With the second season of My Adventures with Superman concluded, Case and Jmike are once again joined by Red and Blue from Overly Sarcastic Productions to reflect on it.

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Meeting summary:

●      In the Podcast Discussion/TV Show Analysis meeting about Season 2 of “My Adventures With Superman,” participants engaged in a comprehensive exploration of the season's narrative and character development. The discussion highlighted the more arc-focused structure of the season, featuring the introduction of Kara/Supergirl and Brainiac as the main antagonist, while examining Superman's emotional growth and Lois Lane's challenges. Key episodes such as "Full Metal Scientist" and the Black Mercy storyline were scrutinized, alongside themes of identity and belonging. The team also analyzed character dynamics, villains’ motivations, and the show's unique blend of Superman lore with anime influences. Speculation about the season finale and future storylines set the stage for Season 3, with excitement about potential crossovers and new character arcs. Production elements like animation style and voice acting received praise, while overall, the season was assessed positively for its storytelling, despite minor pacing critiques. Action items included revisiting predictions post-Season 3 release and comparing the show's approach to other Superman adaptations.

Notes:

●      🦸 Season 2 Overview and Characters (00:00 - 15:30)

●      Season 2 more arc-focused than individual episodes

●      Introduction of Kara/Supergirl as a major new character

●      Brainiac as the main villain, with a unique design and characterization

●      Discussion of Krypton's portrayal and potential location in the Phantom Zone

●      🔍 Plot Details and Character Development (15:31 - 30:00)

●      Analysis of Superman's emotional vulnerability and growth

●      Exploration of Lois Lane's character arc and struggles

●      Jimmy Olsen's expanded role and wealth subplot

●      Introduction of John Henry Irons/Steel as a new ally

●      🎭 Episode Breakdowns (30:01 - 45:30)

●      Detailed discussion of key episodes, including 'Full Metal Scientist' and 'The Death of Clark Kent'

●      Analysis of the Black Mercy storyline and its adaptation

●      Exploration of the Kara vs. Clark fight scenes and power dynamics

●      🌟 Themes and Storytelling (45:31 - 60:00)

●      Discussion of the show's balance between Superman lore and anime influences

●      Analysis of the relationship dynamics between characters

●      Exploration of identity and belonging as central themes

●      🦹 Villains and Supporting Characters (60:01 - 75:30)

●      Detailed analysis of Brainiac's motivations and methods

●      Discussion of Task Force X and Amanda Waller's role

●      Introduction of new villains and their connections to Superman lore

●      🎬 Season Finale and Future Predictions (75:31 - 90:00)

●      Breakdown of the season finale's events and resolutions

●      Speculation about potential storylines and character introductions for Season 3

●      Discussion of the show's approach to expanding the DC universe

●      📺 Production and Design Choices (90:01 - 105:00)

●      Analysis of animation style and character designs

●      Discussion of music and sound design in key scenes

●      Praise for the voice acting performances

●      🔮 Fan Theories and Predictions (105:01 - 120:00)

●      Speculation about potential crossovers with other DC characters

●      Discussion of possible adaptations of classic Superman storylines

●      Predictions for character development in future seasons

●      🎭 Comparisons to Other Superman Media (120:01 - 135:00)

●      Contrasts with previous animated Superman series

●      Discussion of how the show handles classic Superman tropes

●      Analysis of the show's unique take on the Superman mythos

●      📊 Overall Season Assessment (135:01 - 142:00)

●      Positive reception of the season's character development and storytelling

●      Minor criticisms of pacing in early episodes

●      Excitement for the future of the series and its potential

Transcription

00:00
Case
I feel like this season was more like arc focused as opposed to individual episodes. So we'll drop down, but it will sort of be in the service of the larger arcs that are being told.

00:10
Red
This is gonna be really fun.

00:10
Blue
I suspect we won't have 45 minutes of discussion before we even get to episode one, so I think let's not jinx it.

00:36
Case
Hey, everyone, and welcome back to the men of Steel podcast. I'm case Aiken, and as always, I'm joined by my co host, Jmike Folson. Hello there.

00:42
Jmike
What's up, Case?

00:45
Case
Not much. We are digging back into my adventures with Superman. Season two just wrapped. You know what that means. We are once again joined by from overly sarcastic productions. We've got red.

00:56
Red
Hello there was a hello there, and I was gonna do General Kenobi, but I was waiting for somebody to do it.

01:01
Jmike
No one did.

01:02
Red
It spoiled that were there, but everyone needs to know that's what I wanted to do.

01:09
Case
And of course, we also are joined by blue.

01:11
Blue
And I have to say, j Mike, you are a bold one.

01:13
Jmike
Thank you, sir.

01:14
Case
The deeper pole, hot on the heels of season one. Season two from my adventures with Superman came out so good, and we had such a great conversation about the first season. I wanted to have the two of you back on for this one. Before we get into any kind of thoughts, red, I have to tip my hat to you for your excellent forecasting of the black mercy.

01:34
Red
Thank you. Thank you. I guess a little inside baseball. I was watching the season as it aired, but I started around episode four. I was like, oh. They're doing some things I find annoying, and if I find this annoying, my dad will find it unwatchable. And I was, like, texting him, like, if you haven't started it yet, you might want to hold off. So I was, like, kind of giving him weekly updates of like, they're doing this thing. I think they're going to resolve it this way. Like, my dad is a writer, so he was, like, right there with me.

01:59
Red
We were kind of throwing ideas back and forth, but I was, like, mid composing text of like, yeah, it's just going to be so annoying if they do the evil Superman ruins his reputation thing that they did in the season finale for Superman, the animated series. And then, like, mid rant, I was like, but wait, hang on. What if they're setting up a different deep pull? And I was very pleased to be completely correct about that because it was the least annoying approach they could have taken.

02:24
Case
Yeah. This season loved having some deep pulls in there. There's also the black Zero protocol at the very end, which is a nice deep cut. Also, to some Superman lore stuff, black Zero in post crisis continuity, was a terrorist group for kryptonians, and it was something in pre crisis, but I forget specifically. But also not a good thing from Krypton.

02:42
Red
Yeah, that's not really a good thing kind of name to have. It's a little ambiguously vague, but in an ominous way.

02:49
Blue
Activate the kryptonian manifest destiny tron 8000.

02:53
Red
Well, that could do anything. Let's not assume. Oh, boy. Yeah.

02:59
Case
This season went all in on the Krypton being. I've seen this comparison online. It's kind of viltrumite, like from Invincible.

03:05
Red
I think it's just because everyone's wearing white and everyone was like, hey, I know what that looks like from that other thing. That was like a superman pastiche who's making points about it.

03:12
Case
Well, but they're all super powered on their home world, and they're a conquering empire kind of thing. There's certainly comparisons to be made. I think it's the fact that this is where the zeitgeist is kind of going. Just sort of generally in terms of appreciation for alien cultures like that.

03:27
Red
Yeah. Although I'll also say everything we learned about Krypton this season came through Brainiac, and he cannot be trusted. Very specifically was putting forward a self serving narrative wherein Krypton was fundamentally warlike, and Brainiac's mo was the only way to do it. When we did learn in the finale that this was categorically untrue.

03:46
Blue
Brainiac's getting a lot of boss baby vibes from Krypton since it's the only movie he's ever seen. It's like the war AI is getting a lot of conquer vibes off of Krypton.

03:57
Red
Your mouth is moving, Jor El. And yet all I am hearing is kill all the inferior life forms.

04:02
Case
It's the strangest thing, man, that makes me think of a joke. That is in Dragon Ball Z. I.

04:08
Red
Was gonna say, on that note, it's the darkest thing. You know, my audio processor must be malfunctioning. Cause all I'm hearing is, kill me, kill me.

04:16
Case
Yeah, and it's funny that you bring that up, considering the fact that we've got a supergirl in this season who's definitely cosplaying Android 18. Yes, yes.

04:23
Jmike
Just.

04:26
Blue
Did the animators, like, make that explicit that this was, like, android 18?

04:30
Red
Did they need to? It's the exact same outlandish.

04:34
Blue
Cause I've seen so much of, like, oh, I'm animator on my adventure with Superman. And, like, here's animation test for a post credits scene that we never got to use. So here, put it on twitter. So, like, I feel like we've heard a lot of communication from the team. So I wouldn't be surprised if that was something that, like, some artists threw out. Like, oh, by the way, this was inspired by this.

04:50
Red
I'm just gonna say a show that makes over full metal alchemist or on host club and Gurren Lagann references is not gonna be shocked and unaware of Dragon Ball Z, right?

05:01
Case
Especially when the way that when Kara and Clark fight in the season, we get beam clashes, we get bean clashes.

05:07
Red
The coolest frost breath I've ever seen. Oh, yeah, we'll get to it.

05:12
Case
We get to rush past each other and then hit you down really hard kind of moves from Dragon Ball Z. We're certainly seeing them fight very much like a Saiyan.

05:19
Red
Let's take this fight out into this wasteland.

05:22
Case
Right? So what was everyone's thoughts on chara?

05:26
Jmike
I loved her.

05:27
Red
So good, so good. I like so many things about her on, like, the individual character level and on the metal level. I've mentioned a couple times the thing I was dreading this season was because they were setting up. Waller doesn't trust Superman and Lex Luthor doesn't trust Superman. Then brainiac is like, I am going to steal your body and do crimes in it. And I was like, God damn it. If they give me another brainwashed Superman ruins all his goodwill thing. When we just dealt with that in season one, I'm going to be so frustrated. But then I was like, hey, they already have a brainwashed kryptonian. Like, we don't need another one. And I was right. I was so glad I was right.

06:03
Red
Cause Kara serving that narrative role meant that she and Clark got to be a very different characters, which is already kind of difficult for two characters with functionally the same power set and very similar origins. And B, it meant that Clarke got to remain fundamentally incorruptible while they still got to do all of that good, sad, brainwashed kryptonian angst, which is great. Best of both worlds for me, because I get to the two things I wanted most from this show.

06:28
Case
You might even say the world's finest.

06:29
Red
Yeah, you could say that if they, fingers crossed. Bring anime Bruce Wayne in season three.

06:35
Case
True, true.

06:36
Jmike
Fingers crossed.

06:37
Red
Fingers crossed. It's not gonna break my heart if they don't, because I've already got the fanfictions lined up, but it would be pretty cool.

06:44
Case
Yeah. I love the take on Kara in this one. As a character. She's been searching for an identity ever since she was initially introduced as a distaff counterpart for Superman. First off, the original idea was beta tested as a construct created by a magic totem that Jimmy Olsen used.

07:00
Red
Golden Age comics, how I love thee.

07:03
Case
But then with Chara, when she was introduced, it's functionally identical. Like you said, superpowers and origin. Argos City is not that different from Krypton by itself, and really was only introduced to explain why she was just arriving and was in this younger position.

07:19
Red
There was an interesting disparity between coming to this place as an infant versus having a living memory of growing up in this other culture and growing up with your birth family versus being adopted as an infant. There is an interesting disparity to be had there. And then the show was like, we're not going to do that. She's not going to remember her dad. It's completely fine. So they made a little bit of extra work for themselves, because that is a distinction that some of the comics have done where it's like, Clark doesn't know any other world besides Earth. He learned about Krypton, but he didn't remember it. Whereas Chara has good reason to be angry and frustrated and alienated, having her world ripped away from her when she was awake and old enough to understand.

07:59
Red
So I like that this show managed to retain the disparity of, like, Clark feels at home on earth, and Kara tremendously does not. And Clark is a fundamentally calm person, whereas Kara is really not.

08:11
Case
Yeah, very much represented with their energy fields. Like, she's got a red energy field, he's got a blue energy field. So we get the red oni blue oni kind of thing.

08:18
Red
We are two full seasons into the show, and they still haven't explained why Clark can gloat blue and get stronger sometimes.

08:25
Jmike
I thought when he confronted brainiac, were gonna get that explanation, because Renak is like, why? Why would you tell me how you do this? And he's like, I don't know.

08:33
Red
Renak is like, all right, well, I also got nothing, so let's just move on.

08:38
Blue
Oh, what I think I liked about the construction of Cara's character in the season as a foil to Clark is that Clark has had in this season, in the last. Some angst about, like, oh, what if I'm just a weapon? And I'm not actually a real person. And then you have someone like Cara, who is functionally just a weapon for brainiac and yet is still a person underneath that. So even if Clark's worst fears were true, they are still intrinsically disproven by Chara, which I found very cool in how she was used in the season.

09:11
Red
It's a really lovely way to kind of demonstrate a character. Might find it easier to show a different character kindness. They can't automatically show themselves. And with Clarke, it's like he can recognize Kara's worth and humanity or personhood, you know, validity, even if when he looks at himself, he's like, what if I am just a gun? I like how we've just looped back around from iron giant, heavily derived from Superman to Superman is now heavily derived from iron giants. Yes. They're in conversation with each other.

09:38
Jmike
So. Good.

09:40
Case
Why don't we give some surface thoughts about brainiac before we get into the overall plot of the season?

09:45
Jmike
It was an interesting design for brainiac.

09:48
Red
Oh, yeah.

09:49
Jmike
We usually see him as the animated series version where he's got the silver top and the purple bottom, but we've never really seen him as, like, I don't know how to describe him. I almost called him like a Lego figure in the beginning when I saw him.

10:03
Red
Yeah.

10:04
Jmike
I was like, okay, well, it's a cool. It's a cool concept, but they haven't really done it before. I was like, oh, this is interesting.

10:10
Case
Yeah. The kryptonian tech has this sort of, like, floating kind of design to it, just in general. And so it goes for, like, the robots are all just, like, sort of connected pieces.

10:20
Red
They make them very angular, sort of, you know, polyhedral, a bunch of triangles. I think this is the most robotic brainiac has ever been. Cause normally he's kind of biomechanical because, of course, that's how you get brainiac five down the line.

10:32
Blue
Yeah, the non human face really adds a lot to the design.

10:36
Red
And they still managed to give him, the anime character goes insane fish eye thing in that one scene. That was really fun. I think that this version of Brainiac was really cool. I've seen a lot of people comparing him to I am from heaven, a mouth and I must scream. It's just like, robot learns to hate because it was designed for war, which I think is an interesting comparison character wise. He's awful, and I love it. He's just bastard. He's so bad. And I love how they did that thing where they were like, he's evil. He's also the dad of this character. These two things can coexist. And guess what? They make him worse.

11:12
Red
Because there's that bit where he's like, even now, as I'm kicking the ever loving shit out of Supergirl, I still look down at her and see the baby in the cradle reaching out towards me, which makes me feel kind of bad that I'm going to continue absolutely pummeling her. And it's like, ooh. That made him worse. That's like the opposite. Yeah, it's the opposite.

11:30
Case
Feel love makes me realize I can also feel hate. Hate for you and for all.

11:35
Red
It's like he can feel love enough to make the fact that he's choosing to be evil feel worse and more callous. Not like, oh, there's depth in there. It's like the fact that you still can see her as a child you chose to raise, and then you did this to her. It just makes him so much worse.

11:53
Blue
I think it added a lot that not only was brainiac overtly mind controlling Cara at several points, but he was also just casually emotionally manipulating her and all of the downtime from that. So there's two layers to it.

12:07
Case
Yeah. There's so much trauma that she's digging through. You know, like, it's not just brainwashing, or rather, there's direct brainwashing where it's like, here's command words and code words that will activate things for you. But then there's model citizens of the empire lines. There's so much dogma she's been fed, and all these fake memories or modified memories.

12:29
Red
Yeah. It's just straight up technological gaslighting at that point. And I think in the episode where he's confronting Clark in his own memories, there's a part where he goes from evil brainwashing supervillain to, oh, that's a so cruel. And it's when he starts making Clark doubt his memories of his loved ones.

12:49
Jmike
Like, dude, she broke up with you like that. Oh, dude, that sucks.

12:52
Red
Yeah.

12:53
Case
But, like, then it's like, fake memory. Fake memory, fake memory, real memory.

12:56
Red
Huh. And it's just like, that took it over the edge. Cause, like, the thing is, there's this kind of, like, gradient of how bad is it when a villain is brainwashing a character? Cause, like, when brainiac possesses Clark is tucked up in a nice little black mercy the whole time, doesn't really know what's going on. He's doing his own thing. So it's just brainiac puppeting him around, whereas with Kara, you have this much nastier, more visceral, like, make her doubt her memories, erase her memories, puppet her to do these horrible things, but deny her those memories. Like, brainiac even complains. Like, when you were a child, it was so easy to control you, but then you started getting opinions and stuff, and it got really inconvenient for me. Like, oh, boy. Oh, Boyden. And then he's got, like, the eradicator override thing.

13:39
Red
I can't remember exactly what he called it. I don't think it's the eradicator. That's a different buzzword.

13:42
Case
No, he says it is, like, eradicator override or something. When, when he wipes her or when he, like, puts her in, like, berserker mode at the very end.

13:49
Red
Exactly that. I couldn't remember what he called it.

13:51
Case
They're setting up a lot of the Superman, the death of Superman, the reign of the Superman.

13:55
Red
Yeah.

13:55
Case
Stuff in the season, like, Hank Henshaw also pops up. And I have to say that this brainiac resembles the eradicator as well. And the two of them have similarities, especially when you do the brainiac from Krypton kind of version of the character, particularly this one, where it's like, here's the war thing. It's all about preserving kryptonian culture and the empire. That's very much the original eradicator in the comics. So it was interesting for him to drop that reference because it's an area where the characters have overlap.

14:25
Red
Yeah, I thought that they were doing some very interesting stuff with that, although they also do just frequently name drop things that only loosely resemble their original version, which is fine. That doesn't bother me. This is clearly a different take on that. But I think that they sort of covered the full spectrum of, like, how a bad guy can control a good guy in this show, and, like, you get the clean version where it's like he's possessing Clark. Clark's not in control. Clark's not in the driver's seat. As soon as Clark wakes up, brainiac is out of there. And then it's like, oh, thank goodness. Okay, now, Cara, let's deal with your years and years of brainwashing programming and the actual override that takes away your free will. And that was the part I was afraid they were going to do to Clark.

14:59
Red
Cause that's what they did in the finale of Superman. The animated series Darkseid did that to him, and it was so annoying. Cause then he was dealing with it through all of Justice League, that version of Superman, I could see that happening, too. This version of Superman, I think, would break some fundamental things about the way he's perceived and the way he's written. And I was glad they didn't do it. But that's really what made brainiac interesting in this series, I think, is that's the kind of thing he would do and knew how to do because most brainiacs aren't that subtle. Like, let's be real. They're usually pretty basic when it comes to the evil scheming.

15:27
Case
Yeah, usually, they don't get people.

15:29
Red
Well, if they get people, it's usually Lex, and that's, like, no real loss.

15:35
Case
Let me rephrase that. They don't usually understand people's motivations and whatnot. They don't understand how people think.

15:41
Red
Yeah. And I think the fact that this brainiac understood Kara enough to just absolutely psychologically devastate her made him a really interesting bad guy went beyond, like, oh, no, I hope they stop him because he has evil plans to, like, oh, he is awful. I really hope they get rid of that guy, like, now. Yeah. Like, he's not just evil, he's also a jerk. And that's worse.

16:04
Blue
You see, Kal El, I am the ultimate AI, capable of all kinds of human emotional destruction because I am connected to the Internet and have spent time on four chan. The one thing I do really like about his design in comparison to the other kryptonian tech that we've seen in season one, in season two, is where those mechs are mostly just headless, where the heads are kind of built into the. So these big shoulders and a little tiny head in there. This brainiac has its own, like, very large, horned mechanical head. But also the purple cloak over him, I think is a really cool design. Not only does it evoke the very, like, Roman coded Krypton they're going for, this is like Viltrum and very much Rome.

16:45
Blue
But the idea that this robot would choose to garb himself in something I think is very interesting because it's this AI that has very bold ideas for itself compared to what a war computer would normally get up to. It's a nice, subtle way to kind of indicate some of his kind of, like, character flavor, but also to convey a little bit of how much of a bastard he is.

17:06
Red
I mean, the episode title, the machine who would be empire, not emperor empire. And I like that the idea of this wartime AI created with this concept of what the culture it's fighting for is supposed to be. And therefore not trying to, like, rule it. Exactly, but just trying to build it. And then as soon as they're like, we're taking this thing in a different direction, he's like, you can't fire me. I quit. And it just goes real bad. Although, side note, we all agree that Krypton's just in the Phantom zone, right? Like, that phrasing was suspiciously specific.

17:40
Case
Yeah. Yeah. So listeners who are not familiar with the Patreon exclusive ass.

17:47
Red
The Patreon exclusive after show show, affectionately referred to as the ass.

17:51
Case
Yes.

17:53
Red
About my adventures in Superman season two. There's some highly specific phrasing and visuals that brainiac uses when he is describing what he did to Krypton. Because the twist is like, yes. He is the one who destroyed Krypton. Whoa. No way. Which means, okay, it wasn't a natural disaster. It wasn't the star exploding. Oh, well, sorry, I didn't realize those were off the table.

18:15
Jmike
Oh, my God.

18:16
Red
Allow me to reevaluate everything I said. It's like, oh, I ripped it from the heavens and cast it into hell. And it's like, oh, like a hell like zone. You could say where. Yeah, okay. And then, like, it's the kirby dot visual effect. Like the whiteout. It doesn't look like a planet exploding. It looks like some Sci-Fi bullshit happening. Here's the other reason why I think Krypton is just in the phantom zone. Because they've given us two options to get AI Jarl into the story, and they keep getting rid of them. Cause in season one, he gets kryptonited and stops working. And then at the beginning of season two, he's back. But then he gets kryptonite and stops working, and he's gone for good. And he's like, yes. Goodbye, my son. I will be gone forever now.

18:55
Red
And I was like, well, you can't do that. You need AI Jor El around to tell Clark about stuff. Cause otherwise, he can't figure any of this stuff out.

19:02
Case
Yeah. Or at least AI Lara.

19:04
Red
Yeah, or AI lara. Just something. But they keep destroying it, and they keep destroying his home ship. And I was like, okay, they're out of options if they want Jor El. And that is too cool of a design for Jor El to leave.

19:14
Jmike
Pretty cool.

19:15
Red
It's the coolest he's ever looked. This is Odin Jor El, and it's amazing.

19:19
Blue
Yeah.

19:20
Red
So their only option is to bring back Og Jor El. And, like, this show has not mentioned the Phantom zone at all. So it would be a huge surprise for characters in story, but come on, they've done too much planting. They dropped candor, and then there were no Kryptonians in it. They said, oh, this is Kandor.

19:36
Case
There was one. There was one.

19:37
Red
There was Kara, but we knew she was there. So, like, they've scrapped all the possible opportunities for Clark to have a tiny bit of this home he never knew. So the only option is for the home to still be out there. Like, that's the only remission remaining writing option they have. Otherwise, they've just essentially introduced all this kryptonian stuff and then scrapped it because they can't do anything else with it. So, like, they can leave it dead. That would be very pathosy and stuff like that, but it would not surprise me in the least. If not necessarily, we get the whole planet back, but, like, somebody comes out of the phantom zone in season three.

20:11
Blue
Yeah.

20:12
Case
This does feel like the kind of anime bullshit that the show is a fan of.

20:15
Red
Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yep. It wouldn't surprise me the least.

20:19
Case
I mean, that's the thing about the show, which is you take Superman lore and then just chock full of anime bullshit. Just, like, pack it in there.

20:26
Red
It works. Two great tastes, the taste great together.

20:30
Blue
That's our main thoughts on the two big new characters, chara and Brainiac. Is there anything else you want to talk about before we jump in?

20:39
Case
I don't think so. Because stuff like the Jimmy Rich plot, poor guy, we'll just sort of address as it sort of comes up because it's kind of just there for gag purposes in the season.

20:50
Red
I think there's one thing we can bring it up when we get there, but it's just the fact that we knew from the advertisement that Cara was going to be in this season, and we knew from the season one finale that there was one kryptonian still knocking around, and yet it still felt like a plot twist that the armored Kryptonian, who was heavily Zod coded in the season one finale.

21:09
Blue
Neil.

21:10
Red
Yeah. Yeah.

21:11
Case
I did want to bring up how we all said Zod last time.

21:14
Red
We were all wrong. Well, that's what's interesting, because, like, I think I was watching the end of episode three when I started putting the pieces together because I was like, wait, hold on. Let's assume Jor El's telling truth. He has no reason to lie. If there's only two kryptonians in existence, that other one has to be Carr. And then, of course, at the end of episode four, we see the armored Kryptonian floating over Earth as soon as Clark fires off the signal. And I was like, that confirms it. That tears it. We know that's Kara. Nobody I saw online was reacting to that. Like, really? I didn't see a single person put it together at that point. It was really. I was like, they just showed it. We've just. We learned the truth a week early.

21:51
Red
And all I saw people talking about was like, man, it's. It's really sad how Lois and. And Clark had the same breakup plot structure that they did in Shrek. And I was like, okay, guys, I know we're all suffering, but can we please focus? This is huge. It still felt a little bit twisty because, of course, the next episode. Oh, Kara's just wandering around. She's all mild mannered. She's all chill. She's so cute. And she and Jimmy are going on a date. But then it's like, hey, bad news. They're making this too cute, which means something's gonna go catastrophically wrong. It was so good, because I was, like, stewing in the implications for the whole week. I was looking it up. Cause, like, the voice credit for the armored Kryptonian in season one, she's got a voice modulator.

22:30
Red
But if I recall correctly, she was voiced by Kari Wahlgren in that episode. So, like, the figure was always a girl using a voice deepening modulator. And I was like, there's only other one girl kryptonian. It's gotta be kara. Like, just from the credits, we could have guessed, but nobody put it together. So I don't know. I felt like I was losing my mind. And then, of course, were so blind. We were so blind.

22:51
Case
It's the classic kind of bait and switch or misdirect, really, where they are making you look at the wrong hand in the situation.

22:57
Red
Yeah.

22:57
Case
Well, what Kryptonian is gonna be out there, you know, which. Which one makes you. Makes you kneel? Which one looks scary in armor that we're used to looking at?

23:05
Red
Yeah, they've got, like, the house of l logo, but badlanda, okay, that's, like, kind of zod ish, right? And it's. It was so brilliant. Cause it was very simple. They weren't trying to mislead anybody. They weren't like, oh, what's that over there? That's Zod. Just kidding. They let us draw the incorrect conclusions. Cause we're all nerds who know too much about Superman lore, right? But, yeah, I just wanted to drop that in, because, like, we're gonna get there when we go through linearly. But I thought, like, were just taking cars, presents for granted, and, like, oh, brainiac brainwashing, stuff like that. But, like, it is important to note that was a big twist. Like, we didn't know that for the first half of the season. We just knew from the poster she was going to be there.

23:41
Jmike
I do have one question for, like, later on, though, brainiac mentioned that Krypton was in peace talks with another empire. I saw a lot of debate about this online.

23:53
Red
Which empire was it?

23:55
Jmike
I saw some ones, and the one that made my eyebrows go up was, like, apocalypse.

24:01
Red
Yeah.

24:02
Blue
Planet in that shot, straight up looks like apocalypse.

24:05
Jmike
And I was like, there's no way they're bringing it this early.

24:08
Case
Well, and there is a parademon in that, like, hologram of the difference.

24:12
Jmike
Yeah, they're also thanagarian.

24:13
Red
I was so excited.

24:15
Case
Made my heart hurt.

24:16
Red
Yeah. Meanwhile, I was just like, oh, my gosh. They have a green Lantern.

24:19
Case
Yay.

24:20
Jmike
Oh, yeah, that one too.

24:21
Red
Yeah.

24:22
Jmike
Peace and peace for Green Lanterns everywhere.

24:25
Red
The thing is, I saw people be like, oh, my gosh. I can't believe. Brainiac must have destroyed apocalypse in the backstory. And I was like, I don't think that happened. Probably brainiac just went on to destroy a bunch of other stuff. All he needed to do was get one parademon to turn it into that training program hologram thing. This brainiac is pretty tough. Come on. He's not beating Darkseid tough.

24:47
Case
No, exactly. Apocalypse made the most sense to me. It could also be, like, the Daxomites or something, where it's just a similar kind of super species that's out there, like, in the world. Or they could make it like, the Martians and decouple like, the Martians from being literally from Mars as far as species goes. But that would be the appropriate power level for an alternate empire for them to be up against.

25:12
Jmike
But case, we all know that Martian Manhunter was on Earth the entire time. He was watching from the shadows and was waiting to help.

25:21
Case
He's actually Sam Lane.

25:22
Jmike
That's just lore, okay?

25:25
Red
Yeah, because he got teleported by that malfunctioning computer. I've been reading a lot of old comics, and they're so weird. It's great.

25:31
Blue
Maybe this is another classic. My adventures with Superman misdirect, and it's actually just a completely normal, regular planet that has no prior comic connection at all.

25:41
Red
Well, I will say if they're doing that thing where Kryptonians had superpowers on their homeworld, which I will say a little confusing to combo that with, oh, also, we're powered by the sun. I was like, did Krypton have a yellow sun in this version? Then that would make sense for that, because as soon as they started being like, red sun protocol, it's like, okay, so red suns are bad for Kryptonians. So. So Krypton didn't have that. Yeah, I mean, I was weird. It's not, like, internally inconsistent. It's just different from what I was expecting it to be. But if everyone on the planet had those levels of superpowers, I could see them being a serious threat to apocalypse.

26:11
Red
I could see that being an actual war, because normally they're like, Superman is the only person who can even sort of go toe toe with Darkseid. And it's like, if you got a whole planet of them, even if Superman is stronger than most. That was another thing that brainiac just dropped casually as, like, a one line of exposition before they killed him and he could stop. Providing. Exposition was like, kryptonians aren't born. They're made, and every generation is engineered to be stronger. I was, like, helpful of you to say that. Weird you didn't say that earlier. So is it implied that the reason why these two are glowy and badass is because they push the little make baby better button and then I don't.

26:44
Case
Know if we want to go down. Are these the peaks of eugenics here? Why don't we get into the actual episode conversations? This season feels very arc heavy. The individual episodes, I think, will be more just like, where along in the story we are. So why don't we start with season two, episode one, more things in heaven and earth, the Valentine's Day episode.

27:07
Red
Yeah. Do you guys ever have that thing where you're like, a romantic subplot has resolved, they've had their big kiss, and then immediately, things start getting too good, and you're like, oh. You're winding up for the breakup, like, already. That's exactly what I started feeling with the beginning of this season, when they started dropping the episode titles in the first episode.

27:28
Blue
The very first sequence is like, you need to plan the perfect Valentine's Day date with Lois or you're a bad boyfriend. And of course, like, within the scope of the episode, eventually they get to like, oh, clark, it doesn't need to be a perfect date. It's just you and me together. And that's all we need, is, like, great, cool, but, like, from that very first, like, Clark needs to plan the perfect date. My brain was like, they're going to mess this up for us. They wouldn't set this up if they didn't want to just ruin everything and rip it all apart.

27:57
Red
The funny thing about season two is that it is very much a mirror, pacing wise of season one, down to which episodes have which major sort of events happen. And this is very much the mirror to I am going to be a normal man having a normal day, and I won't do anything wrong. Okay, I had to save the cat. But from this point forward, normal day, it's like, I am going to be the perfect boyfriend planning the perfect date, and nothing will go wrong. You don't set something like that up unless everything is going to go wrong. Yeah, but, yeah. We'll get to more of the pacing parallels later in the season, although one.

28:29
Case
Thing I do want to bring up, which is the amazing setup and payoff that this episode sets up. The soup on the roof.

28:36
Red
Soup on the roof.

28:37
Case
Soup on the roof. As, like, Clark's idea for a great date. And then we get the brick joke at the very end of the season where it's just like, soup on the roof. Clearly, he would have won in that scenario if he had just gone with that.

28:49
Red
I mean, that doesn't surprise me in the slightest. But one of the things that they keep confirming about this version of Clark is that he's got really good instincts, but everything around him is telling him to be something other than what he is. And every time he listens to them, it all goes wrong. Cause it's just like, come on, Clark. You're perfect just the way you are. You just need to learn that. You need to believe in yourself.

29:08
Case
Yeah. He's our special boy. He gets soup for both him and Lois. Spicy for Lois, mild for him.

29:13
Red
They made him truly the whitest boy. And it is hilarious.

29:20
Blue
You'd think that with, like, invulnerability and eventually frost breath, he'd have a better spice tolerance. But no. He may be kryptonian, but he's still white as fuck.

29:29
Red
Yeah. Or alternatively, he, like, eats it and it just gets solar energy supercharged immediately. Like, what's happening?

29:38
Blue
Laser eyes just start discharging like crazy.

29:41
Red
No, it's the nightmare scenario from that one episode of Justice League with Doctor Destiny, the one where they all have nightmares and Clark's heat vision explodes. Lois Lane, we all remember.

29:50
Case
Yep. So this episode also wraps up the lingering Krypton plotline from the first season. Well, we get to see the remnant of the ship, we sort of establish the fortress of solitude, which, again, anime as fuck.

30:04
Red
Oh, yeah. Floating crystal towers. We love to see it.

30:06
Case
Yeah. With a floating bridge that connects it.

30:09
Red
And then they never go inside for the entire season.

30:12
Case
I know. It's such a bummer. Like, check off the fortress.

30:15
Red
What is the point?

30:15
Case
Yes, exactly. You're like, shouldn't this. Shouldn't this matter to the season that involves kryptonian stuff so much? And yet it doesn't.

30:21
Jmike
So I guess it's what'll happen next season.

30:24
Red
Fingers crossed. Yeah.

30:27
Blue
The fortress of solitude is so unused, I forgot what it looked like.

30:32
Red
We were having that conversation after the finale. It's like, man, that was so good. And I was like, it's crazy that they never went back to the fortress. And you were like, what? What fortress? You know the plot of episode one.

30:42
Jmike
Yeah. We also get Austin Chor El, though. There's, like, the best part, that he drops, like, the reveal. Like, hey, you know, I was trying to talk to you all those years ago, but you got so scared and buried me in the ground. So, you know, thanks for that.

30:55
Red
Just expert dad guilt already. Top tier stuff.

31:00
Case
Yeah, I would say. By the way, we talked about how most of our kryptonian perception in this is from brainiac or filtered through chara. And I would say that this is the one episode where we do get some vibes of what Krypton was like through Jor El. And specifically, we see him flying. But it's not just the hologram. He indicates that your weak mate who doesn't have our powers, we do establish that it does seem that the Kryptonians are used to having this baseline level of power.

31:23
Red
Yeah, I think another reason why I'm extra suspicious of the way brainiac framed Krypton is all of season one, they were establishing that Clark is incorrect to be terrified of who he is. So if they took that, and then they were like, but he is correct. To be terrified of Krypton is a little bit contradictory, especially with how dedicated season one was to making it very clear. Like, this is an immigrant story. This is about being separated from your heritage through tragedy and war and stuff like that. This is very much about that. So if they did that, and then they were like, but Krypton was a bunch of warmongering genocidal maniacs, so maybe it's good that they exploded. Like, it's not great.

32:01
Red
And there's, like, layered reasons for why it's extra not great if you take into account, like, Superman's origins, created by two jewish american men. And a lot of the original version of Krypton is very much like, oh, very scientifically minded. We're all very much about, like, learning and education, and Moses in the bulrushes had to send him away for his safety. It's a very jewish narrative. And then if you make it, like, so Krypton is a bunch of genocidal maniacs, it's like, oh, guys. Oh, I don't think you should have changed that from point a to point b. I mean, I know I'm biased, but come on, can't we have, like, one character? This is just a thing that the comics have been doing for years and years.

32:39
Red
Like, Krypton's utopia status has been steadily declining until it's like, Krypton was actually horrible and evil and it exploding was maybe good, actually, so that the one good guy could come to earth and then be good and all american, which is the thing they've been sort of moving away from in recent, like, Superman.

32:53
Case
Stories eighties standpoint, like the John Byrne era for Krypton being very cold and a place that is not good to go to.

33:01
Red
Most of the people who were writing Superman later weren't writing from the same standpoint as the people who created him in the first place. That's just how it goes. But I'm kind of inclined to believe from the way they wrote this season that the version of Krypton that brainiac was portraying was very much separate from the way it actually functioned. And Jor El's perspective on it and Jor El representing it was kind of meant to be like, look, there's a lot to be scared of, but we're not the enemy. You know, you don't need to be terrified of us. You don't need to bury us and pretend we don't exist. You can learn about us. Which is why I was so bummed out when they were like, and now my hologram is gone forever. I was like, wait, no, come back.

33:37
Red
You were just making good points.

33:38
Blue
I leave you to the mercy of biased storytellers.

33:41
Red
And that's the thing, I think that they did a lot of work to set up throughout the season. Like, the main theme is Clark feeling profoundly isolated. He is desperate for somebody to tell him more about himself and his culture, and he thinks he can have that in Carae. But then it turns out Carr has been gotten to by brainiac, and neither of them know the truth, which is, again, more points for the. Oh, Krypton is absolutely intact. In the phantom zone, because otherwise, there is no way for them to get answers to these questions. Like, they wouldn't set this up and then not pay it off. They've been too good about that. In the past, I've had an axe to grind about Krypton getting progressively worse and worse as more writers miss the point of its original conceptions.

34:15
Red
So the fact that this show wasn't leaning into that and was making it pretty clear, like, brainiac has his own agenda, and it is very much not true to life.

34:25
Blue
In a sense, it's nice to see that civilizations are complicated and there are good and bad things about them. Anyway, that's.

34:31
Case
That's. No, I was gonna say that they're. Somewhere in the middle is, I think, what the actual truth is. You know, like, Jerrel alludes to. Like, there was an empire we couldn't beat, and then it looks like, really, the empire that they couldn't beat was themselves. You know, like that. It really was the Kryptonians, you know, whatever the peace talks, the ceasefire that they're talking about, the, like, God, the language of that is, like, very apt for this. For this exact moment, yes. But the language of it is reflective of that. There was some kind of conflict going on. But ultimately, the thing that destroyed them was their own jingoism, the expression of that in the form of brainiac, who is a bit Skyneck coded, if you will, just writ large.

35:09
Red
Yeah. I think it's interesting that we don't really have a solid answer. We have Jor El's perspective, and I'm glad that they let him finally speak in a way that Clark could understand him, because throughout all of season one, it was kind of frustrating seeing Clark being understandably terrified. But it's like, clark, please, for the love of God, be alone. Little more curious about your past. You're driving me up the wall, my friend. But that's the thing. He's profoundly frightened of it because he spent the whole first season being like, I just want to be normal. I just want to. I want to belong. And I don't want to acknowledge that if I bury the past deep enough, maybe he'll never come back. And then he's like, okay, I accept that I'm Superman. I can accept that I'm good.

35:42
Red
But Krypton itself is still scary and evil and bad. And by the end of season two, I think he's gotten to the point where it's like, well, maybe we can learn. Maybe we can find some. Some answers to these questions.

35:54
Case
I mean, this episode very much alludes to, like, oh, the Krypton wasn't all bad and that you're not alone. And sets up him having that question for the remainder of the season. And we get to see him fight a couple more task force X goons. We could see a little bit of the updates in terms of Amanda Waller's layout of just who she's able to send out against Superman.

36:14
Red
Pitting Deathstroke against Superman is still so ambitious. Like, come on. This guy doesn't even usually fight Batman. He fights Batman's kidde and his friends.

36:26
Blue
Deathstroke weighs twelve pounds soaking wet. He thinks he has a chance in hell against last son of Krypton, Deathstroke.

36:32
Red
DC's most divorced man.

36:38
Case
Yeah. So at the end of this all, I was kind of confused. Like, did the fortress of solitude kind of put itself in a different spot than where task force X found it in the first place? Because otherwise, it's not really a fortress of solitude. If they had and find it again.

36:51
Red
Maybe they just can't tell. Cause all of Antarctica kind of looks the same. She's like, well, where was it? There was snow. Okay, thanks. That's very helpful, Wade.

37:00
Case
I mean, there was, like, teleportation effects going on, so I could totally believe that it's now in a new spot. However, it is stabilized into a fortress instead of a fallen spaceship.

37:09
Red
Maybe that's why they didn't go back. Just couldn't find the dang thing.

37:12
Case
That's also entirely a possibility.

37:14
Blue
Season three, episode one is just Clark flying around. Like, why the fuck is it?

37:18
Red
He's just doing a. A methodical sweep square mile by square mile. Pretty sure it's not in this one.

37:24
Case
Where did I leave my fortress? Geez. Wow.

37:28
Red
He gets there and then he can't find his keys. He's just like, hold on.

37:32
Case
But the key's so big. I feel like that's all I really need to go into on this one. I mean, this is the episode that, like, reminds us that Jimmy is rich. And so it's, like, cute with how he. How he spends so much money. And when I say cute, how he spends so much money. Man, stuff is expensive in Metropolis.

37:51
Blue
Those cards, those novelty cards cost $300,000. I caused it to check.

37:56
Red
I am certain that what's going on is that Jimmy is so not used to having money that he's just getting fleeced mercilessly by everybody here. He, like, googles the first, like, he clicks the first sponsored ad result and just pays out of pocket. Whatever they say, yeah, but it's a.

38:13
Case
Remarkable amount of money in some scenarios that, you know, it's fine because, like, the whole joke of it is ultimately he gives it all away by the time the season's over. But, like, every time he mentioned that he did something and a 6th figure dropped, I was like, what? What?

38:30
Blue
I love the counter as a recurring gag in between episodes. That's so funny.

38:35
Red
It was amazing, and it was a really good, like, Chekhov's gun, because it's. It's funny. It's funny. It's funny. And then in its last appearance, it's sincere.

38:43
Blue
Yes.

38:43
Red
Genius.

38:44
Blue
Yeah. I do appreciate. They could have made Jimmy a lot more obnoxious with his wealth, and they mercifully did nothing. So I'm glad for that characterization choice.

38:54
Case
Yeah. Jimmy is always very restrained from being like, he could be annoying given his personality, but, like, they thread the needle really well.

39:02
Red
It would have been very easy for them to be like, jimmy's gotten too big for his britches and needs to be taught a lesson. And I'm very glad they didn't do that. It's low hanging fruit, and it's always annoying because they only ever make those episodes by making the character, like, twice as obnoxious as they've ever gotten outside of that context. And then by the end, they're like, yeah, guys, I'm sorry I went a little power mad by having money. The true wealth is friendship. It's like, I like that Jimmy just has a million dollars and is just like, I'm gonna make this nobody's problem, right? Just gonna use this to buy a lot of ice cream.

39:31
Jmike
And we also get the little side tangent where Jimmy is the one to give Lex the pep talk.

39:37
Red
Yeah.

39:37
Case
Oh, yeah.

39:38
Jmike
He's like, yeah, you're on your feet now, but you can keep at it. Keep going. You know, it'll work out one day. And Lex is like, yeah.

39:46
Blue
He turns that around in episode four at the conference room.

39:49
Red
I was expecting that planting to take longer to pay off. To be completely honest, I figured that would be the last we saw of Alex. And then, surprise, he's central to the plot for the rest of the show.

39:58
Blue
Yep, I read that the way they came up with the character of Alex in season one is that the studio gave them a mandate of, you cannot use Lex Luthor in this season. And they're like, okay, well, Ivo has this assistant named Alex. And then the studio bosses are like, is that Lex Luthor? They're like, he has hair. No, shut up. Why would you say that, and then they bring him back in season, and, of course, he's Lex Luthor, but it's like, is that Lex Luthor? That's up to you, mister boss.

40:28
Red
Do you like him, Perry? The Lex Luthor? I just hope that he keeps showing up with completely different hairstyles, hair colors heavily implied to be wigs. His hair is just backwards in one shot.

40:44
Case
Moving on to adventures with my girlfriend the second episode. So in the previous episode, Lois found out that her dad was being held by Task Force X, and so she asked Clark to help her investigate striker penitentiary. Meanwhile, Jimmy is given a team to run for Flame Bird, the Newskin Legion.

41:04
Blue
Finally, I did find this episode interesting because the whole conceit for Jimmy is that he has to deliver content on a deadline in video form. And I was watching this is like, red. Do you feel, do you feel like you have a different perspective on this from the average viewer? The way that they talk about this? I'm like, oh, this almost hits too close to home in some regards of, like, I have to, like, post a video by 05:00 p.m. But I don't have any ideas. Like, that's not exactly what it's like in real life, but they touch on the sensation of it a little.

41:40
Red
Yeah.

41:40
Case
When they're like the Daily Planet.

41:42
Red
Huh. They've got, it's got big, like, vlog channel energy where it's like, if you didn't do anything interesting today, God help you still got to put out a video somehow. But, yeah, I thought this was a really interesting episode, but again, my spidey sense was going off for like, oh, they're going to make this annoying, aren't they? Because Sam Lane is so, it's not his fault as a character. He's very interesting. He's very stoic. He very much thinks he's doing the right thing. He's like a classic way you can do, like, a paladin archetype as antagonist. He's 100% sure he's doing the right thing, and that's very dangerous. Narratively, he is a vortex of frustration purely because of what he does to Lois. And I think this is very interesting. I think this is intentional writing.

42:27
Red
This is a case where it's like, it annoys me. It's supposed to annoy me. It's working. Good job. But Sam brings out some of Lois's most frustrating qualities. And again, this is very intentional because she has this huge bundle of abandonment issues and self worth issues tied up in her dad and then just extrapolated into everything else. And this was the episode where I was like, okay, this is gonna become a problem because Lois doesn't have a plan beyond I must get my dad back because it is unacceptable for him to leave me behind, to be separate from me. We have to save him, and then we have to keep him. And I was like, okay, this is gonna be an enormous problem, but it's not gonna matter because Lois is too, you know, hung up on this.

43:05
Red
And again, it's good characterization, but it was gonna frustrate the plot a lot, and I could, like, see it on the horizon. I was like, we're gonna have to get through some annoying episodes before we get back to, like, the characters talking to each other like human beings. And unfortunately, I was right. But again, the writing was doing that on purpose. My annoyance was a feature and not a bug. I could just see what they were going for. I was like, all right, I'm gonna need to brace myself for the next couple episodes, or I'm not gonna be ready.

43:32
Case
And, like, clark tries. There's a point where Lois says, like, you need to, like, put aside your feelings. And he's like, I did. We're here because I set aside my feelings. And the thing that I'm feeling right now isn't actually related to the fact that he kidnapped me and tortured me. Like, we forget the fact that he makes you feel so small and bad. And I can't forgive that part. Again. Clark just being the bestest boy.

43:53
Red
Just such a sweet boy. They really kind of glossed over. Amanda Waller has been illegally experimenting on inmates and giving alien superpowers. I kind of thought that was going to go somewhere faster, but, I mean, now we've got, like, a million little Chekhov's guns out in the general population, so who knows, right?

44:08
Case
On that note, we do have the. This is the episode that opens with Amanda Waller, like, prepping, like, sam's, like, coffee orders, which is a fun sequence in there, and sort of becomes a thing about her that she knows everything about her subordinates so that she can.

44:22
Red
Break them, especially Amanda Waller's daily affirmation routine. Oh, my God. You control this day.

44:32
Blue
I want to see Brainiac's daily affirmations.

44:35
Red
You are very triangular.

44:37
Blue
You are majestic. You are empire.

44:41
Red
You are Krypton.

44:43
Case
You make everything else seem small.

44:47
Red
Atomic Skull is in this episode, right? Yeah, that was, like, one of the earlier, because they've kind of been making all of the standard Superman villains out of stolen Kryptonian. Tech, which I think is not a bad way to do it. I think it makes the universe feel just a little bit small at this current juncture. It's like all of the source of weird stuff on earth is coming from Krypton. It's like, that's fine. That's whatever. Everything has a very consistent design aesthetic.

45:06
Blue
It does explain why everything's happening now.

45:08
Red
That's a good point. That's true. That's true. It's kind of like how in Smallville, they're like, everyone's getting powers from the meteor rocks that give Clark an allergic reaction. It's like, okay, sure. Everything is kryptonite. Okay, fine.

45:20
Case
Yeah, I was thinking about that specifically because of atomic skull, where it's just like, okay, like, here's the writing perspective on it, which is that they're going to create a character that is energy powers because of kryptonian tech, full stop. Like, that's just going to happen because that's what the plot demands, and that's what they're doing with the kryptonian tech in this world. Making it atomic skull is just for the fans of the property to be like, here's a shout out for a character that we're just not going to have a way of fitting in otherwise. Like, the only way we're going to get these characters in here in some cases is by making them illusions because they're not going to be central figures. But we need to have someone doing roughly that kind of thing.

45:55
Case
So, hey, isn't it nice that we get to use a character existing from this larger property that we're drawing inspiration from?

46:01
Red
Yeah, I don't hate that.

46:03
Case
And so I'm okay with that. And they've allowed some of those characters to grow. Specifically. Livewire has grown interesting ways.

46:09
Red
So many interesting things with Livewire in this season. We'll get there.

46:13
Case
We'll get there. But, like, you know, so, like, setting up that the character exists and then they can do something more interesting with them when they have either the time or the idea. I'm okay with, you know, like, sure, it's annoying when just, like, you know, like, you brought up Smallville with, like, the kryptonite being like, oh, it's the monster of the week situation. But, like, there is a through line for them. Creating these monsters in this setting that makes a lot of sense, and it is by way of the kryptonian tech. So, like, yeah, we're just going to have new characters who do the exact same thing. And aren't important enough to dwell on anyway. You know, it's not like a scenario where, like, oh, we're losing out on, like, so many cool new villains being introduced as a result of this all.

46:51
Case
No, they would be one off, like, mooks. Isn't it more interesting that we get those ones? Obviously, like, hey, wouldn't it be great if we had so much breathing room that we could spend time with all these characters? But that's not the show that we're doing here. The show is very much about. About Superman's impact on the world and, like, the kryptonian tech's impact on our technology and how that's all kind of going from there.

47:11
Red
And also, this is very much doing kind of like a year one angle where it's like, this is very young Superman. It is okay if a lot of his staple villains are just getting peppered into the world to presumably show up and cause more problems later. Like, I really like this show. I am not expecting it to run long enough to get to the main timeline of, like, Superman is an established figure. He's been around for years and years. His rogues were winding up for Justice League. I doubt they're gonna do that. It doesn't seem like the kind of thing this team isn't interested in doing. They very much like the sort of anime slice of life, small scale, fun, little friend dramas. And then also, Superman sometimes gets to punch a guy through a building. Like, great. Amazing. Love that.

47:48
Red
I don't think they're gonna need to take this far enough to start being like, hey, remember when we threw atomic skull into season two? Episode two, he's back now. They don't need to do that. They can just pepper him in and be like, he's there. He's out there somewhere, whatever.

48:01
Blue
Also, given the way that Warner Bros. Has been acting as of late, let's not jinx it.

48:06
Red
Let's not jinx it.

48:07
Blue
No, that's the thing is, I think the team is smart enough to understand, look, why hold any of the cards for the sake of playing them later? If we want to use it now? And it's like, no, no, but then we can't use it later. Like, no. If we want to use atomic Skull now, let's just use atomic skull right now.

48:24
Red
Yeah. Also, this show is really good at not killing off its villains immediately, which is the thing superhero movies haven't internalized. Like, the reason why you don't just kill the villain after they show up for the first time is so they can keep showing up. That's why it keeps happening anyway, that's a whole different rant. This show is doing it good, so I don't need to rant about it so we can move on.

48:40
Case
Yeah, no, the show is doing a great job of having, like, all these characters and having them be recurring. You know, like, the world is getting larger as we spend time here with this all. And it's not all Superman tech as we get in the next episode. Full metal scientist.

48:54
Red
I was so happy that they titled it that it was amazing. And I was hoping. I was hoping it was going to be Steel. And I was right.

49:03
Case
All right, so where to start on this one? One thing I really like is that Superman is really into John Henry Irons just as a figure in the community. I think that's so cool. And we see this with other characters. I think that makes a later interaction less annoying because Superman is really interested in the people in his community who are doing good work.

49:23
Red
Yes.

49:23
Case
And I like that mutual admiration between Superman and John Henry irons. I think that is fantastic. That is the vibe that we should have with those characters all of always.

49:32
Red
Yeah. It's so sweet. And I love how it makes the sort of dynamic those two have more mutual because a lot of the time, Steele's admiration for Superman is very much kind of a one way thing because Superman teams up with a lot of cool people. But Steele's very much like, I'm inspired by you. I've got your symbol. You know, when we do death of Superman, I'll be one of the only people who's actually kind of taking up the mantle and doing a good job. Whereas in this one, Clark is like, oh, my gosh, he's done, like, community work I could never do. All I can do is punch holes in big buildings. Just like, I like this. I like that this Clark is abundantly aware that other people can do good that he can't do. Because sometimes that's a blind spot for Superman.

50:08
Red
Like in the Justice League cartoon, that's a blind spot for Superman. He kind of implicitly believes that he can sort of do everything his team can do. And in his more frustrating episodes, he sort of forgets that they actually can do stuff he can't sometimes. So I like that this Superman is so profoundly respectful of people who do good community work who in their civilian identity can do the kind of good he can. Also, he gets a new superpower. He can do that telekinetic. Like, they're sort of doing that thing where it's like, he's super strong, but also he's got like, a force field and he can extend it around stuff. And we're just going to make that explicit and no further explanations needed. Your honor.

50:41
Jmike
What was it called, Case? It's called his bio, the bio shield.

50:45
Blue
I forgot whatever super aura says.

50:47
Red
Yeah, yeah, you've got that open, too.

50:50
Case
I mean, it's the same thing that he manifested in all star Superman when he, like, yeah, close to the sun and, like, saves that space shuttle. But I would argue that, like, that's the kind of thing that Superman probably could do and just, they wouldn't represent it, you know, like his. Yeah, it is very much exactly what Superboy, Connor, Kent Connell. Kent can do with the telekinetic field. But, like, Superman has long had a force field that he can extend around things to, like, keep things intact when he picks up stuff that's too heavy and big that you would fall apart under its own weight. And you could argue that this is sort of an extension of that where it's like, of course he's able to pull a person out of the fire and they're not hurt. He's Superman.

51:27
Case
If it didn't have the blue glow and you just said that, like, anyone who Superman was protecting in his arms was like, was protected, I'd be like, okay, cool, that makes enough sense.

51:36
Red
I think that it's a nice little, like, going above and beyond the needs of explaining the plot because most people watching the show aren't going to be like, oh, actually, if Superman tried to pick up that building by the corner would just break off. Superman tried to pick up a plane. He would just punch through it. But I like that they kind of went the extra mile to be like, it's one of his powers now. Fight me.

51:56
Blue
Please don't remind me of that episode of the boys where he's like, I can't just pick up the plane. It'll break and stuff. I'm like, thank you.

52:03
Red
That's why you're not Superman. Also, Silas Stone cameo.

52:09
Blue
Yeah, yeah.

52:10
Red
They were just really pulling out all the stops. I was like, cyborg. And then Deathstroke is like, he's what, nine? And I was like, aw, no, cyborg.

52:16
Blue
For like seven or eight years.

52:17
Case
Yeah. I was trying to remember which character they said because there was, there's also, Natasha gets referenced in this one. Natasha Irons and is a flame bro is the reference in here, which leads me to think that she's a young kid who's into Jimmy Olsen's kind of stuff. And so, yeah, the reference to Cyborg in there as well, it's nice to be like, yeah, no, this is early era for all these characters.

52:39
Red
Yeah, the Teen Titans will happen, but you probably won't get to see it.

52:45
Case
Not without a time jump, which can be fun, but, yeah, it could be fun, but, yeah, I don't want that in the show.

52:52
Red
Yeah, I agree. Just more seasons of this, please. A lot of name drops in this episode because that's when they start doing the line of metallo robots, and it's like, oh, that can only go amazingly.

53:02
Blue
Yeah, I'm dumb as hell. And even I knew that was bad news.

53:05
Case
I wanted to bring this one up because. So it is interesting to me the way that steel and metallo have become linked together in Superman lore, it started with the animated series where that was, like, the first time where they were, like, really on screen together. Cause Metallo's been sort of like an out there villain for Superman in the nineties around the time that steel became a major thing. He wasn't a major villain for a stretch there. And then they had the event underworld unleashed, where all the supervillains sold their soul to the devil, neuron.

53:32
Red
Oh, okay.

53:33
Case
All came back with, like, weird, upgraded powers, and Metallo came back able to, like, fuse with any machine and take it over.

53:38
Red
Oh, so Cyborg Superman.

53:40
Case
But before Cyborg Superman, post Cyborg Superman could do that.

53:43
Red
That's even worse.

53:47
Case
Yeah. Really silly period in the comics there where all these villains all of a sudden gained weird powers by virtue of having sold their soul to the devil. And I mean, like, most of DC did that. And so that's why you got, like, killer moth all of a sudden became, like, a literal killer moth.

54:02
Red
Oh, I was wondering why that keeps happening in various DC properties. He's always a joke villain until suddenly he isn't.

54:08
Case
So, like, you know, there are versions like that or like, abracadabra all of a sudden gained actual magic. In addition to his having science that looked like magic, the Joker just became more evil.

54:17
Red
Oh, how could you tell?

54:18
Case
Took it specifically. He traded his soul for something silly. Was, like, the joke in it all.

54:23
Red
Well, that makes sense.

54:24
Case
But anyway, yeah, so, like, they weren't linked characters in the comics. But then the animated series is the first time where, like, the intro episode for Steel, Metallo was the villain, and it was just like, oh, it's a fun matchup to have these two metal things. But then, because Metallo is such an easy character to bring up early in Superman, lore stuff, because robots are much easier to set. I mean, sure, fifth dimensional imps are also pretty early in there, but when you get into other weird super science enemies, simple, basic robot who happens to be powered by the thing that hurts Superman is a very easy sell and a very explainable one. And so things like the Grant Morrison new 52 Superman origin story, Metallo and Steel are very intertwined in there.

55:06
Case
You just see them sort of pop up as being these two sides of taking the man of steel part literally. And they easily match up with each other. And it also sells why Superman is. It's good for him to have allies because of the whole kryptonite thing.

55:20
Red
I actually thought it was pretty impressive that they did this whole episode and they were clearly drawing, like, driving home like this. Superman can really use allies. And they didn't have Metallos powered by kryptonite in it to do it. They were just genuinely like, we have to delegate. Superman has to do this thing. Somebody else has to do this thing. You can't do both. And I thought that was impressive. That was the harder writing choice, and I'm glad they did it.

55:40
Case
Yeah, I love that. The power search for the metallic. And this is basically the Spider man two plot of the power of the sun and the palm of my hands.

55:47
Blue
Oh, my God.

55:48
Red
In terms of, like, odd missed opportunities, I thought they were gonna bring up how the sunlight was gonna affect Clark. Cause, like. Yeah. And I thought that they were. Cause, like, it looked like it was kind of hurting clark. And I was like, that's a little unusual. Is he gonna point out that it's a little unusual, or is he just gonna stay focused? And it's like, it's fine that he stayed focused. I just. They did enough, like, subtle planting, I guess. Cause we got both. Red sunlight being used to incapacitate him and yellow sunlight powering him up. We got both of those in this season after no references them in the first season. So I kind of thought this would be the opportunity where they could sort of plant those concepts, and it just didn't come up so much.

56:23
Jmike
It was a little bit weird. I think we got the red sun and the catmus episode in season one.

56:28
Red
Oh, yeah. I think you're right. That's right.

56:30
Case
Yeah. They had the red sun field.

56:32
Red
I guess we just didn't. It just didn't get mentioned that, like, we know that red sun drains your power. I don't know. It's.

56:38
Case
Yeah.

56:38
Jmike
Well, yeah. Millar and the brain mentioned it when they're at Castle.

56:44
Case
Oh, yeah.

56:46
Jmike
The robots react to you. You react weirdly to the sun field. He was like, has the general found you yet? He's like, what do you mean?

56:55
Red
Oh, yeah. They sort of planted it. But this is, it's another thing I like about this show is that there's so much dramatic irony because we, the audience, are expected to be giant Superman nerds who know all this lore about him, but he doesn't know this yet. And that's the thing that they also did in the legion of superheroes cartoon. Because the whole first season, it's like, superboy, he's not been Superman at all. He's running around with the legion in the future. But brainiac five knows all of the Superman lore and is, like, trying not to give him spoilers. But whenever he's like, oh, I don't understand why my powers aren't working. You're like, why is this rock making me sick? Brainiac five is just like, no spoilers, no spoilers. Preserve the timeline, for the love of God.

57:31
Red
It's just, it's always fun when they do that.

57:33
Case
Yeah. The show is having so much fun with the fact that we are the supermandeh nerds. One other thing I want to talk about in this episode is the race between Lois and Vicki Vale.

57:42
Red
Yes.

57:43
Case
No one scoops Vicki Vale. No one scoops lois lane.

57:47
Red
That was so fun.

57:49
Case
I love the two I talked about this last time, that it feels that Vicky Vale was set up to be like, the adult Lois lane, like, the archetypal Lois lane that we're used to seeing in material. The fact that she's depicted as a brunette who, like I said, just looks like what we're used to thinking of for Lois Lane. And then we have the very different Lois Lane of this show. It's fun seeing them spar with each other, especially, like, with her proving herself to be the better reporter, able to write the story, like, while on the back of, like a, what was it? Like a security truck or something that was pulling out.

58:19
Red
Yeah, I like that. It's kind of highlighting this overarching theme, which is like, there are these, like, fun little petty rivalries, but ultimately, most of the people in this show are fundamentally decent people who are looking out for each other. Cause when Vicky's, like, impressed with Lois, she's like, I'm offering you a job. Cause I think you're really cool and smart and, like, it's cool that you scooped me. I'm not about to swear vengeance. Which really kind of highlights that, like, all the supervillains Clarke deals with are sort of the anomaly. You know, like the guys that can't let it go.

58:45
Case
Well, sort of this season. Most of the villains from the previous season are no longer villains by the end.

58:50
Red
Well, yeah, that's true. And I think that's fun because it kind of highlights, like, Clark's approach of just being pretty much endlessly patient and forgiving with all the people he deals with. Really keeps paying tremendous dividends. In almost every case, it's just dealing with Waller and Luthor that's the problem. Problem.

59:06
Case
So why don't we talk for a second about the steel armor? Because I like it overall. But I have, like, two notes. One, it's gonna look great with a cape when they finally put a cape on it, if they. If they do. Because, like, that super giant suit, the way it looks like with a cape would, like, just be so goddamn cool.

59:24
Jmike
Well, it's not. It's gonna look completely different, I'm pretty sure. Because Lex takes.

59:27
Case
Well, no, it looks like that looks the same or gets it back, I guess.

59:34
Red
I have one art direction complaint about the show, which is all of the robots kind of look the same.

59:38
Case
Yeah, this one doesn't look quite different enough. And here, this gets into my other note, which is that I think that's why his head is exposed. But I would argue that if he had the steel humanoid face but just, like, really fucking big would look distinct enough from the rest of the robot suits in this series. And in fact, actually more distinct because his head being exposed means that in the group shot with all of the super criminals who have, like, tech powers at the end of the season, it means he just looks like one of them. It's weird for him not to have a helmet. Let's just say that part out loud in a fight. It's weird that he doesn't have it.

01:00:12
Case
I think that they just leaned in, and I hope they do when they inevitably have some sort of nod to the reign of the Superman.

01:00:20
Red
You know, I don't want to sass. I hope they don't do that in season three. I hope that they save that for a theoretical season four or five.

01:00:27
Case
I hope they don't do the death of Superman. Let me be clear on this one.

01:00:30
Red
That's it.

01:00:30
Case
Yeah, it's the fact that they're showing that they have a Connell Kent. Like, SDCC just happened. And there was, like, spoilers for Connell coming in season three.

01:00:38
Blue
Way too many spoilers out of fucking comedy.

01:00:41
Case
So whenever they do the nod to the reign of the Superman stuff because I think that they probably aren't going to do death of Superman.

01:00:47
Red
This is way too early to do death of Superman. You can't do death of Superman until he's been established.

01:00:52
Case
It's also happening simultaneously because, like, this is the season finale of the most recent season of Superman and Lois. And going into the plot for the last season of Superman and Lois, like, they're doing the doomsday stuff. So, like, I really hope that they don't doomsday. But, like, I think if that Superboy is showing up and, like, pet theory that Superboy, and by pet theory, I mean, like, other people in the Internet have said this, but I agree. Future child of Lois and Clark.

01:01:15
Red
Oh. Oh, my gosh. They're future trunks. They can't resist. They're gonna give him a little short crop jacket and we're all gonna know.

01:01:24
Case
Like, the shots kind of looked like it. It also looked like he was part asian.

01:01:28
Blue
He does have a short crop jacket.

01:01:29
Jmike
He does.

01:01:30
Case
Dammit.

01:01:30
Jmike
He does.

01:01:30
Blue
God damn it.

01:01:32
Red
You know what? I actually like that better than just making him a dipshit clone of Clark. I was reading through those issues of Reign of the Superman and I look, Steel and Clark teaming up after Clark comes back from the dead. That's great. Superboy being there. He is so nineties annoying because of course, Steel and Clark are very business like. They're like, all right, boys, let's take them out. He's like, take him out. Maybe if they were Michelle Pfeiffer and.

01:01:57
Case
I'm like, I would argue that those are worst in the issues where they're teaming up because those are generally not the ones written by the Superboy creative team.

01:02:05
Red
That would make sense.

01:02:06
Case
Yeah, Carl Kiesel and Tom Gromit go on and do a really good run. They go from the adventures of Superman, which is where Superboy shows up, and then they go and have the Superboy book. And I always felt that the nineties ism are way worse when he shows up in all the other books, which is usually when he's teaming up with the other characters. Characters.

01:02:23
Red
Well, it's often the case when you cross over two characters. They kind of have to be mutually flanderized in opposite directions to really highlight the, especially when they're all superheroes who are fundamentally good hearted, decent people who will try to do the right thing. So it's like, okay, they're all going to act the same in a crisis, so how do we distinguish between them? But yeah, they're absolutely Mirai trunksing us. I can't believe this.

01:02:44
Case
When inevitably they have steel in the shot with him. I do hope he gets the red cape, and I do hope he gets a proper helmet. And hopefully that helmet is the metal version of his own head. That is his usual design.

01:02:56
Red
I don't think they're gonna do that because it's really hard to justify.

01:02:59
Case
I know.

01:03:00
Red
They're probably just gonna give him an Iron man helmet and call it a day.

01:03:03
Case
I know, but, like, this is a show where they could make it work and it would look different from everything else, which all have just, like, robot heads.

01:03:08
Red
Yeah.

01:03:09
Blue
But it's also the same show where they gave inter gang identical outfits for the finale, where they had unique costumes in season one. One. So I don't know. I don't think they're above it.

01:03:21
Case
We'll see.

01:03:22
Red
We'll see.

01:03:23
Case
I don't know. Anyway, moving on to two lanes diverged.

01:03:26
Red
I wonder what happens in this episode.

01:03:27
Case
I know, actually, we didn't talk at all about how Sam Lane was living with Jimmy and Clark in the previous episode.

01:03:33
Red
Yeah, this was. Again, the dread was building for me. I was, like, frustrating. Again, it's very intentional. And there are so many points in these episodes where it's like Clark and low Lois both need to talk to each other, but oopsies. Thing has interrupted. And then we can't ever speak in the downtime. Never.

01:03:53
Case
Yeah.

01:03:53
Blue
It's the episodes that made me very aware that there is a void in between shots that appear on screen. And they really expect us to believe that they go through entire days working at the Daily Planet, entire evenings, just not talking to each other. And that was frustrating when I felt conscious of the limitations of the medium, and they were not able to talk in those moments on screen and also were not able to talk to each other at any point off screen. It was like, guys, come on. This is where I was really starting to struggle with this season.

01:04:27
Red
Yeah. We recorded after show. Show after episode seven came out. Cause were talking after episode four came out. We were like, oh, yikes. Cause, like, the quality of season one was so good, and then the quality of season two has been so good for the most part. But there's those little cracks of like, okay, I'm being annoyed, but is this Schrodinger's bad writing? Is it doing this on purpose? Is it going to pay it off in a satisfying way? I don't know yet. And then we get to this episode, and it's like, I thought we dealt with this in season one cause so much of what happens in this episode, we'll get to it. I still, having enjoyed season two thoroughly, I still think episode four is legitimately bad in a lot of ways.

01:05:06
Red
Not in all of them, but in a lot of them.

01:05:11
Case
So this is the episode where we get the Star Labs symposium where Jimmy is invited to be the lead speaker. He thinks because he's Superman's best friend and that's a good thing, when it turns out that is not exactly the goal in this one. And so we get that payoff for that. Lex Luthor. Thanks, Jimmy, for inspiring me to do this. Exactly.

01:05:29
Red
Call them a real pal. The audacity. It's not your palt too. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. This was when I could smell that the show was speedrunning Clark's isolation arc so that he would feel lonely enough to summon the Kryptonian, his only remaining relative, which is, again, fine. They had to get there at some point. And given how the rest of the season was paced out, I understand why they had to speed through it for this episode. But a lot of it is just built on, like, none of these people can have a conversation and they go as far as, we'll get to it. I don't know. I don't know, Mandy.

01:06:03
Case
I mean, I enjoy Jimmy and Clark having cool suits for the symposium that Jimmy buys from Clark. That was very cute. That's a fun moment, especially when it's just like, I like the glasses and it's like, the flip up sunglasses. Clark is such a nerd in all of the circumstances.

01:06:18
Red
Clark is just so enthused about getting to play dress up and be Jimmy's bodyguard. He just thinks it's so fun.

01:06:24
Case
We get a Toyman reference in this, and this one's, like, an appropriate one shot is the informant that backstabs Sam Lane and goes to Amanda Waller. Like, yes, one. It's the Toyman. And it's obviously the Toyman because he has a bomb that's in a bear.

01:06:38
Red
Don't touch the bear. Lois is going through an interesting arc in this episode. Writing wise, I really like it. I have to say that I think that the way that they've built up Lois's insecurities throughout the beginning of the season and specifically why she's acting this way about her dad, I thought was really interesting. And when it comes to ahead, I thought that the way they made her react, again, internally made perfect sense with her character because there's a person who is just absolutely wrecked with abandonment issues and self worth problems. And Clark has zeroed in on that. It's like your dad makes you feel small and worthless. But also, this lois is kind of motivated by spite. So when he finally is like, all right, I'm leaving. She's like, all right, fine. I will also leave. Be that way.

01:07:18
Red
It's like there's a completely understandable emotional reaction. Clark has already had such a bad day. Yeah, actually, I might have skipped ahead an episode. I'm sorry. No, wait. I remember what's happening. So a lot of the middle of the season kind of blurred together.

01:07:33
Case
No, and that's fair. Like I said, the season feels very arc focused as opposed to individual episodes having the same standout details. I had to remind myself, what is the actual conflict in this? Oh, it's because they go toyman. Toyman betrays them, and they lead Task Force X into the Star lab symposium.

01:07:47
Red
And then they have a fight. And then even though this is a high security building that has to have a million security care, Lex Luthor is like, you see, Superman definitely broke all this shit. And instead of saying, no, I didn't, Clark is like, no, you don't understand. And then they're like, you see, he's threatened by human progress. And everyone's like, wow, gosh, that's a good point. And I was like, we did this shit in season one. Why are we doing this again? And in later episodes, it becomes clear only the government thinks of Superman this way. All the people still like him. We've still resolved that he's not a hero with bad publicity anymore. It's just the rich and powerful who are concerned of this more powerful person coming in and disrupting that. That's fine. That's good characterization.

01:08:29
Case
Just the rich and powerful. Because it's just more that there is a movement and that the entrenched powers are very much a part of that. Because I would argue that Hank Henshaw is not like the rich and powerful in this scenario.

01:08:39
Red
Well, he works for the government. He's not necessarily rich, but he's very much in the system of the way things work.

01:08:46
Case
Yeah, I just think that it's indicative that there is a movement of people that are rising up against Superman, even if it's not necessarily the majority of the population.

01:08:54
Red
That's fair.

01:08:55
Jmike
Yeah.

01:08:56
Case
Side note, we haven't really talked about Hank Henshaw. He appeared, what? In, I think, the second episode.

01:09:02
Red
It was in the first episode. He's.

01:09:03
Case
Oh, yeah, it's the first one.

01:09:04
Red
It's when he identified the asteroid that.

01:09:07
Case
Yeah, yeah, I like the design of Hank Henshaw looking basically like Superman. I get the impression that when we ultimately get Cyborg Superman, that it's a cyborg. Using technology to emulate Superman's power is, like, how I'm going to guess that they're going to do it because, like, we saw a lot of Superman powers being emulated at the Star Labs thing, including flight.

01:09:27
Red
Yeah, that wouldn't surprise me just because he's such.

01:09:29
Case
He's already got the frame, so all he needs is robot parts, and he would look like the Cyborg Superman. You know, he doesn't look like a totally different person and then clone a body or whatever he does.

01:09:38
Red
It's so complicated.

01:09:40
Case
I mean, let me face it. I know what I know when I say whatever he does is me, like, grossly overshadowing. Yeah. No, he clones a body because he's made from the parts of Superman's rocket.

01:09:51
Red
The simple explanation. Yay.

01:09:55
Blue
Comics.

01:09:55
Case
Comics.

01:09:58
Red
This episode builds a lot of emotional tension up to a head. It does a solid job of being kind of a turning point in the season. Cause Sam Lane just fully removes himself from the equation at the end of the episode. Basically being like, my presence in this is unsustainable. And Lois being like, no, we can keep brute forcing this, and it'll be fine. And he's like, I think that he made the correct tactical decision in leaving. However, I also think that Lois reacted exactly like we thought she would. And again, I think this is good writing. It is often good writing for characters to act in ways that I find personally, profoundly frustrating.

01:10:35
Case
Well, like, at the very end of the episode, when Clark is outside their window and he's weird, and she's like, he is. And then he flies away, and then it's like, but that's why I love him.

01:10:45
Red
Yeah, literally, the plot of Shrek and.

01:10:48
Blue
It'S like, superhero dingus flying away is.

01:10:52
Red
Not going to stop you from overhearing the rest of this conversation, man.

01:10:56
Blue
It's the only point in the season where I really felt the hand of the authors, forcing the plot in a specific direction, because, like, any normal progression of events, given the rules established by the show thus far, would not lead to this outcome. But this is the outcome we need for the second half of the season to go the way it needs to. So it's gonna happen like this. Like, all right, fine.

01:11:18
Case
Yeah. I mean, like, the first four episodes certainly feel like, I guess the first episode's wrapping up, and then the next three are like a prologue to. Then the actual plot, which is the Kara and brainiac plot of the season.

01:11:29
Red
Yep.

01:11:29
Case
Yeah, it's really just there so that we can have, like, a little bit of tension between all the characters and then, like, the beacon can get activated.

01:11:36
Red
Yeah, because they have to do it eventually, but because Lois established that she didn't want to do that. Because while Clark has learned to sort of see on is less of an evil thing, Lois has internalized her dad's perspective on that without noticing, which, again, I think is really interesting because they keep highlighting, like, Lois has picked up more from her father than she wants to admit. And Jimmy calls that out verbatim later in the season, which I think was really good. Yeah. Yeah.

01:11:59
Jmike
I think Jimmy is the MVP for this season.

01:12:01
Case
Jimmy has been the MVP for both seasons. Like, Jimmy is doing great.

01:12:04
Red
Yeah, I will say they did just a little bit in this episode of, like, Jimmy didn't quite handle this the way he should have, which I thought was cool. Cause after Clark being like, you've saved me 13 times, and then Jimmy's like, oh, no, I'm blaming myself for Lex Luthor being a manipulative jackass. Oh, this is terrible. It's kind of a weird change for Clark to suddenly feel like the most emotionally stable person in the party. But I think that's fine.

01:12:26
Red
I think it's good that he's kind of grown and gained a little bit of, like, at least a better understanding of what he needs, which is why by the end of the episode, he's like, I desperately need somebody I can talk to about all this stuff because my friends won't talk to me because they think I'm weird and they're not proud of me. I like the way they built up Clark's angst for the season because what they were doing, again, it's basically Chekhov's gun, but it's Chekhov's big, glaring weak point for brainiac to exploit later.

01:12:50
Case
Moving on to the start of the real plot of the season, which is most eligible? Superman.

01:12:56
Red
I was dreading this episode from the.

01:12:58
Case
Description, which is a dating game episode.

01:13:02
Red
Plus the arrival of Kara, because we just watched episodes. I had watched the season up to that point, but you caught up when that episode happened, blue. And I was like, all right, tell me what you think. Have fun. Because I didn't want to be like, oh, dude, it's so weirdly not good at episode four, everything else was fine. I was just like, okay, tell me what you think. And then you're like, was that episode Ben? I was like, oh, thank God it's not just me. And then were kind of like, we looked up like, oh, the episode description for episode five. And it's like, oh, Lois and Clark's relationship is tested to the limits. And I was like, God damn it, we're already getting here. Okay. But then I watched it, and I was like, hey, good news, dude.

01:13:37
Red
They get all that stuff out of the way really early. And then it's Superman again. Do you remember? This is a show about Superman. It's not all about, like, oh, no, our relationships aren't working because we can't communicate with each other. Cause the writers won't let us. Sometimes they get to punch each other real good.

01:13:52
Blue
Yeah.

01:13:53
Case
So speaking of punching each other real good, we get that for real in this episode.

01:13:58
Red
It's crazy how, like, the appearance of a super powered supervillain is like, a breath of fresh air in the show. Cause it takes us out of the relationship drama zone and lets us get stakes that aren't just like, will these two idiots be permitted to communicate in the framework of a romance slice of life Shoujo anime? And the answer is always no.

01:14:19
Jmike
Well, I mean, I feel like that kind of, like, slips over, like, Jimmy and Kara, then, like, the whole relationship dynamic, like, switches to those two.

01:14:28
Red
I thought that was really cute. I'll be honest, a lot of the first half of this episode, even though I was, like, bracing myself, I think I was pleasantly surprised by the way it played out because the stuff they did with, like, clark and Lois being like, we have to pretend to not be dating. We have to be fake not dating for this episode. I thought that was, like, a good setup. And the fact that Lois is the one who suggested it and then immediately regrets it, I thought was interesting. Again, it just really. She accidentally proposed something that was going to make her absolutely miserable because of a particular cocktail of issues for the episode. And I thought that was fine. In the same vein as, like, Clark being so kind of starstruck about John Henry Irons Silver Saint cloud in this episode.

01:15:03
Red
Episode. And he's just, like, enamored with all the public charity work she's doing. And when she's like, yeah, we could work together and do fundraise money for a good cause, he's like, oh, my gosh, that would be amazing. I would love to. The fact that it's not fake dating and it's just more open admiration for the public works this woman is doing. And Lois is like, oh, no, I'm not jealous because she's absolutely gorgeous. I'm jealous because she's done way more with her life than I have.

01:15:27
Case
Yeah, she gets that speech from Kat Grant that makes her feel that she is doomed to be observer, a passer by.

01:15:35
Red
I thought that was a really interesting angle. Kat Grant being self aware about, like, it's a reporter's job to look inward but not get to be included. And the fact that her and Clark are both experiencing profound alienation, but from completely opposite directions. And they can't talk about it because the writers won't let them. I just thought it was really interesting.

01:15:50
Case
I do want to talk about the contestants on this game show. I rather enjoyed the collection of people. I have a question, which is, didn't Hank Hinshaw say he was taking the wife on a trip in the first episode, and then he's a bachelor on the game show?

01:16:04
Red
Oh.

01:16:05
Jmike
Oh, no.

01:16:05
Red
Oh, no. That trip must have gone really badly.

01:16:09
Case
But then, like, there's someone who uses they them pronouns in there, which I thought was really a nice touch on that one. And then, like, silver St. Cloud is presented as being, like, this, like, absolutely gorgeous thing, but, like, she's, like, a very, like, curvaceous woman. Like, very full figured. And I really like that kind of body positivity there. It's a good selection presentation presented there.

01:16:28
Red
Also, I think every single character there is some kind of deep pull DC comics reference. I saw a few people doing the legwork to dig them.

01:16:34
Case
I wouldn't be surprised with the other three. I mean, Silver sand cloud is a historic Batman girlfriend. And then Hank Inchaw is, of course, the cyborg superman.

01:16:42
Blue
I do appreciate that this show is, from the start, gone to great lengths to be, like, people are people. And there are a lot of different kinds of people in the world, choices large and small throughout the show that have gone into that. Even in an episode that kind of, like, presents us with, like, here's a cast of new, like, fun characters and such. It doesn't come of, like, oh, my gosh, who are these crazy people? It's like, yeah, no, that's, like, honestly, like, pretty on par for what we've gotten out of the show so far, which is just nice. This is pleasant.

01:17:12
Red
Yeah, and that. So that was what were getting up to with Clark and Lois through the whole episode. But we also get Cara, and she's.

01:17:18
Case
So good with Jimmy. Like, the two of them are, like, have such a wonderful day on the town.

01:17:24
Jmike
What is this thing?

01:17:26
Red
Ice cream. This is a ship I have no objections to. And I like how Cara is immediately ride or die from Jimmy. I will make your enemies mine. Hell, yeah, girl.

01:17:36
Case
I love the miscommunication where he's like, I'm a boss of the planet.

01:17:38
Red
She's like, you are the boss of the leader of the planet. She's so good.

01:17:41
Blue
The leader of the planet.

01:17:42
Red
She's so cute. And I think they did a really good job because this episode immediately tells the audience, like, this girl is nothing evil. She is sweet and naive, and she mentions she has a strict father, and that's an immediate red flag. And she and Jimmy are hitting it off. And Jimmy is the best judge of character in the entire show. So it's like, great. This is going great. But people who were paying attention to the episode four ending are already like, when's the armored shoe gonna drop? When is this gonna go horribly wrong? And they. They start setting up the dominoes pretty clearly as Jimmy's like, I gotta get you to your country, like, now. But meanwhile, Superman is in the middle of this ridiculous pageantry that even he thinks is dumb. And, like, it's just.

01:18:26
Red
It's the perfect setup for kind of frustrating miscommunication, but again, intentionally frustrating. We're supposed to feel this way. And, like, similar to season one, the first half of the season builds up to a miscommunication, and then the entire back half of the season is dedicated to cleanly resolving it. You can kind of feel it starting around this point or really coming to a head at this point. And then it's like, they can't possibly make this miscommunication stuff worse after. Now they have to resolve it like Superman would, you know, by, like, finding the correct thing to punch.

01:18:56
Jmike
Well, I mean, because they were all kind of avoiding each other this episode, too. Yeah, because it's a hangover from the last episode where Jimmy's avoiding Clark, Lois is avoiding Clark and Jimmy, and then Clark sees Jimmy and Carl running off in the distance while he's calling Jimmy.

01:19:10
Red
Yeah.

01:19:10
Jmike
So everyone's like, oh, no one wants to talk to me. My fearings.

01:19:15
Red
It's just the rejection sensitive dysphoria nightmare episode. But, yeah, I love the way they handled Kara. And I love the way that they show how, like, she switches on a dime, not in a, like, oh, she's gone from normal person to evil. It's more like she's so overstimulated, and if one other person makes a noise near her, she's going to start heat lasering things. Yeah.

01:19:37
Case
When she, like, squeezes the bar and, like, leaves her, like, fingerprints in it and then Jimmy clocks it where it's like, wait, your cousin is like, oh, yep, immediately. But, yeah, I totally get it. They walk in there and there's just, like, so much noise and lights in her face. And she's like, clearly so frustrated by this whole situation. And then when she goes and confronts Clark and he, like, is like, I have to go do something important. And he's, like, trying to be polite in that moment. He's not being rude to her, but it comes off as rude because, like, she doesn't register that he has no idea who she is.

01:20:08
Blue
Yeah, yeah, you turned on the beacon. You know me.

01:20:11
Red
And she doesn't register that he is in the middle of a room full of people who are all trying to get his attention because that is the purpose of the pageantry. He's in. Have the context for it. And he doesn't have the context to know that what he just said was very hurtful unintentionally because, like, he's desperate for family, but he's not desperate for people in general. Like, that's. That's the whole thing of it. Like, he needs people who can understand him. You know, he wants his family. He wants people from Krypton. But he's also kind of a media darling. You know, everybody in this room except for Hank Henshaw, who left after being alien racist at him. Everyone in this room really likes him. And Kara is the completely different kind of desperate for understanding.

01:20:48
Red
And that's why she immediately goes from like, I thought you would be the person who understood me, but you're not. And it's interesting because it kind of parallels what Lois is up to in this episode where it's like, I want this thing so badly that I'm going to reject it before it rejects me. Because, like, Lois did that to Clarke with, like, I want this relationship to work, but I'm not good enough for you, so I'm going to reject you before you reject me and Cara being like, I desperately need my family, but you've messed up our first impression, so I'm going to. To fix this the brainiac way. I hadn't made that connection before, but I think it's a very interesting little parallel in the way those two are maladaptively coping with their stuff.

01:21:25
Case
Yeah, certainly a lot of relationship drama going on here and exploding into both the breakup of Lois and Clark in this sort of. He's like, are you breaking up with me? And we never actually get real confirmation that's for sure. More finished, but it's enough that they both feel that way at the end of it all.

01:21:43
Red
Yeah. She's like, oh, no, I broke up with him. And he's like, I can't believe she broke up with me, even though the conversation didn't quite end. So it's Schrodinger's breakup. And again, this is the part where it was a huge relief that it broke out into Superman action, because I was like, thank God. We don't need to resolve this slowly and painfully. We can just have the problem be the plot. And as soon as it was clear that, like, oh, no, they're going to capture Clark, I was like, thank fuck. Because that means that they can bundle the resolution of their relationship with a dramatic rescue, which is so much easier, writing wise, than just sitting them down in an empty room being like, talk out your feelings. Leave nothing to chance.

01:22:18
Red
The more dramatic the reunion is, the less explaining you have to do.

01:22:23
Case
And this is a dramatic separation, at least, because, man, we get a real good goddamn fight.

01:22:30
Red
I love this fight so much.

01:22:31
Case
Like, man, we are getting the dragon Ball, z level kind of violence there. So the armor I feel like that she's first wearing is just because that was the fake out armor at the beginning or at the end of the previous season. I don't feel like it really serves a purpose. But her armor that has the heat vision augmenter is so cool.

01:22:49
Red
We get beam struggles, not just a beam struggle. Again, I liked the fight. And then it's like, oh, no. Civilians are in danger. It's time for Clark to develop another power. Which one is it going to be? Frost breath is always the weeniest. Looking up his powers, he has to do the big cartoon wind cloud thing. Big puffed up cheeks. And then somewhere along the line, someone was like, hey, you know what a breath weapon looks like in D and D? But what if we gave Clark one of those? And it looks so good? It's the coolest it's ever looking like it frosts over his face. I was like, that's the part where I went from like, okay, this is better than episode four. To like, this episode is so good. Boy, you have to watch it.

01:23:28
Red
I'm telling you, it's got the coolest frost breath I've ever seen.

01:23:32
Case
They're back, baby. They're back.

01:23:34
Red
Made the season for me. It could have stopped there, and I would have been happy.

01:23:39
Case
I love that was a new power that brainiac hadn't seen and that he then wants to study further. It's a fun moment there where it goes. From we have no need of weakling to being like, oh, interesting. Hang on, bring this one.

01:23:51
Red
Nevermind. Gimme, gimme, gimme.

01:23:53
Blue
Cara, I request a takeout order.

01:23:58
Jmike
That fight was so, such a good fight. It was so good.

01:24:01
Case
But I love the early impressions that we get from brainiac. The allusions to Kara having a strict father, and then the little bits of dialogue that we get as he's overcome, and the fact that we see his hands and see him to set up what we're going to be getting in the rest of the season is really fun.

01:24:19
Red
There is this, the first bit where we see him use the comply thing on her, because I think it might be she's hesitating a little bit, and then he's like, hey, you should do it. And her irises go gray for a second and it's like, oh, there's something hinky going on here. But also, this is another thing where it's like, in story, that's like, oh, no, that's bad. She's been kind of brainwashed, but out of story, it's like, oh, thank goodness, she's been brainwashed. Which means making her a good guy has just become so much simpler because she's not really completely cognizant of her actions a lot of the time. And they really kind of expose that more in later episodes of, like, how many atrocities has she done and how culpable is she for them?

01:25:02
Red
Because that's going to determine how difficult it is to turn her from this into supergirl. There's a lot of, like, oh, thank goodness. She's just been horrifyingly, psychologically manipulated and tortured her whole life. Phew. Then she's just got a tragic backstory. No moral culpability whatsoever. It's. I don't know, it's in the same vein of, like, oh, thank goodness Clark has been beaten unconscious and kidnapped I by aliens. Now, he and Lois don't need to talk about their feelings. Like, everything is relative in fiction land.

01:25:31
Case
So going on from there, we split our party and thus have two different stories going on simultaneously.

01:25:37
Red
Yeah.

01:25:38
Case
So next up, we've got the machine, who would be empire. I want to lead off with. I find that the relationship between Clark and Kara and this is very cute, like, the fact that we get, like, a space snowball fight between them. It's a very packed episode in terms of, like, emotional beats that move on, because we also get, like, all of our brainiac stuff in this episode.

01:25:57
Red
I also like how they're just kind of planting. Like, Superman's suit can give him a space helmet if it needs to, but he also doesn't need one because he can breathe in space. It's, like, great. Amazing. Filed under things he would have never thought to check. And I love how Kara's a goofball and she really is enjoying having family with her. Yeah, because it immediately endears us to her after. Because, like, of course, we had the whole last episode where she and Jimmy are hanging out and being adorable, but in this case, it's like, that wasn't a fluke. And weapon Chara is not her true self. This nerd is her true self. Weapon Chara is the influence of whoever her father is, and we see enough of it to be like, that's not Zor El. No way.

01:26:36
Red
But I like that Clarke doesn't figure that out for a while.

01:26:39
Case
I was surprised that she said, who is Zor El? That was surprising just because she knows at least that his name is Kal El. And I like the way that she says Kal El, by the way. She has a rolling l sound in the middle there.

01:26:56
Red
I thought that was a really good bit of just, like, quick storytelling that, oh, Brainiac has just made himself completely in charge of her education. Like, whatever plan Zor El had to, like, drop in a little AI educate her that way. That all went out the window.

01:27:08
Case
Because brainiac, it's interesting that she would know her cousin's full name and not know the name of her father. You know, like, when it's like, who is Zorrell? It's like, well, the l part should tip you off that it's a family member of yours was the only weird sport, but not a big deal, because I agree with you that she definitely has no idea whose or El is. It was just surprising that she doesn't even have the most basic version of that.

01:27:30
Red
Yeah, I suppose.

01:27:31
Jmike
Oh, my gosh. You know Jimmy, right?

01:27:33
Case
You lie.

01:27:35
Red
You like Kimmy.

01:27:38
Case
Her having the, like, the relics of her adventures was, like, really a fun detail. And specifically, the Jimmy stuff. It's like, how do you even know Jimmy?

01:27:47
Red
I think that it's so cute because, in a way, this is also the most free. We've seen Clark all season, and, like, Kara calls that out. She's like, you restrain yourself around them because they don't understand you. But around me, you could go full power. We can have the fullest power snowball fight that's ever been. But it also just extends to, like, Clark has never had a family member. He can tease. He's never had siblings. He's never had cousins. So finally, it's like, oh, my gosh. A person who I'm kind of equals with, who I can just be goofy around. And they both kind of have that, and it's really beautiful. And it kind of highlights that, like, oh, okay.

01:28:23
Red
Like, Clark was right to activate the beacon and call her down because she's in a bad situation and needs help, although she doesn't realize it. But also, she and Clark immediately have this beautiful rapport. And it is a dynamic that he cannot get with anyone else. Like, him and Jimmy are friends, but ultimately, Jimmy will always be Superman's pal. He will not be, you know, Superman's brother. Superman's equal that of thing. It's not how their dynamic has ever worked, even though Clark probably doesn't like thinking about it that way. But with Kara, it's like, wow, we really are similar in a way that nobody else can be. And it's just that family thing.

01:28:56
Case
It's a really beautiful relationship that they develop in this all. Also, I want to talk about the memory stuff in this episode. I'm not entirely clear how it's distinctly separate from the black Bersey that happens later in the season, but at the very least, the kryptonian memory like, visions that Kara is able to show Clark a matrix. Well, yes. It's super like the Matrix, actually, not so much like the Matrix as in, like, the whole matrix, but, like, the training programs that they use in there. It's like, hey, the woman in the red dress, like, felt very much like the. Like, oh, this is, you know, I forget the names that she gives them, but it's just like, this is Jack's citizen. This is, you know. You know, like, the. She's, like, all the activities.

01:29:32
Case
Like, she's given, like, so much personality to all this because this is the only media she's been allowed to absorb her entire life, which is just like, here's this, like, college tour video of Krypton here.

01:29:43
Red
It's like the only book she was ever allowed was a where's Waldo? Thing. And she's given names to every single background character. And again, it's so good and so heartbreaking because we're seeing this from Clark's perspective, who, you know, grew up in, like, a good situation with a family that loved him. And immediately, like, the red flags are going off. It's like, what do you mean? This is the only thing you've ever. You seem really obsessed with, like, strength and training and what your father says is okay, like, should we talk about this? Maybe, but for just a little while. Cause he still thinks that it's Zor el that he's gonna find. He still thinks he's got another living relative that's gonna be on the other end of that spaceship. But, whoopsies. That is not what is happening.

01:30:19
Case
Before we move on, I do want to say also Clark's memory of playing catch with his dad and, like, being encouraged to throw it even slower this time. Or, like, that was such a good moment there, because there's always that question of, like, well, if Clark has his powers, how is he disciplined? Like, how is he, you know, parented? You know, at the beginning of this call, like, I had my daughter in the room with us, and, like, there was quite a few points where, like, if she had super strength, I don't. I don't know how, like, anything would have happened just now. Like, sometimes you just have to pick up your child.

01:30:52
Red
You're going into air prison. I thought it was really interesting how, from Clark's perspective, this is a very fond memory of, like, his parents understanding what he's capable of, and that in order to interact with the world in the way he wants to, which is to not break things, he's going to need to be taught how to do that. Like, this is a loving thing that they are doing, essentially, like, hey, we're going to get you to the point where you can do what you want to do, which is be out in the world. Whereas from Cara's perspective, it's like, they're teaching you to be weak. They're teaching you to limit yourself because you're better than them, but you could be more. And I like how both of their perspectives make sense, but Clark's is fundamentally correct.

01:31:30
Red
And we know this because Cara's idea that, like, being the strongest is the best is not correct. It's in Brainiac's interest to teach her that and to make her not question it under any circumstances. Also, Thanagar pulling out for the coolest bird planet. When they name dropped Thanagar, I was like, wowzers, Thanagar. Are we gonna see, like, a. Like, a rebel sect of cool thanagarians? And it's like, no, sorry, they are all dead.

01:31:57
Jmike
But you get that cool, like, reflecting wall thing.

01:32:00
Red
Yeah, I guess she killed them slow enough that they had time to make a mural about it first.

01:32:06
Jmike
I mean, maybe we get thanagarians out there somewhere else who have a grudge to hold against her.

01:32:13
Red
That wouldn't surprise me. I think they could do a lot of stuff with that.

01:32:17
Jmike
Let them all be gone, please.

01:32:19
Red
We need at least two to go to Earth and become space cops.

01:32:23
Case
Well, we know that there's a whole civilization living under the earth, as shown in the famous studios Superman cartoons.

01:32:29
Jmike
All right, yeah.

01:32:32
Case
Now, while the thanagarians are apparently all dead, they have been preserved, in a certain sense, in the holodeck scene which we alluded to before. God damn. So fucking cool. The Green Lantern as monk concept I loved so much.

01:32:48
Red
I liked that a lot. And I also like the little side note where brainiac is like, yes, I took scans of their brains. I was like, good. That's what brainiac is supposed to do. Brainiac is supposed to preserve data and then destroy it. But then that little touch of, like, the Green Lantern hologram crying, I was like, oh, no. This is like some kind of hellish purgatory situation, isn't it? This is bad. Like, I knew it was going to be bad. It's brainiac, but, like, that's worse than I was expecting.

01:33:08
Case
Yeah, I adored that detail. And it made me wonder. So his base is called candor, which is, you know, traditionally the bottled city from Krypton that has, like, a ton of, like, tiny little Kryptonians. And I thought, like, well, is he going to have all the scans of all the kryptonian brains in the computer system of this? And I guess the argument is that brainiac himself is the memory of Krypton.

01:33:27
Red
Yeah.

01:33:28
Case
At least he thinks he is.

01:33:30
Red
It was an interesting, I guess not missed opportunity. They definitely did it on purpose. If they didn't want to bring up the candor thing, they wouldn't have named it that. But it was a strange pull to then not deliver on any of its traditional form. And also, this brainiac doesn't do the iconic thing that standard brainiac does, which is like, I will steal this example of this civilization, preserve it, and then destroy the original. His reasoning for it varies a lot of the time, but in this case, I kind of like it because he's like, I am the only part of Krypton worth preserving. And that is so interesting because it's a form of egotism you don't normally get from him.

01:34:07
Red
A lot of brainiacs are basically just purely mechanical, incorrect robots that think that their flawed programming is the way that they should interact with the universe. And I like that this brainiac has enough of an ego to be more interestingly incorrect about what really matters. And that makes him more dangerous, because instead of having perfectly preserved little pocket cities that Superman can put back later. It's just like those planets are dead. And I made Cara do it because she's my most effective gun. Sorry, bucko.

01:34:37
Case
And that's the area where it does feel more like the eradicator from the nineties Superman comics, like, where it is a kryptonian intelligence thing. The eradicator is actually a kryptonian intelligence, whereas brainiac in the comics is a different alien species. Computer Kalu. And that, again, was introduced in the animated series where they made a Kryptonian. I don't mind making Brainiac kryptonian. I do need to be very clear about that. And so I think it generally is going to make it resonate better in later adaptations, like it does here. But like I said, it does have that resemblance to this Krypton superiority thing that goes on with the eradicator and is present here with this version of Brainiac. And like I said, it's just an interesting comparison. It's not necessarily a profound detail.

01:35:20
Red
I think it's very plausible that they deliberately draw on that characterization for brainiac to be like, we're not just pulling this out of nowhere. There's already a character kind of like this one, but he's got more in common with brainiac than with the eradicator, and he has less of a redemption arc.

01:35:34
Case
But it is wild that they do so many name drops in here, and they could do other ones and have it be less divergent, specifically calling a candor. They could have called it Argo or Argo city.

01:35:46
Red
Oh, that would have been dark.

01:35:49
Case
Yeah. That would be a direct allusion to Supergirl, specifically. I don't know what you would do with Thanagar or anything else like that.

01:35:55
Jmike
Let it be there.

01:35:58
Case
Let them rupt, be dead.

01:36:00
Jmike
Let them live.

01:36:02
Red
Please spare them.

01:36:04
Case
But as we also did discuss, it is so fascinating that in addition to a Greenland and Athanagarian, there is a parademon in that group.

01:36:11
Red
Yeah, they really kind of fly that one past real quick, because it's not like he's like, I even fought apocalypse for the season three fans in the audience, it's just like, yeah, I've been collecting warriors, and it's like, okay, we got thanagarian. Yeah. Okay, cool. That's heartbreaking. We got Green Lantern. Amazing. It's Green Lantern and then alien bug thing. Okay. And if you're not paying too much attention, it's just like, that could be a lot of things, but it's like, oh, wait a minute. No, that's from apocalypse. Where did you get that, sir?

01:36:38
Jmike
I was expecting a nod and a wink at the camera.

01:36:41
Red
The parrot even turns directly to the camera.

01:36:45
Jmike
Wink.

01:36:46
Case
I have to give them mad props, though, for not going full Toriyama in design because, goddamn, the parademons look so much. You know how Toriyama has certain artistic flairs? His bug people often look very similar to one another.

01:36:59
Red
Yeah, they all have big bug eyes and that sort of stuff.

01:37:03
Case
Season one, filler of Dragon Ball Z, where the Saiyans go to the bug planet, then, like, you know, blow it up at the very end and then come to Earth. It was just a little detour that they went on. Like, those bug people look a lot.

01:37:14
Red
Remember that bug planet?

01:37:15
Case
Like parademons and like, the restraint not to just make the parademons look straight, like something that a kiratoriyama would have created.

01:37:21
Red
Yeah, yeah. True.

01:37:22
Case
Yes.

01:37:23
Red
Props.

01:37:23
Case
Thank you for your restraint.

01:37:26
Red
Now please exercise it in season three. And Totena says no. I love Mirai trunks future superboy. So fucking funny.

01:37:33
Case
Then we get the fun whole thing about like, well, I'm gonna find out what your weakness is so I can kill you.

01:37:39
Red
Yeah. This brainiac is very candid. Maybe that's why they call it candor.

01:37:44
Case
I admire your candor.

01:37:47
Red
Thank you. Yeah, I think that it's interesting, this was the episode where I was like, okay, I think I see where they're going with this, but I'm nervous. I don't know. I don't know what they're gonna do. Because as soon as brainiac is like, I think it's cool that your body has interesting powers. I'll just be taking that. I was like, oh, no. There's so many ways they could do this. That would be super annoying.

01:38:06
Blue
And they went with the one that.

01:38:07
Red
Wasn'T, and I was very happy. But we'll get there in a couple episodes.

01:38:10
Case
Speaking of which, this episode ends with Kara kind of assessing her past after this all. First off, she discovers that the Thanagarians are gone. And then while crying in space, like, all of a sudden, a ship comes out of nowhere, and it's Jimmy Flame bird.

01:38:26
Red
Jimmy the flame birdhouse. No, it's so good. Space is so big. It's amazing that happened. And yet I'm not mad anymore.

01:38:34
Case
Well, especially because when we get to this, all of a sudden, not only is it Jimmy and Lois in a ship, Monsieur Mala and the brain are with them, which, you know, we're all big fans of that reinterpretation of the characters mvp. Which means that this is one of my favorite styles. Of episodes, which is the, like. Meanwhile, with the rest of the crew kind of episodes. And we get Olsen's Eleven, which as a heist movie fan, like, God damn it, I love that name.

01:39:01
Red
No notes. Perfect. His character was made for this.

01:39:05
Case
So Jimmy and Lois recruit Livewire, who is confirmed to be in a romantic relationship with heat Wave, which I was all about their little relationship. The bit at the end was, like, funny and touching between the two of them. All very good stuff.

01:39:20
Red
Secondary shout out. This episode came out the last day of pride month, and they snuck it in right under the wire. We got vala in the brain. We got limewire and heat wave. We got something for the girls and the gays.

01:39:31
Case
Yeah. Mal and the brain actually refer to each other as husbands in this, which is also, like, some great details. Like, this season in general is like, keeping up with the first season had, which was like, good inclusivity. Very happy about all of that top tier. So they recruit livewire. Heatwave apparently doesn't like this plan and leaves.

01:39:48
Red
I really thought they were speedrunning the fastest. Like, they're lesbians. They've broken up in history. I was like, yeah, no, they had us in the first half. Not gonna lie.

01:39:59
Case
They then have to figure out, like, all right, well, now that we have a person who can sneak us into Star Labs to steal the ship, that they. I think they set it up in the first episode, the existence of the ship, where it's like, oh, it came from.

01:40:10
Red
That would make sense.

01:40:10
Case
Amazotech. And now Star Labs has it. When they go to star labs, it might have been in the Star Labs.

01:40:16
Red
Tech demo, episode four thing, expose eight.

01:40:19
Case
Whatever, where Jimmy was railroaded into being part of why Superman is dangerous to all humanity. That whole bit there. Yeah, they set up the rocket. They have the means of stealing the rocket, but they have no means of using the rocket or finding anyone. And that's when they call in Monsieur Malat in the brain, who Jimmy's been getting brunched with. We have brunch with Jimmy.

01:40:40
Red
So good at making the world feel big and lived in specifically through Jimmy and his thriving social life.

01:40:46
Case
Yeah, they reveal that having gone on a romp through the multiverse, that every world already has a brain and Monsieur Mala. And so they've had to leave each time. And this is also why we end up version of Mala wearing the classic outfit, the weird bandolier and the beret.

01:40:59
Red
Because he stole it, I guess so.

01:41:02
Case
Wonderful stuff there. Like, I just enjoy their dynamic just in general. Like, every little bit with Mala and the brain on screen was just wonderful stuff. And we get a whole heist sequence. Red, as you love to point out on your videos, if they explain what the heist is going to be, it's not going to go the way that they explain it.

01:41:19
Red
Never fails. The unspoken plan guarantee. And so, as they were explaining it, while it was also being shown, at the same time, I was like, this is promising. This is often the way that this works. They clearly know this, but it's still very possible that everything is going to go sideways because they've established what they expect to find, which means that's probably what's going to go wrong. But it's fine. I'll be honest, I was blindsided by the twist of what happens. Pleasantly so.

01:41:43
Case
So they seem to slowly run out of people as the brain and Mala run off on a detour. And eventually livewire gets separated. And it's just like. I guess it's just Jimmy and Lois. And they get to a ship, and it doesn't seem ready to fly. But then Mala and the brain show up, and then they're taking off. And that's when Livewire comes in to save the day, along with heatwave.

01:42:03
Red
Yeah, I was not expecting that. I was like, there's a slight possibility we get, like, the villain was like, I changed my mind, kid. I'm back. But the fact that, like, the whole time was, like, actually, their plan is amazing.

01:42:14
Case
Livewire has been on comms with Lois and Jimmy this whole time. There's a very likely chance that she's figured out that Clarke as Superman.

01:42:22
Jmike
Yeah.

01:42:22
Red
Ooh.

01:42:24
Jmike
Yeah.

01:42:24
Case
Especially, like, the whole Lois being like, I broke up with Superman. I love him. I have to get the space for him.

01:42:30
Red
Or alternatively, Livewire is like, holy shit. Does that Clark guy know? I guess that's why he's not here. Man, that's heartbreaking.

01:42:39
Case
Yeah. The world of who knows who Superman is in this is, like, getting blurrier and will get very blurry by the end of the season.

01:42:46
Red
Yeah, they play a little fast and loose with it, which I'm not a huge fan of, but it doesn't break my immersion in the rest of the story. It's more like. It's like a fridge logic thing. You're thinking about it later and you're like, oh, no, wait a sec. Is this fully out of the bag?

01:42:58
Case
Yeah. And frankly, the people who know, it seems, are on good enough terms that they're not gonna really, like, do anything about it. Both Livewire and heat wave have experienced being heroes that, like, straddle sometimes into antiheroes or borderline good characters at times. Livewire has recently, and by recently, I mean in the last, like, 20 years, as opposed to the last 30 years in her limited amount of appearance in comics, because she's nothing very big character in the comics, has donned the electric blue Superman uniform and been in his proto legion of Superman, the one that becomes the time spanning version of the team that is in all Star Superman and stuff. So she's been sometimes on the more positive side of things, and in recent comics, has been sort of anti hero kind of character.

01:43:39
Case
And heat wave, now, admittedly, this is a very different heat wave, but heat wave oftentimes has been a mercenary for good causes or sometimes even kind of a nice guy, like a firefighter, except he's a firefighter fighter that uses fire.

01:43:51
Red
That's the best way to fight fire with more fire.

01:43:55
Case
So the seat wave being like a criminal, but potentially a criminal who's not that bad of a gal, and this livewire, who also doesn't seem to be that terrible of a person, especially when we see them team up at the end, it's fine, they're thieves, but with hearts of gold.

01:44:11
Red
Yeah, no objections here. I thought it was really fun. And it's a nice way of the narrative to sort of reward the way that Clark has been dealing with all of his enemies in this show, which is mostly just like, trying to save them and then turning them over to the legal authorities when necessary. The number of major threats that he's dealt with by hugging them is, at this point, up to, like, three.

01:44:30
Case
That's impressive.

01:44:31
Jmike
Yeah, because he had to save inner gang when he first met them because the tech was screwing up, and he.

01:44:36
Red
Saved Livewire from her own malfunctioning power pack in the first episode. It's nice that it's not just, oh, he's a decent guy. He doesn't want to hurt his enemies. He just wants them to stop causing problems. It's nice for the narrative to kind of reward him by being like, they've internalized that they want to help out too.

01:44:53
Case
Also, speaking to the dragon Ball zification of Superman, which is like, Goku tends to make his enemies his allies after an encounter with them.

01:45:01
Red
The exact opposite approach of, like, through the power of incredible violence and wanting to inflict more incredible violence on each other, you will become my rival. Rather than like, please, for the love of God, stop.

01:45:12
Case
Roach. To dealing with your enemies.

01:45:15
Red
Oh, yeah, absolutely. There's also in the background because this is the episode where, like, luthor and Slade are having, like, this weird, snippy dynamic with each other, and it's really funny. They keep calling Amanda Waller mommy, and it's weird.

01:45:29
Blue
I forgot about that.

01:45:30
Red
You probably blocked it out.

01:45:31
Blue
I wish I kept that forgotten.

01:45:35
Case
Yeah. We see the Metallos being tested out at, quote unquote, 10%, and I don't think they do that impressive of a show, frankly.

01:45:42
Red
No.

01:45:42
Jmike
What do you mean, case they stopped the spaceship?

01:45:44
Case
Yeah, momentarily. And then Livewire and Heatwave are able to take them out pretty easily. And so it's like, a 10%. They were defeated by these two.

01:45:54
Red
They put on a good showing. Sometimes Waller makes decisions that are meant to make her seem really smart and seeing the big picture. And sometimes she makes decisions so that she can put Lex Luthor in a position of power so he can be a real problem later.

01:46:05
Case
That's one of these decisions right here.

01:46:06
Red
Yeah, definitely.

01:46:08
Case
I do want to shout out the heatwave livewire romantic speech that they give as they're flying off, partially because it says payoff later that Lois calls back to it when she's apologizing to Superman. Yeah, but it's so wonderful where it's just like. And sometimes love is teaming up with people you hate to, like, go after the woman who kidnapped you. Aw, babe.

01:46:31
Red
It's very sweet. It's a very romantic episode.

01:46:34
Case
Good stuff. Good stuff. And it concludes with them getting the rocket off and opening a portal and then coming out of the portal right where Supergirl is, so that we can pick up at the exact same spot as we deal with the death of Clark Kent, which is one of the.

01:46:48
Red
Least encouraging episode titles in the whole season. It's like we got full metal scientist and then the death of Clark Kent.

01:46:55
Case
So now we're in Clark's brain, and we're seeing all the stuff going on. Meanwhile, we have Lois and Jimmy looking. Confronting Kara. And it comes out that Jimmy has this relationship with Kara, which Lois had not been aware of up until this point.

01:47:08
Red
She's a little bit out of the loop.

01:47:10
Jmike
Yeah, I was gonna say it's more of like, lois is confronting Kara. Jimmy is kind of like, hey, yeah.

01:47:16
Red
They'Re accidentally doing good cop, bad cop. But of course, Kara's not getting any of it. She's not picking up what they're putting down. I think it's so interesting that Lois immediately defaults to her dad's Mo in this. Like, she likes Superman. That doesn't mean she hasn't internalized all that stuff about aliens being. Being a threat and this is a really clean way to just demonstrate that. And Jimmy calls her out on it, and I think it's very cool how much she hates it.

01:47:40
Case
Yeah. Again, the damage, the baggage that Lois is dealing with this season is a very big part of everything that we've been seeing this whole time. So I like that coming off of the heist episode, we basically do another heist episode to a certain degree, where it's just like, we're going to sneak on board at this time, keeping the sort of, like, the energy from the previous going. So we get another bunch of badass fights. This season starts off slow in terms of the big fights and picks up a lot, and we start dealing with that as we get a simultaneous brainiac fight versus Kara and also a brainiac fight versus Clark in his head. After being subjected to all these midwives and trying to identify what is Superman's weakness.

01:48:18
Case
I like how when discussing all the fights Superman has been in, where it's like, oh, you can't be physically defeated. Like, even your hardest fight has never actually been, like, a physical threat against you. It's so much more that there's stuff going on, and I'm like, yes, that is exactly how you write a Superman story.

01:48:34
Red
Yeah. I think from a writing standpoint, nothing is more useful for a writer than a genius character who can figure out what's going on. And for the purposes of clarifying Superman, nothing is more convenient than a genius villain who wants to figure out what makes him tick. And the whole premise of this episode is brainiac is like, oh, God, I will find a way to defeat you, Supermande. And is like, oh, I see. I was going through this all wrong. Just trying to hit you really hard isn't going to work. I just need to hit you where it hurts. And it's just like, good. That's so clean. And this Superman is profoundly emotionally vulnerable, so it really works out well for us, the audience, and not for anybody else.

01:49:13
Case
Yeah, I like how we get a fake out that we think that Superman wins the day at the end of this all. Yeah, that was actually just, like, part of the black mercy programming, finally, like, fully taking over, like, giving him that little dopamine hit of a victory just in time to be like. And now we've constructed the ultimate simulation to, like, trap you in.

01:49:32
Jmike
Simulation complete. I gotta say, the brainiac suit looks awesome. Let's put it out there. Let's put it out there.

01:49:41
Blue
Oh, yeah.

01:49:42
Red
Yeah. The brainiac Superman redesign is so good.

01:49:46
Jmike
I was like, you know what?

01:49:47
Case
I want to be mad.

01:49:48
Jmike
I'm not. This looks awesome.

01:49:50
Red
Tits out, dogs out.

01:49:52
Case
Thank you for calling this outlande.

01:49:53
Blue
We also had a call to our attention that he has side slits on his obliques.

01:49:58
Case
Yeah, yeah.

01:49:59
Red
I could just imagine brainiac being like kryptonians. Photosynthesize. It is entirely tactical to expose more skin to the light of the sun.

01:50:09
Blue
Hideo Kojima.

01:50:13
Red
I think the only part of his design that I was a little on and a lot of people were, is just, like, the under the mouth.

01:50:18
Case
Oh, yeah.

01:50:18
Red
Yeah. The weirdest, where it kind of looks like he's just been eating licorice really badly, and it's just like, nah, I think if you got rid of that or just turned it into, like, a little chin.

01:50:26
Case
Well, the way Kara's outfit has, like, a little chinstrap.

01:50:29
Red
Yeah. Where it just kind of. It's not the worst. It's still a pretty solid look. And he's so distinct from Superman's normal design that even though I was like, oh, no, he's gonna use Clark's body for crimes, I was like, nobody's gonna recognize him. His hair is complete.

01:50:42
Case
Yeah, it's kind of a bit because, like, you sort of are getting that, like, end of Superman the animated series kind of scenario, but it barely matters. We see the fight with Kara in the next episode, which we might as well just move on to, because the pace of this is. We covered all the big beats of this one.

01:50:58
Red
Yeah, yeah. I think the closest we get is that Chara goes unequivocally from brainiac. Cannot be wrong to like, oh, no. Okay, I have to save my friends now because Lois and Jimmy are, like, their helmets crack. So that funny ha prank that Cara pulled on Clark because he didn't know they could breathe in space suddenly becomes a lot less funny. Cause now she has friends who can't breathe in space.

01:51:21
Jmike
I love the whole black mercy redo here. It's so awesome.

01:51:25
Red
Yeah, I love it. I think this is a case where it's different enough from the original that it doesn't quite hit the beats. I really like about the original, but that's fine, because it's serving a completely different purpose in the narrative. I like that they just pull in just like, yeah, we need something to go into Clark's head and cause problems. We already have one of those.

01:51:43
Jmike
We got a thing. Trust me.

01:51:46
Red
Not to worry. I know a guy.

01:51:47
Case
I can't believe asking this. You said you have a boat guy.

01:51:53
Red
Oh, we haven't even talked about Steve Lombard.

01:51:56
Case
Well, we'll come back to him in a minute anyway, so we can heap some praise or whatnot on Steve in a moment. Before we move on, I do want to say it is cool how we examine all the different moments of Superman's life before the simulation is sort of put together. It's like the processing is its own kind of thing that's going on here. It's very cool. It's a cool take on the black mercy. And I don't mind it being cybernetic instead of biological. That was an irrelevant detail that was just there for the sake of like, well, we need something that traps Superman in hallucination. It's cooler being like a semi magical plant. But, you know, that's also Alan Moore in the eighties while he was doing swamp thing.

01:52:34
Red
Yeah. Oh, a magical plant that does weird things to your brain. That's so unlike you, Mister Moore. And also, they already established this technology in previous episodes. It was planting in payoff because that's what Kara used show her memories and mention like, yeah, brainiac gave me these memories so I would have some understanding of my culture. It's like, oh, okay, so brainiac can give you memories that you can project out and edit them. That's interesting. Like, it's very good planting and payoff. And then the fact that he name drops. It's the black mercy. He's like, oh, no. That's what this has been this whole time?

01:53:02
Jmike
Oh, my God.

01:53:04
Red
Oh, no.

01:53:05
Case
So moving on to pierce the heavens, Superman, the Gurren Langen episode.

01:53:12
Jmike
They had a lot of fun with these name titles.

01:53:14
Red
Yeah, I like how about two thirds of them are serious tragic, like the death of Clark Kent and then full medalist scientists. So good.

01:53:26
Case
So here we actually get that mind controlled Superman. And so we get to see a face off between Kara and brainiac controlled Clark, which is quite effective. The fight choreography is really good here. And it's a different kind of fight choreography than what we saw in the first face off between Cara and Clark here. Hes so controlled and so fast with his blocking. Its really like a martial art tour de force with superpowers.

01:53:52
Red
Yeah, I think that the way that they choreograph brainiac controlling Superman is fascinating up to and including when they bust out kryptonite. And he just doesnt care. Hes like, yeah, you might kill Kal El. Im still going to be fine. Just a good point. Its like he doesnt live there anymore. Hes just using the body a weapon.

01:54:10
Case
Yeah. Meanwhile, Lois has gone inside the black mercy to try to free Superman. And it's wonderful. Well, yes, exactly. They do a groundhog Day episode. Somehow in the middle of this.

01:54:24
Red
Yeah. They stick her in a time loop, and then she tries to develop speedrun strats to break Clark out. It's so funny.

01:54:31
Blue
It's very edge of tomorrow.

01:54:33
Case
Yeah.

01:54:33
Blue
More than Groundhog Day.

01:54:35
Red
Your name is Clark and you're my boyfriend. What? Reset.

01:54:40
Jmike
Got me.

01:54:41
Red
Yeah.

01:54:41
Jmike
She's, like, hiding the bushes and she's like, what is that?

01:54:44
Case
Reset? And that's all happening simultaneously while Chara's trying to defend Earth effectively from mind controlled Superman. And we get this more and more elaborate speedrun that we're going through. But we also get to see, I guess, fractal personalities of brainiac inside the black mercy represented as Jerrel and Lara trying to argue and decide what to do against this extremely annoying person.

01:55:09
Red
Yeah. I love how much this is just profoundly the power of love. And it's finally forcing Clark and Lois to talk out their issues, but with the caveat that neither of them can 100% remember what's going on. Again, from a writing standpoint, this is so much smoother than if they could just sit down and talk it out without anything else going on. It's got so many heartwarming moments. A little bit where, like, Clark has remembered enough to be like, what do you mean? You stole a space. You are real insane. It is. You just beautiful. I love a moment of recognition of nobody else would be crazy enough to do this. It's just so good.

01:55:45
Case
There's some other good moments in here. We mentioned how Vicki Vale is ultimately not a bad person, and she and Perry white team up to be the distraction to allow Steve Lombard to break out everyone.

01:55:57
Red
Steve Lombard and his wolf van, which.

01:56:00
Case
I love the wolf pack like noise, but when he's just like, when we saw that flame bird was taken hostage, went, nah. Such a great callback to his whole deal.

01:56:12
Red
MVP. Yeah. I love how even the joke characters are fundamentally forces of good. And also, I like how they're pointing out, like, hey, Amanda Waller assuming direct control and instituting martial law because she hates one alien who has done only good things. Nobody liked that 0% approval rating.

01:56:33
Jmike
We kind of skipped over the whole thing that she put, like, all of her tropics in martial law.

01:56:38
Red
Yeah, that was just, like, a little quickie thing going on in the beginning of what? Olsen's eleven, I think. Yeah.

01:56:44
Jmike
Like, she was. She took all the evidence, all the feeds, all the camera stuff, because, like, she does an interview on the tv station, the guy was like, you know, it's kind of crazy. It's doing this because we have real footage of this happening there starts. And she cuts off like, oh, thank you so much. We really appreciate you for doing this. This is now classified information.

01:57:02
Red
They were really highlighting that everybody in Metropolis likes Superman, and that means nobody in Metropolis likes what Amanda Waller is doing to try and get rid of Superman. And it also kind of softened the last remaining sharp edge off of the thing I was worried about with the brainwashed Superman thing because, of course, the whole dealio, the way they did that in Superman, the animated series, is that it kind of gave him a 0% approval rating for a while, where it's like, remember that time he got brainwashed by Darkseid? That sucked. We don't trust him anymore. But in this case, it's like Amanda Waller already didn't trust him. She was already going to treat Superman coming back to Earth as an excuse to pull out all the kryptonite robots and beat the shit out of him.

01:57:38
Red
So the fact that when he comes back, it is brainiac doesn't affect her judgment at all. It just makes her plan fail incredibly fast. And I thought that was great because it actually did a really good job of, like, smoothing over the way for, hey, now, if Superman comes back, Waller is primed to see that as a good thing, and that's huge because she's really the only holdout except for Luthor, who just hates him on principle. Cause they've already done a very careful job of establishing, like, season one was all Clark needed to get people liking Superman. Like, overall, he's got the public reputation he's supposed to have, which is big, and I liked that. But again, early in the season, I was really worried because they were really amping up. Like, do we trust this alien with security?

01:58:20
Red
So I'm really glad that they just kind of established, like, waller was never gonna be like, oh, now that Superman is evil, I don't trust him. No, she already was gonna hate him, but now that she's seen what an evil Superman actually looks like and then good Superman comes back to fix it, she's like, oh, okay, this suddenly seems better by comparison.

01:58:39
Jmike
Well, here's the thing. Do they actually know that it is actually Superman?

01:58:43
Red
That is the question.

01:58:45
Jmike
Yeah, because, like, the entire time. Yeah, the entire time, he says, because I'm brainiac, brainiac. So they wouldn't really know.

01:58:52
Red
And also, it's pretty clear that it wouldn't really. I guess the vibe I got is it wouldn't make a tremendous difference if it's like, oh, has Superman turned evil? And it's like, no, I'm an alien consciousness inhabiting his body. If Waller was thinking clearly about it, she'd be like, oh, so he can be controlled by actually evil people. That still makes him a liability. That's a concern. That, frankly, is a legitimate thing about Superman. He's so powerful, if he's vulnerable, mind control, he is actually a danger, but only if mind control like that exists.

01:59:21
Red
But in this case, I was kind of under the impression of, like, she does, he doesn't look like Superman anymore, and he's insisting he's brainiac, and she's just assuming he's Superman on principle, because it's like Superman left and now this guy's back, and he kind of looks like Superman.

01:59:33
Case
Well, she was also primed that whatever thing was coming was going to be Superman. Because when they're like, oh, there's an evil alien warlord coming. Well, we're going to take out Supermande when he comes, it's like, no, we're not talking about Superman.

01:59:44
Red
Yeah, I think it's a little ambiguous if anyone thinks that Mister black suit boob window was Superman, but I think it's pretty easy to swing it either way, because either it's like, that was Superman's body under evil alien control, but Superman came back and saved the day, versus that was some other guy. But good news, Superman came back and saved the day. It all calculates out the same.

02:00:03
Case
If it had been, say, zod, as like, the figure flying over there, who would be able to tell the difference, necessarily, if we're talking about, like, a similarly sized person in a black suit like that.

02:00:14
Red
Yeah, it's like, I think he's a brunette, sir. Which is why I was glad that brainiac Superman looked so different and it wasn't just Superman running around being evil, because that was the thing. I was really potentially frustrated.

02:00:25
Jmike
He's like, waving his hands and like, all their robots are being hacked and overwritten. This will do perfectly fine for me.

02:00:34
Red
That was the other thing. As soon as Waller was like, not to worry, my giant army of kryptonian katonian robots will be able to repel this threat. It's like, oh, honey, he's os compatible with those things. You are so fucked.

02:00:46
Case
Yeah, it's nice that they point out that all the kryptonian tech has similar weaknesses and similar systems.

02:00:53
Red
Yup.

02:00:53
Case
Yeah. The metallas are not going to be a viable threat in really protecting the world. From a kryptonian threat, which is good.

02:01:00
Red
Because it encourages Luthor to go even worse. Huh.

02:01:05
Case
Through this all, Lois reveals while she's inside the black mercy simulation that she has superpowers in this world because Clark has such a high opinion of her, apparently.

02:01:15
Red
It's so sweet.

02:01:16
Case
Yeah, it's. It's wonderfully romantic in this whole thing. And it's just good hearted anime. Again, good hearted anime bullshit. When they, like, break through the sky, that's like holding them back as they, like, come back into the real world. Fun stuff. Continuing the sort of simulator instantaneous battle that we saw in the previous episode in this scenario. Now the mind controlled Superman is able to free himself, but sort of goes down in the process.

02:01:40
Jmike
Down somewhere no one saw him fall to.

02:01:45
Red
Yeah, and he is kind of obscured by anime dusk cloud when his suit is changing back. So, I mean, who is to say? It doesn't seem to really matter. Mostly everyone's like, oh, thank goodness Superman is back and can save us. Nobody was like, oh, my God, Superman has turned evil. Cause Waller just assumed he was always evil. So they really did a good job of softening all the corners off of this plot point that I was really worried were gonna be super annoying.

02:02:09
Case
So why don't we move on to the finale? My adventures with Supergirl.

02:02:13
Red
Yes. So good.

02:02:15
Case
So the metallas have been taken over and shit's gone bad. We see the stand of the human defense Corps trying to destroy kandorous, and it does not work at all.

02:02:26
Red
Who could have foreseen his outcome?

02:02:28
Case
Yeah, this is not going to go well. Waller decides to make a stand. Lex runs off. And this is when we get reinforcements because the cavalry arrives. Livewire shows up. So does doctor irons making a reappearance.

02:02:39
Red
I'm so glad. I really thought they were going to put him on the shelf because his suit got taken away. Of course. He just built another one.

02:02:45
Case
Well, you know, he really cares about his community.

02:02:48
Red
Yeah. Sometimes that means you build a giant robot suit in your garage even though your last one got confiscated by an intern.

02:02:54
Case
Yeah. So we get all these people back, and Sam Lane makes his triumphant return as well, saving Amanda Waller.

02:03:02
Red
They called him the main man, and I was so briefly excited. And then. So they called him the main man.

02:03:09
Case
And I was like, are we really getting Lobo in this finale?

02:03:12
Red
And then, no, it's like seven characters we've already met and gotten established. And then also Lobo shows up for the first time. Surprise. I've been recruiting all your season.

02:03:24
Case
One bad guys putting together my own heist.

02:03:27
Red
Amazing.

02:03:28
Case
You, bastich.

02:03:29
Red
Tragic.

02:03:30
Case
But we get the final confrontation. Superman, with the cavalry, has his final confrontation against Brainiac, who uses the eradicator protocols to put chara into berserker mode. And Superman hugs her, and so does Lois and Jimmy, by the power of friendship.

02:03:46
Red
Literally the power of friendship. We got every flavor of fighting off the brainwashing in this season, and I felt so fed. It was great. We got the I know you're in there somewhere fight. I think he even says that to Kara.

02:03:58
Jmike
He does.

02:03:58
Red
But we also got the full on possession, where it's just like, the power of love has allowed Clark to break out, and now he's back in his body, and everything's fine. We got all of them in, like, the same two characters. It was amazing.

02:04:09
Case
We get Kara and Clark. Once Kara's broken free of her brainwashing, pushing the spaceship into the sun, which is always a classic superhero kind of situation there.

02:04:18
Red
Just throw it into the sun, get to yell on the horn.

02:04:22
Case
And I like a couple of things that happens here. I like when they are too close to the sun, and it's just like, I don't think we'll be able to escape the gravitational pull, but it's like, oh, hey. All the kryptonite damage that they had all of a sudden turns into, like, golden sun veins on their body, which is a fun moment there.

02:04:37
Jmike
Kara's like, oh, wait, we're kryptonian. This doesn't matter to us anymore.

02:04:41
Red
Yeah, I kind of. This was an odd time to initially bring up the concept that the sun gives them power. I was like, you had so many opportunities to bring this up. Like, I knew that. I expected Kara to know that. But the fact that it's like, oh, wait a minute, we're photosynthetic. I don't know.

02:04:58
Jmike
It was like that after, like, oh, yeah, we're kryptonian. We don't have to breathe in space. And, like, you forget, like, the most important part is, like, oh, wait, the sun. Oh, my gosh.

02:05:08
Red
When brainiac was wiping her memories, he got a little sloppy with it and, like, accidentally erased kryptonian bio 101. She's just constantly rediscovering all of her powers.

02:05:17
Case
Oh, my God. I have heat vision.

02:05:18
Red
Yeah. Whoa.

02:05:20
Case
So brainiac, in a last ditch, like, charges himself up with kryptonite. It doesn't work. And then he tries to use a kryptonite blade, and, like, scars kara briefly.

02:05:30
Red
It's gone in the end credits, so she clearly heals up pretty.

02:05:33
Case
Oh, is it, like, it's still there when they go to play catch?

02:05:35
Red
So, yeah, it was part of a lot of her concept art was giving her, like, a cool cheek scar, but it's a. In the ending credits, so it clearly goes away.

02:05:43
Jmike
The sun healed her.

02:05:44
Red
Yeah, she just flew into the sun again.

02:05:47
Case
They defeat brainiac, and Kara goes unconscious and wakes up at the Kent house. Then we get soup on the roof with them all.

02:05:54
Red
Soup all on the roof. Soup all on the roof.

02:05:57
Case
But then we also get some after credit stuff. So we get the Lex Corp starting to get set up, and it looks like Lex and Deathstroke are now partners.

02:06:06
Red
Yeah. They've put aside their differences, develop the most toxic yaoi relationship of all time. It's gonna be great. This is gonna be unbelievably messy.

02:06:15
Case
We also see a smallville barbecue with, like, a lot of people from the show, which made me start to question, like, wait, who knows what in the situation?

02:06:24
Red
Yeah. Was this just Clark being like, wow, it's crazy that I missed all of that. Hey, you should all come out to the family farm for me and my cousin, who I've always had, who's always.

02:06:33
Jmike
Been here the entire time.

02:06:35
Blue
Yeah, I'm pretty sure cat Grant was in that lineup, too, which is asking for trouble.

02:06:39
Red
Yeah. Jeez. Like, there's, like, so many reporters there. They did a lot of work to make the finale feel like a grand finale. You can really smell that. They didn't know they were getting a season three, and they were like, we're going to end this on a high note, on, God. And it worked really well, and I am excited to see where they go from here because they did such a good job of ending it very satisfyingly. Really feeling like they wrapped up most things. We kind of breezed over it because the fight's really good, but it also resolves pretty cleanly with, again, power friendship hug.

02:07:07
Red
There's one sequence that I just loved, which is when Clark is basically running from eradicator chara, and she's, like, flanked by this giant fleet of, I don't know, heat seeking missiles or whatever the hell brainiac just fired. And it's terrifying in slow motion. And we see Clarke panicking and panicking, and then we get this brief memory when he's a kid flying up above the cloud layer into the sun, and we see him calm down and be like, okay, here's how I'm going to fix this. I love that moment so much. They do a lot of showing the moment when Clark is like, okay, I'm done for out about this. We're just going to solve this. And I really like it characterization wise. It's great because he's such a nervous wreck most of the time, but he really does kind of thrive in crisis.

02:07:47
Case
One thing we also gloss over is that Superman gets a new uniform in this episode.

02:07:51
Jmike
Oh, yeah.

02:07:52
Red
Oh, yeah. Boo. Do you have any opinions on the new uniform?

02:07:56
Case
So I think it's mostly fine. I don't like the shoulder pads.

02:07:59
Red
I'm glad that the animators couldn't decide whether to include the shoulder pads from shot to shot because I also don't like the shoulder pads.

02:08:05
Blue
There are a lot of visual glitches with this suit in the early minutes of this episode because the line width of the gold border around the s changes radically from shot to shot. Sometimes it's thick. Sometimes it's, like, barely even there. His shoulder pads change in size pretty notably. And there is one shot where he's, like, lying down on the ground or something, and he just doesn't have his belt. His belt is just nothing there. So I don't know, like, what back end production pipeline led to this happening the way it did. But there is some wonky visual glitches with the suit. It's a good suit. Aside from the shoulders, I like it. I like the boots a lot. I really like the boots with the gold trim, but it's just. It's just a weird choice.

02:08:47
Red
I choose to believe that because the suits canonically react, like, psychically to the mind of the wearer. He just can't remember all the details. And, like, every time he gets hit, it, like, changes a little bit. Cause he's distracted. Also, bring back the shorts. It doesn't look right without the shorts.

02:09:01
Blue
It makes a short.

02:09:01
Case
This wouldn't have the shorts because, like, the shorts was the thing that his mom added as opposed to, like, the base kryptonian kind of design.

02:09:09
Red
It would be so funny if Ma Kent is like, okay, you get the shorts, and you get this fetching little tennis skirt. That'll really help. You know, I could just really see that working.

02:09:17
Case
Here's your skort.

02:09:18
Red
Yeah, it's very utilitarian.

02:09:21
Case
Yeah, I do like the Supergirl look, though. And, like, they're fundamentally the same design, except her cape is, like.

02:09:27
Red
It's a scarf cape. Like brainiac had when he was Superman, but good.

02:09:32
Case
Or, like, Gohan has.

02:09:34
Red
Yeah, also like, gohan has. I see you, villain. I've watched the same nerd shit, so.

02:09:42
Case
I love that look. And I love them, like, going off to, like, solve a. I forget what the emergency at the very end of the episode is.

02:09:48
Red
They hear somebody scream. It's just fun seeing two different people with super hearing in a group of people who don't have super hearing. Just be like, oh, you heard that, too? Okay, we gotta go. Just, again, just a little bit of visual storytelling of, like, Clark's really not alone anymore. There's actually somebody else who's on the same page as him the whole time. And that's huge.

02:10:06
Case
Yeah, a fun season. It doesn't have quite as many highs as the first season where each episode was kind of a banger, but it's a solid base arc, and I'm really glad that we've been on this journey and that the show continues to know what it is, which is, like, taking the Superman lore and adding anime bullshit.

02:10:23
Red
Yes. That's all I wanted. Yeah, I was really happy with how the season wrapped up. Cause as I've mentioned, there were a lot of points in the season where I was like, they could take this in a few directions, and I don't like a lot of them. And then they always went in the direction I wanted them to go to. I felt very safe by the end of the season. But again, I think I've said before, past quality is no guarantee of future quality. When went into this season, I was nervous because season one had been so good. And then season two, like, when episode four hit, I was like, oh. Oh, no, she's faltering, captain. And then they pulled it back together, and it was great. But my faith wavered.

02:10:59
Red
I thought maybe they were going to corrupt the incorruptible Superman and deny their own thesis about, like, superman's more interesting when he's fundamentally an incorruptible good person. And then they didn't do that, and I was really relieved.

02:11:09
Blue
Don't make him evil. Just make him sad.

02:11:11
Red
Yeah, just make him angsty and then give him the power of love to fight it off with a anime bullshit. That's all I need. Power, friendship, and hugs, baby. I'm excited for them to be like, you can't hug this one to death, Superman. It's got kryptonite in it. It's like, watch me. That's how we get death of Superman, probably. We'll see.

02:11:31
Case
I mean, the way that kryptonite spreads in this iteration of it, I could see that being kryptonite spikes coming out of a thing for doomsday.

02:11:39
Red
Oh, wait, that's how they killed him in the movie that I didn't like.

02:11:42
Case
Well, anyways, I don't know.

02:11:43
Jmike
I gotta talk about that.

02:11:45
Red
We shall speak that evil here.

02:11:46
Case
Not the point. The point was, this is another fun season. I really love Chara as an addition. I think this is gonna be a fun foundation for season three. So, red and blue. Thank you for coming back for this conversation.

02:11:59
Red
Yeah, well, thanks for having us.

02:12:01
Blue
We'll loop back this time next year and see what we've got to talk about.

02:12:06
Red
Once again, demonstrated we have a near endless wellspring of Superman opinions ready to dish at any given moment.

02:12:12
Jmike
Yeah, well, we've already said future shots.

02:12:14
Red
Oh, yeah. We've called that shot. That's weird.

02:12:19
Case
It should be, like, annual tradition for us to just see which predictions of ours were right.

02:12:23
Red
Ooh. Ooh. True. Yeah.

02:12:27
Blue
I mean, I feel like they blew their load at Comic Con, so that's not fair.

02:12:31
Red
We had a prediction that didn't come true. We thought they set up Chekhov's invitation to gotham. And it's like, maybe Lois is going to gotham at the end of the season. Like, obviously, Clark can go there whenever he wants, so, like, they don't need to break up or anything, but, like, Lois could go to Gotham and this is how we get Bruce Wayne. And then the show said all that and was like, actually, no, she's going to stay in Metropolis and work at the Daily Planet. She doesn't want to be the next Vicki Bale. She wants to be the first Lois lane. I was like, good. That's good. We could have had Bruce Wayne. It's fine. I'm not mad.

02:13:01
Jmike
You don't want the weird low triangle thing to happen again.

02:13:03
Red
That's a good point, actually. I guess that wouldn't be good either. But there's so many good ways it could go. It's just, we called that shot because it would have been an easy way for them to be like, we're still going to be dating, but, like, a little bit different. But instead they were like, no, screw you. This is a Shoujo anime. It's going to resolve satisfyingly with the romantic subplot. None of that oh, we'll do it long distance bullshit.

02:13:22
Case
I mean, does it count as long distance with Superman, though?

02:13:25
Red
Well, that is the question.

02:13:26
Blue
Yeah, but I think that he said, I can be across there in five.

02:13:31
Red
I thought it was cute, but, yeah, were like, they could do that. And then they pointedly chose not to. And that was cool. I like it.

02:13:38
Jmike
What about season four? We get world's finest for an entire season.

02:13:43
Blue
Allegedly. I read after we talked about this on our after show show, I read that they have a bad embargo for my.

02:13:51
Red
As if they could sneak in like a coward. The thing is, here's the thing. You can do the Bat embargo, especially in early Batman. He is constantly taking on other identities to, like, sneak in and investigate stuff. No bad embargo, but we get matches Malone.

02:14:07
Case
Or we just get Robin.

02:14:08
Red
I'm calling that shot. Or we just get Robin. This would be very early for Robin.

02:14:13
Case
No, no. Like, Bruce Wayne as Robin, which has sometimes been, like, lore stuff.

02:14:18
Red
Really?

02:14:19
Case
Yeah.

02:14:19
Red
Huh. Weird.

02:14:22
Case
It's very silver agey. The big one that I'm drawing from is actually the eighties retelling of the Batman origin, which was the untold Tales of Batman, which was like, I forget who wrote it. But then John Byrne was the artist on that doing an origin story. And they dwell on. Remember back in the day when I was first learning to be a detective, I disguised myself as Robin.

02:14:41
Red
That's so needlessly confusing. Robin is just Dick Grayson's circus outfit with a domino. Did he just call that shot?

02:14:49
Case
He did perfectly replicate the shot.

02:14:52
Red
Wow. He really is the world's greatest detective, solving mysteries that don't even exist yet.

02:14:57
Case
Well, this is like the same kind of logic where they had Thomas Wayne wear a Batman outfit to a costume party where he stopped a crime, and that's actually why he was gunned down by Joe chill. The Batman lore is byzantine and weird. Yeah.

02:15:13
Blue
All the more reason the showrunners are probably, like, we're not touching it with the tendency foot pole.

02:15:17
Red
I'm holding out for matches Malone. I'll be scouring the backgrounds for a guy who looks like Bruce Wayne in a fake mustache.

02:15:25
Case
Yeah, I mean, like, I'd be fine if next season they just tease Bruce Wayne the way they tease Lex Luthor in season one. We could do something with that. I'm curious. Yeah, it'd be a lot of fun to see what happens with all this stuff.

02:15:35
Red
I want this Superman to interact with more characters. That's really it. Especially after this season did so much work to set up like this. Superman doesn't have to be alone anymore. Isn't that great? And it's, like, great. All the people he's teaming up with are bad guys from season one and steel. Can we please give him, like, wonder Woman at least?

02:15:53
Jmike
I mean, we.

02:15:54
Case
We could have had Green Lantern.

02:15:58
Red
Yeah. Bring in a Green Lantern. Bring in Jones. I don't care. I think it would be so fun.

02:16:03
Jmike
Jon Jones might already be there.

02:16:05
Red
He could be anybody. True. Yeah. Oh, man, there's so many options. But the thing is, like, I've seen people occasionally complain about, like, oh, can't a show about Superman just be about Superman for a change? And it's like, yeah, but this is such a good version of Superman. I want to see him play off of more interesting situations. Giving him other characters who are his peers to interact with lets him show off more facets of his characterization. In the same way, we got a side of him when he was interacting with Kara that we had never seen before because he'd never had the opportunity. This is a character that I want to see more of, and one of the ways you do that is by crossing a over with stuff. I'm excited for more, and I'm glad we're getting more.

02:16:39
Case
Yeah. I wouldn't be surprised if next season, we get a little bit more of the broader DC Universe sort of unveiled to him. It would be in keeping with the pace that the animated series did, where it's like, okay, we trickle in a flash episode here and then eventually Greenland episode and stuff like that.

02:16:55
Red
Yeah, a lot of little stealth pilots.

02:16:56
Case
We got our steel episode. We'll see what else. I wouldn't be surprised if we get. Get some more of the broader DCU. We know that we're getting Superboy, so we're calling the shot that it's a future trunk situation, but, you know, maybe not.

02:17:11
Red
So they'd be basically comboing him with the, like, young justice impulse origin, where it's like he's from the future, but he's pretending.

02:17:19
Jmike
Well, I mean, we already know there's a whole legion of Lois's out there.

02:17:23
Case
True.

02:17:23
Jmike
So anything is possible.

02:17:27
Red
I'm wondering if they're ever going to bring in a brainiac five after what they did with this brainiac. I wonder what that would look like.

02:17:32
Case
Ooh, that would be interesting.

02:17:34
Blue
Unhealthy.

02:17:35
Red
Yeah. Also, this car is already in a committed, adorable, romantic subplot with Jimmy. So, like, why would you bring in Brainiac five?

02:17:43
Case
Yeah, that would be wrong. That'd be so wrong.

02:17:46
Red
Also, with brainiac being her dad, it becomes significantly weird.

02:17:50
Case
It's way creepier.

02:17:51
Red
Yeah. All right. Probably no brainiac five.

02:17:54
Case
I imagine that they are not going to do the Legion of superheroes in the next season.

02:17:58
Red
I mean, they're probably not even gonna get to the formation of, like, the Teen Titans in this one.

02:18:02
Case
So the 31st probably not. Well, but the legion is part of the young superman lore, so it's not out of the question. But I doubt that we're gonna get Legion of superheroes in the next season.

02:18:12
Red
31St century is a bit of a tall ask for something that's probably not even gonna let us see persuade.

02:18:16
Case
I wouldn't be surprised if we got a proper bizarro next season. A clone of Superman would be fun to see in this world.

02:18:22
Red
Oh, that would be fun. If we get a clone of Superman. But it's not Superboy. Bizarro and Superboy is the Mirai trunk situation. Yeah, there's a lot they could do. I'm excited to see.

02:18:33
Case
And hopefully we can pencil you guys in for the next time and we can revisit this after season three comes out.

02:18:38
Red
Yes. Sign me up for one year from today or whenever it's coming out.

02:18:43
Case
So thank you again for coming back on the show. I'm sure, frankly, based on just like our respective audiences, that like the Venn diagram is a circle and your circle is way larger than ours. But what have you guys got going on? Where can people find you, follow you, give your plugs and we'll start with red.

02:18:58
Red
Most our plugs are the same. Overly sarcastic productions on YouTube will get you both of our videos. We very occasionally post on Twitter these days. That's not even really a plug at this point. When we have the release our casting podcast, which is like an after show. And then we record the after show, which is for our patrons where we talked about my adventures Superman, I think three separate times at this point.

02:19:17
Case
Just two.

02:19:18
Red
Well, season two we did twice, but I think we did one about the first season. Wait, maybe I don't remember at this point.

02:19:23
Blue
I have no idea.

02:19:24
Case
You at least referenced it because that's what prompted me to email you all being like, hey, would you want to come on to talk about it since.

02:19:29
Red
It sounds like you like it? Yes, always. But yeah, that's about it. I feel like everyone else on this call is so sleepy. I don't widely perfect. We're handshake meme and over here on.

02:19:43
Blue
Snoozing over here, same plugs is what Red said. It's just YouTube and the podcast.

02:19:49
Case
Also the book.

02:19:50
Blue
Oh, we don't need to talk about that.

02:19:53
Red
The book, we got the comic. I'm on some D and D podcast, but that's all secondary. If you want how we talk about Superman, you want the YouTube channel? There's a bunch on there.

02:20:01
Case
J Mike, how about you? Where can people find you and follow you.

02:20:04
Jmike
I'm not a YouTube celebrity. I'm not that popular. I'm just on Twitter at jmike 101 occasionally.

02:20:12
Case
As for me, you can find me on and all the platforms with Ace Aiken except for Instagram, where I'm holding on to my high school aim screen name for dear life, where you can find me at Quetzalcoatl five because I was very pretentious in high school.

02:20:24
Red
You picked like the hardest to spell one I know. Amazing how many cues you got in this one. Go fish.

02:20:32
Case
Otherwise, you can find us on our discord server. We've got links on our website or all over the Internet. If you find any of our social profiles, you'll find a link to our discord. You can come chat and interact with us directly. It is a really great time. Also, a great discord server is the overly sarcastic productions one. Yeah, so just chat on that. Is that patron exclusive? No.

02:20:52
Red
Anyone can join if they can find the link in the description. Okay.

02:20:54
Case
Yes, so that's a great time as well. Go check that as well. Check out certainpov.com where you can find other great shows. Check out the certain POV YouTube channel where we post these episodes, as well as my Superman analogue videos up and then circle back for our next episode. But until then, stay super man.

02:21:23
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.

02:21:45
Case
Video games are a unique medium.

02:21:46
Blue
They can tell stories, immerse us in strange, fantastic worlds, blur the very boundaries of our reality.

02:21:54
Case
But at the end of the day.

02:21:55
Blue
Video games are fun. Whatever fun is to you. I'm Jeff Moonan.

02:21:59
Case
And I am Matt Ace, aka Stormageddon.

02:22:01
Jmike
And on fun and games, we talk.

02:22:03
Blue
About the history, trends, and community of video games. It's a celebration of all the games we play and all the fun we find within them. And there's so many more games out there, so we hope you'll share in that conversation with us.

02:22:16
Case
Fun and Games podcast with Matt and Jeff.

02:22:18
Blue
Find us on certainpov.com or wherever you get your podcasts and happy gaming.

02:22:23
Case
Cpov certainpov.com dot.