A quartet of kids with pharmaceutically enhanced intellects decide to make Metropolis their playground. Lois and Clark are on the story, but learn that the drug, if used too often, will wipe the kids' brains out.
Superman needs a threat, a danger, to make him work, but a bunch of kids playing pranks on a large scale present no kind of threat to the populace at large let alone to the man with the red cape. As a result, this epiosde is little more than annoying and tedious. As the kids are what Hollywood considers to be 'cute' they are also annoying and cloying.
Worst Episode so far.
A friend of Clark's father brings him a glowing green rock to keep because the authorities are after it and have taken over his farm. Lois and Clark fly out to Smallville to do the story, but encounter Traske, an alien hunter with a hatred of Superman and now armed with a rock that can kill his prey.
Kryptonite makes its bow in the series early on and proves to be as dangerous to this incarnation as any other. Armed with it, Traske, the alien hunter from Strange Visitor(From Another Planet) makes a credible foe, threatening not only the weakened Clark, but also his parents.
The fun comes in the form of Lois's encounter with Smallville and its people. She is a small town girl herself who has cast out everything other than the city and so sneers at everything. Her faux pas with the locals are quite amusing and make up for the routine resolution of the plot.
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It's the middle of winter, but Metropolis is suffering a heatwave like no other and the suspected cause of all this is Superman. The use of his powers seems to exactly match the hitches in temperature. The locals turn on the Man of Steel and demand that he not use his powers. When he can't stand by and let innocents die, they banish him. That doesn't stop Lois looking into potential links to the Lexcorp Nuclear power plant, though.
This is a nice and original idea, using the idea of global warming and ecological concerns to put Superman in a difficult position. Unfortunately, the plot doesn't go much beyond the basic concept and the finale as Superman rushes into a reactor core to stop a meltdown is rushed and completely anticlimatic.
The story of the heatwave does give Tracy Scoggins an excuse to wear nothing but a series of bikinis throughout, which is not to complained about. The increasingly sugary edge, however, is to be complained about.
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A perfume creator who has been spurned by Lex Luthor for not meeting his diabolical deadlines tests her new perfume on the staff of the Daily Planet, causing them to lose all inhibitions.
Using a love potion in a confined area isn't exactly epic in scale when it comes to criminal mayhem, but there is undeniable fun to be had watching Teri Hatcher's Lois throw herself at Clark in increasingly blatant ways that culminate in a dance of the two veils. Perry gets himself a lawsuit and a black eye whilst Jimmy gets a supermodel somehow. Cat spends time with the photocopier guy.
It's bright, breezy and fun in an utterly disposable fashion.
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Lois checks into the honeymoon suite of a hotel for some R&R, but instead happens upon a corrupt senator receiving his pay in the office opposite. Clark and Lois are then required to pose as newlyweds to see what else they can learn and discover that a military test is about to be sabotaged in such a way that Metropolis will be submerged beneath a giant tidal wave.
It's only appropriate that after an episode where a love potions sends everyone mad with love there should be an episode set in a honeymoon suite. This riffs on the SUPERMAN 2 Niagara Falls scenario, but has enough fun in the script for the leads to play with and keep fresh. It also steals scenes from REAR WINDOW with much less success.
Where it really falls down, however, is in the denoument. The giant tidal wave is created and dealt with in scant seconds and with apparently nobody else noticing it ever existed. The show might be more about the relationship between Clark Kent and Lois Lane, but he is Superman after all and you can't just ignore that. A big finale that is such a (pardon the pun) damp squib only hurts the show.
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A giant asteroid is heading for Earth and only Superman can save the day by flying into it at maximum speed. Unfortunately, the impact causes him to crash back to Earth with no memory of who he is. As Lois and his parents try to help him regain his memory, a fragment of the asteroid continues on its deadly trajectory.
There is, at least, a real sense of impending doom in this episode where the stakes are nothing less than the end of the world. The scenes where Perry lets Jimmy write his story knowing nobody will ever read it, or where he says goodbye to Lois without ever saying goodbye are actually quite touching even though the outcome is never once in doubt.
The special effects remain less than special in the flying area, but this is a TV budget after all and the crash back down in nicely handled.
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Lois is witness to the murder of a prominent, but reclusive, scientist and becomes the target of Mr Makeup, an assassin who can make himself look like practically anyone. Both Clark and Superman are around to protect her, but how can you be protected against everyone?
A much smaller threat this time around, and a less fantastic one, but the main threat is to the character of Lois. Teri Hatcher goes from hard-bitten journalist to panicked kitted so many times it's a wonder she can remember what day of the week it was supposed to be. None of it proves to be believable and Superman lets the villain go a couple of times before he finally gets around to catching him. As for the special effects, there aren't any as Superman does practically nothing.
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The children of the Metropolis rich are being kidnapped and ransomed for huge amounts. When a servant's child is taken, Lois and Clark pick up a lead that a magician might be involved and that leads them into a place where not everything is as it appears and even Superman can be hypnotised.
Penn Jillette of the magic duo Penn and Teller guests as the magician most likely, but there are a couple of other suspects to play with and the one most likely is always the one who didn't. Or are they? There's magic on display, but the plot is anything but. The script, however, has enough entertaining character interplay to get by on and Lois's intense dislike of magic is fun.
You also get to see Tracy Scoggins in possibly the shortest skirt known to mankind.
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Lois hides a murderer who has escaped from his trial and whom she believes to be innocent. He worked for a computer genius and the search for the actual killer turns more serious when a computer virus is released that might wipe out human civilisation as we know it.
John Shea's Lex Luthor gets to do nothing in this episode other than muse on what he would do if civilisation fell and if he could survive. These are actually the more interesting parts of a plot that has to shoehorn in a potential marriage breakup for Clark's parents for no readily discernable reason.
Melanie Mayron's female detective is far too good a character for this and her bonding with Lois in the face of certain death is the high point.
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Clark learns of a holographic globe containing a message from his Kryptonian father that reveals all about his alien origin, just in time for the globe to be stolen by a teenage thief.
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A rival newspaper starts a run of scoops on the Planet involving disasters, leading Lois and Clark to suspect that someone is causing the mishaps deliberately in order to report them.
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Superman is putting himself about all over the globe saving ships and planes, which is a bit of surprise to Clark since he's still safely esconced in Metropolis. Who is this imposter? He is as strong as Superman, looks exactly like him and can fly as well. The only way to find out is to challenge him one on one.
Straight from the plot of SUPERMAN III, this is a story of good Superman against evil Superman. It comes as no surprise that Lex Luthor is behind it all and it also doesn't come as any surprise that the face off between the two on a movie set turns out to be an almighty damp squib. The emotional impact of the eventual fate of the faux Superman is also a good deal more muted than we might have expected.
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A Saturday evening's work at the Daily Planet goes awry when a group of terrorists break in. Trapped with Lois, Perry White and Lex Luthor, Clark is forced to pretend to be equally helpless, hoping he can find out what the villains are after before they start killing prisoners.
There really isn't enough plot here to fill up the running time and so a flashback to prohibition era Metropolis is thrown in to show how a vault load of money came to be in the offices of the Daily Planet. Whilst this is initially fun, seeing all the actors getting to play someone else, it soon palls. And, as usual , there's precious little of Superman to go around, though for once there is an excuse for that.
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The Daily Planet has fallen on hard times and, just before it goes bankrupt, it is saved by Lex Luthor. Lex also surprises Lois by proposing to her. When Superman can't promise her a life, Lois accepts Luthor's proposal. A bomb goes off and the planet is destroyed. It seems like the end of an era.
Step forward John Shea as Lex Luthor and take a bow. The character brings together a bunch of schemes that lay the entire cast of heroes low and leaves them in a place where victory would appear to be his. Everyone gets to admit to their innermost feelings (well almost) and the romance side of the story is everything since Superman does pretty much nothing.
The cast, though, manage to pull it off as they have managed to be appealing enough over the length of the show to allow us to forgive its serious shortcomings in the superheroing department.
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As the date for Lois Lane's wedding to Lex Luthor comes ever closer, Clark gathers together the old gang from the Daily Planet to see if they can find out what really happened to destroy the newspaper. Luthor is behind it all, of course, and the chunk of kryptonite that he has obtained means that his victory over Superman will be complete.
Kryptonite is, of course, the one thing that can truly hurt Superman, so Lex Luthor getting hold of a bunch of it is not a good thing. What is a good thing is that John Shea has managed to convince us that Lex Luthor's naturally cruel nature is such that he would want to keep Superman alive to torture rather than just kill him off as soon as possible, otherwise that part of the plot would be hard to swallow.
As it is, this is a satisfying conclusion to the series even without the presence of the ever reliable James Earl Jones whose scene with Lane Smith effortlessly steal the whole show. The popularity of the show will ensure that this story is far from over.
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OTHER LOIS & CLARK SEASONS
