Superman Week: Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman: "Pilot"

In Lois and Clark’s pilot episode, which first aired on September 12, 1993 and was written by Deborah Joy Levine, Clark Kent (Dean Cain) of Smallville moves to Metropolis to pursue a job at the Daily Planet.  

Of course, Clark is no ordinary rookie reporter: he was adopted as a child by a kindly Kansas couple (K. Callan, Eddie Jones) under unusual – and alien -- circumstances in 1966.  He is unaware of his exact origin, however.

After impressing Editor Perry White (Lane Smith) with his writing and feeling for “human interest” stories, Clark teams up with the beautiful, feisty, and highly-neurotic Ally McBeal, er Lois Lane (Teri Hatcher) on his first story: the sabotage of the space shuttle, Passenger.  That vehicle has been assigned to add an important module to the Prometheus Space Station, and the orbiting platform will fail without it.

Even as Clark Kent assumes the disguise of a hero called Superman to use his super powers (including x-ray vision and flight) for good, the richest man in Metropolis, Lex Luthor (John Shea), plots to sabotage the next shuttle launch so that he will have the opportunity to build a new space station, one which he can control without government interference…

I watched and enjoyed Lois and Clark throughout its four year run in the mid-1990s, even though the program focused very heavily on relationships and comedy, rather than crime-solving and action. 

The workplace romance aspects of this series are indeed charming and reflect the new idea that in the 1990s, we would fall in love at our jobs, where we would spend the bulk of our time. The yuppie-ism of the 1980s had made work the center-place of American lives in a way it hadn’t necessarily been in previous decades, but even a workaholic like Lois in Lois and Clark still actually pined for personal fulfillment outside of her career.

Lois and Clark reflects many such new realities of the nineties (like Don't Ask, Don't Tell) with a wink and a nudge.  One joke in the pilot involves a member of the Royal Family getting a sex change operation, and at another point in the premiere story, Perry White pointedly asks Clark Kent when he is going to "come out of the closet." 

In the latter instance, Perry is being literal: Clark is hiding in a supply closet while he plans his next move to rescue Lois and Jimmy.  But the "come out of the closet" lingo is important because it signals that Clark is indeed an outsider among his peers, hiding a secret about his identity and his very nature.

Another moment in the pilot suggests the burgeoning 1990s obsession with fitness and diet.  Lois takes one look at Clark's refrigerator -- which is filled with candy bars -- and notes "You eat like an eight-year old but you look like Mr. Hard Body."

The pilot episode also gets in a reference which will seem familiar to fans of Superman: The Movie (1978).  In that Jimmy Carter Era film, Superman promised Lois that he would never lie to her.  Here, the Man of Steel says instead that she can "trust" him, and one has to wonder if, in the 1990s (and the Clinton Era), it is meant ironically, as counter-point to reality.

In terms of the famous characters of the Superman mythos, there have certainly been some notable updates for the 1990s.  

Lois Lane is described by another character in the drama as “domineering, uncompromising, thick-headed and brilliant,” a straight-forward update that doesn’t take traditional sex roles into consideration.  In this era, Lois has nothing to apologize for by putting work first, or competing with -- and vanquishing -- male reporters.

Lex  Luthor  (John Shea) in this incarnation, furthermore, is not a power mad criminal or scientific genius, but a corporate raider, someone who seeks power through the world of business.  He is also a physically-attractive man, and not apparently bald or wearing a wig.  Later, we do find out he has the familiar chrome dome.

Perry White is very much the same man we've met before.  He's curmudgeonly and obsessed with "hard facts" and getting the story right.  Instead of invoking Great Caesar's Ghost, however, this White likes to invoke the memory of the King...Elvis Presley, another indicator of how this edition of the Superman myth revolves around pop culture references.

In terms of Clark Kent/Superman, this pilot episode makes it abundantly clear that Clark is the real person -- the son, the journalist, and prospective romantic partner -- and that Superman is the disguise he puts on, for the sake of the world.  This is an inversion of the Adventures of Superman dynamic of the 1950s, but it works.  The pilot makes it clear that Clark is a real man of honor.  At one point, he notes that "Like any citizen of the planet, I must obey the law," and that's classic Man of Steel dogma.

In many ways, this pilot episode of Lois and Clark reflects almost perfectly the yin-and-yang of the continuing series.  This installment boasts exceedingly good humor and fun banter, as well as romantic fireworks. But the suspenseful/action/adventure aspects just don't quite come together, despite everyone's best efforts.  Today, the special effects look especially dated, but I remember that in 1993 they looked rather impressive.

So, this may not be an "astonishing debut," but Lois and Clark's pilot reboots the Superman legend in a pleasing and funny, if not suspenseful and dynamic, fashion.  Today, this happy lark of a series absolutely reeks of the roaring nineties, an era when we had so much peace and prosperity that Superman/Clark Kent actually spent more time trading barbs with Lois than racing to save the world.

I sort of wish we still lived in that world today.