Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Lois & Clark Vatman Episode Discussion Thread

This episode is significant because it marks the first time the show used a comic villain besides Lex Luthor. I think that they did a pretty good job of adapting Bizarro even if they didn’t make him look like his comic book counterpart, and I also think that Dean Cain did a good job playing the dual roles this episode called for him to play.

I think the show went in the right direction by making Superman’s clone somewhat sympathetic instead of just a completely evil Superman. I’m not too extremely familiar with the comic version of Bizarro, but from my understanding, he tends to be presented as a sympathetic character. Therefore, I’m glad the show didn’t stray too far from the way he is in the comics.

I never thought of Vatman as being Bizarro. My understand of Bizarro was that he was from another skewed alt-dimension, where everything was the opposite of reality. So, where Superman is usually good, pure, forgiving, and smart. In the Bizarro dimension, Superman (or Kent Clark) was robotic, stupid, evil, and vengeful. Although, despite all that Bizarro was still in love with Lois. How's that for screwed up logic?

Vatman shows how evil Lex Luthor truly is. He's been planning his revenge on Superman since he first came on the scene by stealing the lock of hair that Superman donated for auction (back when he first arrived in Metropolis). Then he had a clone of Superman made. Somehow the cloning processes can make a fully adult male, but cannot recreate his intelligence. So, Lex tried to mold his "creation" (boy, did they love the Frankenstein story in the writers' room at LnC, didn't they?) into a man who doesn't know right from wrong. It also shows a bit of Lex's lack of understand of the monster he created, because he thinks he can control him without having yet acquired Kryptonite.

These Clones are much different than the ones we're introduced to in TOGOM, because those clones of Hamilton's DO have their memories in tact. It's kind of interesting that Lex uses the same faulty method for creating clones again in S3 in the ARGH arc.

It's terrific that Lois is thrilled that Vatman has showed interest in her when Superman hasn't. The expression on Clark's face when he realizes the Clone Superman has a date with Lois is priceless! The night that Vatman invites himself to Lois's apartment for dinner is hilarious! But even though he acts strangely through the whole date, it isn't until he jumps her bones to kiss her that she realizes that he's not Superman. It's very ironic. Lois recognizes Superman's kiss, except in the fact that it's the SAME as Clarks.

I love that Clark kind of adopts this clone of himself as his brother in his need to have someone around like him. It's sad that as soon as he discovers him, the Clone starts to die and Clark needs to destroy him by throwing him into the sun.

We learn that Perry's birthday is St. Patty's Day (March 17th), because while Lois and Clark are dealing with Superman's naive twin, Perry and Jimmy are dealing with Perry's 50th birthday, and his mid-life crisis. Actually, if you've been paying attention, in GGGoH Perry says he's been in the newspaper business for 35 years, take that out of 50 and Perry has been in the business since he was 15!

This demonstrates what a good friend Jimmy is, wanting to stop his beloved boss from committing suicide because Jimmy thinks Perry got bad news from the doctor. It's an interesting juxtaposition against Vatman's suicide request because he truly is dying.

I completely agree! He was able to accurately portray both characters in a way that we can tell them apart (usually, except when the clone is impersonating Superman for Lois). I'm sure it was based on what a good job he did with this episode that Alt-Clark and even Barry the Superman impersonator were brought to life.

There have been several versions of Bizarro over the years. He is usually depicted as being a man-made creation -- a duplicating machine was either accidentally or deliberately used on Superboy or Superman to create Bizarro. Unfortunately, the machine malfunctioned and only created imperfect duplicates.

One thing I am very glad of is that they did not use Bizarro's speech patterns in Vatman. Bizarro always says the opposite of what he means, but different writers have different interpretations of how to do that, and often there is inconsistency within a single comic. Some typical examples of Bizarro speech would be:

Me am Superman's friend. Me love Superman. (Meaning, "I am Superman's enemy. I hate him.")

If Bizarro wanted to indicate that he came from a cube-shaped world, he might say one of the following. (These are themselves imperfect examples, since I doubt he would know the words 'cube' or 'sphere.)

Me come from sphere-shaped world.
Me not come from cube-shaped world.
Me go to sphere-shaped world.
Me no go to cube-shaped world.

Bizarro is often depicted as being extremely stupid (in keeping with him being Superman's opposite), misguided, and quite destructive, but well-meaning in his own way. He is indeed usually portrayed relatively sympathetically. He lives on a cube-shaped world with a Bizarro-Lois which Lois herself made to help ease his loneliness. He duplicated himself and Lois so that Bizarro-world actually has many Bizarros and Bizarro-Loises. The originals can be identified because they hand a medallion around their necks that say "#1".

Bizarros hate beauty and perfection. It is the law on Bizarro world that everything there must be imperfect.

I really like Bizarro as portrayed in John Byrne's Man of Steel six-part mini-series. I can't say why without seriously spoiling an excellent comic, so I'll just highly recommend that mini-series to anyone interested. Bizarro shows up in the fifth issue of the series.

Joy,
Lynn

[edit] p.s., Virginia wrote:
According to one of the comics (sorry, I don't recall which one), Perry has stated that he started off selling newspapers. An editor saw his promise and took him under his wing, but helped mold him into a newspaperman by being extremely tough on him. Perry says this to Lois and Clark; the reminiscences were inspired by his seeing a young boy, who reminds him of himself in his youth, selling copies of the Planet. That young boy, of course, is Jimmy.

Agreed. I've often seen people criticizing his acting by saying that he didn't differentiate his Superman and Clark at all. I'll agree that his portrayal of the differences between his personae was much more subtle than those of Christopher Reeves, buy I don't think that that is inherently a bad thing. After all, in the L&C universe, Clark obviously has to create his Superman character, and acting is not necessarily something that Clark is good at. (He does a good job of it at times -- witness, for example, his reaction to the fellow he rescued from the sewer in the pilot episode -- but he is abysmal at other times, such as when he has to ad lib an excuse to let him get away to be Superman.)

If I could ask Dean Cain one question, it would be this: He portrayed Superman very differently in the pilot and the first few episodes of the series than he did later in the series. Some of that was the writing; for example, later episodes would never have had Superman referring to his mother. But a lot of it was his acting; he had not, for example, adopted his more rigid posture in the pilot. My question would be: How much of the difference was Dean Cain's trying to figure how to be Superman vs. how much of it was that Dean Cain knew at the start how he wanted to portray Superman eventually, but he wanted to show Clark's struggle to become Superman?

I thought Lex's version of Little Red Ridinghood was exactly how he would tell the story.

The thing about Barry is we see him for just a short snippet in TOGOM, and then we never, ever see him again. They have a perfect look-alike of Superman, and yet LandC never use it at all, ever again. That was an underdeveloped plot point almost as bad as shape shifters in the Star Wars prequels.

On the issue of does Superman change, or does the acting develop, it might have been a bit of both. But I think it was realistic that he made the total mistake of mentioning his mother when he first shows up, although since he does figure out about Krypton before he gives Lois "The Interview", he does misdirect people away from that issue. Also, evidently Lois did not print that line. It seems she was withholding crucial information from others from the start.

Some of my favorite fanfics are based on "Vatman". The first one that springs to mind is Sue S.'s "Security" . Sue leaves it chillingly ambiguous as to how far the clone actually went when he was "romancing" Lois.

Dandello has a duo of stories in "Taking Down A God" and "Taking Down A God: The Rest Of The Story. As you might expect from the titles, things aren't too good for the regular humans on Earth when the clone is in town. Don't miss these.

The above two authors have the scary evil clones, but Nan Smith shows us the nice side in "Twins" . The clone is told that he has to kill Clark, but he doesn't really want to. And once L&C are able to actually talk with him, he sees the error of his ways. Of course, in a Nan story, a lot more happens, so I'm not spoiling too much.

I've always thought it was unfair to criticize Dean Cain for not differentiating his Clark and Superman personas because the script for "Lois and Clark" didn't really call for a differentiation. I will say that had he been asked to play Clark as a clumsy act like in the movies, I think Dean Cain could have totally pulled it off.

I'm sure he could have too but I think Dean would be the first to admit that he wouldn't be keen on playing that version of him for the long term.

Christina, I am also glad that Dean did't do the clumsy Clark routine. That is one aspect of the movies that I found quite painful to watch.

Lois_Lane_Fan, that is, at least in part, what I had in mind with my comment about Dean's relative lack of differentiation not inherently being a bad thing. After all, in the show's take of the series, Clark has been Clark all his life, and has only started to try to pretend to be someone else during the pilot episode. That's got to be incredibly difficult for someone as honest as Clark to pull off. It makes sense that Clark wouldn't come up with an alternate persona that is as different from him as the movie counterparts. IIRC, in the movie, Reeves' character spent his childhood being just Clark, and spent his early adulthood being just Kal El. By the time he came to Metropolis, he had already spent enough time as the two separate personae so that it makes sense that his Superman could start of being very distinct from his Clark.

Joy,
Lynn

I forgot to add one of the best "Vatman"-related fics I've read, Anti-Kryptonite's And Then There Was Light" . Don't miss this.