Bizarro’s World

Plot summary: Bizarro turns out to be alive and upon learning of the history of Krypton gets to work trying to ‘remake’ his ‘home’ by force.

  1. Notes and Trivia
  2. Recap
  3. Best Performance
  4. Episode Ranking
  5. Rogues Roundup

Notes and Trivia

Episode: 32 (S2.E19)

Original Air Date: October 10th, 1997

Directed: Hiroyuki Aoyama (3)

Written: Robert Goodman (5)

Animation: TMS-Kyokuichi Corporation (13)

Music: Lolita Ritmanis (9)

Bizarro names his little pet alien creature Krypto, which is of course normally the name of Superman’s dog. Unfortunately Krypto Classic does not appear in the DCAU 😦

When Bizarro looks at his reflection in the water the logo on his suit isn’t mirrored even though it should be. In the comics his appearance is mirrored all the time, but for whatever reason they didn’t go that way for the show… and then made this stylistic choice/error.

Angela Chen’s reported rumour that Professor Hamilton had been to the Fortress of Solitude is true. He went there in ‘Blasts from the Past.’

Recap

Lois Lane drives out to the destroyed cloning facility from ‘Identity Crisis‘ but is turned back by Lex’s security. Superman arrives and assures her he checked the site thoroughly and nothing remains.

Except that’s totally not true as Bizarro is alive and wandering the snowy wilderness, scaring away skiers. A conveniently timed news piece about the Fortress of Solitude gives him an idea…

Finding the Fortress pretty easily, Bizarro frees all of the alien animals, taking a shine to a rabid little creature that tries to kill him and adopting it as a pet he eventually names ‘Krypto’.

Triggering the Brainiac Orb, Bizarro is given a crash course in Superman’s life story, inspiring him to fly back to Metropolis to ‘remodel’ it to resemble Krypton.

Excited to see Lois, Bizarro brings her inside his ‘house’ to see his handiwork and meet his ‘father’ (a terrified hostage wearing a uniform that vaguely resembles Jor-El’s Kryptonian attire).

Superman grabs some Kryptonite (and the anti-K suit to protect himself) but it turns out Bizarro is completely immune to its effects. Ya know, because opposites!

As usual Superman ends up with a hole in his suit and struggles to save Lois and ‘Jor-El’ from the collapsing building (Bizarro wants to recreate Krypton blowing up for some reason.)

There’s some shenanigans with a missile, Superman saves the day, and then takes Bizarro to another planet and just… gaslights him into living there with his lil alien ‘dog’?!?

Best Performance

Tim Daly‘s basically the only person with lines so… uhhh… congrats? His Bizarro is perfectly fine. Sometimes fun, sometimes annoying. But that’s the character I suppose. Superman’s monologue about how lost, confused and alone he felt when he found out he was an alien falls relativity flat, leaving me questioning if we have to have an uncomfortable conversation about Daly overall. I don’t think he’s actively bad; I do understand why they cast him. He has a sense of optimistic warmth to him that is in the right ballpark for Superman. But he’s just not a very compelling actor in my opinion. Is it grim to talk about how maybe the series lead is Actually Bad in the section where I’m awarding him best performance? Absolutely. But the alternative was to end it after the first sentence.

I like Joseph Bologna a whole lot, but Turpin only has like 3 lines. Our eternal queen Dana Delany talks the second most but it’s extremely generic Lois dialogue.

Episode Ranking

Straight to the bottom of the pile and if I’m being completely honest I don’t particularly want to talk about it. But I will anyway.

I’m really not sure what the goal of this episode was to be honest. At one point I wondered if they were going to essentially do a clip show with a few interstitial Bizarro scenes, but it’s even worse than that. Obviously Bizarro causes some significant structural damage to the city, takes a hostage and chucks a missile at the city… but it somehow felt like there was never a moment of danger in the entire episode. Lois is bemused by the entire thing despite being a quasi-hostage. We do what feels like the 100th instance of the Anti-Kryptonite suit tearing which obviously has diminishing returns. Superman diverts what feels like his 100th missile before it can hit the city. Even something like freeing the partially dangerous alien animals from the Fortress has no consequence. Superman couldn’t have wrangled a couple of beasties? Nothing? No? Fine.

While I don’t support erasure of the real Krypto… I’m afraid I love this little alien gremlin thing. Bizarro calling it ‘doggie’ as it tries to rip his throat out is adorable. But that’s my only positive.

When writing the review for ‘Monkey Fun‘ I said how it’s impossible to care about anything going on, but at least that episode had the cute factor of Lois & Titano, and some vaguely fun Giant Ape shenanigans. That was still really bad, but this episode just happened to me and I cannot communicate how little I want to ever watch it again.

  1. Brave New Metropolis
  2. World’s Finest
  3. Livewire
  4. Double Dose
  5. Fun and Games
  6. Father’s Day
  7. The Last Son of Krypton
  8. Ghost in the Machine
  9. Stolen Memories
  10. Action Figures
  11. The Prometheon
  12. Tools of the Trade
  13. The Main Man
  14. Mxzypixilated
  15. Blasts from the Past
  16. Target
  17. The Way of All Flesh
  18. Solar Power
  19. My Girl
  20. A Little Piece of Home
  21. Feeding Time
  22. Speed Demons
  23. Two’s a Crowd
  24. Identity Crisis
  25. Monkey Fun
  26. Bizarro’s World (NEW ENTRY)

Rogues Roundup

Bizarro (Tim Daly) (second appearance)

I didn’t enjoy his first appearance but understand he’s a big part of Superman mythology so they’re obligated to go to him at least once. Whatever tiny amount of sympathetic/poignant tragedy there was to him learning the truth of his existence and sacrificing himself to save Lois is entirely undone by this second outing in my opinion. If you’re going to retcon a death you need to have a really good justification and this was just a total waste of time.

Does he border on cute sometimes? Sure! But is that worth writing 22 minutes of television over? Absolutely not.

Congrats Big Man, you just fell below a Giant Ape that doesn’t even talk.

  1. Livewire
  2. Darkseid
  3. Lex Luthor
  4. The Joker
  5. Toyman
  6. Metallo
  7. Parasite
  8. Brainiac
  9. Mr. Mxyzptlk
  10. Kalibak
  11. Harley Quinn
  12. Lobo
  13. Luminus
  14. DeSaad
  15. The Preserver
  16. Bruno Mannheim (and Intergang!)
  17. Kanto
  18. Mala & Jax-Ur
  19. Mercy Graves
  20. The Prometheon
  21. Earl Garver
  22. Titano
  23. Bizarro (↓)
  24. Detective Bowman
  25. Weather Wizard

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