Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Superman & Lois’ On The CW, Where Clark Kent And Lois Lane Move Back To Smallville With Their (Super?) Teenage Boys

One of the hallmarks of Greg Berlanti’s Arrowverse series is that he brings the DC heroes that are featured down to earth, at least a little bit. They all have issues that mere mortals like us can identify with. Then again, most of the Arrowverse’s heroes are in the younger stages of their lives; they haven’t settled down and raised families (well, except for Black Lightning). But one if we follow one of the most storied comic heroes of all as he and his legendary love figure out how to parent teenagers — while also keeping the world safe? Welcome to Superman & Lois….

SUPERMAN & LOIS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A burning-hot spaceship hurtles towards earth. We hear Clark Kent (Tyler Hoechlin) talking about how he arrived in Smallville, Kansas, as a baby after his home planet, Krypton, was destroyed.

The Gist: The story of Superman & Lois isn’t about Clark living in Smallville as a teenager, like Smallville. And it’s not about his whirlwind romance with Lois Lane (Elizabeth Tulloch), like in Lois & Clark. Here, Superman is a well-established hero, investigating breeches in nuclear power plants with Lois’ father, Gen. Sam Lane (Dylan Walsh). And the supercouple have been married for a long time, raising teenage twin sons Jordan (Alex Garfin) and Jonathan (Jordan Elsass).

Jonathan is the All-American kid, about to start at QB for his Metropolis high school, the first freshman to do so. Jordan has had his issues growing up; he’s often distant and would act out when he was younger. He has been diagnosed with social anxiety disorder. So he’d much rather play video games — he likes playing the guy beating the snot out of Superman, who he thinks is “boring” — than contemplate the first day of high school.

Clark tends to beat himself up over not being there for his kids, especially Jordan, whom he has been unable to connect with. They have no idea who he really is, so when he gets called away to fix up yet another nuclear plant rupture, Lois covers for him by saying he’s on a reporting assignment for the Daily Planet. But when Clark gets a call from his mother’s doctor back in Smallville, all that changes.

He flies there just after his mother dies, but on the way there, he sensed his mother telling him to “come home.” At his mother’s funeral, he and Lois reconnect with old frenemies the Cushings: Fire Chief Kyle Cushing (Erik Valdez) and his wife Lana Lang Cushing (Emmanuelle Chriqui), who works a local bank. Their older daughter, Sarah (Inde Navarrette) is eager to get to know Jordan again after the last time they hung out together a few summers ago.

She’s also there when they go into the barn to reset the wifi router, when Jordan slips, and a bunch of pipes fall on them. But they come out virtually unscathed. Lois has wanted Clark to tell the boys who he really is just in case something like this happens: If one or both of the twins start showing powers.

In the meantime, Clark and Lois find out from Lana that to help support neighbors in the downtrodden town, Clark’s mother took out a reverse mortgage on half the house’s value. So they have a choice; sell the farm to scuzzy magnate Morgan Edge (Adam Rayner), who has also gutted The Daily Planet, or pay the loan and stay? The decision is influenced by two things: The boys finding the spaceship he arrived in as a baby, and him revealing who he really is, and the fact that the nuclear plants are being damaged to draw Superman out, by someone who knew him as Kal-El on Krypton and is intent on destroying him.

Oh, and it turns out that one of the twins does have powers. We just won’t tell you which one.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Superman & Lois fits nicely into CW’s Arrowverse, which makes sense, considering that Hoechlin has played Clark/Superman in just about every other Arrowverse show.

Our Take: As we said, the show is part of Greg Berlanti’s Arrowverse, even though it looks like it’s designed to stand alone from the other shows due to its Smallville setting. But what we found interesting is that Berlanti and showrunner Todd Helbing have made Clark and Lois into a couple that are dealing with all sorts of real life issues, many of which are just as important as saving the world.

The biggest of these real life issues is parenthood. If you ever wanted to see what Clark and Lois are like as angsty middle-aged parents who are constantly feeling guilty about their parenting skills and the damage they’re doing to their kids, Superman & Lois is the show for you. There are no romantic notions here; Clark and Lois still love each other, of course, but the sexy, flirty stage of their relationship is long gone. Jonathan is a bit of an arrogant prick, and Jordan is a typical surly teenager, albeit maybe a shade darker than that. Smallville is in such bad shape that most of the people whom Clark, Lana and Kyle went to school with have left town.

The Kent-Lanes have to deal with all of that, plus the decline of print journalism, house foreclosures, and teenagers on anxiety meds, all on top of the fact that one of those twins has new powers that they have to figure out. Oh, and there’s a mysterious enemy out there who wants to destroy Superman. Yeah, that little issue is there, too.

All of that may seem ridiculous for a Superman story, but having Superman/Clark not be some sort of all-powerful mythical figure but one who is dealing with the same BS every other working parent on the planet is somehow makes the Lois & Clark story a new, refreshing angle. It brings the whole bumbling Clark-turns-to-Superman trope to a different level. It shows that even Superman, along with the dynamic journalist Lois Lane, are just as self-loathing as every other parent right now, and for some reason that makes us want to watch.

Now, the story about the mysterious enemy is going to be interesting, as well, mainly because of the storylines that have been introduced into the Arrowverse via other shows (like the Crisis On Infinite Earths, perhaps?). It doesn’t look like it’s going to follow the traditional path that other Superman series have, and that’s just fine with us. Just as we like seeing Clark and Lois as harried parents, we’re also happy to see Superman battle some different enemies for a change.

Sex and Skin: None, except for when Jordan tries to kiss Sarah at a town bonfire, and he gets the crap pounded out of him by her boyfriend (oops).

Parting Shot: The mysterious enemy who almost killed Clark goes on his ship and is told by the computer that he’s out of Kryptonite. The officer has a very, very interesting last name.

Sleeper Star: Navarrette plays Sarah with just the right balance of wise-ass teenager and someone who is vulnerable enough to identify with Jordan and his issues. Will she be Jordan’s version of Lois? Have I said too much?

Most Pilot-y Line: It almost feels like the glasses thing is a joke now, isn’t it? Clark takes of his specs when he finally explains to his boys who he is and — OMG! Superman was in front of us all along! Can’t we get a different explanation, like these guys just didn’t think their dorky dad could do what Superman did, even though they looked alike?

Our Call: STREAM IT. Superman & Lois has some way to go to get to the level of some of Berlanti’s other Arrowverse shows. But it’s got a good base story, one that we haven’t seen on screen when it comes to Clark and Lois before.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.

Stream Superman & Lois On CWTV.com