A cryptid hunting we will go.
Last time on My Adventures With
Superman, Lois did her damnedest to get Clark to admit he’s Superman. Clark,
oblivious to her knowledge despite the hints she kept dropping, gets her to
agree to help him investigating the advanced tech weapons in the city. While Clark
flies around as Superman, Lois chases him around town in the hopes of getting
the super side of Clark to reveal the normal. They end up fighting Heat Wave
and her gang at an automotive shop after Lois handcuffs them together, saying
she won’t leave his side until Clark gets there. Superman stops Heat Wave, who
reveals that everyone with the tech weapons has been taken out and kidnapped by
a blur that she assumed was Superman. She escapes after her suit powers all the
way on. Superman drops Lois off at the Daily Planet despite her protests and follows
her. He ends up in a brawl with Agent Slade Wilson, now bedecked in advanced
tech armor that puts him on par with Superman and two robots. Wilson is also
backed by the “General,” a middle-aged man of possible Asian descent and Amanda
Waller. Superman takes out the robots but ends up stuck after a strike from Wilson
destabilized the bridge. He holds it up, leaving himself completely open.
Thankfully, the General calls Wilson off, not wanting the civilian casualties. Clark,
badly injured from the robots and Wilson’s plasma swords returns to the Planet,
switches to Clark, and tries to play off his injuries as no big deal. Lois, not
willing to be lied to her face so blatantly, decides to force the issue and jumps
off the building. This forces Clark to fly after her and catch her. The two
have a huge fight about Clark keeping his identity secret from her and Clark
being flabbergasted that Lois would risk herself like that to prove a point.
She storms off, saying that they’re done. This is all happening while Jimmy is having
a horrible day working with Steve Lombard, who is forcing him to take video footage
for his Nah stream. The stream is literally just going through Jimmy’s
Flamebird videos and shouting NAH to his ideas. He also gives Jimmy advice on
being a “lone wolf,” as he senses Steve energy from Jimmy. Jimmy, feeling
insecure about his friendship with Lois and Clark now that they’re becoming
close tries to get their help, but they’re dealing with all that stuff above.
Their big blow out causes them both to forget about the Bigfoot finding camping
trip that Jimmy was stoked about, and he goes off on his own. He finds Bigfoot
almost immediately but is captured by it. Oh no. Enough recap. Let’s get to it.
The episode opens with Lois
throwing her camping gear together. She’s called Jimmy and leaves him multiple voicemails
apologizing for forgetting about their trip and blaming Clark for frazzling
her. She tries to head out but finds Clark waiting at the door. She tries to
slam the door in his face, a difficult task given he’s ya know largely invincible,
but he stops her. He’s there because he can’t get in contact with Jimmy, and he
flew to the campground and couldn’t find him. He’s worried Jimmy was kidnapped by
the Wilson and his crew. He knows she’s still mad at him, and seems to want to
respect her boundaries, but she’s the best investigator he knows, and he can’t
find Jimmy on his own. Lois is willing to help but warns Clark that she’s doing
this for Jimmy and she’s still extremely angry at him. She does say that they might
be overreacting, maybe he just turned off his phone.
We cut to Jimmy, being held
prisoner by forces unknown and strapped to a table. A compartment opens above him,
and a robotic claw descends toward him. So… yeah, this isn’t a great situation for
him.
Clark and Lois arrive at the campground.
Lois discovers Jimmy’s tracks in the dirt and follows it. Clark tries to make conversation,
asking Lois about how she knows how to track in the wilderness. Lois shuts him
down by just saying wilderness weekends. She elaborates a little, saying that
her dad took her on those trips when she was a kid. Clark sheepishly says that
that’s cool and that he didn’t know that about her, to which she cooly says there’s
a lot about her he’s never going to know. They find a fenced off area that Clark
somehow didn’t see from the sky. While Clark deals with the weirdness of not
seeing a massive fence despite flying around the area a dozen times, Lois pulls
out her phone and calls Jimmy. They hear it on the other side of the fence, and
she rushes through a hole in it to get to the phone. Clark follows and is
immediately hit with some force that seems to hurt him. His vision gets blurry,
and he drops to his knees. He gets up and stumbles back, revealing to us that
there’s some kind of red dome over the area. Lois calls Clark over. She found Jimmy’s
phone, and in the distance, they saw a lab of some kind with a massive circular
hole in it. They look at the phone and see the video of him getting grabbed by
Bigfoot.
Jimmy wakes up to find himself at
the mercy of the Brain, a German scientist who is a disembodied brain in a
robot, and Monsieur Mallah, a talking French Gorilla. The Brain asks Jimmy if
he’s got any last words, accusing him of being a spy. Jimmy says that he just
wants to thank them, as the talking French Gorilla proves that he was right about
everything and that he only wishes his “friends” were there to eat humble pie. He
tells them to open his brain, as at least someone cares about what he thinks. Mallah,
sensing Jimmy is going through some stuff, releases him and asks if he wants to
talk about it, much to the Brain’s displeasure.
Outside, Clark and Lois find a
weird area. There are floating trees, rusted old jeeps and tanks, and corpses
in military gear strewn all over the place. They also pass some weird alien
looking tech that they don’t see, and it starts to power up. Lois finds a sign dubbed
the area the Cadmus. She thinks she’s heard that name before and plays one of Jimmy’s
videos. He claims Cadmus, aka area 52, is believed to have hidden technology
like UFOs and other Alien tech inside it. Clark tells her to play the next video
for clues. The next video unintentionally shames them for not being there as
Jimmy excitedly told his viewers he was going to bring his two best friends on
as special guests. Lois turns off the phone and she asks Clark if Jimmy knows. He
says no and when she asks why he tries to walk off. Lois, still pissed, cuts
him off and tells him she’s tired of him not answering her questions. Clark,
also angry, tells her he’s told her more about himself than he’s told anyone
else and asks what more she wants to know. Lois blurts out that he wants to
know if he lied about his feelings for her, if all the compliments and clear
signs of attraction were just meant to keep her from realizing his secret. Clark
has just enough time to ask how she could think that before they get attacked
by flying robots. Mood killer.
Inside Cadmus, Mallah is showing Jimmy
around the base, much to the Brian’s irritation. We learn that a lot of Jimmy’s
theories are correct. The Lock Ness Monster? Mallah confirms they lost several
mutants in Scotland. Secret sonic guns? They have several, the creator was recruited
for Cadmus. Jimmy wonders if they’ve seen his phone as he wants to document
this. The Brain is furious that Jimmy would share their secrets, but Jimmy
admits that it’s mostly about proving he’s right to two people specifically.
Mallah tells the Brain to calm down, but the Brain is worried that Jimmy will
lead others there to destroy them. Oh, also, The Brain and Mallah are lovers. …
Former Lovers… I don’t know how active one can be with a partner that is essentially
a brain in a jar. Mallah is more optimistic, saying that maybe things won’t be
like last time. Jimmy asks what he means and Mallah explains their backstory, again
over the Brain’s objections. He reveals that 22 years ago that Cadmus was a research
thinktank run in tandem with the more military focused Taskforce X. Mallah was
one of their experiments, turned from a normal gorilla to super intelligent one
by the Brain back when he had a body. Cadmus wanted to use the strange
technology that the government gave them to try to create things to improve the
world. Taskforce X found out and raided the base. The other scientists were
captured or eliminated, Taskforce X disrupted an Unstable Blackhole they’d been
working on and Mallah and the Brain were assumed dead. Brain’s body was
destroyed, but Mallah put him into that robot container and they spent the last
22 years in hiding. Jimmy says that their stories are similar, in that the feel
abandoned by people that are supposed to support them. Mallah tells him that he
should just speak his mind to his friends and if they’re really his friends
they’ll accept him. And if not he can live with them. Mallah and the Brain get
in an argument about this, and Jimmy slips off to give them space. He stumbles
upon their Blackhole generator, it’s on. Oh no.
Lois and Clark are running from the
robots. Clark turns to fight them, but for some reason his punch doesn’t send them
flying. The robots combine together into a larger humanoid form and send him
flying into a tree. Lois catches up to him and Clark tries to fly off with her.
That red glow intensifies for a moment and he drops. Clark says that something’s
wrong, his powers are weaker somehow. They run, setting off traps that slow the
robots down. Lois jinxes them by saying they’re in the clear, sets off a trap
and turns on a turret. Clark leaps in front of her and takes a few dozen plasma
shots to his arms, shredding his shirt in the process. Lois looks on in
absolute horror until the guns run out of shots. Clark is largely fine, he’s
covered in scrapes but he’s in one piece. Lois asks how he knew he was bulletproof,
to which he says that he didn’t he just knew she definitely wasn’t. He says
they need to go find jimmy before something else happens.
Mallah explains to Jimmy that this
is a new blackhole. He goes on to say that they deliberately sabotaged the original
to hide from Taskforce X, and that they’re hoping that if they can stabilize
this one, it’ll open a wormhole to other dimensions. Like maybe one that’s cool
with an interspecies gay romance. Mallah says that the blackhole will be fine
as long as nothing disrupts the power flow to the room. The lights dim for a second,
suggesting power is being disrupted, oops.
We cut to outside where Clark rips
the door to Cadmus open. He tells Lois they need to hurry right before being
punched by the Brain, now in a battle suit. The Brain tells Mallah that he was
right, that Jimmy led enemies to them. Mallah charges, but somehow Jimmy moves
faster than a pissed off gorilla and tells everyone to stop. Learning that
Clark and Lois are the friends that Jimmy is mad at, Mallah tells him that he
and the Brain will back off to let them talk. The Brain whines as they go that
he wants to watch them fight. Clark begins to apologize to Jimmy, telling him
that he’s kept secrets from Jimmy when he shouldn’t and that he needs to tell
Jimmy the truth. Jimmy blurts out that he already knows Clark is Superman and
that this isn’t a big reveal to him. Clark, flabbergasted, asks him how long he
knew. Jimmy reveals they’ve known each other since Freshman year and that the
first day they met, Clark ripped the handle off their dorm room and tried to
say the screws came loose. So yeah, Clark is cartoonishly bad at lying about his
powers. Jimmy says that he got that it was something Clark didn’t want to talk about,
so he resolved to not talk about it until he was ready. Lois yells Jimmy why he
didn’t tell her, Jimmy yells at Clark for telling Lois before him and Clark, exasperated
says “It’s been a weird 24 hours. My powers aren’t working, and we’ve been
chased all over this place by robots. So, let’s just take a deep breath and
stop yelling!” Mallah then interrupts, revealing they were listening over the intercom
and reveals that Cadmus didn’t make Robots. So those AREN’T one of there’s.
Several robots start flying in, the three run inside and Clark barricades the
open door with a bit of rubble. He’s given back up by the Brain who says these
are the OMACS, the original kill squad of Taskforce X. The Brain speculates that
something must have awakened them.
Mallah summons a squad of Mutants,
two of them looking suspiciously like Gurren Lagann, and they tear up some of
the OMACS. Mallah admits when pressed by Jimmy that he and Brain got bored like
one year in and made a bunch of Mutants. But aside from the Blackhole and the
army of Mutants, they live a simple life of peace. The OMACS fires off a plasma
blast, disrupting the Blackhole containment field. The group falls back into
the Blackhole lab, Mallah saying they need to turn on the backup systems to
keep the Blackhole from destabilizing further. Mallah and the Brain tell Clark
to enter .1887 into the computer console and to keep entering them until it works,
or they all die. The Brain, Mallah, Lois and Jimmy get weapons and start
shooting at the robots. Jimmy and Lois ask the big question, why he cut them
out this huge part of his life. Clark admits that he was scared that they’d
treat him differently if they knew he had powers. All he wanted was to be their
friend (obviously more with Lois) and he didn’t want them to treat him like an
alien. Both Jimmy and Lois agree that they are friends with him because of who he
is, and they just want him to be open with them. This triggers a lightbulb
moment in Mallah, who gorilla swings over to them and slams the computer. Why? To
open the containment field of the blackhole, to make it hit critical mass and stabilize.
The Blackhole sucks up all the OMACS, and nearly gets our heroes, only Clark’s inhuman
muscles keeping everyone from being sucked in. it almost gets the Brain
regardless, but it stabilizes and opens a wormhole.
Outside, the biggest disbelieve breaking
moment happens. Lois gives Clark her coat and it somehow fits. What? Yes, I am
less willing to believe a 5 foot nothing, slim woman’s jacket could ever fit
Clark’s quite literally inhuman physique.
Anyway, Mallah reveals that Cadmus’ red-sun-omega-field has shorted out.
It was what kept the base hidden from the rest of the world and so he and the
Brain need to leave. But he says he’ll miss Jimmy. The Brain asks Clark if the
General has found him yet. When Clark asks how he knew that, the Brain reveals
that the OMECS activated because of him entering their perimeter and that the omega
field affected him, and that all the other tech reacts to him. He warns Clark
that he’s in Taskforce X’s crosshairs, and that the General is the sort of man
that would Blot out the sun if he thought the country demanded it of him. He
offers to take Clark with him and Mallah, but Clark wants to stay behind with
his friends, to help the world get to a place where everyone is accepted. Jimmy
tells Mallah that if he and the Brain return, they’re doing an interview for Flamebird
and Lois adds the Daily Planet too. She says that they’ll probably need
pictures to prove it to Perry to make him a believer, like her and Clark. She
grasps Clark’s hand as she says it, so it’s pretty clear they’re in a good
place now. Mallah and the Brain depart through the portal.
Sometime later, a Taskforce X agent radios
the General and says they haven’t found what set off the old tech, but the area
has signs of recent habitation. The General arrives and picks up one of the OMACS
in the Blackhole lab. He says that this is nostalgic for him, as this was the
site of his first operation, the first hard call he ever had to make. He tells
the man standing behind him that he wants the man to look over the tech and
give his opinion on it. The man he’s talking to, Ivo, asks why a humble
kidnapped billionaire would do that. The General says because they want the
same thing, to stop Superman, to tear him from the sky and bury him so deep the
world won’t even remember his name. Ivo says he can work with that, asking when
they start.
Well, that was certainly a
different take on Monsieur Mallah and the Brain. The Brain’s I’ve seen before in
Young Justice and Teen Titians is an amoral sociopath, more
machine than man, always working on world conquest. To see him as one half of an
odd couple is just odd. Not that I’m complaining, while Mallah and the Brain
are certainly a little dysfunctional, they clearly love each other and seeing a
fairly healthy queer romance is something that I appreciate. Even if ½ of the
couple is a talking gorilla. I liked Mallah’s characterization as the social
one in his relationship that is clearly starved for new conversations. He’s
just so… jovial that it’s hard to be suspicious of him even knowing that he is
keeping secrets and that he’s normally the right-hand man of a supervillain.
Hearing the background on Taskforce X and Cadmus was interesting. Lot of things
are lining up around Clark, Cadmus got its equipment around when Zero Day and
presumably Clark’s ship crashed, and all the tech reacts to him. That’s a lot
of data points lining up. I’ll be honest, I love that Jimmy always knew Clark
was Superman. Instead of being so oblivious to his superhuman roommate that it
boarders on delusional, he was actively not talking about Clark breaking
things, super speeding around or the like. It also makes choices like Jimmy going
along with Lois’ plan to find Livewire in episode 2 and doing other dangerous research
make more sense when he knew his superpowered BFF was just a phone call away.
Hell, that even explains away the weird bit where it seemed like Jimmy improbably
butt dialed Clark during the confrontation with Livewire. I like that Jimmy was
trying to respect Clark’s boundaries and not ask about the alien thing, but
folks more adapt at Psychology than me have pointed out that strategy had it’s
own problems. Namely, they NEVER talked about it. It is important to respect
the boundaries of your friends and loved ones but deliberately not talking about
something that you know is odd is not the way to go either, is my point. I liked
that for Lois and Clark’s plot its mostly them walking around the forest and
clearing the air between them. Lois is still angry for most of the episode, but
she’s willing to talk and we do learn why she exploded so big at Clark at the
end of the last one. I don’t love that it was based on an irrational
fear that all of signs of affection and praise were lies to keep her from his
secret, but I get where that might be a big deal for someone with trust issues.
I especially liked the moment that after being shot repeatedly Clark admitted
that he wasn’t sure that he was bulletproof but he knew Lois wasn’t, so he
acted on impulse. It’s a very Superman moment, to take a hit simply because he
knows someone else can’t. I like that Clark finally admitted that he was scared
that being an alien would change how they felt about him, that they both
reassured him that it doesn’t, and that now everyone is in the know. I’m not
going to lie, the hero hiding his identity from friends and loved ones trope is
annoying to me, so I’m glad it’s dead and buried in this incarnation. The General
giving Ivo access to technology that we know can weaken and potentially
completely nullify Clark’s powers isn’t good, by the way, but we’ll see that plot
come to a head when we get to it. And that’s all I have to say about that. Have
a good night.
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Twitter: @BasicsSuperhero
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