TV REVIEWS: FTN Reviews Superman & Lois Episode 4: Haywire

I think we all knew that a crescendo was going on with Superman & Lois and inevitably things were going to take a little bit of a dip, and “Haywire” was that dip. After three solid episodes we got to a bit more tropey territory and they’re pushing certain themes a bit too hard a bit too quickly.

The last three episodes was very much about Lois & Clark finding the new status quo in their lives and balancing time with their jobs and their kids. It was prevalent all throughout the episodes, but here, in “Haywire”, they just kept harping on it via Sam Lane and it just got annoying.

Granted, Sam Lane is a key figure in Superman lore, and he if you recall, he was in the universe Pre-Crisis via Supergirl. But the “new Sam” is very different from the old one and he literally has one note: duty over everything else. From his talk about “shifting priorities” to Superman “doing his job” and telling the boys in the most annoying way, “Don’t…distract him!” and then him refusing to see the error of his ways when Lois called him out on his crap, it was just way too much. Again, we’ve already had three episodes of Clark trying to “balance life on the farm and being Superman” and it’s a great story, but when you push it too much, it’ll get repetitive and boring. This is ironically a major criticism of many Superman stories in the comics, but that’s another topic.

Furthermore, as I noted in the last episode, the characters did a lot of “reacting to one thing” and then “being sorry about it” later in way that’s very headscratching. If you recall, Jonathan was the reason that Jordan got to say on the football team, a very noble thing. But now (and teased in the trailer for next episode) he regrets it and is angry that “the whole team likes Jordan” versus liking him. So does he not want Jordan to be happy and accepted? Or did he just do that because he felt guilty for being popular? Which is it?

Lois also had this moment sadly with the vote of the council meeting. Did she have a right to be mad at Clark? Yeah, she did, and she was written well in one part where she admitted that it somewhat wrong for her to be mad given who he is. But then she said the line “I feel like I’m the lowest on the totem poll” and that’s just dumb. Because the last two episodes have been about Clark supporting her and telling her to “follow her gut” and not back down from Morgan Edge and yet she’s “low on the totem pole”? And the writers even tried to cover it up with the “in this moment that I’ll likely regret tomorrow, yeah” line which was equally dumb.

Also, why did Lana go from “I’m not happy in my marriage” to “I’m making out with my husband in front of the kids” after just one drinking night with Lois? How did they make that leap?

There were other weird elements here like the “yellow phosphorous” that someone ignited their friends’ powers, the offhanded reference to a “super school” and Thaddeus Kilgrave who was as one-note as you could be.

Yes, I do realize that this review for the most part has been bashing this episode, and to be clear there were good elements and moments, but this was the first episode of the series that I honestly fast-forwarded parts of because it just felt like a waste to go through them in real-time, and I didn’t have that feeling at all with the first three episodes.

“Haywire” was very much a lull, but it happens in all shows, so it’s not too much of a surprise. Hopefully next episode will bring things back to life in the way that makes this show so special.