Season 2 Episode 12 – Lies That Bind or Emotional Damage, Emotional Damage
The BAM Crew (Bethany, Alison, and Michael) are back to talk about the latest episode of Superman and Lois Season 2! Lies That Bind dealt with the fallout from Clark’s revelation to Lana about his secret identity and The Crew had some serious feels about the whole thing. On the more amusing side, The Crew also had some serious feels (in a good way) about how great Tal-Rho was in this episode and even have some scenarios on how he and Clark got the flowers he gave to Lois.
Also, Bethany reveals who had The Most Punchable Face and Alison lets everyone know who was The Most Aestheticaly Pleasing people in the episode. Finally, The Crew addresses all of your feedback!
Michael is writing the reviews for Superman and Lois over on The Superman Homepage. Check out his review for Lies That Bind by clicking here.
Michael also has an essay in the recently released Oooff! Boff! Splatt! The Subterranean Blue Grotto Essays on Batman ’66 – Season 3 and you can order a physical copy of the book by clicking here and get the Kindle copy by clicking here!
Finally, go and check out Alison’s podcasting efforts over on The GeekCast Radio Network! She co-hosted So You Wanna Be A Hawkeye series and you can find the first epiosde of that by clicking here.
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 discusses the next episode of Superman and Lois titled All Is Lost!
To respond to Mike’s pointing out that I left out that, in the Bronze Age (DC Comics Presents #114, cover dated October, 1979), Pete Ross inhabited the body of Superboy in order to kill Superman in revenge for Superman’s failure to rescue Pete’s son: I left that out because, as soon as I read it, I ignored it. That whole storyline forced pretty much everyone to act completely out of well-established character, so I decided this was a poorly-executed Imaginary Tale, and put it out of my mind. Just my own “head canon”.
It will be interesting to see how Superman proposes to try to help/save the other Earth. I can’t even imagine what the plan will be, but I have faith in the writers that they will come up with something that makes sense.
It will also be interesting to see, at some point, possibly not in the remainder of this season, how Lana deals with knowing the Secret of the Kents. I imagine that, at some point, she will need help that only some of the Kents can provide, so she will have to re-establish a relationship with them, although it may be a bit formal or frosty for a while.
I’m looking hopefully toward a growing closeness between Superman and Tal-Rho, although I don’t see, as Michael suggested, Clark trying to show/teach Tal regular human behavior. Tal operated for quite some time as Morgan Edge, so I’d guess he has already learned how to behave as a human.
Thanks, as always, for this podcast which is entertaining and informative in its own right, and enhances my enjoyment of the TV series.
Thanks for the fun discussion, SALTy BAM crew.
The CW synopses seem either really lazy (because they seem to be written by someone who just watched the first five minutes of the show), or they are really, really trying not to spoil anything. If I had never watched the show and read this synopsis, I would assume this was a really boring superhero show — which is too bad, because its not.
I assumed Clark and Lana were in the backseat of the car Pete was driving when Lana whispered in Clark’s ear. And it was Clark who yelled “Pete” and grabbed Pete’s shoulder, as if Pete fell asleep at the wheel and was drifting toward the tree (or Pete decided to kill them all in jealous rage because Lana was whispering really loud!). This whole flashback was supposed to be about “the accident,” after all. Of course, at first glance I thought Pete was killed, since I only saw Lana sitting on the road after the crash. And yeah, Clark bolting after that would have been really weird from Lana’s point of view. But then, Lana still had a good relationship with Martha Kent, who surely “smoothed things over” with Lana a bit while Clark was away.
Okay, I admit I am just a teenager myself, but I think Lana was completely overreacting about being mad at Lois. This is like finding out the family of the neighbor you are friends with are in the witness protection program and had completely different identities, and being mad at the neighbor for not telling you?! Come on!
While I agree “secrets” is the big theme this season, other themes seem to include “making mistakes”, as well as “smoothing things over”…
I agree with the outvoting. I would wear a t-shirt that says “Team Throuple”, but not “Clanis”…
Dr Anj and I had an interesting exchange about this episode on Twitter, where he rightfully pointed out that it would have made more sense for Clark to ask cousin Kara to help him destroy the pendant before considering Tal-Rho. A simple mention by Clark saying, “Kara is off-world, so we need Tal,” would only take a few seconds of screen time. I also suggested that “Superman and Lois” can have Supergirl on the show the same way “Supergirl” had shown Superman during the first few seasons: by having a different actress/stuntwoman in the costume, but you only see Supergirl’s face in shadow, or maybe only show her boots in the camera frame.
Following up on the “echoing” Ally lines that make me think the merge didn’t fully work: right before the third commercial break, while Ally absorbs Superman’s strength in mid-air, you can hear Ally say: “I told you, Superman (Let me out) — we would become gods! (Help me.)”
Great summary of the history of Lana knowing Clark’s secret in the comics and other Superman shows. One point I would add about post-Crisis Lana is that she still “held a torch” for Clark, and the moment she decided she “didn’t want anything to do with him for awhile” is when Clark told Lana that he was starting to see Lois romantically in Superman v2 45. That was when Lana thought Superman had the most slappable face…
Looking forward to seeing what does become of Tal-Rho, Jon-El, and Bizarro World.
I was absolutely gobsmacked, after the Ally background session you did earlier this season, that nobody mentioned that Ally has become, as her comics counterpart did, Parasite.
Similarly, a discussion I expected to hear a few episodes back, thinking it was inevitable after the recurring discussions about the significance of writing a cult into a show set in Smallville, was the question of what it might signify that said cult was (at least for the most part), *right.*