Tyler Hoechlin and Elizabeth Tulloch raise (super?)
boys in the new CW spin-off.
Make Superman sad, or make him evil.
Tyler Hoechlin as Clark Kent and Elizabeth Tulloch as Lois Lane on ‘Superman & Lois’.Dean Buscher/The CW
Ditch those red underpants and butch the bright blue tights into dark blue kevlar.
Let him snap somebody’s neck.
Kill his parents no, kill him!
Dean Buscher/The CW
Now bring him back, in black!
Amazon has two shows about nefarious Superman-types.
HBO Max promises to delete all Henry Cavill’s smiles fromJustice League.
The 90-minute premiere welcomes fresh viewers, though, skipping from familiar crash-landing origins into unfamiliar territory.
Lois and Clark are married, living in a Metropolis brownstone with teen sons.
Jonathan (Jordan Elsass) plays football and has a girlfriend.
His twin brother, Jordan (Alexander Garfin), plays lonely videogames and suffers from social anxiety disorder.
Raising a Winklevoss and a Zuckerberg isn’t easy.
Before the opening title even appears onscreen, Superman stops “a meltdown the size of Fukushima!”
with ice breath which makes him late for Jordan’s therapy.
“The boys need to see what a strong and loving and vulnerable man looks like.”
No, no,you’recrying.
In the opening montage, Superman rescues a little boy from a falling car.
Hoechlin makes the line sincere and unforced, like he just helped his neighbor carry a couch upstairs.
But this old-fashioned man of tomorrow lives in a scary new today.
When Clark visits Smallville, he finds a typical 20th-century town gone to typical 21st-century rot.
Her brooding fire-chief husband Kyle (Erik Valdez) keeps busy putting out meth explosions.
“Everybody else we know moved away,” Lana tells Clark.
Is that an accusation?
Is Clark a class traitor, the former farm boy raising next-gen coastal elite?
I’m focusing on the world-building because there are story twists I don’t want to reveal.
Suffice it to say that the first half of this premiere is heavy on emotion and openhearted sincerity.
Jonathan and Jordan don’t know about their father’s secret identity.
What if onlyoneof them inherits his superpowers?
The romantic implications turn soapy will the former young lovers' kids also fall in love?
but the teen drama embeds into harsh realities.
Sarah comes from a community rifted by drugs and depression.
“People around here?
This is just one of many spin-offs inGreg Berlanti’s DC TV-verse.
ButSuperman & Loisis also a reset, and maybe an attempt at audience expansion.
It avoids the usual bantering CW playfulness, and fans ofSupergirlwill note (perhaps angrily) some canonical tweaks.
Although, hmmm, didn’t a lot of those series go downhill fast?
There’s a lot to enjoy in the premiere and some serious question marks.
The CW also released the second episode to critics, where some problems really come into focus.
A powerful mystery man (Wole Parks) keeps causing nuclear meltdowns.
Much worse is the ricocheting presence of Sam Lane (Dylan Walsh).
He’s an army general in charge of, like, all national security.
Noteveryonehas to be related, and Walsh’s generic heart-of-gold toughness detracts from the show’s quirky personality.
Something’s missing here, though.
Lois winds up spending a lot of time in Smallville, which offers great possibilities.
All that brassy Metropolitan attitude, now making big waves in small pond!
You want to feel like someone fromBillionsjust strolled intoFriday Night Lights.
Superman & Loisturns on a couple big decisions that change the Kents' lives.
One of those decisions is interesting, yet much easier than it should be.
He stumbles over conversation with Sarah and then just stops stumbling.
I guess she likes him because he’s quiet and different: Nice, but notnotthe plot ofGarden State.
This is a hard one, really.
I enjoyed a lot of things about the premiere, even if one final twist left me baffled.
The second episode offers promising routes forward and bends the larger serialized story in a dispiritingly familiar direction.
That future looks unlikely just now, with viewers gone cuckoo for Quicksilver cameos.
Which, after all, is why he needs Lois.B
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