This pesky plot bunny has been beating me about the brain for while so I thought I'd just throw it in here to placate it.
I've been reading the L&C episode Transcripts and happily supping on the irony of events in the first season, especially when compared to the third and fourth. I wonder how Lois and Clark would react if they met their future, married-with-children selves, somewhere during the first season.
Either Lois and Clark could accidentally be transported to another parallel universe, where they meet their younger counterparts in a world as similar to their own as possible, or they could travel back in time in order to prevent something happening that would have repercussions in the future.
What I’d really like is if the time portal or dimension rip could occur due to some high-profile scientific demonstration going wrong and everyone would know that Lois and Clark were counterparts from another time or place. That way the eye-openers would not be confined to The Golden Duo alone. I’d love to see how the co-workers, who had written off the young Lois as someone who had no time for anything but her work, especially Cat Grant, react to the wife-and-mother persona of the older Lois. It could be contrived that no one would remember they’d been there, once they completed their mission and went back.
Plus, it’s my personal theory that neither Clark nor Lois were ready to share the Big Secret or any other romantic entanglement a moment sooner than what originally happened. The older Lois might have been harbouring some secret resentment against not being let in on it sooner, wondering about what-ifs. Letting both Lois and Clark get a clearer perspective on themselves as they were ought to help them resolve some of those issues, as well as stop some of the secret self-recrimination they still feel for various incidences in their past. It could even be that young Clark, encouraged by the older couple’s success in their relationship, decides to reveal his secret to young Lois but is stopped by older Lois, explaining that she does not yet have the emotional maturity and self-knowledge to deal with it just yet. And older Lois could have some heart-to-hearts with her younger self about why you can’t really love a plaster saint and what it really means to love someone.
I picture the older Lois to be markedly more restrained and patient than her younger counterpart, a woman who has learned to choose her battles and keep her mouth shut and play dumb when need be. Who isn’t afraid to show her soft compassionate side and is through with her obsessive need to prove herself to everyone within a ten-mile vicinity.
The Clarks’ differences would be a bit subtler, except for the initial contrast between the “green jeans” look of the younger Clark as opposed to the impressive “GQness” of the older one. (Tee Hee!) I’m thinking that the older Clark would have gained some healthy cynicism and respect for Lois’ intuition as well as injected some of the assertiveness inherent in his superhero persona into his everyday one.
Well, I haven’t really thought it all out yet, but what d’you think? Does it suck?
If , by some bizarre chance, anybody wants to take this bunny home and feed it up into a nice, fat, coherent story, I’d appreciate it if you got in touch with me. I have some other niggling little ideas you might like.
Adios,
Hasini.
