Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Lois & Clark Hardest implausibility for you to swallow

This peeve isn't unique to Lois and Clark, but it irks me when the writers completely ignore the way actual systems work. The justice system has already been mentioned. (A Murder One trial in two weeks. Yeah, right.) Superman Returns pulled an even more glaring error: Lex Luthor was supposedly released because the appeals court called Superman as a witness and he didn't show. Appeals courts don't call witnesses.

In that same vein, I can't stand the Smart Kids episode. It took me a year to get my foster care license, but Lois Lane, a reporter with no training and a clear conflict of interest, is able to take a child home--a child who apparently just hangs out in Lois's apartment all day while she's at work, BTW--on the non-custodial mother's say-so. Lois even has a snarky little line to the effect that 'just because she doesn't have custody doesn't mean that she has no say-so over where her children go.' Actually, that's precisely what it means.

This scene is weird to me because I'm actually fine when they're just holding hands and she's flying alongside him. I start working that weird comic book logic and think that its not that implausible at all, she' being carried by the wind current like a plane. Then he lets go, she falls, and my logic gets crushed. Not to mention it makes superman look like pretty big jerk.


Thank You! Someone finally understands. Every time I mention that I like superman if there is a batman fan within a 5mile radius they will start talking about how everything about superman is illogical and batman is a real hero and so much more believable etc. And the truth is he's not at all. One ordinary guy taking on an entire city's criminal underground? Loaded with hi-tech gadgets and nobody stops to wonder where the hell he got it all or how he can afford it? The batmobile never gets caught in city traffic? (that one is the most implausible to me) And with a car like the batmobile that stands out in every highway still no one knows the location of the batcave?
I have an easier time believing that no one recognizes Clark Kent when he takes his glasses off.

As for Clark's clothes, it's one of those things I chose not to think about because it was just going to make me go crazy. However, in one fanfic explanation I particularly liked they said that Clark didn't even know what happened to his clothes, they would disappear when he spun and reappear when he spun again. I don't think they ever explained how he made that discovery though.

The thing about all of this is that with some things (the powers themselves) we willingly suspend disbelief, for others (things that are more familiar in everyday life) it's a lot harder.

For a non L&C example, in one episode of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles they made three important errors about how blood groups work in about twenty seconds, and the only explanation for one would be that Sarah Connor was NOT John Connor's mother. I immediately picked up on that because I'm a biologist and regular blood donor, whereas the sheer impossibility of time travel doesn't worry me at all.

With L&C I think that the secret identity thing is the big stumbling block for a lot of people because most people are good with faces; I don't have a problem with this because I'm really bad at recognizing people - having said that, if I saw someone every day in two different identities I think the penny would drop sooner or later. The powers, even things like the selective hearing, are more of a 'given' and you have to accept them or the character doesn't work at all.

With the Superman Returns / Supergirl / NCIS crossover I've just written the secret identity thing was a big problem - they're detectives, surely they'll notice sooner or later. I was going to get really elaborate about disguises, but in the end I said the hell with it - they get to see Supergirl in civilian clothes and aren't fooled, because she isn't trying to fool them, but right at the end of the story one of them literally bumps into her, in her secret identity, and is completely clueless. It's a Kryptonian thing, maybe they have the same Someone Else's Problem field that stops anyone noticing the TARDIS.

Thank you, Marcus! From now on, that's the explanation I'll use.

Honestly, though, I was always willing to suspend belief and overlook most of the details (Lois not recognizing C/S, where his clothes went, etc). My issues with the show were more of characterization (or, more precisely, the lobotomy that both Lois and Clark apparently underwent sometime in the third season). I know being in love can change you, but would you REALLY just stand there and let evil incarnate (Lex Luthor) drive off with your fiance instead of taking him back to the prison from which he had escaped?

I mean, really?!?!?

Well said. That's it exactly!

And the fact that the hearing is the only power that I have a problem with bolsters your point, since that is the only one I am familiar with from my own personal everyday life experience (although my hearing obviously was never as good as Superman's, it used to be much better than most people's, as I mentioned in my earlier posts).

<chuckle> That works for me; although didn't the concept of the SEP field originate in Life, the Universe,and Everything? (The third book in Douglas Adam's five book "trilogy" (sic).)

So long and thanks for all the fish,
Lynn

Originally posted by Datchickukindaknow:
Thank you for understanding me! And thank you for pointing out the ridiculousness about the batmobile going unnoticed. Yes, that's very believable. :rolleyes: Or not. In one of the few fics I have written I had Batman guest-starring, and I had him sort of park the batmobile in hyperspace, because where else would he park it???

(And hey, if you think Superman is ridiculous for wearing those little red shorts on the outside, what about a grown man who is dressed up as an oversize bat?

Dr. Friskin: Batman, are you sure it is wise for you, a single man, to share your home with Robin, an underage boy?

Batman: Don't worry, Dr. Friskin. I'm not into robins. I like bats.)

Originally posted by Lynn S. M.:
Hah! There were so many things I loved about The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy, but one of my favorites was the inifinite improbability drive for spaceships - the more improbable something was, the faster your spaceship would go!

Ann

If metropolis and gotham are supposed to both be New York then they both have no where to park, batman would be better of taking the train. On that note, this is not exclusive to Lois in Clark but I guess it bothered me here more because it is called Metropolis and anyone that lives in a big metropolitan area knows that there's never parking right in front of the building where you wanna be, unless that's the day you actually need to be five blocks from there.

Lol, I've often joke that its a bit odd for a grown man to spend so much time with an adolescent boy in a cave.

I mean it is sci-fi and everything, but I think the most far out there was the transferring of bodies in I've got you under my skin.

Although I can't believe Lois didn't figure out Clark was Superman whenever Clark was missing when Superman was blind, Clark came back to life, Clark and Superman were both apathetic at the same time.

I just saw the ultimate LnC example of this -- in AKA Superman, Lois strikes up a conversation with Perry about the surprise party they are planning for Clark while her husband is sitting only a few feet away. Now admittedly Clark is talking on the phone at the time; but even so, Lois should certainly have known better than that!

cheers,
Lynn

Check out this link , it's pretty funny in this context. (And yes, this is not really relevant to the thread topic, but it's funny.)

Here's one that's been popping into my head lately as the growing season comes to life here in farm country--Martha and Jonathan are constantly popping off to Metropolis at every little crisis of Clark's. Don't these people have a farm to run? Do the writers have no idea how difficult it is for farmers to get away for any kind of vacation? It's not like all of Clark's crises happen in the dead of winter, either.

I agree wholeheartedly. That very topic came up in
this thread .

The times when they flew Superman Express weren't too bad; depending on how fast he flew them, they might only lose a few hours labor, or a day at most. But there were numerous times when they used more conventional flight methods.

cheers,
Lynn

Re the secret identity thing - yesterday I watched a DVD of the Fleischer Superman animated stories from the early 1940s, and noticed that he never lets Lois get much of a look at his face - he snatches her from danger, usually half-unconscious, leaves her somewhere safe, and flies off again within a second or two.

Those films are quite a shock if you're used to the current comics code version of Superman - they were made in the early days of America's involvement in WW2, and in one story Superman is sabotaging Japanese ship construction (without making any attempt to avoid loss of life), in another he rescues Lois from Germans and arranges for them to be bombed. Needless to say the Japanese are horrible stereotypes, with buck teeth etc.

One thing I noticed in another episode - Clark disguises himself as a security guard with a grey wig etc., and Lois immediately spots him. Not sure what this means, but it's interesting.

Superman's super powers are all implausible, but this is a fantasy, so I've just cavalierly discarded my disbeliefs and enjoyed the fun. But there is one episode that really bothers me because it takes Supes' remarkable vision and changes it in mid-stream, so to speak.

In Sex, Lies and Videotape, a bomb under a conference table is about to explode in Metroplis. S. has just rescued Lois at their mountain get-away. S. takes a shard of broken mirror, tosses it into the air, bounces his vision off the mirror surface at just the proper angle to reach the building in Metropolis where the bomb is. The vision then passes through a window, penetrates the table and burns through the wire of the detonator thus defusing the bomb.

So his vision can reflect off glass, be a gps, pass through glass, penetrate solid objects and then burn solid objects all in one burst. I find this whole scenario extremely annoying. However I must confess that I made use of that remarkable visual ability in a story. Shameless!

Jude

Never noticed that one, Jude. Probably because I'm mostly being annoyed by the fact that Lois can move her bound hands enough to do charades, but apparently not enough to just remove the tape on her mouth and tell Superman the important info. :rolleyes:

Have to say, that's the sequence in that episode that provokes the same response in me that you have to Superman's super-super vision!

Probably because it's connected to something that always really bugs me in TV shows and that's people who are supposedly tied up or otherwise restrained with restraints that they can quite clearly slip their hands out of with ease.

There's an example of that in one of the Lex Files episodes, too - where Lois is supposedly restrained by metal cuffs to the arms of her chair and they are so large it's ridiculous to believe they could keep her there.


LabRat

I could buy the charades in general but not that she could get them all the way to her mouth. Mini hand charades on her lap maybe but that her arms were bound at the elbows or so gave her way too much freedom of movement.

Carol

It's not so much the looseness of the bonds, Carol, as I'm fairly sure at one point in the middle of the charades she puts a finger to her lips. If she can do that, why can't she pull off the tape?

Course, haven't seen the episode in a while, so I could be making that up as I go along.

LabRat

That's what I mean, Labby. Mini-hand charades sure - if her hands were stationary on her lap. But her arms are fairly free from the elbows down so she can move her hands to her mouth. I remember thinking that the first time I watched it...

Missed this thread for some reason - but it's be fun to read through this morning.

So question: Clark Kent/ Superman's neatly cut hair. I get how he does the front but how does he get all of the back of his head?

c.

Doesn't he uses a mirror to bounce the heat vision off of? Or am I thinking of fanon and not canon? I seem to have a distinct memory of him using mirrors, but - again - could have come from anywhere, knowing my memory....

LabRat