Plot summary: Somebody is determined to to kill Lois Lane and there are unfortunately no shortage of possible suspects.
Notes and Trivia
Episode: 20(S2.E7)
Original Air Date: September 19th, 1997
Directed: Curt Geda (6)
Written: Hilary J. Bader (3)
Animation: Koko Enterprise Co., LTD & Dong Yang Animation Co., LTD. (13)
Music: Lolita Ritmanis (4)
The zinger “I believe this is your floor” was also used in Superman II.
It may just be me, but there’s just a hint of New Gods to Lytener’s fancy armour in the final scene.
Recap
Lois wins an investigative journalism award but is a little shaken due to a death threat written on her napkin. Sure enough, Clark spots a trap above the stage and excuses himself so he can swoop in as Superman and save her from being crushed to death.
Clark asks why Detective Bowman is rude to Lois in the aftermath, learning that she ran a story on police corruption 2 years ago and he’s had it in for her ever since. Way to prove her wrong!
On the drive home, Lois’ car plays another threat over the radio and suddenly begins to drive itself, swerving off an overpass and plummeting to certain doom.
Luckily Clark was thrown overboard first, so was able to quick-change into Superman, catch the car, claim he saved Clark already, and then reveal the hidden device that gave control of the vehicle to the unknown killer.
Rather than going to the police, Lois insists on taking the tech to Edward Lytener, a former LexCorp employee who helped her with her exposé on Luthor. Lytener confirms that the tech is that of his former employer.
Naturally Lex denies any involvement and goes as far as to promise he’ll find out how his tech ended up in her car, which infuriates Clark, but Lois believes him.
Next an elevator at the Daily Planet locks her inside and rocket thrusters propel it through the roof of the building and into the sky where Superman narrowly saves her (and a pair of helicopter passengers) before it explodes.
Defying orders to stay home under police protection, Lois sneaks off to see Ed Lytener again, who does the classic villain thing of accidentally revealing his deception, and traps her in his lab, angry that she didn’t help him after he blew the whistle and got fired.
Lex phones Clark and confirms the device from her car went missing along with other inventory when Lytener was fired, so he races to save her, but Lytener has a Red Sun powered suit.
Superman beats him up anyway, disables the traps, and Lytener is arrested. Lois thanks him for always saving her in time and they flirt a little.
Best Performance
Dana Delany was so good early on in the show but they’ve unfortunately greatly reduced her role since then. Perhaps due to scheduling, perhaps because they wanted to focus more on whacky villains. She’s back in full effect here though. She did a good job of stammering her way through her acceptance speech to sell being rattled by the death threat, and then switching to the extreme opposite of total defiance in the face of concern for her safety from Clark. Her delivery of “I’m not having a good day” is sublime, quietly admitting to Superman that for all her bravado, she is legitimately shaken. All of that plus some detective work and plenty of flirting with Superman.
Eddie Barth is good at being a dickish cop, disinterested in sincerely engaging with a victim and thinking he knows best. It’s a shame it’s such a tiny role. Likewise, Jonathan Harris is solid as the snooty Julian Frey, Lois’ rival nominee who wishes her luck but then talks shit about her when she leaves. Robert ‘Airplaine!‘ Hays is perfectly fine as Edward Lytener.
Episode Ranking
While I appreciate how surprisingly good the villains have been throughout the show in terms of being able to provide legitimate challenges to our hero, I’m glad they did a simpler ‘Superman saves people’ story. In my opinion the true enduring central core of the character is Clark having to make excuses so he can go change into Superman in time to save ordinary people, chiefly Lois Lane, and this episode runs that play over and over, making its way methodically up the field… and then settles for a field goal instead of a touchdown. The ending is pretty wet, and drops it to the middle of the pack. They did too much with Lytener and detracted from the other suspects in their mystery and proper closure.
On the plus side, it’s a Lois-centric story, returning such a delightful take on the character to the fore where she belongs. Each attempt on her life takes a little more out of her, and while she’s good at pretending she’s fine and wants to get on with trying to crack the case, the quiet moments reveal her vulnerability, and the nightmare sequence ends up being quite powerful as a result. It isn’t immediately obvious it’s a nightmare at all, in fact, and the audience remains convinced Superman will save her seconds before she hits the concrete… but that never happens and they go as far as to cut to black and play a thudding noise before revealing she was dreaming. That’s a great way to subvert expectations, especially after Supes saved her three times before that in the episode.
I’ve been meaning to talk about this for a while now, but I really appreciate that they don’t exclusively stick Lois & Clark in the same clothes in every episode. Sure, they have ‘main’ looks, but every so often they’ll change the colours up a little. In a perfect world it would happen every episode but that’s ridiculous, so I appreciate the effort to even do it this much. Lois ends up wearing four different outfits in this episode, while Bruce Wayne almost exclusively wore that hideous brown and yellow suit in BTAS.
Pretty sure they were making a fat joke with the larger nominee who wrote about the truth about diet culture. Sucks. You could be charitable and say it’s actually body positivity but this is the same creative team that used to draw Paul Dini into BTAS in such a way that he crash dieted to lose weight.
- Livewire
- Fun and Games
- The Last Son of Krypton
- Stolen Memories
- The Prometheon
- Tools of the Trade
- The Main Man
- Blasts from the Past
- Target (NEW ENTRY)
- The Way of All Flesh
- My Girl
- A Little Piece of Home
- Feeding Time
- Speed Demons
- Two’s a Crowd
- Identity Crisis
Rogues Roundup
Edward Lytener (Robert Hays) (first appearance)
I’ll give them credit for not following the rules of Scooby-Doo for once, as we met multiple potential suspects, and Lytener wasn’t even the first! They do a good job with the reveal too, as it seems he’s told on himself when Lois wasn’t actually suspicious yet, but then she confirms she was playing dumb. I think it’s a little weak for them to reveal he helped her in the first place because he had a crush on her, but I guess it’s meant to be a pitiable and villainous character, so that fits. I just don’t think they necessarily needed it.
Speaking of which, pivoting hard into a ‘villain that can fight Clark’ thing at the end with his advanced tech suit smacks of ‘we like this guy we invented and want to do more with him later’, which I can understand, but feels like a hat on a hat. I’m glad that Superman just took his enhanced hits, got back up, and then out-boxed him. Like you may have fancy tech but you’re still just a nerd fighting a guy who punches for a living.
Detective Bowman (Eddie Barth) (first appearance)
Corrupt cops are a layup for villains, and even in limited minutes this dude is a real dick, telling an attempted murder victim that she’s so annoying there’s likely to be multiple pages of suspects who would want her dead. Then he stalks her with binoculars while she’s sleeping and smirks when she wakes up visibly upset from a nightmare.
But then he just doesn’t appear again??? Was he watching her as part of the police detail and just happened to get some personal pleasure that she was suffering? They didn’t have 20 seconds to bring him back for the arrest of Lytener? Really weird given he’s coming back later in a bigger role (which is why I’m ranking him at all at this point!) Still, helps Darkseid!
Lex Luthor (Clancy Brown) (eighth appearance)
You know how I constantly prattle on about Lex being more a series regular than a villain? Well here he is, actively helping! They make sure his first scene is testing a dangerous weapon just to remind you he’s not a great dude, and he also kinda hits on Lois/is overly touchy, but when he says he respects her and what she does… I legit believe him. I think that’s a character wrinkle that makes sense if you consider the totality of him, but it’s not necessarily come up in this show so far.
This is all bolstering his position as a great character, but it’s still not enough to nudge him over the tightly focused and excellently deployed villains above him. I’m starting to wonder if he’s going to end up fourth of fifth and people are going to get mad at me. Ah well!
- Livewire
- Toyman
- Lex Luthor (–)
- Brainiac
- Metallo
- Lobo
- The Preserver
- Parasite
- Bruno Mannheim (and Intergang!)
- Kanto
- Mala & Jax-Ur
- The Prometheon
- Bizarro
- Earl Garver
- Edward Lytener (NEW ENTRY)
- Mercy Graves
- Darkseid
- Detective Bowman (NEW ENTRY)
- Weather Wizard
The Matt Signal 
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