Plot summary: Livewire escapes captivity and recruits Parasite to help her gain revenge against Superman.
Notes and Trivia
Episode: 23 (S2.E10)
Original Air Date: September 22nd, 1997
Directed: Yuichiro Yano (2)
Written: Hilary J. Bader (5)
Animation: Koko Enterprise Co., LTD & Dong Yang Animation Co., LTD. (15)
Music: Harvey Cohen (5)
As you’ll of course recall, Parasite earned a TV in his prison cell during the events of ‘Two’s a Crowd‘. He appears to be watching the same spoof of Letterman that Joker does in ‘Joker’s Wild‘
Livewire refers to Parasite as a ‘Purple People Eater’, referring to the 1958 song of the same name. You are most likely to know it from Nope and X-Men 97.
Recap
A hapless prison janitor ignores the ‘no electronics’ sign when cleaning near Livewire’s cell and is promptly manipulated into letting her listen to his walkman.
Draining enough power to open the door, she infiltrates the prison’s lighting system and then escapes, zapping Dan Turpin at a press conference where he pledges to recapture her.
Superman gets his shit absolutely wrecked too, until he’s able to open a fire hydrant and spray her with water, forcing her to flee. She promises to return and murder him soon.
To that end she breaks into Styker’s Island to free Parasite, proposing an alliance to take out Superman. He agrees, largely due to some innuendo, and the pair escape the facility.
Clark spots Parasite on a prison boat and swoops in to stop him, but Rudy dives into the sea and drains a shark to give himself the ability to slip away quickly and quietly underwater.
Regrouping at a hideout, Parasite agrees to Livewire’s plan to drain Superman enough so that she can kill him. He tries to affirm their alliance physically but she just shocks him and leaves. Good for her.
The duo attack a powerplant so Livewire can “eat”, but Superman arrives, wearing what I can only describe as a body-condom, protecting from both of their powers!
They manage to freeze him solid for a moment with liquid nitrogen, and when he breaks free his ‘protective layer’ goes with it, allowing Parasite to drain him, bringing The Man of Steel to his knees.
Livewire goes in for the kill, but Rudy betrays her, using the strength he gained from Superman to withstand her electricity enough to drain her too.
While all seems lost, Superman is able to trick Parasite into setting off the sprinkler system, overloading his newly-absorbed weakness from Livewire. Both villains are carted back to prison and Superman flies away.
Best Performance
Oh no! Two of the best guest performers in the show so far are against each other!
Just kidding, Joseph Bologna has like three lines and it remains Lori Petty‘s world that we’re all just living in. Her soft impersonation of Bologna was funny, and she leaned really hard into the sex appeal of the character in general this time, rather than the punk rock shock jock schtick. There’s still a decent amount of madcap cartoon tomfoolery for her to not become one-note, and even a tiny slither of emotional nuance to play with, both when manipulating the janitor at the start, and expressing her fear of water. Truly a 1-of-1 talent.
I actually enjoyed Brion Jones a lot more this time around, largely because they wrote a treatment of the character that better fits his voice, which felt at odds with the design previously.
Episode Ranking
Taking two of your more memorable villains and teaming them up against the hero is a cheat code toward success, and it certainly worked really well here. Livewire and Parasite both drain power to amplify their abilities and have both given Superman as much of a run for his money as anyone in the show, so they make for a good fit. Naturally the deadly alliance falls apart when they turn on each other, but both benefit hugely from the entire endeavour (see below).
I’m a sucker for specificity in terms of a clever little fight sequence. Superman knows he can’t touch Parasite or he’ll get drained, so just lifts the entire boat he’s driving out of the water, and Rudy can’t reach him to do anything about it. Smart! Then Rudy just grabs a fucking shotgun and fires it through the floor in a moment that was so gloriously out of pocket compared to what villains like him usually do that it made me laugh out loud. Superman then responds by simply rocking the boat side to side to make him fall over and drop the gun. All of this takes like 20-30 seconds but packs in so much oneupmanship and quick-thinking on both characters’ part. Then they just stick a cherry on the top by having Parasite leap overboard to drain a freakin’ shark to give himself the edge over the Man of Steel in an underwater skirmish. These are the kinds of things that light up my brain and make me remember an episode.
Similarly, they returned to the well of ‘Parasite absorbs weaknesses, not just strengths’, with Superman exploiting Livewire’s aversion to water to defeat Rudy this time around. The way he goes about it rules almost as much as the above-mentioned sequence, as Superman sincerely seems desperately out of options, swinging wildly at his mocking pursuer with a broom. This of course is just a ploy, and Rudy accidentally sets it ablaze so Clark can set the sprinklers off. An excellent capper to a fun little sequence where Parasite stalks his prey around the building.
They put a lot of work into visually interesting and varied ways of depicting Livewire’s powers last time, so could only do so much new stuff, but I particularly enjoyed the lingering shot of her disappearing into a TV set as the lights flickered. Plus this episode gave us an underwater fight where a mutant absorbed a shark’s life force and then battled an alien. So. My hands are tied.
All in all it’s a really smart script from Hilary Bader that elevates two recurring villains and yet again highlights our hero’s intelligence. Superman is generally only talked about as a total powerhouse, but as I’ve said before he’s beaten most of these foes by improvising clever solutions. It lacks the emotional hook of three episodes I’m placing it above, but I simply have to reward the elegance of the writing. The only thing keeping it from the top spot is the tour-de-force of Livewire’s debut.
- Livewire
- Double Dose (NEW ENTRY)
- Fun and Games
- The Last Son of Krypton
- Stolen Memories
- Action Figures
- The Prometheon
- Tools of the Trade
- The Main Man
- Mxzypixilated
- Blasts from the Past
- Target
- The Way of All Flesh
- My Girl
- A Little Piece of Home
- Feeding Time
- Speed Demons
- Two’s a Crowd
- Identity Crisis
Rogues Roundup
Livewire (Lori Petty) (second appearance)
Gosh she rules. Seeing how much havoc she can wreak with just the electricity from a walkman is a great villain showcase, and her ability to push the janitor’s buttons first to get him to share with her is great too. Similarly she uses her feminine wiles to whip the prisoners up into a frenzy, only to electrocute them all when they grab the bars. Queen shit.
I mentioned it in the voice acting section but they generally leaned more into her being a quasi-Poison Ivy type this time around, which I was a tiny bit disappointed by at first before realising I’m an idiot. She remains a fully three-dimensional character, whether it be the legitimate fear she shows towards the water when breaking Parasite out of prison, or her fiery temper when rejecting his sexual advances.
It’s a slightly weaker appearance than last time, but not to such a degree that her vice grip on the top spot is loosened.
Parasite (Brion Jones) (third appearance)
What an excellent rehabilitation for a character with a tonne of potential that hasn’t quite been utilised right thus far. Initially it seems like they’ve decided to give up on him as a big time threat and turn him into more a comedic minor villain. He’s got his big TV, he becomes a bit of a sex pest and keeps getting smacked around by Livewire, serving as her lackey. Levels to this and all that.
But he also demonstrates some quick thinking (gushed about above), first fighting Superman solo, and then betraying Livewire, draining both sets of powers and using them to stalk a weakened Superman. He remembers his secret identity, threatens Lois, the whole deal.
Obviously he gets outfoxed in the end and has his memory fried once again to restore the status quo, but the episode does plenty to reemphasise how dangerous he can be. And honestly for as gross as some of his behaviour towards Livewire is, the double-entendre of him actually being more interested in her power than her body works really nicely. Plus he keeps that MF’n THANG on him! Big jump for Rudy!
- Livewire (–)
- Toyman
- Lex Luthor
- Metallo
- Parasite (↑)
- Brainiac
- Mr. Mxyzptlk
- Lobo
- The Preserver
- Bruno Mannheim (and Intergang!)
- Kanto
- Mala & Jax-Ur
- The Prometheon
- Bizarro
- Earl Garver
- Edward Lytener
- Mercy Graves
- Darkseid
- Detective Bowman
- Weather Wizard
The Matt Signal 
Leave a comment