Tuesday TV Touchbase: Superman & Lois

Before we get to this week's Tuesday TV Touchbase on Superman & Lois, here's some news on another TV series based on a comic book.

It's a given that shows that haven't been written yet are going to be impacted by the still ongoing Writers Guild strike. But at least we would still get our shows that were done before the strike. 

Season 4 of The Boys is as I understand in the can and ready to go. But producer Eric Kripke has said that in solidarity with the Writers Guild, season 4 of The Boys will not be released until the strike is resolved. 

Here's a spoiler about season 4 of The Boys: people 'SPLODE! 

On with the touchbase! 

A couple of weeks back, Andrea and I caught up to the season 3 finale of Superman & Lois.  

 

Most of the season was taken up with Lois Lane’s battle with breast cancer.  Elizabeth Tilloch conveyed Lois’s battle with cancer such raw emotional power, the ups and downs of being defiant in the face of death and also being worn down by the grueling fight. Lois gets a double mastectomy and no one hides from this with Tilloch wearing some form of harness or binder to convey Lois’s new status.  Everything Tilloch had done with this role and this storyline deserves greater recognition. If there is any justice in this world, Emmy voters should pry their eye balls away from the series du jour on streaming and pay this actress and her performance some damn attention. 

 

Hell, let’s give Tyler Hoechlin some  credit as well as Clark Kent. Clark had his own emotional journey to traverse, working to find that right balance of being supportive of his wife’s trials while not coddling or being too protective. For all his power as Superman, Clark was helpless to do more for Lois’ suffering other than to just be there for her when she needed it.  

 

Life doesn’t stop even for battles against death and another arc for the season was Clark and Lois investigating Metropolis crime boss Bruno Mannheim. Mannheim is a brutal man who will stop at nothing to obtain power and keep it but the over all driving force of his life is saving the life of his wife, Peia, a  woman with sonic powers who is Mannheim’s enforcer and is also dying of cancer. Mannheim’s got a super secret lab doing sketchy s**t looking for cancer cures. He finds one and it works but not for long. The cure escalates Peia’s sonic powers to the point they kill her.

 

Clark and Lois also expose the truth that rival crime leader Boss Moxie was not killed by Lex Luthor but by Peia in her role as Mannheim’s enforcer. 

 

Lex Luthor is released from prison and he’s not happy.  

 

Superman & Lois gives us a different Lex Luthor than we’re used to seeing. This is no small bald guy with a fast brain and a faster mouth, engaged in erudite word play. Michael Cudlitz  gives us a physically imposing Lex Luthor who looks like a threat before he says one word. And when he speaks in a voice of rumbling thunder, damn, there is no doubt why everyone is scared of this Lex Luthor.

 

After walking several miles from prison to Smallville and right up the steps of the Kent farmhouse to personally deliver a threat to Lois Lane, Lex Luthor gets to work to kill Superman. He finds Mannheim’s discarded experiment with Bizarro.  The efforts to use Bizarro’s super powered physiology to create a cancer cure have a side effect on this otherworldly mirror image of Superman. Bizarro can be killed. Then he comes back and is stronger than before.   So Luthor and his gang engage in a litany of different ways to kill Bizzaro over and over again. Each resurrection making him stronger, bigger, morphing into a large hulking man monster with bone protrusions. Yep, Luthor’s turning Bizarro into Doomsday.

 

When Bizarro first appear in season 2, it was a bit of a feint to make us think the writers were giving us a Doomsday storyline. So Bizarro becoming Doomsday brings us full circle.

 

The season finale gives us a knock down drag out between Superman and Bizarro/Doomsday and things do not look good for the Man of Steel who at one point appears to be dead but no, not quite. On the surface of the moon, it one major push, Superman and Doomsday are hurtling at each other and we fade to black.

Season 4 will have to resolve this. 

 

Speaking of Season 4….

 

Season 3 was written and produced before word came down Superman & Lois had been renewed for a 4th season.  Can you imagine if the whole series had ended with that cliffhanger?

 

What we do know about season 4 is it will be shorter, only 10 episodes. And also the entire supporting cast has been demoted from regulars to recurring.  Other than Lois, Clark, sons Jordan and Jonathan and big bad Lex Luthor, everyone else will have a minimal presence on the show.  Which may not be a totally bad thing. It seems that the writers really had to bend over backwards to come up with excuses for Kyle Cushing to have something to do.

Where we end with the supporting cast in Season 3 is Chrissy Beppo is engaged to Kyle Kushing and is pregnant with his child. So far no one has answered why Chrissy Beppo is named after the 1960's comic book character Beppo the Super Monkey.  Or why as editor of the Smallville Gazette, Beppo keeps busting on crime bosses in Metropolis.  

Smallville mayor Lana Lang finally gets some with John Henry after flirting with each other for a whole season.  But John Henry is offered a sweet deal by Sam Lane and the DOD to set up shop in Metropolis to produce more high tech stuff for the DOD. 

Where exactly the hell is Metropolis relative to Smallville? I mean, Clark and Jordan can pop back and forth at super speed but everybody else seems to jump back and forth between the two with impunity. I guess the answer is Metropolis is as far from Smallville as the plot requires.   

Coming up on future editions of the Tuesday TV Touchbase:

• We're not done with the Man of Steel. The animated series My Adventures With Superman debuted last week and I will have something to say about that. Spoiler: it will be positive! 
• The new Justified series and the return of What We Do In the Shadows are on the way. 
• Eventually the 39th season of Jeopardy will reach it's end and I'll have something to say about that. 
• There's another murder mystery show that's got my attention, My Life Is Murder starring Lucy Lawless.  
• Still watching Outlander and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and I'll have some posts on that.
• Did I forget about Only Murders in the Building? Almost did Season 3 coming up at the beginning of August.  
• And the big project we're all really excited for here at the Fortress of Ineptitude, coming at the end of July, season 2 of Good Omens! Squeeeeeeee! 

So much TV, so little time.

Until next time, remember to be good to one another and try to keep it down in there, would ya? I'm trying to watch TV over here.