Viewer Log: My Adventures With Superman ep 8

 Super hearing I think would literally drive me insane.

Last time on My Adventures With Superman, Lois and Clark prepped to go on a date. Both parties went a little overboard with prepping, Clark trying to make the most romantic evening of Lois’ life, Lois trying to figure out some of Clark’s past as a present but were interrupted. Clark by Mr. Mxyzptlk, an interdimensional being that said he needed help saving Lois from interdimensional criminals. Meanwhile, Lois and Jimmy were picked up by an interdimensional group, the League of Lois Lanes, dimension cops looking for Mxyzptlk. Mxy tricks Clark into breaking into a museum on Earth-1, stealing a tape recorder. Clark tries to stop him but gets teleported away again. They arrive on a desert on Earth-12, the Lois’s arriving and intending to take them both out. The League believes that Clark is too powerful to give the benefit of the doubt, even when he tries to capture Mxy in front of them. He gets struck by some weird bullets that cause him immense pain. In the confusion, Mxy steals the Lois’s ship and escapes. Lois, left on the ship because she refused to believe her Clark was guilty of anything, holds him at gunpoint, but lets him take her to the Lois’s base. Once there, she gets a data file, an orb, dubbed Superman X file. She can’t investigate further, though, as Mxyzptlk gets what he wanted, his bowler hat. The hat returns Mxyzptlk to full power. Clark and the other Lois’s arrive. During the battle, Clark and Lois reaffirm that they like each other and end up kissing. They fight Mxy, Clark distracting him long enough for Lois to find a portal. She reached through it and stole his hat, returning him to a depowered form. With the help of Jalane, a gender-swapped Jimmy, they escape the League. Lois and Clark go on a late date and have a great time. After, Lois fiddles with the X File, unlocking it and getting a video of different Supermen laying waste to their worlds. Mxyzptlk escapes prison to tell Lois that yes, this is all real, and that he has more information, but it’ll be more fun to watch her figure things out. The episode ends with Lois finding a glowing green crystal in the orb. Enough recapping. Let’s get to it.

 

The episode opens with the various super criminals being held by Taskforce X. Siohban McDougal aka Silver Banshee, Albert aka Roughhouse, Leslie Willis aka Livewire, and Mick Rory aka Heat Wave are all released from their cells. Before they can do much beyond looking around, their shock collars are activated, and they drop to the ground in pain. The General, Amanda Waller and Dr. Ivo appear, the General gives the group a speech about how they stole from Taskforce X and how they’re going to make up for their crimes. Ivo rather ominously announces that today is moving day.

 

We jump over to Clark who wakes up suddenly upon hearing someone calling for help. He looks around his apartment but finds it empty. He hears another scream for help and realizes it’s coming from somewhere in Metropolis. He suits up and flies out, finding a man and his young daughter trapped in a burning building. He gets them out and sets them down, only to hear another scream for help. He stops a man whose car’s breaks aren’t working, hears another cry and starts flying off again. We see him zip around the city helping with several other cries for help, before he hears the General’s voice saying that after this operation, Superman won’t be a problem. He’s distracted by more cries for help.

 

Later, Jimmy arrives back at the apartment, having spent the weekend visiting his parents. He plugs in his phone, saying he forgot his charge and that’s why he hadn’t called in the last few days. His phone boots up and he finds his Flamebird stream has 500 new followers, and everyone is singing the praises of Superman following his many rescues. Clark suddenly superspeeds in, saying that he heard Jimmy from the warehouse district but had to stop an out-of-control bulldozer before coming home. He announces that he has super hearing. After Clark flies out to rescue a cat in a tree again during his explanation Super hearing, Jimmy notice the tons of coffee cups, energy drinks, coffee cans and other stimulants around the apartment. He asks Clark if he’s gotten any sleep lately, Clark saying not for a few days. He tells Jimmy about hearing the General and how he can’t stop working until he finds the General. Jimmy says that this kind of a lot for a Monday and maybe they should go do their day jobs for a bit to help him de-stress. Clark suddenly remembers something about Lois and flies off. Jimmy almost calls after him, gets an alert that he’s hit 1 million new followers, so decides to focus on that.

 

At the Daily Planet, Lois arrives and is looking rather miffed. She’s still dealing with finding out there’s a chance her boyfriend has a chance of going full despot it seems. She enters the Newspaper Morgue and discovers it’s festooned with flowers. She then gets a text from Clark, which includes a picture of him with the flows and a message saying, “Happy One-Week Anniversary!” Dude, you gotta pace yourself or she’ll expect you to get her the moon for your one-year anniversary. Lois is happy about the text, but then sees the orb in her purse. She pulls it out again, and plays the video of the Evil Supermen and asks the room that that can’t be her Clark, right? Perry arrives, somehow not noticing the piles of flowers in his Newspaper Morgue and tells Lois to come with him. He takes her up to his office and reveals that he wants her to assist a guest’s editorial writer, Vikki Vale. Vikki is one of the top reporters in the DC universe for those who don’t know. Vikki comes out of the office, and they get introduced to each other. We learn that she and Perry have a long history together as sort of frenemies. Perry distracts her by pointing her at Jimmy and saying he’ll be the photographer. Once alone again, he tells Lois that Vikki is a lot but she’s a top reporter and she’s thinking about leaving Gotham Gazette to work for the Daily Planet, so Perry wants his top intern to help her with her project to seal the deal. She goes over to Vikki and Jimmy, only to learn that they’re going to do a story on the biggest threat to Metropolis… Superman!

 

Superman is flying around trying to find the General. He hears the general talking to someone, saying that they lost “him” somewhere. He’s distracted by a little girl who’d lost her parents screaming for help. He helps the girl, Libby, find her moms with his super hearing and flies her to them. He then hears a news report about an invisible man causing trouble downtown and realizes it’s probably Kyle aka Mist. Clark realizes that that is probably who the General lost and is looking for.

 

Back with Lois and Jimmy, Vikki is giving the standard “superheroes are bad” speech, ya know, too much power, doesn’t answer to anyone, vigilante, that whole thing. She thinks that no one tries that hard to be good without hiding something. Except. Superman. That’s. Literally. His. Whole. Thing. Lady! Vikki isn’t convinced by Lois pleas to the contrary. Lois, wanting to try to sway Vikki, offers for her and Jimmy to set up the interviews for her. Ya know, give her the best positive spin on ol’ Sups. They take her Captain Immonen the blimp pilot from the 3^rd episode that Clark saved from a crash, the old lady from the convenience store, and Flip Johnson. While Flip distracts Vikki with the Newskid Newspaper, Clark texts them he’s on his way and he superspeeds them over to an alley to talk. He tells them about Mist and the General looking for him. He starts focusing on his hearing again, but Lois pulls him out of the sort of trance he goes into, asking him if he’s okay. Good on ya, Lois, one week into the romantic relationship and you can already tell he’s overworking himself. Jimmy found a video from one of his now 2 million Birdwatchers about an invisible man breaking into Morrison’s Pawn Shop a minute ago. Clark thanks Jimmy, tells Lois he’ll be fine, kisses her cheek, and super speeds away just before Vikki came over to find them. They say they were going to talk about her next interviewee, but Vikki says she has that covered. We cut to the ruins of the Amazo Tower and her final interviewee, Alex.

 

Superman flies over to the pawn shop and sees Mist running from it. But, the combination of his exhaustion, the noise from all the voice and general stress causes him to land badly, breaking a fire hydrant in the crash. He quickly fixes it and races after Mist, but not before some folks take a video of his crash landing.

 

Back at the interview, this Lex-Luthor-in-a-wig looking fella says that Superman can’t be trusted and is the end of the world. His evidence? The broken-up ballroom their standing in and the fact that his intervention led to the collapse of Amazo Tech. I would like to remind everyone that might be true, but the final domino was definitely CEO Anthony Ivo losing his God Damned mind after putting on an experimental tech suit and trying to kill multiple people. Just saying. Alex and Vikki are both anti-Superman. Their conversation triggers Lois’ memory from the sphere. Alex does point out that Superman just having a bad day could ruin the world. Vikki thanks Alex for the interview and walks off. Lois and Jimmy try to get her to reconsider but she tells Lois that you don’t get to be the best by writing Fluff, that’s something Perry never understood and she wonder’s if Lois doesn’t either.

 

Meanwhile, Superman is still chasing Mist. It’s hard because he keeps shifting in and out of sight. The episode doesn’t come out and say it, but I think Superman is seeing beyond the visible light spectrum to see Mist. That or the shifting back and forth is happening too fast for anyone else to see. No one is reacting to him, they’re just reacting to Superman acting weird. Superman is overwhelmed by the voices again and crashes hard, causing a big crater in the sidewalk. He gets up and sees Mist run into the street. He almost gets hit by a truck but Superman super speeds over and saves him. But he pancakes the truck. He clearly terrifies the crowd with his actions, including little Libby from earlier. He says sorry and flies off.

 

Lois tells Jimmy they need to stop Vikki, but Jimmy gets an alert about the car incident and says they need to get to Clark. They go to the Daily Planet and shout Clark’s name until he arrives. They ask what’s wrong with him, and he says that he needs to catch Mist as it’s the only lead he has on the General. Lois asks him what his next step is after that, taking on the US military? Clark is adamant that he needs to stop the General from kidnapping people. Jimmy tells Clark that this is giving him pretty bad buzz, and Clark takes him phone to read the comments himself. Lots of anti-Superman comments. Clark says that he’ll fix that, but he needs to stop the General. Lois, clearly still thinking about the evil Supermen, says that maybe he shouldn’t right now. Just take a break and try to be normal. She realizes she said the wrong thing like .05 seconds after saying it, but it’s too late and Clark flies off.

 

Superman flies up and focuses hard, finally catchin the sound of Mist running. He corners him and he gets the lowdown at what happened. Mist tells him that Siobhan and Albert got grabbed after the bank job but he escaped. He found the underground prison they’re being held in, but learned that they’re being moved today and that he’ll probably never find them again after that. He begs Superman to let him spring his family first and then he’ll let Superman do what he wants to them. Superman agrees to help him.

 

They rush over to the army base just as the plane takes off. Superman flies after the plane and rips the door off, telling the prisoners to brace themselves. He’s suddenly punched out by Albert. He’s attacked in tandem by Taskforce X: Livewire, Silver Banshee, Roughhouse, Heat Wave, Deathstroke and Parasite. He’s clearly confused by this, saying they’re prisoners, but Siobhan corrects him by saying they’re doing a work release program, taking out Superman. They rush him as a group. Superman is more powerful than any one of them, but the combinations of their new battle suits and Parasite have them overpower Superman. He gets knocked from the sky and hits Metropolis city park.

 

Jimmy and Lois arrive at the Daily Planet and try to scramble to figure out a plan to stop Vikki. Unfortunately, they learn that Vikki already posted the story “The Metropolis Menace” and she’d lied to Perry to get their help. She leveraged this story to make her the new Editor-In-Chief of the Gotham Gazette. It’s then that Jimmy gets the alert about Superman being attacked in the park.

 

Superman gets overwhelmed by Taskforce X. They each take a turn hitting him and tossing him about as Jimmy and Lois try to run to help him. Roughhouse grabs him and beats Superman a few times, but his power spikes, his body turns blue, and he throws Roughhouse off. Silver Banshee and Livewire try to blast him, but he grabs Silver Banshee and throws her at Livewire. He knocks back Deathstroke and Heat Wave. The park is in ruins at this point. He tries to fly off, but Parasite grabs him and starts draining him. Ivo keeps draining him, saying that this ends when he says it does. His suit mutates more, growing more insect like as it grows bigger. The General, Waller and Mist arrive. The General tells the madly cackling Ivo to stand down, and when he doesn’t, he zaps him with the shock collar, saying he’s done when the General says so. Mist pulls down the collar of his shirt, revealing he was wearing a shock collar the whole time too. Superman, exhausted, badly beaten, and drained, asks why they’re doing this. The General tells him it’s because he’s the end of the world, and has Livewire electrocute him to shut him up. Jimmy and Lois arrive just as the plane takes off. The last moment of the episode being Lois saying, horror on her face, “They’ve taken Clark!”

 

Well, that was certainly a zero to sixty tonal shift. We begin with the relatively light premise of Clark overworking himself because of his super hearing to him getting curb stomped by the God damned Suicide Squad. Clark overworking himself because he’s hearing everything and he’s too morally ridged to ignore cries for help is a good plot beat. The fact that he’s exhausted and running mostly on caffeine does help to explain how he could behave so erratically that people start turning on him. And, yeah, from a civilian perspective, Superman was acting incredibly strange following someone no one else saw. As I said above, I’m pretty sure the times when we were able to see Mist outlined in blue were times when he was invisible to human eyes but detectable by either X-ray or some other form of Kryptonian vision. They never explain how they convinced Mist to play the bait to draw Superman in, but I assume Siobhan and Albert both threatened to make him do it. Otherwise, I’d have told Superman the score and hoped he’d break the collar on ethical grounds. Just saying. I liked the B story of Lois trying to convince Vikki that Superman is good as a part of a roundabout way of convincing herself that Clark wouldn’t become like the ones in the recording. It was a nice way for her to indirectly work on her problems. Though, obviously Vikki went in with the story she wanted to write already prepped, otherwise she wouldn’t have gone to Alex, the guy with the most serious conflict of interest we’ve seen thus far. Like, dude, Superman may have busted the place up, but that’s only after your boss was forced out of the company, had a nervous breakdown, used experimental tech on himself and nearly murdered several people. Clark may have thrown the last punch, but Ivo threw a whole hell of a lot more. I also like the fact that she’s not scared of Clark, she’s scared that something will happen to him. She doesn’t shrink away from him, she accepts his signs of affection without hesitation, but she asks him “why not try being normal?” in the hope that somehow that’ll help stop him from being corrupted. It was the wrong thing to say but she said it for the right reasons, ya dig? Onto the fight, I loved it. I was pretty sure that Superman would have to fight the whole squad at some point, but I thought it’d be a brawl in the finale, not two episodes before. I liked that the fight seemed to show that Clark lost for two reasons, 1. Ivo draining his strength, and 2. Much more importantly, he spent a huge part of the early fight just taking hits and not wanting to fight the others. Other than maybe Slade, Ivo, and Leslie, he had no personal grudge against these people and was just trying to talk while they unleashed hell on him. Hell, without the Parasite suit he would have won the fight. But no, Ivo had to grab him and suck the life out of him. So, Superman has been captured and taken to a black site, Jimmy and Lois have no idea where he is, and the General is clearly looking to finish the job. Wow, the first half of these two parter ended on a bleak note. I’ll see you all next time. 

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