Episode 17: O Mother Where Art Thou or A Krypton Man of Constant Sorrow
The BAM Crew (Bethan, Alison, and Michael) are back and boy do they have thoughts on episode 10 of Superman and Lois Season 1. O Mother Where Art Thou was emotional and things escalated quickly. And then continued escalating. And then really escalated. It was quite the ride.
Anyway, Bethany gives us her thoughts on Sam Lane’s use of torture, Alison talks about how this episode had a real “season finale” feel to it, and Michael admits what part of the episode made him cry. There’s also talk about how great Jonathan is, Sarah’s attitude towards her parents, how a certain character really likes to play the long game, and more. Bethany reveals who had the most punachable face and Michael gives not one, but two lessons as part of the Professor Bailey’s Superman 101 segment.
The Superman and Lois Tapes can be found on both Apple Podcasts and Spotify. The show can be reached by email at thesupermanandloistapes@gmail.com. You can also leave comments here or over at the Facebook page for the show, which you can get to by clicking this link.
The main theme for the show is “Heroes” by the awesome Mike Schmidt. You can find his work over at Speed Force Music.
Next Time: The Crew will be talking about the next episode, A Brief Reminiscence After Cataclysmic Events.
I don’t have a problem with Sam Lane being a character who would use torture. My problem is that the show gave me the impression that Superman is either okay with it or too stupid to realize what’s going on. I felt this way a few weeks ago when Sam was considering using torture to interrogate John Henry right in front of Superman.
Just like everyone else, it didn’t occur to me when Edge called Superman “brother” that he meant it literally. By the way, I have two sisters and two brothers from a different biological father and there’s nothing “half” about them. Sorry, Michael. You were just wrong (as we all were).
Regarding Lara’s leaving her first husband: it’s pretty clear he wasn’t a very nice person. Aside from sending Tal with the intent to enslave humanity, Lara also mentioned that he stole the Eradicator as revenge for leaving him. Given the picture that’s been painted of Zeta-Rho, I don’t find difficult to imagine that Lara had been wanting to get out of a bad situation. Besides, their marriage was arranged. She likely never consented to any of it. As for why she created the Eradicator if she had no intention of body-snatching anyone: it’s possible that it was all done in the last possible moments out of desperation, and she never really had the opportunity to figure out what to do with the Kryptonian concisenesses after they’ve been saved. She was attempting to deal with the literal end of the world as it were.
The answer to nature vs. nurture is, in my humble opinion, a combination of both. Environment and experiences have huge influences on an individuals development, but so do genetics. I believe that if two unique individuals were to somehow experience identical lives, the outcomes would still be different because they will each react to their experiences in unique ways.
Thanks for responding to my Batman question. But it seems like none of you have ever read Tower of Babel or Omac Project. I know he faced in-universe consequences to both, but I’m talking about how we as fans give him a pass because he’s the $(^$&*()&^% Batman.
P.S.
I’m glad to see Lara Lor-Van have agency and play an important role in the story. Too often she is simply there because the writers need a mother for baby Kal-El and has no role beyond that.
First, to Michael’s claim of being half-right/half-wrong because Morgan Edge is Superman’s half-brother, I have to disagree. A Half-brother is a brother, so I think Michael is wrong, as I was in my call on this.
Second, just because he has powers and spoke Kryptonese, Superman decides that the serial liar heretofore known as Morgan Edge is telling the truth? Sorry, Superman is a trusting fellow, but he isn’t gullible, especially in matters of, you know, the survival of the entire human race! Superman didn’t trust him when he assumed he was human, but a couple of sentences of Kryptonese makes him a truth-teller? C’mon!
Third, I agree that the torture of Kyle Cushing should have been more explicitly marked as morally wrong by some character at some point to make it abundantly clear to the viewing audience, which could well include slavering gung-ho faux-macho types who see it as absolutely the right path. I certainly hope that this is directly addressed in an upcoming episode.
As much as I believe that the writers have done an excellent job in the series, I think these last two points were stumbles for them.
I will be interested to see, in future episodes, how that escaped Kryptonian boy came to take the name Morgan Edge and how he built a reputation, and a large and extremely profitable company, over time, while maintaining enough discipline and secrecy that no one seems to have realized that there was another “Superman” on Earth. There must be a story there.