Dating is complicated enough without Mad Scientists being involved.
Last time on My Adventures With
Superman, the gang heads to Super Fest, a convention setup to celebrate superheroes,
both real and fictional. Lois, working there against her will, immediately
spies Winslow Schott, the Toyman that tried to get her dad captured by Waller,
and goes to stalk him to prove he’s still a criminal. Kara expresses her
obvious romantic feelings for Jimmy, but Jimmy rebuffs her, saying that he
wants her to experience more of life before rushing into a decision. Shortly
thereafter, a teen fan of Kara’s, Jessica Cruz, says that she admires Kara’s
bravery and that spurs Kara forward to seeking out potential suitors to see
more of what life has to offer. Jimmy is… less than thrilled. Clark faces off
against a new mercenary villain, a Russian woman going by the Whip, who uses
Kryptonite in her tech to weaken him. She also expresses her disappointment to
learn Clark does superhero work for free. He lasts until Whip’s Kryptonite runs
out, ties her up and leaves her for the cops. Whip seems to like a fella who’s
so dominant as she whispers, “I love him,” as Superman flies away. Clark makes
it back to the convention just in time to deescalate the snafu Lois found
herself in after ripping off a child’s Teddy bear’s head to try to prove
Winslow Schott is still a bizarre arms dealer. She then notices that his booth
is covered in weapons, needles him as being a loser for just a minute, and that
sets Winslow off. He activates his booth, transforming it into a not-Gundam.
Before Clark can handle the situation, a different Red-Blue Blur knocks Schott
outside and beats the tar out of him. It’s revealed to be Captain Hank Henshaw,
rebuilt by LexCorp to be their homegrown Superman. Clark and the gang are
shocked by this revelation but go about their day. And in the final moments of
the episode we learn that Hank’s body is almost entirely mechanical, and he’s
dead set on protecting Earth from Superman. Enough recapping. Let’s get to it,
shall we?
We open with a commercial
specifically made for Jimmy. It’s from the World Organization for Romantic
Matchmaking Science (WORMS). The CEOs Zazzala and Tazzala, who are romantic partners
as well as business partners (I’ll get to it in the closing paragraph), are
pitching their dating app to Jimmy and swear that they can use the power of science
to match him with his perfect date. We pull out to see that Jimmy is showing
the promo video to Clark and Lois. Clark is mildly supportive of Jimmy trying
new things, and Lois is looking at him like he’s batshit insane. Lois accuses
him of publicly going on this App and promoting it through Flamebird to get
back at Kara for taking HIS advice. Jimmy insists that it isn’t, badly, and
that he’s just trying to make Flamebird a lifestyle brand. They bicker about
Jimmy being an idiot, before Lois points out that Jimmy has an actual story he’s
supposed to be looking into about a mysterious criminal called the Distortionist.
They are kidnapping people and mutating people with gene manipulation. Jimmy
says that it can wait, as he and Clark are going to WORMS!
Clark emphatically tells him ‘no,’
as he is planning on spending the day with Lois. He doesn’t have any Superman business
at the moment, so he’s being a good partner and goes to make Lois breakfast. He
cleans off the table and Lois sees that he kept the model farm he bought from
Winslow Schott last episode. She is immediately freaked out to see that Clark
had added two miniature figures of the two of them… with a cradle. She tries to
be super chill asking about the model and if the figures are supposed to be them,
while clearly panicking every second she looks at it. Jimmy cuts in on the
awkward moment by insisting Clark come with him to WORMS. Dude, he’s in a
committed relationship! Anyway, Clark agrees to drop him off, but that’s it. Because
Clark isn’t metaphorically dense, just literally, he does pick up on Lois’
nerves and asks if she’s okay. She insists she’s fine but smiles like she’s being
held at gunpoint.
We move onto Metropolis square
where a purse snatching is stopped by Hank Henshaw. The captain takes the purse
back and hurls the thief against a light pole. The woman tentatively asks if he’s
Superman, and Hank introduces himself as Captain Hank Henshaw. A bystander asks
if the guy is okay, and Hank says the THIEF got what he deserved. We see the
guy drag himself a bit, so he’s at least not dead. The bystander says that
Superman wouldn’t have done that, and Hank cuts him off and says that Superman should
be tougher on crime. He flies off, waving, and Lex asks him over his built-in radio
how he’s feeling. Hank says that it feels great.
Cutting back to the apartment, Kara
super speeds in and asks if Jimmy knew that hotdogs come in Chili variety.
Lois, who’d been napping on the bunk bed, gets up and lets her know that Jimmy
is at a speed dating event to try to make Kara Jealous, and thus doesn’t deserve
a chilidog. She takes it and scarfs it down as Kara asks why she’d be jealous
of that. She’s a Kryptonian warrior after all, she’s as strong as she is
beautiful. Her words. Lois decides to stir the pot a little inform Kara that Jimmy
is just trying to prove to himself that he’s as desirable as Kara is, something
she’s doubtful of. Kara thinks that this is a competition, then, a game that
she can win. Lois suggests getting Kara on Crushrush, a dating app, so that she
can ‘win’ at dating and make Jimmy her Earth mate. Perfect plan, I foresee no
way this’ll just complicate matters further.
Clark and Jimmy arrive at WORMS. The
boys are impressed by the scale if nothing else. A camera crew approach them
and ask for their first impressions for their promo. Jimmy gives a glowing
review while Clark… points out he didn’t sign a release for this and thus is
allowed to leave. Clark waves Jimmy goodbye and heads out. Zazzala and Tazzala
join Jimmy, where we learn that the two CEOs have broken up. Zazzala tells Jimmy
not to worry about her romantic drama, and instead focus on finding his ‘soilmate.’
Terrible name. Jimmy is introduced to his first date.
Lois and Kara set up a dating profile
for Kara. This proves difficult, as Kara doesn’t have a lot of opinions on
things. Lois just marks her as “sporty” when she mentions her preferred Kryptonian
marital arts, and that’s it. She doesn’t even have opinions of Ocean or
Mountains. Lois realizes that Kara needs a few more earth experiences to fill
out the profile. Kara asks if there are any more experiences they can have in
the apartment. Lois’ eyes shoot back at the miniatures and the cradle, panics,
and says they should hit the town. They catch Clark as he returns, lets him
know about the change of plan, and leaves Superman alone with his miniatures. He
sits down to work on the figures… but then hears there’s a fire on Metropolis’
Adopt-on-a-Yacht event, people AND dogs are in danger. He zooms over and puts
the fire out. One of the dogs takes a liking to him, and Superman asks about
their adoption policy. He immediately bails when he hears that they need his ID.
Back at WORMS we meet Jimmy’s date.
She’s a statuesque tanned redhead named Doris, but she goes by Gigi. She’s extremely
forward, saying that she’s deeply interested in Jimmy’s body… specifically how
much Kryptonite he’s been exposed to and if he’s noticed any affects. Jimmy
says no. Gigi says some loaded words about ‘changing’ people. Jimmy doesn’t seem
to notice that she’s got a weird vibe to her, even after she sprayed the air
with some chemicals, force fed him ‘chocolate’ and then took a blood sample
from him. We cut to Jimmy in a confession booth where he says that everything
is going great. His blurb reads “Jimmy Olsen, Oblivious,” as he starts growing
hair on his wrists and claws.
Returning to Clark, he’s back at
the miniatures and is adding one that will probably make Lois drop dead from a
heart attack. He laughs at ‘Clark jr.’ for forgetting his mitt as he tries to
slide a baseball mitt on the miniature, but is called away when he hears about
a robbery at LexCorp. Not because he wants to help Lex, but because he’s worried
about the bystanders, since Intergang is involved.
Jimmy tells Gigi that he’s supposed
to be looking for the distortionist, and claims nothing gets by him. And only
then realizes that Gigi has turned him into a Wolfman. He howls in surprise.
Lois takes Kara on the town,
clearly hoping to take her to a museum or something classy like that… but they’re
distracted by the Mall, which Kara insists they check out.
Intergang tries to flee from LexCorp
but are attacked by Hank. He tracks down and quickly takes out Mist and
Roughhouse. Silver Banshee unloads a sonic blast at him. She barely moves him
backwards, but the force of her attack was enough to break some of the fake
skin off his face and the contact out of his eye so it now glows visibly red.
He tells her she’s going to regret that and charges. Clark intercepts the
attack and says they need to calm down. Hank tells him to get out of his way.
We cut back to Jimmy at WORMS. He’s
depressed that he’s a wolf now. He admits something felt off early, but he didn’t
want to ruin the vibe. A producer lets him know that they can fix him, which
does perk him up.
Hank and Clark clash, Jimmy
interrupting by calling Superman to let him know what is up. This does show off
the power disparity between Hank and Clark, as Hank is visibly trying to overpower
Clark, and yet Clark is able to have this quick convo with Jimmy. Hank sees
Siobhan try to run off and chases after her. Clark knocks Hank aside and stops
Siobhan. He keeps getting in her way and insists she hands over the tech. Hank
charges. Clark ends up having to juggle Siobhan to keep her from Hank, deal
with Siobhan trying to struggle away from him, and Jimmy trying to chat about
how WORMS is going. He’s truly a Superman. He finally gets Jimmy to hang up, takes
Siobhan’s tech and helmet, and tells Hank that no body needs to get hurt. Hank
gets up and says he disagrees. He opens up his palm and charges a laser blast
but is stopped by LexCorp robots trapping him in a cage. Slade tells him to stand
down and that Lex wants a word with him.
Lois and Kara are hanging out at a
record store and Lois shows Kara her favorite band from her childhood, Black
Canary. That’s a fun reference. Kara starts, I kid you not, a musical number
about the future. She’s super excited about learning about Earth culture and
experiencing new things. And Lois is apprehensive about the next step. She
makes it clear that she wants to marry Clark and live life with him but
is worried shifting the status quo will upset somethings. To which I say,
Honey, it took your comic book counterpart like 50 years to learn who Superman
is, status quos lead to getting stuck in a rut. The thing that makes me laugh
is that there song is diegetic, so if you pay attention, you can see the random
Metropolis citizens reacting to Supergirl and some lady singing about the
future.
Back at LexCorp, Lex scolds Hank for
screwing up. He’s been officially dubbed by the news as Cyborg Superman. Lex
tells him that with the public against them, there will be no way to convince
the public to side with them over Superman. Hank is blasé about the whole
thing, asking who cares what the masses think, they have the power. He moves
towards Lex, and Slade does his bodyguard job and stops him. Hank takes another
step, and Slade activates his battle suit. He tries to attack Hank, but his
swords can’t cut Hank’s metallic body. Hank smashes him around a bit before Lex
uses his remote to freeze Hank in place, reminding him there’s no WE in this. Lex
has the power, and Hank will do as he’s told.
Zazzala apologizes for what
happened with Gigi and gives him an injection to turn him back, saying that she
hopes this won’t affect his experience with WORMS or his review. Jimmy is
initially very gracious, until his hands turn into puddy and stretch out.
Zazzala apologizes, saying that she’s not WORMS chief biologist, so she may
have done something wrong. Tazzala joins them, and the two reconcile (despite
Tazzala not saying a word). Jimmy says that’s a cute moment but they need to fix
his bones.
At the apartment, Clark adds a
white dog to his model, saying that Lois will love him. He pitches a few names
for the dog, Bark Kent, Snowy, and settles on Krypto right before Jimmy calls
again. Jimmy gets zapped by Tazzala, which fixes his bones, but he asks Clark
for his help. Clark tells him that he’s always willing to help in an emergency,
but the keyword is EMERGENCY. The emergency then rears her redhead as Gigi
comes out and swears that if she can’t have Jimmy, no one can. She sprays
herself and reintroduces herself as Giganta as she grows into a fifty foot
woman. Jimmy tries to play it cool, saying that they can still be friends. Gigi
shouts at him that she came here to “FALL IN LOVE!” before grabbing him like
that woman from King Kong and starts running down the street. Jimmy tries
to call Clark, who starts to scold him, but then sees Jimmy go by their window
and realizes that this is in fact an emergency.
Kara and Lois sit on a bench after
their mall outing. Kara is excited as she’s got things to add to her profile,
while Lois is still panicking about the future. Kara shows Lois all the
potential mates that are displaying a fish they caught, and an exasperated Lois
says they’ll all have fish! They see Giganta run by with Jimmy in hand, and a
dejected Kara says that she doesn’t think she’ll find a date that big. Lois
flatly tells her that that is not what winning looks like.
Gigi climbs the Daily Planet, because
I guess she’s going full Kong and that’s as close to the Empire State Building
as she’s going to get. She says she’ll make Jimmy gigantic too, and if he hates
it then they’ll call it quits. It’s only then that Jimmy gets that Giganta is
the Distortionist too. She says she’s not into labels as Superman flies in. Clark
tries to grab Jimmy, but Gigi waves him around too much. Tazzala and Zazzala
join them, they both have synthetic bug wings to help them fly, just to tell
Jimmy that they are in fact back together. And to apologize about the endoskeleton
thing. Giganta keeps climbing and Clark asks the Zalas if they could affect
Giganta’s skeleton too. They agree to help and all three fly after the giant
lady. They fly around Gigi to distract her and Tazzala injects her. This forces
her to shrink and fall, Clark shooting down to grab her. As he carries her back
to the top of the tower, she grabs his arm and talks about how gentle and kind
he is. Clark cuts her off, saying, “I’m in a committed relationship.” Jimmy says
that maybe he should get off the app, but Tazzala says they’ll add a WORMS
Sponsorship to Flamebird if he stays. So, Jimmy’s back on board. They ask Superman
for his thoughts, and Clark says that his appearance is not an endorsement, so
gets his face blurred.
They all head back to the
apartment. Clark finishes building the barn as the lady’s come in. Kara says that
she has 75 potential mates that have all said “Sup.” She goes over to look through
her matches and Jimmy goes to join her. Lois pulls Clark to the side and admits
that she’s feeling anxious about the future. She makes it clear that she WANTS
the farm, kids, and a dog, just not right this second. She says that she doesn’t
want to lose what they have and shrink their lives down to a model farm. They’re
interrupted by Kara and Jimmy arguing if Giganta counts as being greater than
75 potential dates because she’s as tall as 100 women. Clark says that he never
made Lois breakfast, and to make it up to her, they’ll get brunch tomorrow and figure
out their future.
We then cut to The Future. Metropolis
is an apocalyptic hellscape that a boy in red and blue is running through. He
enters a LexCorp building and we see this is clearly Lois and Clark’s son. He’s
Korean with the Superman crest on his chest and Clark’s baby blues, there’s
only so many people he can be. He’s joined by a bald Lex, as well as John Henry
Irons and Jimmy in combat gear. Lex and John Henry get the boy outfitted with something
over his shield as the robots burst in. Jimmy and John Henry are killed in
laser fire as Lex affixes a time travel watch to the boy. He tells this Superboy
that the only way he can help is to go back and make sure this never happens.
He casts Superboy into the timestream, but not before he sees Lex also killed
in laser fire.
Well, that’ll throw a wrench in things,
now, won’t it?
Well… Jimmy is handling this like
an adult. … Man, it’s been a while since I said something so sarcastic that it
hurt. As I said last episode, I think Jimmy’s initial impulse to turn down Kara’s
love confession was coming from a good place. She’s kind of a blank slate and
really should experience a bit more of life before settling down. Hell, Lois’
filling out her dating profile highlights that with the fact Kara passed on all
of the questions Lois posed to her. But, getting on a dating profile in the hopes
of making her feel similar jealousy to how he was feeling? One of the most
childish things he could have done. I love Jimmy, but he kind of deserved
getting turned into a wolf and then having his bones turned to puddy. Jimmy is
going to be eating some humble pie a few times this season. WORMS was a fun way
to serve that up. On paper, a dating app that seems to specifically cater to
scientists, tech moguls and the like sounds like a great idea. But then you remember
that 90% of scientists in this universe could be described with the adjective “Mad”
and you know that this is a recipe for disaster. If you didn’t recognize any of
Giganta’s three names, then I’m happy to inform you that she is actually
typically a Wonder Woman villain. The Showrunners expressed a desire to pull in
a few baddies from outside Clark’s typical rogues gallery, so we’ll see a few
more Wonder Woman staples this season. Tazzala and Zazzala are both based off
incarnations of Queen Bee, an insect themed DC Villainess. If there names weren’t
a hint, in the comics they’re actually sisters, with Tazzala being the original
Queen Bee and Zazzala being the fourth incarnation. Before you react, I think
this is a reference. Well, a reverse-reference. Sailor Moon was a wildly
popular Shoujo (target audience are teen girls and young adult women) anime
series that featured a squad of planetary themed heroes in Sailor uniforms
fighting evil alien invaders. Two of the Sailor Scouts, Uranus and Neptune, were
canonically a lesbian couple. Now, anime in the 90s was much more heavily censored
than it is today, and there was basically no way that TV Execs back then would
allow an out queer couple on TV screens. The problem was, Uranus and Neptune
were big fans of PDA, so there had to be some explanation for why they were
always leaning on each other, draping arms on each other and so forth. They
made the very strange decision to make them ‘cousins’ in the original English
dub. I feel like the execs didn’t have any idea how cousins act, but that’s
just me. So, in summation, I think making the Zalas dating when in most media
they’re related is a reverse-reference to that Sailor Moon dub. This show LOVES
anime references, so there’s some weight to my idea. Lois and Kara at the Mall
is really cute. They’ve got a good vibe, with Kara dragging the more grounded
Lois around. Their musical number made me laugh the first time I saw it. The
number was also nice that it highlights that Lois’ relationship anxiety is
based off of speed, not desire. If you asked her, I think she would say that
long term, she’s going to be Mrs. Lois Kent, will have kids with him and live
on a farm like Clark would love. But she’s clearly thinking that would be more for
them in their 30s, not their 20s. The rush is making her anxious. And I liked
that a good chunk of the episode was just Clark getting to work on his miniatures
for a bit. The man doesn’t get to relax very often, and miniatures does feel
like something he’d be into. I could see him with a warehouse of Warhammer
figurines. He doesn’t play the game, he just likes assembling and painting
them. And it was funny to see the ways he got pulled away from his little fun
with the dog yacht fire and then Intergang. Having him face off against Hank
this early was a good way to show off their differences in approach. Hank is
all hardball, make the criminals suffer, Clark is more of a light touch sort of
guy. Which is why it’s good that Clark is clearly the more powerful of the two.
The fight was extremely one sided even with Clark juggling Siobhan and her stolen
goods around. I also liked the choice to make Hank’s lasers come from his
hands. It makes him visually distinct from Clark, and highlights that as good
as Lex’s tech clearly is, he can’t completely replicate Superman. The showdown with
Giganta was a little anticlimactic, but at the end of the day she’s just an
angry woman trying to find a date, not a rampaging cyborg. Even at 50 feet high
she’s less of an overall threat. The bit of her starting to change her sights
to Clark and him cutting her off makes me laugh every time. And finally, I
liked that Clark and Lois agreed to talk things out at the end of the episode.
It definitely seems like they’ve both had a lot of emotional growth since
season 2 and learned that they can’t bottle up their feelings as much as they
did last time. They love each other and have learned that they need to
communicate to make sure they’re okay. Or else Lois might try to break up with
Clark again because she for some reason thinks a long-distance relationship is
hard for a man that can circle the globe in seconds. Shame that their planning
is definitely going to be interrupted by their time traveling son. I already know
how Superboy is going to introduce himself to his parents and you’re in for a
treat if you haven’t seen it before. But we’ll talk about that later. Have a
good night everyone. And stay safe.
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/u2761062/posts/viewer-log-my-ep-167794608
Bluesky: @basicssuperhero.bsky.social
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