November 13, 2024 • 34 mins
In "A Regular Guy," Superman & Lois explores the emotional toll of Clark Kent’s double life, as his secret is finally exposed in a dramatic confrontation that frees him to live openly with his family. The episode redefines the stakes for the Kent family while hinting at an even greater threat from Lex Luthor, now that the world knows Superman’s true identity.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
I've got you, You've got me, Who's got you? Hello?
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Come to me, sun up Challo.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
Neil before So, Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode
(00:47):
of the podcast Full of Kryptonite. We are revealing all
the secrets this episode around. I am taking off my
glasses and revealing to you that I am John Reid,
just a regular guy, but I'm also the host of
the podcast Full of Kryptonite. And I am so happy
that you are here because we've got a really great episode.
(01:11):
I won't bury the lead love this episode. It was amazing.
There was little to no action at all, and it
was perfect in my opinion. There were parts that made
me uncomfortable, and rightfully so. There were parts where I
wanted to stand up and cheer. There were parts where
I wanted to shed a tear. It was a great episode,
wonderful episode. They are frankly hitting it out of the
(01:34):
park most of these episodes in this last season. It
is really making me sad that this is the last
season and we're not going to get more of this,
because if the writing for this show is this strong
still in season four, I would have loved to have
seen what we could do if we could continue on
and keep this going. And Tyler Hecklin, good god Man, Superman.
(01:55):
Tyler Hecklin is Superman. It is He's Clark, He's Superman.
It's he is the full package. Props to Tyler. Tyler,
if you're listening, thank you, thank you for being Superman,
because you have been and continue to be an outstanding
characterization of Superman. So thank you anyway. Season four, Episode seven,
(02:16):
A regular Guy. We start with Clark recollecting about the
early days in Metropolis. My dearest Lois as I recollect
here on the battlefield in Civil War Kansas, and I
don't even know, but he is recollecting about the early
days in Metropolis and how it was almost easy to
be Superman in a city like Metropolis, because in a
(02:37):
big city you can get lost, but in a small
town you can't get lost, like everyone knows you. You
can't get away with anything as a kid in a
small town because somebody's going to see you doing something,
and they're going to either talk to your aunt or
your mom or your grandma or whoever. And by the
time you get home, you're already in trouble. Small town,
(02:58):
it is tough to hide secret in a small town.
What I did love is we've got some scenes we
almost end up with a clip show. We have a
bit of a clip show. So this is you know,
like the in the eighties and nineties, when writers would
kind of run out of ideas or they needed to
save some of the budget, you'd have a clip show.
We almost get that. We get up some montages that
kind of fill in some stuff from earlier things we
(03:19):
had seen. We have the scene where he runs to
make a save and he changes into the kind of
like the nineteen thirties or the Fleischer cartoon Superman outfit
with the symbol that actually we use as the symbol
on our podcast album art for the podcast Full of Kryptonite.
I love the coloring, I love the design of that
suit he changes in that it's the scene where he
(03:40):
grabs the pt cruiser and saves the kid all the
way back. I believe it was in the very first
episode of the whole series, so we get that nice
flashback to that. And then I mean, and that's just
that iconic scenehere a scene where he's lifting up the
car and people are running away from him and the
I think that was a scene from Action Comics Number one.
I maybe get that wrong, but an iconic Superman image
(04:02):
from all the way back in the earliest days of Superman.
We see as we get a little montage of some
stuff here, we also see that he is in the
convenience store. De Nice is there and on the TV
behind her we see that there's a plane that has
lost both of its engines on a news report, and
while Clark is in the store, he kind of comes
(04:23):
up with an excuse. He's like, ah, I left my
wallet in the car. So he he's like too, I'll
be back in a second, runs out of the parking lot.
We see Superman show up save the plane. A few
seconds later, Clark comes back in from the parking lot
and Denise is trying to like play it up and say, wow,
you're back already. He's like, yeah, I just went to
the parking lote, that's all I did. So he's on
(04:43):
the telling of the secret campaign here as he's trying
to convince everybody that he's just a regular guy. In
the meantime, we are back on the farm. Lois and
the boys are there. Lois is trying to build a
crib for Chrissy and Kyle, and clearly these are not
the simple visual ikea type instruck. Lois is getting very frustrated.
We do see later that she did not do such
(05:04):
a great job putting this crib together. But it's okay.
I've tried to put together some stuff as well in
my day, and there was a swing set at one
point in time. I usually try to keep if there's
any four letter words, I try to keep them as
much as possible in my head when I can. I
do remember the one of the only times I've ever
(05:25):
sworn out loud in front of family is when we
had some ants or uncles over and I was trying
to build a swing set. Wed bought a swing set
for the kids, and I was building at the backyard.
That stupid thing was not cooperating with me trying to
put it together, and I said some words that I
have regrets having said those words out loud, especially in
(05:47):
front of family, but I had lost my cool that day,
so I understand Lois's frustration here. In which case, then
have the boys do it. If these are like super boys,
then let them put their superpowers. They could put the
whole together in like ten seconds, and then even if
they got it wrong, ten more seconds to fix it,
So I'd say put the boys to work. Clark comes
(06:08):
back in talks about how Lex is. It's things are
quiet now, but he's back. He's at his apartment in Metropolis.
She asks if John Henry had gotten notice to talk.
Not yet. We cut to a scene with Chris, Chrissy,
and Kyle looking for a house. But it's a little
on the expensive side. So here's here's where I need
some help. If we have any listeners who are in
or around rural Kansas, what I would be curious to
(06:30):
know because we're never quite told where Smallville is supposed
to be in Kansas. It's always depending on the TV
show or the movie. You know, Metropolis is sometimes supposed
to be Kansas City, and then depending on the TV
show or movie, Smallville is an hour away, a couple
of hours away. We don't know exactly where this is
supposed to be. So what I'm curious is they're looking
(06:55):
at a four bedroom, two bathroom, fourteen hundred eighty five
square foot house, and that house looks beautiful, like absolutely beautiful.
My question is because I tried to do a little
search on some real estate websites because I'm thinking, you
know what rural Kansas. Three hundred thousand dollars. Is that
(07:20):
a little unreasonable? And I'm thinking i'd be so I
did try to look it up, and I've just been
looking on some real estate sites in rural Kansas to
find a house that is a nice house with a
number of bedrooms, a number of bathrooms, to you know,
have have a yard, all these other things. And keeping
in mind it's Chrissy, it's Kyle, and it will be
(07:41):
a baby like all the other kids. I mean, they
may come back at some point, but they're growing or grown,
so they're kind of out of the house. It seems
to me. I did look it up. The median house
value in Kansas is around a little over two hundred
thousand dollars, So we're looking at the house that is
(08:02):
probably way above the median value of a house in Kansas.
Granted they are wanting a nicer house, but at the
same time of like, we may be batting out of
our league just a bit when it comes to this house,
and are you going to find a house like this
in Smallville, Kansas? Because we had so many early stories
in this show, Smallville has fallen on hard times and
(08:25):
they jumped at the chance when Morgan Edge came and
was going to change their lives. Smallville was a dying
town and it was a struggle, and it was all
these things, and all of a sudden, I think I'm
spending too much time thinking about this, But all of
a sudden, Kyle and Chrissy like their perfect house is
a three hundred thousand dollars house in rural Smallville, Kansas.
(08:47):
Because it is supposed to be in Smallville. It's not
outside of Smallville, or at least it's very close to Smallville.
Because if you had do zoom in like I did,
paying too much attention to stuff, they did do a
search for houses near Smallville or houses in Smallville in
other states. So I know I lived near Chicago, in
an area of Chicago where three hundred thousand dollars would
(09:08):
not buy you much. So I don't know my real
estate in other areas very well. So I just I
don't know. It seemed like a bit, all right. Clark
starts making the rounds, trying to convince people he is
a regular guy trying to convince Coach Games coach Gaines
super excited. One of Clark's be an assistant coach one
of the boys to be on the football team again,
and he's trying to convince Coach Gains. He talks about
(09:30):
turning down the assistant coach job and how he didn't
really appreciate Coach Gaines harassing the boys about playing on
the football team again, and then Clark kind of arranges
so that he will get his hand slammed in Coach
gaines car door, and he just keeps like yelling ouch
and like he is absolutely in pain, and Coach Games
is like, ouch, ouch, what do you mean. Ouch?
Speaker 2 (09:52):
I'm still alive, but I'm very badly injured. I think
my legs might be broken, but I'll try to stand up. Yes,
they have broken. Perhaps you could toss me abandon or
some anti bacterial cream. I mean an extraordinarily large amount
of paint. The moon has gone through the skin. I
feel it might be angernous. The wound is beginning to
(10:14):
smell a little like almonds, which is not good.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
They just keep repeating it. It's it's a hilarious scene
and Clark, you know, he just acts it out so well.
We get these flashbacks, and we're gonna get several of
these flashbacks throughout this episode. Flashbacks to the Daily Planet.
We finally get to meet this universe as Jimmy Olsen.
We had had Janet Olson, who we had met several
times before in this series, and come to find out
(10:39):
that Jimmy is her brother. And thankfully this is not
that character I mentioned a little while ago, the Jimberly,
Jimmy Jimmington, jim jim Jeru Olsen Luthor. I don't know,
really Jimmington something stupid. Anyway, we meet Jimmy and he
(10:59):
is He's kind of the Jimmy you would expect, is
what you usually, you know, come to expect when you
see a Jimmy Olsen character. He's trying to arrange for
players to be on the Daily Planet softball team so
they could beat the Star, which I think is probably
going to be the Daily Star. He asked Clark at
one point, hey, can we be pals? And that's kind
of a famous phrase Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen, he's always
known as Superman's Pal. Clark initially wants to turn down
(11:23):
playing on the team because his dad has always kind
of helped bea shied him away from playing sports once
he got powers, and in this episode they actually reveal
that he got powers as early as age four, so
clearly the Kent's mon Pop Kent were scared from early
on early age that he would be found out that
(11:43):
he'd taken away from them, So they did have him
shy away from playing any can of sports exhibiting his
powers in any way, even if accidentally exhibiting his powers
by hitting a baseball or throwing a football or kicking
something or so. Clark is hesitant to do any kind
of sports because he doesn't want to reveal himself because
of that fear. Then Lois kind of convinces him. She's like, look,
(12:06):
you gotta have friends like you. Gotta cut loose every
once in a while he play on the team. It's
not even about winning. It's about and it's not even
about your athletic ability. Just be terrible. So lois great advice.
Be terrible. I have always, even without knowing Lois, I
have taken her advice when it comes to sports. ICK
have always been terrible. So thank you Lois for that advice.
(12:27):
I feel seen, I feel acknowledged. It makes a lot
of sense. Now the boys almost get into a fight.
They're there to see a movie from the Marquee. It
looks like it was some version of I already know
what you may have possibly done that nobody else knew
about last summer. They almost get into a fight outside
of the theater because Little Timmy Ryan, Big Timmy Ryan
(12:48):
actually shows up and says that it is unfair that
he never got a chance to be a football star
on the team because he was going up against SUPERBOYE.
So now Timmy Ryan knows that the boys are superboys.
Kyle ends up stepping in and kind of breaks it
up and says, everybody home. We get a scene of
Lois and Chrissy talking. Chrissy is telling Lois that she's
going to need to sell her share of the smallvill
(13:10):
Gazette in order to afford their new house. Lois is
understandably disappointed because she thought they were working on building
something and she wasn't ready for Chrissy not to be
her partner anymore. Clark goes by the firehouse to see
Kyle comments on Kyle selling his grill. Everybody's got comments
on Kyle selling his grill, and Kyle says, I've got
one kid about to study abroad, one kid growing up
(13:32):
too fast. He is talking about Sophie the not Sarah,
who has left her gestational period and has grown into
the drone alien that she will be now that she
is roughly nine feet tall as we saw a few
episodes ago, so clearly that is the kid that is
growing up too fast. We get another flashback to a
softball game. Clark becomes the bunt King and they win
(13:55):
the game because he chooses to bunt instead of actually
swinging at the ball. We have a scene of Clark
and Lois and the boys talking and he is frustrated
that so many people seem to know that he is Superman.
This is where they find out that Candice also knows
that he's Superman. Now he kind of explodes on the
boys and he basically says, look, the whole point of
keeping this secret is so that you can have a
normal life here. Unfortunately, as we know, there's no such
(14:20):
thing as normal life. There's just life. There's no Harf work,
It's just Larf and get off with it. We have
another flashback to the Daily Planet softball team where Clark
shows up late to a game. Once again, Jimmy is unhappy.
It seems like Clark seems to disappear at interopportunity and
times and shows up late to a lot of things.
(14:41):
Clark takes the boys to Timmy Ryan's house and basically
gaslights both him and his mother so bad they could
have lit a match and just blown up the entire house.
Here and this, I'm going to stop here for a
moment because I want to comment on this scene. I
think that at the time I'm watching this scene, and
I was so disapoint in Clark for this scene, so disappointed.
(15:04):
But I don't think you get everything else that happens
later on in the episode where he finally reveals his
secret to everyone, unless you have this scene, unless you
have this scene, which shows how disappointed the boys are,
and this is a place where Clark has to learn
from his sons that he's been doing something the wrong
(15:26):
way for most of his life. I hated this scene
when it was first happening. I was so disappointed in
my Clark. How can you You are such a strong
moral compass for everyone, you make all these sacrifices, You
are so good, you are so optimistic, and yet you
can stand there, sit there and watch you and your
(15:49):
sons gaslight this kid to where the mother now is
so disappointed in her son and You're causing strife within
another family to keep your secret. So it physically made
me mad this scene, but I'm so glad that it did,
because then it's more powerful later on when Clark makes
(16:09):
that change and does decide to tell everybody. Now, I
do feel like we're not going to get it on camera.
You don't have enough time to show all of it.
We do see a montage later on of people watching
the news report that occurs towards the end of the episode,
and I kind of hesitated. I was like, ah, I
feel like I feel like Clark needs to issue more
(16:31):
of an apology to the people that he lied to
over the years. I think I wanted to see a
personal even before the news broadcast was going to happen.
I would have loved to have seen Clark go to
their house and personally apologize to Timmy, Ryan, and his mother.
We didn't get to see that, so I was a
(16:51):
little disappointed in that. But again, it's a TV show.
You've got limited time, and I don't feel like there
were too many places in this episode where you could
have trimmed much of anything else. I do feel like
everything was where it needed to be in this episode.
We have another flashback and Jimmy actually tells c K
that he believes he a Superman. He's be's seen the
pattern is it? Every time Clark doesn't show up for something,
(17:15):
Superman makes some kind of miraculous save, and we get
a list, a nice little shopping list here of the
miraculous saves Superman made in various Superman movies. Jimmy points out, well,
there was a crashing helicopter, and that is from Superman
the movie originally, when he saves Lois from the helicopter
falling off the Daily Planet building. We have the blown
(17:36):
out train track. Now that could be if it's blown
out train track, that is possibly during the earthquake scenes
in the original Superman movie and when Lex tries to
blow up the San Andreas Fault and separate California from
the rest of it and create his new West Coast.
Could have been that, or it could also have been
I think there was the blown out train tracks in
(17:57):
the subway station in Superman four. So there's been a
couple of train saves. They're my favorite one. The favorite
reference of all was and then there was a falling
elevator on the Eiffel Tower. Superman to the terrorists with
the hydrogen bomb. Lois at the bottom of the elevator,
trying to spell everything because she's an awful speller and
(18:18):
trying to do what she can to get the pueld
surprise here. I believe this is your floor. Oh thank God,
How'd I get myself into this? I absolutely love this reference,
the fact that they dropped that in there, and I'm like, yes, yes,
the Superman too. Falling elevator from the Eiffel Tower they
get back home. The boys are just sick over all
(18:39):
the line that they've had to do about their powers. Jonathan,
I think it says at one point, Yeah, it really sucked.
And this is where you really get the sense that, Okay,
something's going to have to change here because these boys
can't do this their entire life. In this situation, the
boys are the ones that are right. If you are Superman,
if you are the moral compass that the optimistic, the
Paradona virtue, basically, then you should be honest. And you
(19:04):
caused strife within another family by keeping and pushing and
pursuing the keeping of this secret. So I absolutely agree
with the boys. It really sucked. Bad call Superman. But
we're going to fix it. Later on, Clark Lewis, and
Kyle and Chrissy are at the diner. Clark and Lewis
(19:25):
revealed that they want to buy Chrissy's share of the
Gazette and then that would give enough for their house
and then they could still be co editors on it.
But they want to do that for them because General
Gramp's wore the same for Hawaiian insurance his entire life,
never took a vacation day and left Clark and Lewis
some money, So that's what they want to do to
be able to help them out and also keep the
(19:46):
Gazette going. The fraternals are talking about how the lying
about the identity is not what they want for their future,
talking about how their dad doesn't really have any friends,
like he doesn't hang out with John Henry, he doesn't
hang out with really anybody. Well, he didn't really hang
out with Kyle, and that's not the life they want
for themselves, so something is going to have to change. Here.
We're back at the diner and the friends are still talking.
(20:09):
Candace's dad, mister Burgandy, shows up and he is at
the diner. He seems he couldn't tell if he was
supposed to be Drunker, if he's just angry, maybe a
combination of both, and he kind of wants to start something.
He says, a little Bertie told me that you've got
a secret, and we find out later that that little
Birdie was actually Lex Luthorse. They may have been cell made,
(20:31):
so they might have served together in the same area
at Striker's prison. At one point in time, Lois says
something to Burgandy at that point, and he tells her
to basically to shut up, because she's been lying and
covering for her alien husband for years. K pulls a
will Smith here. Wow, dude, he pulls a gun on
(20:53):
K and fires it, and we get a slow motion
the end of Hamilton kind of bullet scene. We get
some bullet time here, but everything's running in slow motion.
I love this. In the slow motion, you see that
Clark has time to think. There's any number of ways
he could avoid this bullet. It is moving so slowly,
and no one would be able to see him whatever
(21:16):
he would decide to do. But he's at this point
in time. He looks at Lois, kind of looks everybody
around him. He slowly takes off his glasses and sets
them down. He rips open his shirt and allows the
bullet to come and just hit him square in the
Superman symbol. I love this scene because I feel like
that was the perfect way to show that he has
(21:39):
finally surrendered to the idea that maybe he's been wrong
his whole life living in fear of this, and maybe
it won't be so bad. He's in a town where
all the people in the town seem to love him
and his family. I think he's got a lot of
good will built up because of who his mother was.
Everybody loved Martha Kent, and everybody knows what Superman has
(21:59):
done and over again for not just the world, but
for Smallville specifically. So I just I thought that was
a great way of showing that he has decided to
make this change and that he will let everybody know
the secret. Everyone in the diner at this point, the
bullet falls to the ground and he is in full
Superman regalia. Everyone the diner sees that he's Superman, and
(22:21):
we end that scene kind of pulling out. The camera
pulls out from the diner and we hear him say
at the end, I'm sorry I lied to you all
for so long. We're around the kitchen table at the farm.
This is where they talk about Luther having served at
Strikers with mister Burgandy, so that's how he found out
it was not Candice. They talk about how Luther's going
to keep sending people unless they decide not to keep
(22:44):
it a secret anymore, and they talk about how this
is going to change everything. It's Clark says it needs
to be a family decision because it will change everything.
We will not have normal lives anymore. There is no
going back to this, and Clark apologizes to the boys
one more time because all he really wanted to do
was try to give them some kind of a normal life.
(23:04):
I love the scene where they've got the camera crew in.
Lois said that she's gonna make a call. She calls
Janet Old Janet Olsen from The Daily Planet. She comes
in with the camera crew. They're going to sit down
at the kitchen table and Clark is going to tell
everyone that he is Superman. And I love what he
walks in in that scene because every single person in
there absolutely knows who he is. All the camera crew,
(23:25):
all the folks that are there, they know exactly who
he is. And he just walks in, Hi, I am Clark.
He's just shaking everybody's hands as if he's Tyler of
the episode, as if he's a regular guy. And I
absolutely love it because he hasn't changed. He is still Superman.
He's still Clark Kent, but he is still that you know,
the Kansas farm boy, you know values He's just a
(23:47):
regular guy. And I really I love that about this
characterization of Superman that Tyler Heikerlemen has been doing on
the Daily Planet reports. He basically starts by saying, my
name is Clark Kenton. Yes, I am Superman. It had
At one point he makes a comment, You'd be surprised
what a pair of glasses could do. I will attest
to this because I worked in a store. I might
have shared this either on this podcast or another one.
(24:09):
One time. I worked as a store at one point
and our uniform was simple for the store. It was
a black polo shirt and khaki pants. And I remember
that some folks that I knew from church, they came
into the store one time, and honestly, this person was
probably having a bad day, but they treated me terribly.
(24:33):
And as I'm helping this person and I'm being treated
terribly by this person. I'm standing there, I'm thinking, you
and I have talked in church several times. Do you
not recognize because it's a different setting and I'm wearing
this quote unquote uniform. You don't know who I am.
(24:53):
And it was really bizarre because then like the next
Sunday or a couple sundays later, we were talking in church,
and for them it was like enough it happened. And
I was like, if anybody ever tells me that the
whole thing of Clark can't wearing the glasses and nobody
knows he's Superman is stupid and ridiculous, I will tell
them it is absolutely not, because if you're not expecting
to see someone in a certain way, in a certain environment,
(25:16):
if they're outside the normal environment you see them in,
I absolutely, fully would believe that a pair of glasses
could totally throw people off. I have experienced something similar,
so I get it. So nobody can ever convince me
that it's a stupid disguise. We get to see everybody
is watching this TV report, It's being aired all over
the world, and we see a bunch of different groups
(25:38):
of people from Smallville watching this report on TV. He
talks about how he's just a regular guy, that he's
made mistakes, he struggled to balance at all. He's like,
I'm like anybody else who loves their family and wants
to be better for them. Like this whole scene of
Clark trying to explain that, you know, he's tried, like
as a father, as a hero, he has tried to
(25:59):
do what he can to make the world a better place,
but to make his family safe and to give them
what they need, and that he has struggled to balance
at all. And honestly, I'll pull back the curtain for
a second. I have had a lot of struggles this
year with my day job that I have. It just
life seems for me personally. I don't want to harp
(26:21):
on this too much, but life seems hard right now,
and I don't have it any harder than anybody else does.
So I'm not trying to, you know, play some kind
of a game where I say, Wow, my life is
so much tougher than other people. Absolutely not. I have
so many things where I am so much more privileged
by virtue of nothing that I have earned for myself.
I have privileges that other people do not have, so
(26:43):
I'm not saying that, but it has felt like a
hard year for me. And I gotta tell you, I
was almost tearing up in this scene because there are
times and whether I you know, I've shared this with
my wife, and I've shared this with just a select
group of friends. But it's been hard, and I feel
like I've struggled to keep things balanced and to meet
(27:03):
the obligations. And I'm not saying that that dads are
the only people to do this, because they're absolutely not.
There are single parents all over the place that are
doing things like this. But for me personally, I'm only
talking about my experience personally, it's been hard. And so
when Clark is talking about the struggle to balance these
things and how maybe in some ways he feels guilty
for the things he did wrong or the ways that
(27:25):
he fell short. By God, I nearly teared up in
this scene because it meant so much to me. I
saw myself in those moments where Clark was talking about
all he really wanted was just to try to do
good and to try to protect his family and care
for his family. And I'm just going to say, ladies
(27:46):
and gentlemen, you hit it out of the Park like
I got all the feels from that particular moment in
this episode, So thank you because I saw myself in that,
and I think that is the mark of an outstanding
TV when your writing and your characters, your actors can
portray things in such a way that I can see
(28:06):
myself in them, so outstanding. Thank you so much for that.
We get a flashback, one of the final flashbacks to
the softball team, Clark and Jimmy talk after the championship.
Jimmy was disappointed and basically said, Deale, I guess you're
not Superman then, and he makes a comment last one
to Bibowski's picks up the tab. And this was a
(28:27):
fun little comment as well because back in the probably
late eighties is when he first showed up is Bibbo Bobowski,
and Bibbo is he is supposed to be kind of
a friend and supporter of Superman. It was late eighties,
I think it was probably during the Ordway and Wolfin period.
(28:50):
But he is basically Superman's biggest fan, and he owns
a bar and he's just you know, he's just a big, old, lovable,
tough guy and his bar is called the ASA Clubs.
You know, he's a tough guy, but he's also a
big old softy, and so he shows up in a
bunch of different iterations of Superman. We've seen his character
(29:11):
in a bunch of different ways in comic books, at
cartoons and TV shows. You know, he has this bar
Asa Clubs in Suicide slum part of Metropolis, one of
the roughest parts of Metropolis, and he is just such
a huge fan of Superman, and so we see him
pretty constantly stepping in to try to help in whatever
(29:32):
ways he can. You know, I think he shows up
at one point during the Doomsday storyline. I remember in
that story they're trying to help Superman, well normal people,
what are they going to do against the Doomsday creature.
There was a professor, Professor Hamilton who was trying to
help Superman around that period, kind of give some science
behind Superman's powers that he kind of helped Superman with
(29:54):
some different gadgets that he needed. Basically, he was kind
of like Superman's cue in a way. I remember the
there was a scene where Hamilton had tried to create
some kind of a gun that they could blast Doomsday with,
and Bibbo was like, I got muscles. Let me hold
this thing, I'll try to blast this monster, and they do.
It doesn't do anything to Doomsday, but you know, Bibbo
is always trying to He's the regular jill that if
(30:16):
Superman was fighting some monstrous supervillain, Bibbo, not even thinking
about himself, would probably jump in and try to land
the punch as well, just so he could say he
helped out Superman. So Bibbo has always been kind of
a fun character, and Bibowski's then, I'm assuming, is going
to be a little bit of a play on his name,
and instead of being called the Ace of Clubs, maybe
(30:38):
that's his bar instead. But yeah, so we saw Lois
and Clark New Adventures of Superman. He was in an
episode called Double Jeopardy. He was the animated series. Brad
Garrett actually played his voice. He was kind of a
sea captain in that one. And then he was Miguel Ferrer,
another great actor. He was in Young Justice and Miguel
Ferrer played him in that. Some of the animated films
(31:01):
we have the Death in Return of Superman a couple
of different versions. He was in there. He's been in
a couple of the video games as well. The Injustice game,
and a couple of other things. So Debbo is a
regular character that shows up in all the different media
that Superman has existed in. Okay, we get to a
scene Clark's looking in the mirror and he is starting
(31:25):
to put the glasses on, sets them down. I think
we're getting a glasses less car cluck. From this point on,
he doesn't have to even try to tell anybody he
had Lasik because everybody knows now. He ends up at
the diner, and I love this scene because Denise is
there as she's leaving and he's walking in. She calls
him mister Kent as if it's just another day, and
(31:47):
I love that that he's just being treated like an everyday,
regular guy, despite the fact that everybody knows that he's Superman.
Jimmy is here. So Jimmy got called in by his sister,
and he doesn't seem to be too upset about lied
to all those years ago, and they hug, they kind
of reconcile, and then they sit down to just chat
there at the dynam I was a little This was
(32:09):
something where I almost wanted to see a little bit
more disappointment or anger from Jimmy but I'm okay, I'm
okay that there wasn't. It was a fine way to
wrap everything up, and another great episode. We have only
got what we three episodes left. This was seven, so
we've got eight to nine and tense, we're three episodes
away from the end of this show. They are still
(32:32):
top tier writing and acting, and to it grief, it
is just it's such a wonderful show. I am going
to miss these characters so much. I am glad. I
am sad for the other actors and characters that they
got relegated out of the series regular spots. But I
really think that they did tighten up the storytelling here
(32:53):
by having it really focus on the Kent family. I
do feel like in some of the other seasons we
veered off a little bit too much on these side characters,
digging into the Kent family and their family dynamic, and
and you know, while I thought the writing was good
in the other seasons and getting to know these other
characters was good, this has just been a fun, phenomenal
season focusing in on the Kent family, really getting a
(33:16):
strengthening of the characters of Jordan and John and even
Lois and especially Clark, like I think they have done
so much for Clark's character in this season that I
absolutely love. Thank you to the writers. Thank you to
Tyler Hecklin, thank you to Bitsy Tulla. Thank you to
all the actors in this show. You guys are doing
(33:36):
an amazing job. Phenomenal. Absolutely loved it, loved this episode.
There's barely any action, if any action at all in
this episode. Well there's a gun being fired, but but
you know what, it was top tier. Might even be
one of my favorite episodes of the entire series. So
I don't have other than just continuing to gush about it.
That's all I got. So I would love to hear
(33:59):
what you think about it. If you want to reach out,
we are at Superman PFK on Twitter. We're on Facebook
as well. Well, we've got a page on Facebook. But yeah,
if you want to leave a review, that would be great.
Actually leaving a review on Apple Music. That would be
our podcast. That would be great. But I'd love to
know how everybody else is feeling about this season and
(34:19):
this episode in particular. I thought it was phenomenal, but
I'd be curious to hear what other people are thinking
as well. Everybody, Thank you so much for joining us
on this episode, Up, Up, and away, and we'll see
you back here for the next one and the last
three episode, Got Talk to My Got So Bad Food
(34:46):
shot Love the mo
I've got you, You've got me, Who's got you? Hello?
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Come to me, sun up Challo.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
Neil before So, Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode
(00:47):
of the podcast Full of Kryptonite. We are revealing all
the secrets this episode around. I am taking off my
glasses and revealing to you that I am John Reid,
just a regular guy, but I'm also the host of
the podcast Full of Kryptonite. And I am so happy
that you are here because we've got a really great episode.
(01:11):
I won't bury the lead love this episode. It was amazing.
There was little to no action at all, and it
was perfect in my opinion. There were parts that made
me uncomfortable, and rightfully so. There were parts where I
wanted to stand up and cheer. There were parts where
I wanted to shed a tear. It was a great episode,
wonderful episode. They are frankly hitting it out of the
(01:34):
park most of these episodes in this last season. It
is really making me sad that this is the last
season and we're not going to get more of this,
because if the writing for this show is this strong
still in season four, I would have loved to have
seen what we could do if we could continue on
and keep this going. And Tyler Hecklin, good god Man, Superman.
(01:55):
Tyler Hecklin is Superman. It is He's Clark, He's Superman.
It's he is the full package. Props to Tyler. Tyler,
if you're listening, thank you, thank you for being Superman,
because you have been and continue to be an outstanding
characterization of Superman. So thank you anyway. Season four, Episode seven,
(02:16):
A regular Guy. We start with Clark recollecting about the
early days in Metropolis. My dearest Lois as I recollect
here on the battlefield in Civil War Kansas, and I
don't even know, but he is recollecting about the early
days in Metropolis and how it was almost easy to
be Superman in a city like Metropolis, because in a
(02:37):
big city you can get lost, but in a small
town you can't get lost, like everyone knows you. You
can't get away with anything as a kid in a
small town because somebody's going to see you doing something,
and they're going to either talk to your aunt or
your mom or your grandma or whoever. And by the
time you get home, you're already in trouble. Small town,
(02:58):
it is tough to hide secret in a small town.
What I did love is we've got some scenes we
almost end up with a clip show. We have a
bit of a clip show. So this is you know,
like the in the eighties and nineties, when writers would
kind of run out of ideas or they needed to
save some of the budget, you'd have a clip show.
We almost get that. We get up some montages that
kind of fill in some stuff from earlier things we
(03:19):
had seen. We have the scene where he runs to
make a save and he changes into the kind of
like the nineteen thirties or the Fleischer cartoon Superman outfit
with the symbol that actually we use as the symbol
on our podcast album art for the podcast Full of Kryptonite.
I love the coloring, I love the design of that
suit he changes in that it's the scene where he
(03:40):
grabs the pt cruiser and saves the kid all the
way back. I believe it was in the very first
episode of the whole series, so we get that nice
flashback to that. And then I mean, and that's just
that iconic scenehere a scene where he's lifting up the
car and people are running away from him and the
I think that was a scene from Action Comics Number one.
I maybe get that wrong, but an iconic Superman image
(04:02):
from all the way back in the earliest days of Superman.
We see as we get a little montage of some
stuff here, we also see that he is in the
convenience store. De Nice is there and on the TV
behind her we see that there's a plane that has
lost both of its engines on a news report, and
while Clark is in the store, he kind of comes
(04:23):
up with an excuse. He's like, ah, I left my
wallet in the car. So he he's like too, I'll
be back in a second, runs out of the parking lot.
We see Superman show up save the plane. A few
seconds later, Clark comes back in from the parking lot
and Denise is trying to like play it up and say, wow,
you're back already. He's like, yeah, I just went to
the parking lote, that's all I did. So he's on
(04:43):
the telling of the secret campaign here as he's trying
to convince everybody that he's just a regular guy. In
the meantime, we are back on the farm. Lois and
the boys are there. Lois is trying to build a
crib for Chrissy and Kyle, and clearly these are not
the simple visual ikea type instruck. Lois is getting very frustrated.
We do see later that she did not do such
(05:04):
a great job putting this crib together. But it's okay.
I've tried to put together some stuff as well in
my day, and there was a swing set at one
point in time. I usually try to keep if there's
any four letter words, I try to keep them as
much as possible in my head when I can. I
do remember the one of the only times I've ever
(05:25):
sworn out loud in front of family is when we
had some ants or uncles over and I was trying
to build a swing set. Wed bought a swing set
for the kids, and I was building at the backyard.
That stupid thing was not cooperating with me trying to
put it together, and I said some words that I
have regrets having said those words out loud, especially in
(05:47):
front of family, but I had lost my cool that day,
so I understand Lois's frustration here. In which case, then
have the boys do it. If these are like super boys,
then let them put their superpowers. They could put the
whole together in like ten seconds, and then even if
they got it wrong, ten more seconds to fix it,
So I'd say put the boys to work. Clark comes
(06:08):
back in talks about how Lex is. It's things are
quiet now, but he's back. He's at his apartment in Metropolis.
She asks if John Henry had gotten notice to talk.
Not yet. We cut to a scene with Chris, Chrissy,
and Kyle looking for a house. But it's a little
on the expensive side. So here's here's where I need
some help. If we have any listeners who are in
or around rural Kansas, what I would be curious to
(06:30):
know because we're never quite told where Smallville is supposed
to be in Kansas. It's always depending on the TV
show or the movie. You know, Metropolis is sometimes supposed
to be Kansas City, and then depending on the TV
show or movie, Smallville is an hour away, a couple
of hours away. We don't know exactly where this is
supposed to be. So what I'm curious is they're looking
(06:55):
at a four bedroom, two bathroom, fourteen hundred eighty five
square foot house, and that house looks beautiful, like absolutely beautiful.
My question is because I tried to do a little
search on some real estate websites because I'm thinking, you
know what rural Kansas. Three hundred thousand dollars. Is that
(07:20):
a little unreasonable? And I'm thinking i'd be so I
did try to look it up, and I've just been
looking on some real estate sites in rural Kansas to
find a house that is a nice house with a
number of bedrooms, a number of bathrooms, to you know,
have have a yard, all these other things. And keeping
in mind it's Chrissy, it's Kyle, and it will be
(07:41):
a baby like all the other kids. I mean, they
may come back at some point, but they're growing or grown,
so they're kind of out of the house. It seems
to me. I did look it up. The median house
value in Kansas is around a little over two hundred
thousand dollars, So we're looking at the house that is
(08:02):
probably way above the median value of a house in Kansas.
Granted they are wanting a nicer house, but at the
same time of like, we may be batting out of
our league just a bit when it comes to this house,
and are you going to find a house like this
in Smallville, Kansas? Because we had so many early stories
in this show, Smallville has fallen on hard times and
(08:25):
they jumped at the chance when Morgan Edge came and
was going to change their lives. Smallville was a dying
town and it was a struggle, and it was all
these things, and all of a sudden, I think I'm
spending too much time thinking about this, But all of
a sudden, Kyle and Chrissy like their perfect house is
a three hundred thousand dollars house in rural Smallville, Kansas.
(08:47):
Because it is supposed to be in Smallville. It's not
outside of Smallville, or at least it's very close to Smallville.
Because if you had do zoom in like I did,
paying too much attention to stuff, they did do a
search for houses near Smallville or houses in Smallville in
other states. So I know I lived near Chicago, in
an area of Chicago where three hundred thousand dollars would
(09:08):
not buy you much. So I don't know my real
estate in other areas very well. So I just I
don't know. It seemed like a bit, all right. Clark
starts making the rounds, trying to convince people he is
a regular guy trying to convince Coach Games coach Gaines
super excited. One of Clark's be an assistant coach one
of the boys to be on the football team again,
and he's trying to convince Coach Gains. He talks about
(09:30):
turning down the assistant coach job and how he didn't
really appreciate Coach Gaines harassing the boys about playing on
the football team again, and then Clark kind of arranges
so that he will get his hand slammed in Coach
gaines car door, and he just keeps like yelling ouch
and like he is absolutely in pain, and Coach Games
is like, ouch, ouch, what do you mean. Ouch?
Speaker 2 (09:52):
I'm still alive, but I'm very badly injured. I think
my legs might be broken, but I'll try to stand up. Yes,
they have broken. Perhaps you could toss me abandon or
some anti bacterial cream. I mean an extraordinarily large amount
of paint. The moon has gone through the skin. I
feel it might be angernous. The wound is beginning to
(10:14):
smell a little like almonds, which is not good.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
They just keep repeating it. It's it's a hilarious scene
and Clark, you know, he just acts it out so well.
We get these flashbacks, and we're gonna get several of
these flashbacks throughout this episode. Flashbacks to the Daily Planet.
We finally get to meet this universe as Jimmy Olsen.
We had had Janet Olson, who we had met several
times before in this series, and come to find out
(10:39):
that Jimmy is her brother. And thankfully this is not
that character I mentioned a little while ago, the Jimberly,
Jimmy Jimmington, jim jim Jeru Olsen Luthor. I don't know,
really Jimmington something stupid. Anyway, we meet Jimmy and he
(10:59):
is He's kind of the Jimmy you would expect, is
what you usually, you know, come to expect when you
see a Jimmy Olsen character. He's trying to arrange for
players to be on the Daily Planet softball team so
they could beat the Star, which I think is probably
going to be the Daily Star. He asked Clark at
one point, hey, can we be pals? And that's kind
of a famous phrase Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen, he's always
known as Superman's Pal. Clark initially wants to turn down
(11:23):
playing on the team because his dad has always kind
of helped bea shied him away from playing sports once
he got powers, and in this episode they actually reveal
that he got powers as early as age four, so
clearly the Kent's mon Pop Kent were scared from early
on early age that he would be found out that
(11:43):
he'd taken away from them, So they did have him
shy away from playing any can of sports exhibiting his
powers in any way, even if accidentally exhibiting his powers
by hitting a baseball or throwing a football or kicking
something or so. Clark is hesitant to do any kind
of sports because he doesn't want to reveal himself because
of that fear. Then Lois kind of convinces him. She's like, look,
(12:06):
you gotta have friends like you. Gotta cut loose every
once in a while he play on the team. It's
not even about winning. It's about and it's not even
about your athletic ability. Just be terrible. So lois great advice.
Be terrible. I have always, even without knowing Lois, I
have taken her advice when it comes to sports. ICK
have always been terrible. So thank you Lois for that advice.
(12:27):
I feel seen, I feel acknowledged. It makes a lot
of sense. Now the boys almost get into a fight.
They're there to see a movie from the Marquee. It
looks like it was some version of I already know
what you may have possibly done that nobody else knew
about last summer. They almost get into a fight outside
of the theater because Little Timmy Ryan, Big Timmy Ryan
(12:48):
actually shows up and says that it is unfair that
he never got a chance to be a football star
on the team because he was going up against SUPERBOYE.
So now Timmy Ryan knows that the boys are superboys.
Kyle ends up stepping in and kind of breaks it
up and says, everybody home. We get a scene of
Lois and Chrissy talking. Chrissy is telling Lois that she's
going to need to sell her share of the smallvill
(13:10):
Gazette in order to afford their new house. Lois is
understandably disappointed because she thought they were working on building
something and she wasn't ready for Chrissy not to be
her partner anymore. Clark goes by the firehouse to see
Kyle comments on Kyle selling his grill. Everybody's got comments
on Kyle selling his grill, and Kyle says, I've got
one kid about to study abroad, one kid growing up
(13:32):
too fast. He is talking about Sophie the not Sarah,
who has left her gestational period and has grown into
the drone alien that she will be now that she
is roughly nine feet tall as we saw a few
episodes ago, so clearly that is the kid that is
growing up too fast. We get another flashback to a
softball game. Clark becomes the bunt King and they win
(13:55):
the game because he chooses to bunt instead of actually
swinging at the ball. We have a scene of Clark
and Lois and the boys talking and he is frustrated
that so many people seem to know that he is Superman.
This is where they find out that Candice also knows
that he's Superman. Now he kind of explodes on the
boys and he basically says, look, the whole point of
keeping this secret is so that you can have a
normal life here. Unfortunately, as we know, there's no such
(14:20):
thing as normal life. There's just life. There's no Harf work,
It's just Larf and get off with it. We have
another flashback to the Daily Planet softball team where Clark
shows up late to a game. Once again, Jimmy is unhappy.
It seems like Clark seems to disappear at interopportunity and
times and shows up late to a lot of things.
(14:41):
Clark takes the boys to Timmy Ryan's house and basically
gaslights both him and his mother so bad they could
have lit a match and just blown up the entire house.
Here and this, I'm going to stop here for a
moment because I want to comment on this scene. I
think that at the time I'm watching this scene, and
I was so disapoint in Clark for this scene, so disappointed.
(15:04):
But I don't think you get everything else that happens
later on in the episode where he finally reveals his
secret to everyone, unless you have this scene, unless you
have this scene, which shows how disappointed the boys are,
and this is a place where Clark has to learn
from his sons that he's been doing something the wrong
(15:26):
way for most of his life. I hated this scene
when it was first happening. I was so disappointed in
my Clark. How can you You are such a strong
moral compass for everyone, you make all these sacrifices, You
are so good, you are so optimistic, and yet you
can stand there, sit there and watch you and your
(15:49):
sons gaslight this kid to where the mother now is
so disappointed in her son and You're causing strife within
another family to keep your secret. So it physically made
me mad this scene, but I'm so glad that it did,
because then it's more powerful later on when Clark makes
(16:09):
that change and does decide to tell everybody. Now, I
do feel like we're not going to get it on camera.
You don't have enough time to show all of it.
We do see a montage later on of people watching
the news report that occurs towards the end of the episode,
and I kind of hesitated. I was like, ah, I
feel like I feel like Clark needs to issue more
(16:31):
of an apology to the people that he lied to
over the years. I think I wanted to see a
personal even before the news broadcast was going to happen.
I would have loved to have seen Clark go to
their house and personally apologize to Timmy, Ryan, and his mother.
We didn't get to see that, so I was a
(16:51):
little disappointed in that. But again, it's a TV show.
You've got limited time, and I don't feel like there
were too many places in this episode where you could
have trimmed much of anything else. I do feel like
everything was where it needed to be in this episode.
We have another flashback and Jimmy actually tells c K
that he believes he a Superman. He's be's seen the
pattern is it? Every time Clark doesn't show up for something,
(17:15):
Superman makes some kind of miraculous save, and we get
a list, a nice little shopping list here of the
miraculous saves Superman made in various Superman movies. Jimmy points out, well,
there was a crashing helicopter, and that is from Superman
the movie originally, when he saves Lois from the helicopter
falling off the Daily Planet building. We have the blown
(17:36):
out train track. Now that could be if it's blown
out train track, that is possibly during the earthquake scenes
in the original Superman movie and when Lex tries to
blow up the San Andreas Fault and separate California from
the rest of it and create his new West Coast.
Could have been that, or it could also have been
I think there was the blown out train tracks in
(17:57):
the subway station in Superman four. So there's been a
couple of train saves. They're my favorite one. The favorite
reference of all was and then there was a falling
elevator on the Eiffel Tower. Superman to the terrorists with
the hydrogen bomb. Lois at the bottom of the elevator,
trying to spell everything because she's an awful speller and
(18:18):
trying to do what she can to get the pueld
surprise here. I believe this is your floor. Oh thank God,
How'd I get myself into this? I absolutely love this reference,
the fact that they dropped that in there, and I'm like, yes, yes,
the Superman too. Falling elevator from the Eiffel Tower they
get back home. The boys are just sick over all
(18:39):
the line that they've had to do about their powers. Jonathan,
I think it says at one point, Yeah, it really sucked.
And this is where you really get the sense that, Okay,
something's going to have to change here because these boys
can't do this their entire life. In this situation, the
boys are the ones that are right. If you are Superman,
if you are the moral compass that the optimistic, the
Paradona virtue, basically, then you should be honest. And you
(19:04):
caused strife within another family by keeping and pushing and
pursuing the keeping of this secret. So I absolutely agree
with the boys. It really sucked. Bad call Superman. But
we're going to fix it. Later on, Clark Lewis, and
Kyle and Chrissy are at the diner. Clark and Lewis
(19:25):
revealed that they want to buy Chrissy's share of the
Gazette and then that would give enough for their house
and then they could still be co editors on it.
But they want to do that for them because General
Gramp's wore the same for Hawaiian insurance his entire life,
never took a vacation day and left Clark and Lewis
some money, So that's what they want to do to
be able to help them out and also keep the
(19:46):
Gazette going. The fraternals are talking about how the lying
about the identity is not what they want for their future,
talking about how their dad doesn't really have any friends,
like he doesn't hang out with John Henry, he doesn't
hang out with really anybody. Well, he didn't really hang
out with Kyle, and that's not the life they want
for themselves, so something is going to have to change. Here.
We're back at the diner and the friends are still talking.
(20:09):
Candace's dad, mister Burgandy, shows up and he is at
the diner. He seems he couldn't tell if he was
supposed to be Drunker, if he's just angry, maybe a
combination of both, and he kind of wants to start something.
He says, a little Bertie told me that you've got
a secret, and we find out later that that little
Birdie was actually Lex Luthorse. They may have been cell made,
(20:31):
so they might have served together in the same area
at Striker's prison. At one point in time, Lois says
something to Burgandy at that point, and he tells her
to basically to shut up, because she's been lying and
covering for her alien husband for years. K pulls a
will Smith here. Wow, dude, he pulls a gun on
(20:53):
K and fires it, and we get a slow motion
the end of Hamilton kind of bullet scene. We get
some bullet time here, but everything's running in slow motion.
I love this. In the slow motion, you see that
Clark has time to think. There's any number of ways
he could avoid this bullet. It is moving so slowly,
and no one would be able to see him whatever
(21:16):
he would decide to do. But he's at this point
in time. He looks at Lois, kind of looks everybody
around him. He slowly takes off his glasses and sets
them down. He rips open his shirt and allows the
bullet to come and just hit him square in the
Superman symbol. I love this scene because I feel like
that was the perfect way to show that he has
(21:39):
finally surrendered to the idea that maybe he's been wrong
his whole life living in fear of this, and maybe
it won't be so bad. He's in a town where
all the people in the town seem to love him
and his family. I think he's got a lot of
good will built up because of who his mother was.
Everybody loved Martha Kent, and everybody knows what Superman has
(21:59):
done and over again for not just the world, but
for Smallville specifically. So I just I thought that was
a great way of showing that he has decided to
make this change and that he will let everybody know
the secret. Everyone in the diner at this point, the
bullet falls to the ground and he is in full
Superman regalia. Everyone the diner sees that he's Superman, and
(22:21):
we end that scene kind of pulling out. The camera
pulls out from the diner and we hear him say
at the end, I'm sorry I lied to you all
for so long. We're around the kitchen table at the farm.
This is where they talk about Luther having served at
Strikers with mister Burgandy, so that's how he found out
it was not Candice. They talk about how Luther's going
to keep sending people unless they decide not to keep
(22:44):
it a secret anymore, and they talk about how this
is going to change everything. It's Clark says it needs
to be a family decision because it will change everything.
We will not have normal lives anymore. There is no
going back to this, and Clark apologizes to the boys
one more time because all he really wanted to do
was try to give them some kind of a normal life.
(23:04):
I love the scene where they've got the camera crew in.
Lois said that she's gonna make a call. She calls
Janet Old Janet Olsen from The Daily Planet. She comes
in with the camera crew. They're going to sit down
at the kitchen table and Clark is going to tell
everyone that he is Superman. And I love what he
walks in in that scene because every single person in
there absolutely knows who he is. All the camera crew,
(23:25):
all the folks that are there, they know exactly who
he is. And he just walks in, Hi, I am Clark.
He's just shaking everybody's hands as if he's Tyler of
the episode, as if he's a regular guy. And I
absolutely love it because he hasn't changed. He is still Superman.
He's still Clark Kent, but he is still that you know,
the Kansas farm boy, you know values He's just a
(23:47):
regular guy. And I really I love that about this
characterization of Superman that Tyler Heikerlemen has been doing on
the Daily Planet reports. He basically starts by saying, my
name is Clark Kenton. Yes, I am Superman. It had
At one point he makes a comment, You'd be surprised
what a pair of glasses could do. I will attest
to this because I worked in a store. I might
have shared this either on this podcast or another one.
(24:09):
One time. I worked as a store at one point
and our uniform was simple for the store. It was
a black polo shirt and khaki pants. And I remember
that some folks that I knew from church, they came
into the store one time, and honestly, this person was
probably having a bad day, but they treated me terribly.
(24:33):
And as I'm helping this person and I'm being treated
terribly by this person. I'm standing there, I'm thinking, you
and I have talked in church several times. Do you
not recognize because it's a different setting and I'm wearing
this quote unquote uniform. You don't know who I am.
(24:53):
And it was really bizarre because then like the next
Sunday or a couple sundays later, we were talking in church,
and for them it was like enough it happened. And
I was like, if anybody ever tells me that the
whole thing of Clark can't wearing the glasses and nobody
knows he's Superman is stupid and ridiculous, I will tell
them it is absolutely not, because if you're not expecting
to see someone in a certain way, in a certain environment,
(25:16):
if they're outside the normal environment you see them in,
I absolutely, fully would believe that a pair of glasses
could totally throw people off. I have experienced something similar,
so I get it. So nobody can ever convince me
that it's a stupid disguise. We get to see everybody
is watching this TV report, It's being aired all over
the world, and we see a bunch of different groups
(25:38):
of people from Smallville watching this report on TV. He
talks about how he's just a regular guy, that he's
made mistakes, he struggled to balance at all. He's like,
I'm like anybody else who loves their family and wants
to be better for them. Like this whole scene of
Clark trying to explain that, you know, he's tried, like
as a father, as a hero, he has tried to
(25:59):
do what he can to make the world a better place,
but to make his family safe and to give them
what they need, and that he has struggled to balance
at all. And honestly, I'll pull back the curtain for
a second. I have had a lot of struggles this
year with my day job that I have. It just
life seems for me personally. I don't want to harp
(26:21):
on this too much, but life seems hard right now,
and I don't have it any harder than anybody else does.
So I'm not trying to, you know, play some kind
of a game where I say, Wow, my life is
so much tougher than other people. Absolutely not. I have
so many things where I am so much more privileged
by virtue of nothing that I have earned for myself.
I have privileges that other people do not have, so
(26:43):
I'm not saying that, but it has felt like a
hard year for me. And I gotta tell you, I
was almost tearing up in this scene because there are
times and whether I you know, I've shared this with
my wife, and I've shared this with just a select
group of friends. But it's been hard, and I feel
like I've struggled to keep things balanced and to meet
(27:03):
the obligations. And I'm not saying that that dads are
the only people to do this, because they're absolutely not.
There are single parents all over the place that are
doing things like this. But for me personally, I'm only
talking about my experience personally, it's been hard. And so
when Clark is talking about the struggle to balance these
things and how maybe in some ways he feels guilty
for the things he did wrong or the ways that
(27:25):
he fell short. By God, I nearly teared up in
this scene because it meant so much to me. I
saw myself in those moments where Clark was talking about
all he really wanted was just to try to do
good and to try to protect his family and care
for his family. And I'm just going to say, ladies
(27:46):
and gentlemen, you hit it out of the Park like
I got all the feels from that particular moment in
this episode, So thank you because I saw myself in that,
and I think that is the mark of an outstanding
TV when your writing and your characters, your actors can
portray things in such a way that I can see
(28:06):
myself in them, so outstanding. Thank you so much for that.
We get a flashback, one of the final flashbacks to
the softball team, Clark and Jimmy talk after the championship.
Jimmy was disappointed and basically said, Deale, I guess you're
not Superman then, and he makes a comment last one
to Bibowski's picks up the tab. And this was a
(28:27):
fun little comment as well because back in the probably
late eighties is when he first showed up is Bibbo Bobowski,
and Bibbo is he is supposed to be kind of
a friend and supporter of Superman. It was late eighties,
I think it was probably during the Ordway and Wolfin period.
(28:50):
But he is basically Superman's biggest fan, and he owns
a bar and he's just you know, he's just a big, old, lovable,
tough guy and his bar is called the ASA Clubs.
You know, he's a tough guy, but he's also a
big old softy, and so he shows up in a
bunch of different iterations of Superman. We've seen his character
(29:11):
in a bunch of different ways in comic books, at
cartoons and TV shows. You know, he has this bar
Asa Clubs in Suicide slum part of Metropolis, one of
the roughest parts of Metropolis, and he is just such
a huge fan of Superman, and so we see him
pretty constantly stepping in to try to help in whatever
(29:32):
ways he can. You know, I think he shows up
at one point during the Doomsday storyline. I remember in
that story they're trying to help Superman, well normal people,
what are they going to do against the Doomsday creature.
There was a professor, Professor Hamilton who was trying to
help Superman around that period, kind of give some science
behind Superman's powers that he kind of helped Superman with
(29:54):
some different gadgets that he needed. Basically, he was kind
of like Superman's cue in a way. I remember the
there was a scene where Hamilton had tried to create
some kind of a gun that they could blast Doomsday with,
and Bibbo was like, I got muscles. Let me hold
this thing, I'll try to blast this monster, and they do.
It doesn't do anything to Doomsday, but you know, Bibbo
is always trying to He's the regular jill that if
(30:16):
Superman was fighting some monstrous supervillain, Bibbo, not even thinking
about himself, would probably jump in and try to land
the punch as well, just so he could say he
helped out Superman. So Bibbo has always been kind of
a fun character, and Bibowski's then, I'm assuming, is going
to be a little bit of a play on his name,
and instead of being called the Ace of Clubs, maybe
(30:38):
that's his bar instead. But yeah, so we saw Lois
and Clark New Adventures of Superman. He was in an
episode called Double Jeopardy. He was the animated series. Brad
Garrett actually played his voice. He was kind of a
sea captain in that one. And then he was Miguel Ferrer,
another great actor. He was in Young Justice and Miguel
Ferrer played him in that. Some of the animated films
(31:01):
we have the Death in Return of Superman a couple
of different versions. He was in there. He's been in
a couple of the video games as well. The Injustice game,
and a couple of other things. So Debbo is a
regular character that shows up in all the different media
that Superman has existed in. Okay, we get to a
scene Clark's looking in the mirror and he is starting
(31:25):
to put the glasses on, sets them down. I think
we're getting a glasses less car cluck. From this point on,
he doesn't have to even try to tell anybody he
had Lasik because everybody knows now. He ends up at
the diner, and I love this scene because Denise is
there as she's leaving and he's walking in. She calls
him mister Kent as if it's just another day, and
(31:47):
I love that that he's just being treated like an everyday,
regular guy, despite the fact that everybody knows that he's Superman.
Jimmy is here. So Jimmy got called in by his sister,
and he doesn't seem to be too upset about lied
to all those years ago, and they hug, they kind
of reconcile, and then they sit down to just chat
there at the dynam I was a little This was
(32:09):
something where I almost wanted to see a little bit
more disappointment or anger from Jimmy but I'm okay, I'm
okay that there wasn't. It was a fine way to
wrap everything up, and another great episode. We have only
got what we three episodes left. This was seven, so
we've got eight to nine and tense, we're three episodes
away from the end of this show. They are still
(32:32):
top tier writing and acting, and to it grief, it
is just it's such a wonderful show. I am going
to miss these characters so much. I am glad. I
am sad for the other actors and characters that they
got relegated out of the series regular spots. But I
really think that they did tighten up the storytelling here
(32:53):
by having it really focus on the Kent family. I
do feel like in some of the other seasons we
veered off a little bit too much on these side characters,
digging into the Kent family and their family dynamic, and
and you know, while I thought the writing was good
in the other seasons and getting to know these other
characters was good, this has just been a fun, phenomenal
season focusing in on the Kent family, really getting a
(33:16):
strengthening of the characters of Jordan and John and even
Lois and especially Clark, like I think they have done
so much for Clark's character in this season that I
absolutely love. Thank you to the writers. Thank you to
Tyler Hecklin, thank you to Bitsy Tulla. Thank you to
all the actors in this show. You guys are doing
(33:36):
an amazing job. Phenomenal. Absolutely loved it, loved this episode.
There's barely any action, if any action at all in
this episode. Well there's a gun being fired, but but
you know what, it was top tier. Might even be
one of my favorite episodes of the entire series. So
I don't have other than just continuing to gush about it.
That's all I got. So I would love to hear
(33:59):
what you think about it. If you want to reach out,
we are at Superman PFK on Twitter. We're on Facebook
as well. Well, we've got a page on Facebook. But yeah,
if you want to leave a review, that would be great.
Actually leaving a review on Apple Music. That would be
our podcast. That would be great. But I'd love to
know how everybody else is feeling about this season and
(34:19):
this episode in particular. I thought it was phenomenal, but
I'd be curious to hear what other people are thinking
as well. Everybody, Thank you so much for joining us
on this episode, Up, Up, and away, and we'll see
you back here for the next one and the last
three episode, Got Talk to My Got So Bad Food
(34:46):
shot Love the mo
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