Lois and Clark – CliqueClack Flashback

Super heroes are cool (especially in a house with a four-year-old boy); just look at the success of Iron Man and The Dark Night. Smallville has just been renewed, even though this season was slated to be its last — how could they cancel with the best ratings ever?

It just seems the proper time to celebrate the fun series from the mid-’90s, Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, starring Dean Cain and Teri Hatcher. What was so great about this show? Clark Kent. A lot of times, poor Clark is portrayed as just a nerd, secondary to Superman. This series celebrated Clark as a nice guy, still mild-mannered, but less nerdy (and less klutzy!) and a good reporter … and a good catch. So yeah, casting Dean Cain was a moment of brilliance, and sorry Christopher Reeve, I mean no disrespect, but Cain is my favorite Superman of all-time.

Teri Hatcher’s Lois was no awkward loser like Desperate Housewives‘ Susan; she was cuter, spunkier and even a little bit bitchy (hey, if you’re going to play Lois Lane, you’ve got to be in touch with your inner bitch). But it was fun watching this bitch warm to Clark and see him as an equal, both in business and pleasure.

Cain and Hatcher had lots of chemistry and they were always fun to watch. But let’s not discount Clark’s parents, played by K Callan and Eddie Jones — they were so spunky! One of my all-time favorite scenes was when Clark’s parents were on a rooftop with him, trying to teach him how to fly again after he gets amnesia, and his mom finally just pushes him off. It starts around three minutes into this clip:

Some of my favorite guest stars had great roles on this show, too: Lane Davies (ah… Mason Capwell of Santa Barbara, the best soap opera character EVER) played a villain, Tempus, in season two; Farrah Forke (remember her from Wings?) as the D.A.; Fred Willard, Bruce Campbell, Robert Culp … awesome.

I really, really didn’t like it when they recast Jimmy Olsen, though. I loved season one’s Jimmy, played by Michael Landes, and the excuse that he looked too much like Dean Cain (yeah, he wishes!) just doesn’t fly with me. He added a sense of cool to Jimmy, and Justin Whalin, who took over for the rest of the series, put the geek back in Jimmy.

The first two seasons were definitely my favorite, and I can only describe my feelings as giddy every week when I tuned in. It was fun; like Leverage fun, like a guilty pleasure that was so well done that you didn’t even need to feel guilty about it.

In a nutshell, this show had charm, humor, wasn’t afraid to make fun of itself a little and was still quite a clever concept.

The pilot’s on YouTube:

… and the entire series is available on DVD. You’d be doing yourself a favor if you never caught this series to pick it up, or to relive it if you loved it in the ’90s like I did.

Clacked by Debbie McDuffee
on Mar 04, 2009 @ 13:00 EST5EDT