02:16:02
Red
That could be.

02:16:03
Case
But either way, they start to come through. It's really scary for everyone, and then it just stops and thank God. And they don't really seem to think more about it.

02:16:10
Red
This raises one question that isn't answered throughout the season. So Krypton as a whole, are they more represented by Jor El, who seems to overall be decent, albeit a little bit spooky and incomprehensible? Or were they represented by the scary armada of terrifying war machines that vaporized an entire squad of people, which represents Krypton culture, which is Clark's cultural heritage? Because General Lane is like, that's right, zero day, this thing that you represent. And Clark is like, oh, no, this is what? So, like, he immediately believes it. And again, this is a character flaw on his part. He is so ready to believe that this thing that he is must be innately evil because it scares him. It still scares him even after becoming Superman. But there's another reason I really like this scene, actually.

02:16:54
Red
Because Lane is assuming that Superman is the same guy who he saw heading the know, is talking to him like that on the assumption, like, you led this armada through. And meanwhile, Clark sees his own little spaceship sail merrily through right before Krypton explodes. And he's like, I'm a monster. It's like, clark, honey, you were an infant. But what I think is so interesting about this scene is that after Lane explains all this to Clark immediately starts crying. And Lane has this moment where he's like, oh, fuck. Like the switch flips in his head from seeing this man as a monster to being like, oh, no, this is a child again.

02:17:29
Blue
Yeah.

02:17:30
Red
And I just thought that was such a very powerful moment because, again, we've seen Lane be like, hey, let's not do evil, and let's not do civilian casualties and shit. Let's remember why we're doing this. So when he's like, I think maybe this is the wrong guy. I think maybe he's actually just good. Or at least not. The guy we're looking for isn't character breaking, but I love that little pivotal moment and what it represents.

02:17:51
Case
So shit gets bad when the task force make their break. Amanda Waller's help.

02:17:57
Red
Yeah, also, because Livewire's powers are no longer reliant on her tech at all, which I thought was cool. Seems like she was just as surprised as everyone else when that happened. And she was like, oh, cool. I can break out whatever I want as soon as that camera goes down. And the camera's like, I pretend I do not see it.

02:18:10
Case
And we also get Livewire shocking the shit out of Deathstroke's face, apparently, where his eye is.

02:18:16
Red
Yeah. Which is a way to make him lose the eye.

02:18:19
Case
Yeah.

02:18:20
Red
Less tied in with his divorce than I would have liked. It's just so funny to me.

02:18:25
Case
They reverse the whole thing. It's actually he comes home missing the eye, and the wife's like, you're such a handsome anime fuckboy, and now you're missing an eye. I can't ever love you again.

02:18:33
Red
Now I look cooler.

02:18:35
Case
But it's time for round three with the parasite.

02:18:38
Red
Yeah.

02:18:38
Case
Which goes full Kaiju because he and.

02:18:40
Red
Livewire have figured out their special combo move, which is, oh, he eats energy. And she puts out energy. Great. This is perfect. Let's just make him real big.

02:18:48
Blue
When he was starting to get bigger in the hallway, I'm like, come on, make him a kaiju, you cowards. Come on, do it. And then eventually burst out from underground, I was like, yeah.

02:18:57
Case
He goes, like, full tarasque in terms of kaiju. Ivo sextoped or like an octopod.

02:19:03
Red
He just keeps getting more legs. Kaiju. Ivo is in the opening. He's been there the whole time. I didn't notice.

02:19:09
Case
That's fantastic. And this is a good spot here because we get the confirmation of thesis of, who is this character Superman? Ivo is putting out the same rhetoric about, you can't be all good. You can't be this. Who the hell do you think you are? And this is the moment where Superman actually brings together all the powers he's picked up over the course of the season to be able to identify. And I think this is where we are confirming that he has x ray vision because he's able to identify where Ivo is. And we get such a good fucking shot of him doing, like, the Superman fly through a giant thing, which comics like to reference because they can't do it with the main superman.

02:19:47
Case
Usually we've had a shot like this in the authority when Apollo flies through their parody of giant man from the Avengers. He flies through his head. We've seen, like, Mark Millar loves this, where it's like, oh, yeah, a super fast and vulnerable guy could just fly through a giant person.

02:19:59
Red
Right.

02:19:59
Case
They wouldn't be that effective.

02:20:00
Red
Right. It's the Goku through King Piccolo.

02:20:03
Case
Exactly.

02:20:04
Red
Yes.

02:20:04
Case
And he identifies where Ivo's body is inside the suit. And we get that sort of, like, last Jedi sequence of, like, flying right through the star Destroyer. And he pulls them through, and he answers the question of, like, I am Superman. He stops him, but doesn't hurt him.

02:20:19
Red
Yeah. Haven't you read the paper?

02:20:20
Case
Yeah.

02:20:21
Blue
Don't you read the paper? I love that.

02:20:23
Red
Such a good moment. And also, it's led into with the redemption of the thing that was happening in the previous episode with the entire city just randomly being like, actually, Superman is scary. He had, like, one slightly off day, and we all decided he was a menace. And then Jimmy and Lois go live on TikTok, and they're like, hey, 5 million followers.

02:20:42
Case
Hey, I'm Superman's best friend, and I'm Superman's something.

02:20:48
Red
I was looking at the comments the whole time, and I love the people that were like, oh, my God. Flamebird face reveal. I was like, really fake fans. Clark accidentally walked in and turned on the lights.

02:21:00
Blue
Yeah, the new subscribers don't watch the.

02:21:02
Red
Backlog, but I like how basically they were like, superman has saved everyone in the city so many times. We've kind of sped through it. We're only one season in, but it's happened. So here's how we're going to save Superman. And there's that initial question of, are they going to do it? Are they going to do it? We know they were afraid of him. And then the lights start going out in the city as they're cutting off the power that parasite has been feeding on. And, I mean, it's not a Superman story if you don't get a moment where the people that Superman have saved team up to save him. They're really good at doing the gut punch and then recovering from it. It's like, oh, we've really hurt him this time, but don't worry, we've bandaged it.

02:21:36
Red
So, like, oh, everyone did immediately get scared of him as soon as he slipped up once because he was trying too hard to help him. That's no good. That's upsetting. And then the very next night, it's like, enough people still trust him that they did this to help him save the day.

02:21:51
Blue
Yeah, it was a really good sequence.

02:21:53
Case
Whatever. In terms of, like, well, does that actually shut down the power grid?

02:21:56
Blue
No, I did think about that. We don't have any precedent for, like, oh, if Ivo is deprived of a power source, does the parasite suit shrink? We've never seen.

02:22:11
Red
That's what happens in the very first fight. Stopping, fighting back, because that's the only place he's getting power from. And the suit starts shrinking to the point where it damages Ivo inside it.

02:22:21
Blue
I thought it was because he was expending so much energy. Okay, well, fair enough. Fair enough, then. Okay, cool.

02:22:29
Red
I think at minimum, it would stop it from getting stronger and let Clark actually sort of stand a chance against it. Yeah.

02:22:34
Case
I love that. When Ivo is destroyed, it turns into this giant fucking statue of Kaikyu. That just.

02:22:41
Red
I like that too.

02:22:42
Case
That's pretty great.

02:22:42
Red
What are they going to do?

02:22:43
Blue
And it's there in the next episode.

02:22:44
Red
Yeah. A haunting reminder.

02:22:46
Case
I mean, really big show piece. What feels like the finale of the season. And then we get into the next episode where it's like, oh, actually, just kidding. But the big players of this season, this sort of cleans up most of that. And then going into hearts of the fathers, aside from making the connection of, like, well, who is this general to, like, we have moved past, like, season one's threat. The US government is recruiting supervillains to fight Superman. Okay, so this is the teaser for season two where it's Thanksgiving. And for one thing, it's great that revealing the rocket ship to Jimmy makes him so happy because that's.

02:23:20
Red
And I like how Clark is trying to be like, this is my spaceship. These are the obelisks. When he doesn't know much about what the ship does either. He can't speak the language. It's the cutest thing.

02:23:29
Case
Jimmy's, like, riding the obelisk around the background while he's talking.

02:23:31
Red
Jimmy's having the greatest day.

02:23:33
Case
Jimmy is such a good character in this. It's a character that is severely underrated by a lot of DC fandom. And I think he's done so well here. And you're just reminded that, like, oh, yeah, this is why the character matters.

02:23:45
Red
Yeah. I think all three of these characters, Jimmy, Lois and Clark, writers aren't entirely sure what to do with him because the problem with Superman is he is actually uncomplicated and good. Like, he's legitimately that good. And a lot of writers are like, I don't know what to do with this. Make him punch the heavy thing. And then Lois is frequently like, oh, put her in danger. So Superman has to rescue her. And Jimmy is like, we put him in danger, so Superman has to rescue him. And then this show is just like, fuck you. These are interesting characters and we can actually make them do stuff.

02:24:17
Case
But then we get the big reveal of when they're like, and Lois's dad is coming. And then the door opens, and Clark rushes the doorknob.

02:24:27
Red
And I love how it's initially just like, oh, he's nervous. It's his girlfriend's dad. And then meanwhile, we're like, no, he did just torture him for, like an hour. He's allowed to be unhappy about the situation.

02:24:37
Blue
It was kind of funny how Martha Kent was fully about to out Clark to Lois Lane's dad.

02:24:43
Red
She really needs to get a handle on that. I get the feeling that the entirety of Smallville has to know. Maybe he's got to be, like, their hometown hero. And they're all like, oh, we don't tell them city folk. And then meanwhile, I think it's just like, the mom know. You can't resist bragging.

02:24:58
Case
Yeah, I love the tension in that scene. It's really great stuff. I love Jimmy bouncing around from everyone as, like, the emotional support person. Side note. So Pa Kent is just in terms of, like, a weird poll. Reed Scott is the actor. Great character, Reed Scott. So he is from Veep. He was in Venom. He was, like, the Doctor boyfriend. He's a Zachai actor. And it's just like a weird poll of an actor for this part.

02:25:25
Red
Yeah, that's interesting.

02:25:26
Case
I love the love of the turkey. And then the later setup that Clark can just heat fish with the turkey.

02:25:30
Red
He is so weird. I love him. She's like, yeah, I'll just sit in front of the oven watching the turkey, not cook.

02:25:38
Case
Great stuff. And great that Jimmy feels like he's so important to everyone's emotional well being that he's being pushed too far in this episode.

02:25:46
Red
I think it's so funny because he's the only person where it's safe for all of them to tell him their secrets. With Clark being like, oh, my God, the general is Lois'dad. And Lois being like, oh, my God, my dad is the worst. Jimmy's like, okay, stop it.

02:25:58
Blue
We're going outside.

02:25:58
Red
Everyone just talk to each other.

02:26:00
Case
Going back to my whole I didn't clock this as Sam Lane thing. This episode is the spot where I realized that Lois hadn't seen him because we've seen him so much in the show. And Lois has been around for so much in process that she hadn't been there for any of the sequences where the general was around.

02:26:18
Red
Gotcha. Yeah.

02:26:19
Case
Which just makes this more exciting that somehow they goddamn turned Lois at Lane's dad into the big bad of a season of a show.

02:26:26
Red
Yeah.

02:26:27
Case
No one could have predicted that in 1985 because that wasn't a thing yet.

02:26:32
Red
And I like how he is so blunt and so bad at doing normal social situations. And we've only seen him in the context of unpacking his zero day trauma. And then he's at the house and he's just being very bad at socializing and just, like, looking straight at Clark and being like, I swear I've seen you somewhere before. Do you always wear glasses? And Clark's just always wear glasses. God.

02:26:53
Blue
Yeah.

02:26:54
Red
Oh, man. And meanwhile, lois is just like, God, dad, you're so embarrassing.

02:26:59
Case
So we continue the plot thread of the file from the League of Lois's. So that element is still there. So that continues there. And this is where kryptonite is revealed how it works with Clark. And we get the whole Jordail ship being like, kryptonite.

02:27:14
Red
There's a little thing here that I thought was cool, which is that when Jimmy accidentally sees the file, the very first thing that happens is, I think Lois is like, look, we can't show this to Clark. He's still in a really bad place. This would. Absolutely. They've fully gotten past the whole, like, oh, no, could Clark go evil? They're just like, clark will take this really personally and start worrying if he's going to turn evil. And we just can't deal with that. And he doesn't need to deal with that, so we're just going to hide this from him. And I like that. That's 100% accurate. And it's really refreshing to have finally moved past the whole, like, can Superman truly be all good? What if he was bad?

02:27:49
Case
Yeah.

02:27:50
Red
And I also like that when he does see it, Lois clocked him completely. Right, because he is about to have an emotional breakdown.

02:27:56
Case
Yep.

02:27:57
Red
He's really fucking been through it. Okay. This season has not been easy for.

02:28:00
Blue
Yeah, no, yeah.

02:28:02
Case
But then all this wakes up all of the kryptonian technology that's out in the Kent farm fields and shit goes weird. Lane is just like, you guys, stay back. I've seen this before. It was kind of weird because I was like, wait, so they just let them build a town and a farm over all this classified alien tech?

02:28:23
Red
So this actually does make sense. Which is Clark's little escape pod got bigger while it was buried underground. They mentioned that in the first couple episodes. Like, the first time they buried it was pretty small, and now it's huge. So the farm definitely pre existed it, and then they just buried the little ship. And then the ship just got really big.

02:28:40
Case
That's pretty freaking weird, especially for a certain military that we. It's gonna be really hard going forward.

02:28:48
Blue
To keep this a secret because the whole government's gonna be like, why is this on your farm?

02:28:53
Red
I think are probably pretty good at playing dumb at this point. Just like, well, golly, I couldn't tell you. How long has that been there, do you think?

02:29:01
Case
I don't know. Some city slickers and black cigarettes and sunglasses came by and made us signed non disclosure agreements a few years back.

02:29:08
Red
Take it up with them.

02:29:10
Case
Your honor, we're not legally allowed to say. Damn it. Right? Like Red said, the ship was established as getting bigger. I am surprised at how big it gets. This is, like, a full on warship, apparently with, like, drones, which apparently are also vulnerable to kryptonite. And that's cool that Jimmy is able to wipe them out.

02:29:25
Red
Also, brainiac is in the ship when Jor El is like, oh, the poison is here. Oh, yeah. I don't know if you guys saw that part. Subtitled. What he says is, the poison is here. And then brainiac pops up in front of him. Or at the brainiac three dot symbol.

02:29:36
Case
I saw the symbol, and I understood enough of what he was saying. Just because I think he says kryptonite, I think sounded like poison. Something sounded like it. At least it was very clear when he says kryptonite, like what he's talking.

02:29:46
Red
Yeah, yeah, I do. Like, if you don't watch it with just occasion, you're, like, listening for the keywords. It's like, he said krypton. He said kryptonite. Okay, we're up to speed. He said kal El, but clark doesn't know what that means.

02:29:58
Case
Yeah, this is where the portal opens up and it gets cut off, right?

02:30:01
Red
So, basically, the ship goes up, and it fires off drones, and the drones start attacking people. So, Clark is kind of pulling double duty, trying to save the family and Lois from that. And meanwhile, Jimmy is off with the little orb and the kryptonite, which is just absolutely devastating on the bots. And I think then the ship opens the portal, and there's an armada on the other side. And that's when Clark and Lois catch up to Jimmy and see him surrounded by the completely crystallized robots. He's like, yeah, I don't know why the rock is, like, doing this crazy stuff to them. And Clark is immediately like, oh, okay, I can use this to disable the ship and stop zero day chance to sacrifice myself. For the good of humanity. Don't mind if I do.

02:30:41
Blue
Deal.

02:30:41
Red
Yeah.

02:30:42
Case
So, we see our side of it. Superman saves the day, destroys it all with the help of kryptonite. That's all very cool. We get a confrontation between Sam and Lois by kind of, like, clearing the deck here. Like, at this point. Yeah, it's just like, no, we got to get off. And also, it's my boyfriend.

02:30:57
Red
Well, she didn't say that. Technically, his identity is theoretically still safe.

02:31:01
Case
That's why it's a her. We find out that Jimmy sold Flamebird to the Daily Planet and is now a millionaire.

02:31:09
Blue
So funny. God, that's so funny.

02:31:13
Red
But there was a couple things that happened on the ship that I thought was interesting, because Clark takes the little file sphere, which clearly keeps the kryptonite kind of shielded, and he flies up to destroy the ship. And when he gets there, Jor El is there. And again, the language barrier is still there. And Clark is like, oh, I knew this whole thing was evil. And Jor El is like, come on, man. But Jor El basically starts taking out the drones that were stopping Clark from reaching the core of the ship. So he just starts, like, phasing through them as a hologram and it takes them out. So, Clark clearly kind of gets the picture, like, okay, he's on my side. And he zips his way into the core, and he opens up the orb, and the kryptonite is revealed.

02:31:48
Red
And obviously, it deeply fucks him up, but it doesn't actually do anything to the ship. I mean, it's Superman law that he needs to fight through the kryptonite at least once. So he, like, picks it up and punches it into the core of the ship, which is extremely cool of him. And then he's, like, obviously fucked up from the kryptonite. And Jor El is kind of kneeling over him again. I saw this with subtitles. My brain was just like, oh, yeah, this is what he's saying. I think what Jor El says is like, you brought the poison here. I don't know why you did that. And Clark is like, I had to stop your know, I couldn't let you hurt the earth. And Jor El says, I would never hurt you.

02:32:18
Red
And then he kind of puts him in another escape pod and fires him out of the ship. So, I'm hopeful that escape pod is going to do what the first one did and also get big and have its own Jor El, because otherwise, I have no idea how Clark is gonna find out all that shit he's supposed to find out, but was a big, dramatic sacrifice. And the ship that was coming through the portal gets Sheared in half when the portal closes and just kind of falls onto the Kent farm, where I'm sure they'll have to explain it away.

02:32:40
Blue
I also do like that when Jor El shoots Superman back down in the pod in English, he says, like my son, which, yeah, so I like that.

02:32:49
Red
He'S picking it up, which is why I need him to still be around in season two, because otherwise this is going to be so annoying.

02:32:55
Case
I think they have to be, especially because then the end of the episode is like the classic season two setup where we see what is listed as brainiac in the notes. Going over to someone who is clearly wearing a kryptonian symbol. It looks different than what we saw in the portal because it's, like, more hunched over and bulky, but it appears to be a version of the Zod icon. And then it's like there's this rebellious earth we need to conquer. They will kneel.

02:33:21
Red
Yeah, I wonder who that could be. Which I did. Like, I like how they really just only pepper in the barest details needed. Like, oh, Alex, he's wearing purple. He's a ginger. Okay, that's Luther. Like, we all know. And in this case, it's like, oh, a masked kryptonian who said, neil. I know exactly who that is.

02:33:38
Case
Yeah, I mean, this feels like the end of a Power Ranger season or something. Like, where it's like, all right, who's going to be the big bad next? Like, again, Anne, anime as fuck. And what's great is that you can take Superman, and it still feels perfectly right for Superman to be overlaid with this other set of tropes and genre stuff.

02:33:54
Blue
Yeah.

02:33:54
Case
So this was a really solid opening for the show. I hope that we keep building this out. I'm just so impressed with everything that they're doing with this all. It's so optimistic. It's so fresh in the areas where it needed to be fresh, but it's so timeless and classic in the spots that it really needed to keep those going. We have a really true Superman in this, and we've got a really great supporting cast, which is sometimes forgotten because they take Superman and put him with the Justice League and with everything else. And here it's like, no, he works at a newspaper. He's got interesting people he works with. He's got good friends. There's so much to do with that.

02:34:28
Red
I think that this is one of the only shows I've seen that puts more focus on Clark Kent, Daily Planet than on Superman. Yeah, the 90s cartoon. It's basically all Superman. We only get the occasional glimpse of Clark Kent. And some of those are some of the most fun. Like in the first major finale when the world gets invaded by thanagarians, there's that one really good bit where they're like, oh, no, our friends are about to be discovered. And he just runs up to thanagarian like, excuse me, Clark Kent, Daily Planet. Can you tell me more about this martial law occupation? And just like, immediately, because it's like, this is 100% his field of expertise. This is his perfect cover story. This is actually his job. I don't know. I really liked how this show handled it. It felt very cozy.

02:35:09
Red
It never made any writing decisions where I was like, that doesn't feel good, except to the parts where I was like, this is not supposed to feel good. This is supposed to be a dark night of the soul.

02:35:17
Case
Yeah, I'm just, like, very impressed with it all. I was gushing from the first episode on. J Mike and I have been messaging about this. I was so happy to hear that other people like yourselves as much this way. And I'm really glad that we're actually stopping to have a deep dive discussion.

02:35:30
Blue
I mean, the first time in a while that we get a truly exceptional Superman story. It deserves taking the time to go through it with a similar amount of love as what went into creating it because there's so much effort that was put into this in writing and animation and voice acting and all these other different fields. Like, for all the time that we've spent yelling about the DC movies, let's spend at least a comparable amount of time praising the one time they really nail it in the last, like, 510 years.

02:36:04
Red
Absolutely. Yeah.

02:36:04
Case
I mean, I don't want to be too dismissive of some of the other things that have come out. Like, I've mentioned Superman and Lois a bunch of times and we really liked that show when it came out, which is really good.

02:36:12
Blue
I want to go back and watch the rest of it. I watched some of it for my hildai tribe on Superman and I was so immensely impressed with the way they handled that origin story for, like, the one episode where they did a flashback to Clark and Lois in Metropolis that was just so lovingly done and really impressive.

02:36:28
Case
Yeah, but like I said, that's a different version. Like, this is doing young Superman in the moment, finding himself. And that kind of story is hard to make work with Superman because there's such an expectation of him to know what he's doing.

02:36:41
Red
I think in terms of other Superman stories that I quite liked that have come out semi recently. I liked the Superman versus the elite movie because it also does the whole, like, can you truly have a pure, good Superman? And the answer continues to be yes. And I automatically, like, it's such a low bar to clear, but I automatically respect any story that pulls it off.

02:36:59
Case
Yeah.

02:37:00
Blue
I think the reason that Superman and Lois didn't spring to mind, which it should have, is Superman and Lois being such a specific point in his life where it's like Superman, but he's a father and he's settling down with Lois. Back in Smallville, it seems like, okay, this is a distinct period, a distinct interpretation. Whereas my adventures with Superman just feels like this is a definitive Superman story that you can be like, there's the character, there he is. You can go in and if this is your first piece of Superman media, you'll be spoiled for the rest of your life just going in with this. Whereas going right into Superman and Lois, you probably wouldn't get the ideal experience out of it. Because there is a lot of backstory that is asked and requested to be understood of the audience.

02:37:44
Blue
Which, in a way, is great because it's like, okay, cool. I have my Superman background. I know what I'm doing. Let's see what they do with this. And it becomes more of, like, a specific event for an audience to dig into. Whereas what I love about this version is so much is like, kids can grow up with this and be like, that's Superman. He's just a nice person.

02:38:01
Red
Yeah.

02:38:02
Blue
And this is a great entry point for a whole generation. I hope. I can only hope.

02:38:08
Red
I'm very happy with this. I think I will be satisfied even if all we get is, like, a few seasons of this Superman. That I think is absolutely perfect for my interpretation. Because I'm glad that there's a lot of different versions of this character. Because for some people, different versions of the same story resonate in different ways. This one just happens to be perfectly calibrated to the way that my brain works. So I had a great time, and I want more of it. And I'm glad we're getting more of it. And other than that, I'm good. Now that we've gotten a full season out of the way. That's just been about Clark and Lois and Jimmy. I do want a Batman cameo in the next season. Just a little one.

02:38:38
Red
I want them to be like, oh, boy, we're going to interview with billionaire playboy Bruce Wayne. And we never get the full confirmation. We just see it from the perspective of normal stuff. I just think it would be so funny.

02:38:49
Blue
We talked about this when the show first came out. How would they play Bruce Wayne in this world?

02:38:55
Red
Yeah. I trust them to do it. Right. I have ideas, but I'm not here to write fan fiction. I just think it would be fun. Yeah.

02:39:02
Case
I would love for them to tease him for a little bit. Like, have Superman go to solve a problem. And then there's just like, oh, they're already tied up. Oh, there's a calling card with a bat symbol wanted or something.

02:39:10
Red
Yeah. It's like, oh, there's a Batarang embedded in the wall. I wonder what's up with that.

02:39:13
Blue
That'd be really great. And they've shown they can do the slow burns well enough. I mean, throwing Batman in with all the other brainiac stuff, and Zod is like, that might be a little messy, but I don't know. They've handled a lot of stuff in this season.

02:39:24
Red
Yeah, a lot of things happen in the season. We got Monsieur Mala in the brain.

02:39:27
Case
I mean, this is the setting where you could have a mech, Batman. Yeah.

02:39:31
Red
So many options.

02:39:32
Case
I don't know. Like, you could have them fighting together.

02:39:34
Red
Be pretty good to have back together again.

02:39:39
Case
Yeah.

02:39:39
Red
Just saying it would be nice.

02:39:42
Blue
Don't get me excited about new DC material.

02:39:44
Red
I didn't think that was possible.

02:39:46
Case
Don't make me love again. My heart can't.

02:39:49
Blue
DC peaked when I was nine watching Batman, the animated series, Justice League, and Batman Beyond.

02:39:54
Red
I should rewatch Batman beyond, but I should watch this show.

02:39:58
Case
It's so fun looking at this. Like, Superman has such a cultural cachet. Like, everyone knows who Superman is. They make more money off the merch than they do off of the actual comics of Superman. And so as a character, he has settled a lot in terms of what we expect from him and where the stories have lived for a lot of stuff. Like, there's a reason why the shows, the comics, all these things are like, leaning into. Superman has a family. He's already married. We've already gone through all the big beats.

02:40:23
Case
It is so nice and refreshing to do a new take on the younger years that isn't just Superboy, that is bridging that gap and really spending some time in finding your footing as a public figure of Superman and really dealing with that kind of thing and reinventing a lot of the stuff that we just kind of take as like, well, yeah, of course they're going to do parasite, and it's going to be a guy who gets exposed to radioactive material and he can suck Superman's energy stuff out. I can't get over that. We don't have Metallo in this yet. Not yet, but it's so fucking weird. Metallo is another one of those early guys you introduce because it's easy to explain, like, yeah, it's a robot and he's got kryptonite. He could fight Superman that way.

02:41:01
Red
But actually that makes sense because we only have one sliver of.

02:41:05
Case
In terms of narratively speaking, yes, it makes sense.

02:41:07
Blue
And we only got it from a different universe, too.

02:41:10
Red
It's true.

02:41:11
Blue
Theoretically, there's no kryptonite on earth right now.

02:41:13
Red
Yeah, there's a lot of unanswered questions about krypton and kryptonite because Jorel knew what it was. So something happened there, clearly, and it's so devastating to all the technology. So that's interesting. I'm curious to see them unpack more of that, which is why I've got my fingers crossed for second backup, jor.

02:41:30
Case
El, however that all works. But so many things that you just take for granted with Superman, they, like, turn on their head, but they don't defy any of the core elements of the character. That's just a really cool take that is very brave in a way that a lot of material wouldn't be.

02:41:45
Red
Yeah, absolutely.

02:41:46
Blue
Yeah. Every subversion highlights something fundamental to the Superman story.

02:41:53
Red
It's extremely unapologetic about its differences. From the quote unquote standard version two, which I think is really good. I love a show that is not afraid to tell the story it's telling. We just had a really good time. I think overall, I don't think there's a single thing I would have changed about this show, because everything where I'm like, I don't know where they're going with this is something I'm excited to.

02:42:12
Blue
See where they take it exactly.

02:42:15
Case
I feel like we've covered everything. We just spent 3 hours on this.

02:42:18
Red
We did go through every single episode.

02:42:20
Case
Jay, Mike, as always, at the end of our episodes, I do try to make sure I didn't just talk over you this whole time. Is there anything we missed? Yeah, I think we covered everything. In detail. Yeah, in detail. We spent 4 hours doing just. Was it justice league? We covered everything for this. So I think we're good on this one. Red and blue. Thank you for coming on, providing insight into so much of this and spending time with it after doing a detailed diatribe about it and spending some real time on your own channel talking about the show.

02:42:56
Red
Thanks for having us. This was really fun. Honestly, this is super great. This show is so good. Super great. Is that right? Anyway, just honestly, any excuse to talk about it, because the whole time I was watching it, I was like, this is so good. And I want to talk about why it's so good, because otherwise I'm just going to explode from how good it is.

02:43:13
Case
Well, so awesome having you both on. Everyone should be checking out overly sarcastic productions because it's a channel that I love, that I've been watching for years. And it's so cool that I've actually gotten a chance to talk to both of you. It's cool that I got a chance to meet Blue at Vidcon a couple weeks back.

02:43:27
Blue
Yeah, I wouldn't say it's a chance meetup, but it was a good, quick little opportunity to say hi in person.

02:43:33
Case
So where can people find you if they're not already familiar with your channel? Whatever you got going on, give all the plugs.

02:43:39
Red
The main thing is definitely, yeah, the YouTube channel over psychiatric productions. That'll just turn up our most recent videos. We've got assorted series. There's trope videos, there's myth videos, there's history videos, there's architecture videos, detailed diatribes where we have the most chance of talking about Superman. We do have a podcast where we do, like an after show where we talk about the videos. So there's some Superman stuff in there, too. And we have a second podcast that is for our patrons called the after show where we spent the entire one that we just recorded today, basically talking about this show.

02:44:11
Blue
We're going to talk about this later. We need to get ourselves prepped. There's another after show where we talk half about Superman, half that Castlevania. There's plenty more stuff you can find us around the interwebs.

02:44:24
Red
Yeah.

02:44:24
Case
Awesome. Well, if you dig the stuff I do, you definitely would dig the stuff that they do. So go check that stuff out if you're listening and you're not familiar with it already. Way better production values than anything I'm involved with. So again, thank you so much for coming on. This was great. If you ever feel the need to gush more about Superman, you're always welcome.

02:44:44
Red
Hell, yeah. I mean, when season two comes out, just pencil us in. We're going to want to talk about it.

02:44:50
Case
Yeah, no, everyone should check that out. J Mike, where can people find you? Follow you? What have you got going on? You can find me on Twitter at jmike 101. Yes, Twitter. Twitter.

02:44:59
Red
Yes, Twitter.

02:45:01
Case
We're going to keep calling whatever it's called. I don't know.

02:45:03
Red
Yeah, we got it. We got no horse in this race. We can just be amused at how on fire the situation is.

02:45:09
Case
I always espouse this belief that Twitter had some greater cultural potential, even if it wasn't being fully realized, because it was like, it's like telepathy for all of us. We can broadcast our thoughts and directly message each other's brains. It's cool. What if an egomaniac took it over.

02:45:23
Red
My phone and takes psychic damage?

02:45:28
Case
So I am still on the hell site formerly known as Twitter. At case Aiken, you can find me on blue sky. At case Aiken, you can find me on Instagram at Ketzel Quaddle five because I was pretentious in high school, and I'm still hanging on to that damn aim screen name for life.

02:45:44
Red
Hell yeah.

02:45:46
Case
And you can find this show@certainpov.com where you can find tons of great shows that are out there. You can find a link to our discord server where you can come interact with all of us. It's a great time. Wonderful discussions are going on there, lots of familiar faces. You can find stuff that we are putting out on the YouTube channel for certain pov, which is certain pov media, where you can find my videos on Superman analogs and also clips from the various podcasts that we do. So check all that out. But until next time, stay Super… man.

Jmike

Men of Steel is a certain pov production. Our hosts are J. Mike Folson and case Aiken. The show is scored and edited by Jeff Moonin, and our logo and episode art is by case Aiken.