Superman and Lois tells the continuing tale of the world’s greatest superhero…and every solitary friend and family member in his Rolodex, regardless of how uninteresting or banal their lives might be.

After the death of Ma Kent, the first season of Superman & Lois had the couple and their twin teenage boys move to the Kent Farm in Smallville in order to help heal their troubled family. The trouble in question is solely on the shoulders of Clark, whose double life has kept him away from home far too much. While I concede that it’s a realistic issue, the thought of Superman being a less-than-great husband and father rubbed me the wrong way and immediately put me on the defensive. However, the first season mostly won me over. It wasn’t perfect by any stretch but it was good enough and, more importantly, it didn’t $h!t all over Supes, turning him into a complete beta.

Then season two rolled along, and it started out ok but got progressively CW’d, with silly relationship problems, sillier solutions, and the introduction of far too many side characters and side plots. Still, it wasn’t complete garbage and had built enough goodwill to warrant giving season 3 a try.

Superman and Lois (S3 E1 – Closer)

The premier episode of season 3 finds us a month or so after the events of season 2. Clark and Lois have been putting their lives back together and working hard on rekindling their relationship. It’s a mostly skippable episode that spends much of its time reminding us of what happened last season and reintroducing us to its many many characters.

1 Vacation

2 Shop

3 Amazon

The show has riveting moments like Lana (who is the mayor of Smallville, because she is) discovering that the high school is riddled with toxic black mold. Then her soon-to-be ex-husband bangs Lois and Clark’s ridiculous boss (she is the worst), and the two almost get caught when Lana finally hand delivers the signed divorce papers. You know, the exact thing that you were looking for in a TV series about a guy who can benchpress aircraft carriers and shoot lasers out of his eyes.

Don’t worry, the episode also delivers heart-pounding excitement like when the ever-fumbling, useless, and moping twin son who managed to inherit superpowers yet still hardly smiles does a pisspoor job of rescuing some people in Kuala Lumpur, and Clark, who is training him to use his powers, doesn’t school him on what he did wrong, but yells at him and sends him home.

Generally, speaking the episode was boring, and stuffed with superfluous side character C-plots that I couldn’t care any less about. We’ll see if episode two gives me enough of a reason to continue watching and reviewing the series.

WOKE ELEMENTS

• Every female is a strong independent woman who knows how to get things done.
• Lana’s eldest daughter and Clark’s mopey son started having a romantic relationship last season, but it ended because of silly drama that I honestly can’t fully recall and don’t care enough to research. Well, now he’s fully in the friend zone and the show continues to put all of the burden of maintaining it on him. If he were any kind of man, he’d tell her that he doesn’t want to be her friend, he wants to be her boyfriend, and if that’s not ok with her, fine, but he’s not some kind of emotional plaything that she can keep at arms distance knowing full-well how he feels. It’s not fair to him, just because she “needs time to be her,” whatever the h@!! that means. $h!t or get off the pot, but he is a disgusting wimp who no woman would ever want for anything except to torture by telling him about all of the studs she’s dating.
• Lois and Clark think that they might be pregnant and, while it’s not explicitly said, it’s made very clear that abortion for the sake of their convenience is on the table.

Superman and Lois (S3 E2 – Uncontrolable Force)

So far, each episode’s acting is getting progressively worse  commensurate with the subplots and dialogue. The main bad guy looks straight out of the 90s Mighty Morphing Power Rangers, and every scene is about some childish relationship drama (that goes for the adults as well). Basically, the show has become 95% soap opera and 5% Superman.

To put things into perspective, a 15-year-old girl from an alternate universe “does projects” for the D.O.D. in her spare time on a laptop in the middle of a busy diner less than a foot away from civilians, and she says it loudly enough that anyone could easily overhear it. That’s the kind of show that this is. It’s Shark Girl and Lava Boy with teenage angst and less action.

WOKE ELEMENTS

• Identity politics is making a huge splash in this season with the main bad guy basically being a discount black Lex Luther who claims that Superman didn’t/doesn’t save lives in black neighborhoods, to which Superman says nothing and even looks a little guilty.
• A 15-year-old vegan is able to dictate the terms of dinner to her father.
• Clark and Lois’s son, Jordan, is a disgusting puss. He almost makes me physically nauseous.
• Lana’s daughter, Sara is a total girl boss and becomes more of one in every episode.

The next one doesn’t affect our woke rating for the show and doesn’t affect its quality (or lack thereof) but it may affect whether you want your young ones watching anything on CW.

• Each and every commercial, of which there were many, that played while I watched via the app was more progressive and gross than the next. The most egregious was a pregnancy test commercial in which two-thirds of the women in it were freaking out that it might show as positive.

Superman and Lois (S3 E3 – In Cold Blood)

Superman and Lois is now totally filled with unlikeable and completely unreasonable characters, mind-numbingly boring sub-plots, and a Superman who has been thematically cuckolded in deference to his wife’s “adventures” and his children’s obnoxious whining.

The program is more or less done with Clark, his sons, General Lane, and even John Henry Irons. Instead, it has nearly completely shifted its focus onto the female characters. Superman might be on screen for 3 minutes in each episode, and you can be sure that for 1.5 of them, Lois is piloting the drama. When the twin Kent boys are occasionally on screen, it is almost always in the company of a smarter, wiser, and more put-together female supporting character.

Sara is practically bipolar now. When she’s not dragging the disgustingly beta Jordan along by his d!@k, she’s a complete b!t@h with her mother. Meanwhile, her mother walks on eggshells around Sara, even going so far as to beg her for forgiveness after Lana smacked her in the mouth for an egregious overstep on Sara’s part. Quite frankly, Sara deserved it, and her mom went totally woke-parent afterward instead of doubling down and grounding her for talking to her with such disrespect.

Any goodwill that they built up over the first season and a half has been used up in only 3 episodes of season 3. Skip this travesty of a Superman show and watch the OG Superman instead.

WOKE ELEMENTS

• The show’s complete shift from a show about Superman & how he deals with family life to anything but Superman
• The show’s newfound focus is on any character with a set of X chromosomes no matter how mundane and boring she and her character’s subplot might be.
• Woke parenting
• Jordan Kent is gross. He’s such a whining p#$$y about absolutely everything. You’re bulletproof and can throw cars around like footballs, how about you grow a pair of nuts too?

THIS WILL BE THE LAST REVIEW FOR THIS SERIES FOR THE FORESEEABLE FUTURE. IT IS AN UTTER WASTE OF TIME.