Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Lois & Clark I want my $40 back. (My review so far of Season 4)

OK, maybe it's not quite that bad, but...it's not good either. I've made it as far as "Soul Mates", and I think I've used my fast forward button more on this one disk than I did on the first three seasons combined.

Of course, part of that is that I hate, hate, hate anything to do with New Krypton and that whole arc, so the first two shows were duds for me right there. (Someone here once wrote a brilliant plot untwist or something along those lines for the NK arc, explaining all the reasons why it made absolutely no sense. I want to find that again and send the author a supply of Double Fudge Crunch bars, or the junk food item of his choice.) In addition to the fact that it's a contrived excuse for gratuitous angst, it ruins part of Clark's characterization for me if he isn't the last Kryptonian. So as far as I'm concerned, it never happened.

And then there was the Slightly Creepy Wedding That Made No Sense. I realize that L&C is pretty deeply rooted in fantasy, but for me, the whole guardian angel thing crossed a line into Just Plain Weird. I'm pretty sure I'm going to have nightmares about Mike smiling in that picture at the end.

I did like the vows, though.

And now I'm half-way through "Soul Mates", which is kind of fun, I guess, if a little heavy on the "two souls intertwined" business, which I don't really buy into. I like Tempus, though, and think he's one of the better villians, so I haven't forwarded through quite as much of this ep.

I came to this fandom entirely because of the fan fiction, rather than out of any deep love of the canon. In fact, I didn't even have knowledge of the canon, beyond a passing acquaintance with the Superman myth. I read for probably four months before I ever saw my first episode of the show. But then, when I got season 1, I thought it was a lot of fun. The next two seasons were a little more uneven - watched but not re-watched quite as often - but I'm pretty sure that if I'd turned this show on in the fourth season back when it aired, I'd have shut it off again quickly and never tried again.

And that's fine, actually, because I'm still here mostly for the fan fiction . My thanks to the many authors who have provided me with so many hours of high-quality entertainment and who have, in my opinion, often improved upon and enriched the canon immensely.

Best,

Caroline, who needed to get that off her chest

I have never seen season four, except for a few random episodes on TBS or TNT, whichever it was, around 2000 or so. So I am viewing this with fresh eyes. So far I have only watched LotF, and here are my thoughts on it, in a completely random and non-cohesive manner.

Clark definitely has more of an edge about him than in seasons two and three, more like he did in season one. He kicked butt with the "I am your commander!" attitude, and he seems to have a bit of snarky humor going on, too. And Dean in denim and a baseball cap? Wowzers.

When Lois looked out the window of the Planet, near the beginning of the ep, I think I saw the top edge of the backdrop. Also, she shows a photo from Clark's desk, and it is a publicity still from Ordinary People. Since they were supposed to be on that island alone, who the heck supposedly took the photo? I doubt it was Spencer Spencer's people!

I know that Ching is being played by a new actor, but I never would have thought about it if I didn't already know it (if that makes sense). The new guy looks a lot like the old one.

Lois actually thought that Clark had sex with Zara?! If he had been on New Krypton for years, then I might buy that, but it's been like two days! She knows better.

A U.S. Army colonel fails in his mission and is given a message for the government, so he goes to the offices of the Daily Planet?! Uh huh.

Lois seemed to be channeling a bit of Clois while in the concubine outfit.

How did Lois & Clark get inside the force field?

Most of Smallville has to realize now that Clark is Superman. Not only did Lord Nor refer to J&M as Kal-El's "mum and dad", but he flew onto the scene wearing normal clothes. So will the townsfolk keep his secret? Will they come to resent him and J&M for inadvertently bringing bad Kryptonians to their world?

There were a lot of "yeah, right" moments, but I still liked it. It's fun.

Off to watch BE.

Yep, it's all in how you're introduced to it. Speaking as someone who was hooked on the show from day one, I watched every episode from the day it went on the air to the day it went off the air. I laughed during Season One, I cried when Clark left for New Krypton, and I stuck with the show til the end after the rest of my family dropped out, thinking it was getting to weird. It was sort of like following our town's hockey team towards the end; I knew there was no chance in heck they'd every make it through the playoffs, but I love hockey anyway, and I sat in the exact same seat behind the goal dodging flying pucks for six years. :p

I found fanfic a year or so after the show went off the air, and there are some fanfic rewrites that I definitely like better than the show! But I still hang onto my tapes (and my original fanfic scrawled by hand ). Without the show, there would be none of these great fanfics, and Lois & Clark has eaten up wow...the last 13 years of my existence in some fashion? (Makes me wonder if I should find a new hobby ROFL.)

Keep on trucking. (Or sell it on Amazon when you're done. :p )
Jen

Someone wrote a wonderfully amusing little vignette about that. And I'm ashamed to say I can't remember who! Anyone? Well worth a read.

ETA: Found it. I thought it was either Shayne or Tank. It's Shayne's Gossip

LabRat

Jen I'm with you. I watched the show from day one. During the four years that the show was on, I:

- Graduated High School

- Met my future husband and the first (and last) man I would ever kiss

- Got engaged

- Got married

So you can see why this show is so special to me. My husband would come over on Sunday nights and watch Season 2 with us. I think he might have thought I was crazy when I jumped up and down, yelling at the TV at the end of the Season 2 cliffhanger saying "What? That's it? You can't leave us there! I can't wait all summer to hear her answer!"

Then when Season 3 started and Lois was preparing to accept/reject Clark's proposal -- I was being proposed to (during the same month - weird huh?) We got married before L & C did and needless to say I screamed and threw a fit at the fake marriage. But I hung in there. And at the end of Season 3, I felt like my heart had been ripped from my chest when Clark actually left. I kept telling my husband - he won't leave... not really. But he did. And again I hollared and yelled at the TV about having to wait all summer.

Then in Season 4, we still watched every Sunday night - every episode together... clear to the end - even when they moved the show to Saturday nights at a new time. And then when they announced the series finale, I remember being so sad that it was all over. What were we going to watch together on Sunday nights now?

So, while I realize a lot of people don't like Season 4... it will always hold a special place in my heart for the memories it invokes for me. And I think in a lot of ways I agree with Lisa - that the characters showed some of their original spunk from the first season. I can really see it in the 2 part "People Versus Lois" and "Dead Lois Walking" - there's some real spark and spunk in those eps (especially the first one). People Versus Lois had a season 1 feel to it for me... accept they were married.

So basically I love the series for all that it was (and wasn't) and definitely all it inspired in this wonderful FoLCdom. I'm so happy I found this place.

-- MR

Shayne's "Gossip" is delightful, and even more appreciated now than before.

Does anyone by chance know where I can find the story I referred to in my earlier post, which explained away the New Krypton business entirely? I need to read that again so that I can reassure myself that it never happened.

Caroline

I just finished STGTTWNK and I have to agree with Caroline's assesment here. The wedding was beautiful (and, yes, great vows) but it did kind of cross the weird line. There is a lot of crazy stuff on L&C, but most of it is presented in a manner that allows you to suspend your disbelief. The wedding is just thrown out there with no explanation. Where were they? How did all the others get there? Why does their certificate say they were married at city hall? How did the rest of the world find out about it, especially so quickly? How did that photo and certificate get framed so quickly? For that matter, who took the photo? That's the problem with this wedding - it prompts too many questions.

But it was still lovely. Hey, it's a TV show, I'll go with it.

(Speaking of city hall, that's where I would have headed the absolute second Lois had her memory back after OW. But that's just me.)

I also found the beginning of the episode to be very interesting. I never realized L&C were supposed to be so famous that they were followed around by the tabloids and referred to by first names only on the society pages.

Oh, and I liked BE, too.

Lisa (who likes the NK arc *much* better than the clone/amnesia arc)

I am mostly a lurker to this site (sorry to say) but I come mostly to read the nfics (which are wonderful!!!).

However, I couldn't resist replying to this thread.

I got engaged and married at the exact time Lois and Clark did. Of course I am now divorced but that's not their fault. Mostly because I married the wrong guy. I was so caught up in their romance that I wanted one of my own.

I just purchased season four today and I have to say, I am so excited to watch each and every episode. I just finished "Battleground Earth". I never noticed that Ching was played by a different actor. I actually thought it was Teri's ex. Go figure. I don't think the show's demise was caused by the marriage. It was time for the characters to get married. They couldn't date forever. I was upset when the show went off the air but I'm glad I have them on DVD to watch whever I want.

I love every season and even if in fourth season there are episodes which are not so good (well, every seson has not so good episodes), there are plenty of wondeful moments! so, I love first, second, third and fourth season, and I was very disappointed there wasn't the fifth!

Simona

DJ said:

This is my biggest problem with the NK arc - the fact that the writers manipulated the fans' feelings so cruelly...and then gave them such a silly payoff for it. My husband spends more time at work every day than Clark spent on his big journey, but of course, the fans couldn't have known that. So my introduction to the NK eps was through the fan fiction, including quite a few stories written by fans who were grieving throughout that long summer. And their grief really does bleed through onto the pages of their stories, as they tried to give some meaning, some significance, to L&C's separation, to Clark's bravery, to Lois's sacrifice. And then they tuned in the following fall and got a storyline that was far less engaging and meaningful than the ones they'd spent the summer writing. Because all the L&C writers had cared about was jerking the fans around a little bit more (truly overkill after the clone arc) and making sure people would tune in the following season. Which they would have done anyway, surely, had they just been given consistently good, solid writing and a strong cast. It just seems manipulative to me, and I don't like feeling like I'm being manipulated by writers.

But I'll shut up about New Krypton now, I promise!

I did finish "Soul Mates", and even though the premise is hard to swallow, it did have some funny moments. For some reason, when Lois said, "...mild mannered...telegraph operator...?" and the camera cut to Clark in that geeky telegraph operator outfit, I nearly fell off the couch laughing.

Caroline

Ha ha! Me too Caroline. And the line where Clark says "This sounds like a job for... the Lone Ranger" and he sighs and rolls his eyes (I think he says jeez). I laughed out loud at that.

-- MR

I'm right there with you, Jen.

I'm just glad we finally got it on DVD.

Jackie

I watched 5 eps today. Sadly, I don't even think that is a record for me.

Thoughts on Soul Mates:

Tempus and H.G. Wells make me laugh every time.

Since Clark didn't remember H.G. Wells, how did he recognize Baron Tempos? And later on, how did he know what the "original" Sir Charles did?

Lulu's outfit wasn't right for the time period (in the second incarnation). Dressed like that, the townspeople would have thought she was a hooker.

Despite my nitpicking, I really did have fun watching this. It's just that I *enjoy* nitpicking so much!

BTW, HG's comments at the end imply that *he* is envious of L&C's relationship. This made me wonder what type of relationships the real HG had, so I looked it up on Wikipedia. He was not a one-woman type of man:

Maybe he just never found the right one.

I also liked BY; I thought the B plot was quite realistic and something many women worry about, even if their husbands aren't slated to remain young for decades.

I can't say S4 was my favourite season. For all that it does have some good episodes that I enjoyed. AKAS, Lethal Weapon, Brutal Youth, IGYUMS...just some of the episodes I love. Actually, looking at the season as a whole, I'd have to say I enjoyed two thirds of the episodes.

I'm in general agreement though that the NK arc was a completely wasted opportunity. As I recall at the time they were planning to really spend money on a huge premiere - I think there might even have been talk at one point of making it a TV movie - but then there were budget cutbacks and it all shrunk down to what we eventually got on screen. We had all the angst in BGDF about Clark having to leave Lois behind to go to war on an alien planet, alone...and then it was totally devalued by having him turn right back around and come back to Earth the next day in the pilot.

For all that and for all their faults, I enjoy both episodes.

The wedding - oh how I loathe Mike the Angel. Urgh. All I wanted was a simple wedding with family and friends and a honeymoon in Hawaii. <sigh> I could have done without all that fantasy nonsense. And whole idea of God giving our favourite couple a helping hand to finally tie the knot was just so...well, I have to spend several hours in a darkened room to decompress every time I think about it...

LabRat

I have this crazy attachment to Lois and Clark. I believe I was in fourth grade when I fell in love with the show. I was really young, so my memories of it had been pretty fuzzy until I had the chance to buy the DVDs, but for some reason it's always remained my favorite show. So, though season 4 has some...um... interesting things going on, I just can't love it any less.

I like the NK arc. Though I definitely agree Clark's sudden return was somewhat of a disappointment, and most definitely a missed opportunity, it had its good points. I LOVED seeing the assertive, "I am your commander!" Clark. No more of that 'I'm-gonna-sulk-and-let-Lex- and-Dr.Deter-push-me-around' kind of attitude we saw in that *other* arc. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for sulking and angst in the right places, but the take-charge Clark was so incredibly appealing.

I agree that the cheese-factor in Soul Mates was a little much. The episode is fun, though, and Dean makes a wonderful cowboy, so I can overlook it!

I also wasn't a fan of the wedding. Or, rather, the circumstances of the wedding. It was beautiful, and I adored the vows, but it did seem thrown in there without much rhyme or reason.

Anyway, it's got its highs and lows, and it's probably not my favorite season, but it's still Lois and Clark and I love it just the same!

Ah, someone else who feels this way. I did like bits of Soul Mates, but for the most part, I thought this episode was silly. I also don't like the whole "two souls intertwined" thing.

Hey, I liked the NK arc. It was a big improvement over the Clone arc.

It’s been a couple of months since I watched this episode, but as I remember, he didn’t say this in front of the whole town. And I don't remember the whole town seeing Clark fly in. Of course, I don’t have the new DVD’s yet, so perhaps there are added scenes.

I also remember the fic about the townspeople, or at least some of them, knowing. I always thought that Maysie always knew. After all, she was supposed to be the town gossip, wasn’t she? And unlike on show Smallville, where the small town has 50,000 people, Smallville is supposed to really be an itsy bitsy place. An itsy bisty place is more likely to keep secrets. And I’d still like to know how the writers of Smallville came up with the idea that a city with 50,000 people is supposed to be a small town. The writers need to visit Kansas and find out how big those small towns really are. I mean, gadfries, according to wikipedia the 2000 population of the capital of Kansas – Topeka, was only 122,377.

I’m like Shadow. I fell in love with the show from the beginning. I watched every episode with one little glitch, and I have every episode on tape. I did have some initial misgivings about Dean Cain playing Superman because he didn’t have the ‘right look’. After all, to me, Superman is supposed to have blue eyes, and he’s supposed to be bigger than Dean is. I mean I’d been a Superman fan since I was four so I had certain expectations. But Dean won me over as a fan right away. The glitch: I was out of town traveling for my job when the last episode of Season 2 (the proposal ep) was on. (Yeah, I know – Bummer!). I was actually on the road at the time and so couldn’t watch it at a motel either. I didn't realize that I still be out of town, so I hadn't preset my VCR. I hadn’t been home in ages, so I called my mom, and asked her to just stick a tape in her recorder, check the channel and turn it on at the appointed time. Sounds simple, right? She decided to be ‘helpful’ and cut the commercials which I had told her not to try to do. In the process, she cut off the END!! And this was from the woman who never learned how to turn off the turn table that you played the old LP's on, and she thought she could successfully 'cut' the commercials. Arggghhh... And for some reason, I never got to see the end of the episode until it was on TNT.

I liked most of Season 4 (Soul Mates not included), and I was absolutely furious that they ended the show the way they did without the possibility of even a movie to wrap the show up. Thank goodness for fan fiction.

And I liked the wedding episode for the most part. I could have done without the wedding destroyer, but I liked the guardian angel bit a little. I *didn’t* like that he had to help them get married.

Hey, we are never told how long Clark was gone. Remember Lois went to work, and it seemed like she had been working for weeks before he came back. Yes, it was just one episode to us, but I was always of the opinion that it took Clark, Ching, and Zara quite a while to get to the mother ship. Of course, the mother ship got back to earth much more quickly than the itty bitty orb ship they were in.

Hahahahaha. I know I’ve watched at least 8 eps in one sitting.

I just found this out not too long ago myself. Do you know there are still people on this board who don’t realize that HG Wells was a real person? (Yes, I know that for a fact, but I won’t tell you how because I don’t want to embarrass anybody.) Probably even more don’t know that he wrote a book called Utopia and another one, a really famous one called War of the Worlds. Yeah, those movies were based on *his* book. I think most of us have heard about the one about his time machine… but how many people know the book really exists?

I like the episode where the ghost tries to help Lois to cook. I really liked the end where Lois flings the egg turner at Clark and gets eggs on him. Then she says something to the effect of having gotten eggs on him and that she needed to get them off. I’m firmly convinced that part was just too natural and was never meant to be in the ep. I loved that little bit. To my knowledge, it’s not in the script.

I agree that it would have been nice to see Clark actually go to New Krypton.

Sometimes God does help in these things, LabRat. (I was not particularly crazy that they required Mike’s help either, but I do like the idea of a guardian angel.)

Ugh, I'm hiding my geek hat. :p I probably read them ten years ago, but I have an old, large book with some of his major stories like Inivisible Man, Island of Dr. Moreau, Time Machine... Kinda makes me want to dig it out of my old room while I visit the folks... If anyone dives into some HG, those are the most memorable stories for me.

Anyway, we now return to your regularly scheduled programming.
JD

*sigh* I wish I had time to sit and read and reply to this thread! What I've skimmed through looks really interesting, and I've definitely got my own thoughts to add. Maybe when the semester's over.

Anyway, I did want to secure Paul some free candy.

I believe the story you're looking for, Caroline, is Paul aka HatMan's What Do You Mean "New Krypton"?? . Don't we all wish it could have been that way? *sigh*

Paul's a diabetic, though, so you might have to go sugar free. Though I do hear he keeps Snickers on supply for emergencies.

Sara (grumbling on her way to homework...)

Oh, that's a cute little story. Poof!

I do like the NK arc, but it really doesn't make much sense. Maybe we could say that Jor-El didn't know if the 1000 that left were successful, and he had heard of some disaster and assumed they were all dead....

My feeling on this is that we got two and a half good seasons, then L&C jumped the shark with the long amnesia story arc in season 3 and never really recovered. After that we got increasingly implausible characterisation (especially for Lois) and plots that didn't really make sense. Don't get me wrong - I still enjoyed the series, I just couldn't believe in it to the same extent any more.