Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Superman Related Man of Steel: Jenny Jurwich (spoilers, maybe)

So it now seems that Jenny is actually Jenny Jurwich. A close up reveals that is that last name on her badge as she and Perry run crazily from the attack. Although in the credits she is just listed as Jenny.

The question is, is she a replacement for the Jimmy role, or will we see Jimmy in the sequel.

I have even seen some people claim "maybe Jurwich is her married name, and she is Jimmy's sister". That one I don't buy, because Steve asks her out, indicating she is not married.

She sort of fills some of Jimmy's roles, being the young staff member who might look up to Lois Lane. But they still could easily introduce Jimmy.

I thought her role was way under developed, but with Clark not being at the planet at all until the final scene, there is hope they will do a lot more with the Daily Planet in the sequel.

With Lois knowing that CK=SM, does CK even need another friend like Jimmy. Can't Lois be love interest, best friend and confidant all rolled into one?

On a related note I seem to recall reading recently about a major paper firing its photo journalists, on the assumption they are not really needed anymore.

With the advent of cell cameras and the like, does a reporter like Lois Lane need a photographer, let alone a stringer like Clark Kent is at the end of the film? Even in Lois and Clark Jimmy was more goffer and research assistant than photographer, and that was before the advent of digital cameras and the end of most actual processing of film.

I think we still really do need photo journalists, but I think there is real uncertainty of their roles these days.

I hope so, too. As much as I like seeing Superman flying around being super, I like a good balance between Superman and Clark. Part of Superman's charm for me is seeing this overwhelmingly powerful person having a day job and dealing with everyday problems.

I like having another character to flesh out the newsroom, but I don't think Jenny can really fill Jimmy's role. She can't be Clark's pal in quite the same way just because male/female dynamics are different from male/male dynamics. I liked the scene in Superman Returns where Jimmy took Clark out for a drink because it showed a glimpse of their friendship. (I had other issues with the scene, though, because it's Clark's first day back at work and he takes a break in the middle of the day to go drinking? That's weird.)

I think Jimmy has been underutilized in all the Superman movies. He had a much greater role in the radio show, The Adventures of Superman, Lois and Clark, and the comics, to the point that he got his own series for a while. In the movies he's mostly been a background character just to have a co-worker for Lois or Clark to interact with for a scene or two. Maybe it's easier to use him more in an episodic format because you can have occasional Jimmy-heavy storylines while keeping Lois and Clark the main characters.

I agree. With a strong caveat that I do not like dweeb!Jimmy. He shouldn't be the butt of all the jokes, etc. He was pretty awesome in the radio show that introduced him (albeit a big part of that may be because, as a 14-year-old boy, he was an audience-identification figure).

That said, there's only so much time in a movie and I don't really want Lois or Perry shortchanged, either.

Well "Adventures of Superman" went too far the other way, occasionally not having Lois in an episode at all, and almost replacing her with Jimmy.

On some of my thoughts above, when Lois first sees Clark, it is while the Pultizer-prize winner is taking photos of the unidentified ice-encased object (UIO). Lois takes pictures, thus she does not need a photographer.

OK, to be fair, just because she can take her own pictures when going on a long distance exploration to the far north, does not mean she would not need a photographer if she is covering a fast paced fire in the center of Metropolis or some other event where getting pictures is time sensitive. The UIO is not going to move on her, so the issues are different.

Well the radio show of the same title (I think you are talking about the tv show, anyway) did have Jimmy a lot more often than Lois at certain time periods. But I don't think Lois was displaced there. It seemed to be an option between Superman alone or Superman and Jimmy, without a Superman and Lois option on the table. That run might have been when they were between Lois-actresses, though. Or it might have been because there was a long run of continuous episodes where Clark was away from the Planet and had Jimmy with him (and the initial story he was sent on was not one that required two reporters - it was basically a nostalgia piece). Other stories did have Lois and Clark both being sent on job.

I would think I wouldn't like it, but I did enjoy the show anyway. Definitely a large part of that is because I listened to many in one go and thus did not have to wait weeks for the next appearance Lois. But I really liked Jimmy, too.

Personally, I'd like to see as many Daily Planet staff members introduced as possible, including Jimmy Olsen and Cat Grant, since we didn't get to see much of the newspaper in the first movie. If he isn't introduced, though, I won't be too disappointed so long as Jenny Jerwich doesn't turn into Jenny Olsen. Changing the sex of a long established character just seems weird to me.

I don't mind shortchanging Perry. He has a major role in Lois and Clark, but in a lot of portrayals he isn't as much a main character. He should be there, of course, but I don't mind if he doesn't get much screen time.

John Lambert said:
Jimmy hasn't always been a photographer. For a long time he was a "cub reporter", which seemed to mean intern or junior reporter. He did a lot of undercover work (it's amazing how often he ended up in drag in the 50s and 60s), and he wrote regular articles. He did a lot of the same stuff as Lois and Clark, but since he was a teenager, he didn't get the same status as a normal staff reporter.

I'd like to see Jimmy portrayed as a reporter, maybe who specializes in going undercover. He could dabble in photography as a hobby or in addition to his regular reporting work. I think he was really short-changed on Lois and Clark when they made him a gofer. He worked a little better as a computer specialist and researcher, but a lot of the computer babble made me cringe. (Or if it didn't make me cringe back in the mid-90's, it makes me cringe now.)

Well, at least I have seen some outside references to Jimmy as a "photo journalist", although I am not sure that angle is ever played in canon.

When I think of photo-journalist, I think of J Malan Heslop. The point there is Heslop would later be an editor. He took photos but he also wrote stories. So while a photo-jouranlis may be a photographer first and foremost, they are also a writer. So the line between photographer and reporter can be blurred. Heslop actually made his permanent claim to notability as a photographer documenting evidence of Nazi War Crimes in World War II, even if he did not become a news photographer until 1948, so the merger of photographer and journalist is not a new development.

In fact in the "adventures of Superman" TV show one of the Lois-less episodes is the one where Perry and Clark go to Haiti to track down Perry's top-billed photographer sister who had taken Jimmy with her there on an assignment, and vanished. My favorite line is when they are talking to the local administrator, maybe he is chief of police, I can not remember for sure. They ask about the drum messages says "I don't know, they didn't teach me that at Harvard". While in some ways it seems unrealistic that the clearly Haitian man would know nothing of the local culture just because he spent 4 years away at Harvard (or maybe more if he got an advanced degree), I was glad to see the shows makers allow for an educated black man, considering most TV shows at the time relegated people of African descent to roles of porters. Which I guess would not be so bad, if the porters were not in turn relegated to appearing without really having a part. You could make a TV show focused on the role of the railroad car porter, but in generally that was not what was done.

Yeah, the radio show introduced him as a copy boy (at 14) and he was a cub reporter by time he was 17. We also got the head copy boy and a copy girl (who I think was 15 in her first appearance and 14 when she showed up again a while later), and Tony the reporter. Nice to get the staff fleshed out a little.

And just FTR, Google does turn up some real-life folks who started out as copy boys at that age. I know I read about one just recently when looking at the background of a show/network, but can't recall who. I just seem to remember the man being written about dropped out of school when he got that job.

Actually, can anyone tell me when Jimmy did morph into a photographer? I've gotten up to 1946 in the radio show, and Jimmy is not a photographer, there, but I know the comic could be completely different, of course.

Edited to Add: So a websearch lead me to a page that said Jimmy became a photographer with the Adventures of Superman tv show? And that he was not very often in the comics in the 40s? That sound right to everyone?