Lois & Clark: The Not-So-New Adventures of Superman

Watching the bright new "Superman Returns" brought back so many great memories I have about the Man-of-Steel, it's hard to know where to start. Like...  being a six year old buying a Superman comic from a magazine rack in a drug store... Running home to watch George Reeves in a syndicated re-run of the first TV series... Standing in line for hours to watch "Superman: The Movie" starring Christopher Reeve.

Nothing compares, though, with working on the first season of "Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman." It ranks as one of the greatest creative satisfactions I’ve had in the series TV business. 

I had first worked with Deborah Joy LeVine (she received the WGA “Developed By” credit) on a law series called "Equal Justice." A gifted writer, she had written an exceptional pilot that ABC had picked up and, at the same time, ordered a half-dozen back-up scripts. So before film was even being shot on her pilot, Deborah Joy, her brother Dan and I were throwing “super” ideas around every day in a little trailer on the Warner Brothers lot.

As the show's newly-minted supervising producer, getting in early allowed me the rare opportunity to put some of my own spin into the always-changing Superman mythos.  During that first season, here are my favorite contributions to the 70 year mythology:

• Clark Kent and Lois Lane became partners.  Originally, in both the comics and the series, they were conceived as competitors. It felt to me, however, that if they were going to each chase the same story every episode, we would have to work too hard to get them on screen together. Solution:  Perry White makes them a team. Worked like a charm.

• In my first episode, “Strange Visitor (From Another Planet)," Clark discovers for the first time he is an alien from the planet Krypton instead of some kind of failed Russian experiment as his parents had assumed. It was during the Space race in our timeline when he crashed so what would you expect the Kents to think: here's a human baby in a rocketship that wasn't one of ours.
  

• Our Clark Kent was put on record as having crashed to Earth on May 17th (my birthday), and the event was tied in with UFO mythology dating back to Roswell. I wrote Men-in-Black into that episode before the MIB movie ever wrote Fade In...

• In a later episode, “The Green, Green Glow of Home," Clark returns to Smallville with Lois Lane, allowing us to see the town through her eyes. In this same episode, Clark got a past that included a high school girlfriend besides Lana Lang.

• Kryptonite’s rules were also changed so that it erased his powers, temporarily, allowing him to experience the world as a “normal” person. (This change was undone in subsequent seasons.) Clark was exposed to the dreaded Kryptonite by the person who loved him most – his father – rather than some arch-villain.

• In my third episode, “All Shook Up," Lex Luthor declares his love for Lois Lane and becomes almost likeable for a moment. This episode was also a re-imagining of a classic original TV series episode, "Panic in the Sky."

And, since people ask all the time, Dean Cain was and is one of the nicest actors I’ve worked with. He’s extremely hard-working and has a core character that is so likeable that it was a pleasure writing for him. 

And Teri Hatcher, well, in my opinion, she was magic on screen from Day One.  My first episode contained the first interview Lois Lane conducts with Superman. It was intimidating to write, mostly because it had been acted so brilliantly by Christopher Reeve and Margot Kidder in the first movie (remember the pink panties?).  Teri made me feel more for her character than I ever got from the films, and that was just in our first episode. You can download that scene by clicking here:

Download Lois Interviews Superman.pdf

A good friend of mine during those days was actor Lane Smith who played Perry White. We'd met seven years earlier, on my first series "Kay O'Brien" for CBS, when I cast him as one of the lead surgeons. He made Deborah Joy's catch-phrase come alive: "Great Shades of Elvis!" Sadly, Lane passed away a few years ago, but he was definitely a complete original.

Now, of course, "Lois & Clark" isn't even the newest Superman on TV what with the excellent CW series "Smallville." And even that show isn't the newest Superman out there what with the blockbuster "Superman Returns."

If the history of Superman intrigues you, another friend of mine, Gary Grossman, has even written a book about all the super-mania over the years. It's worth checking out, Superman: From Serial to Cereal. Gary knows this world inside-out.

But at the end of the day (we LOVE to say that out here in Hollywood), I'll never forget "Lois & Clark," and you gotta let me get away with saying this once -- it was a super experience!

Comments

[Gary Grossman]

Bryce,
Thanks so much for the great time, the great mention of Superman: Serial to Cereal, and the great things ahead! I love your website/block and passion you put into this and everything. Speaking of time, this takes time, too. I'm amazed! Thanks tons again! Best to you, Jackie and the whole family!
Gary, Helene, Zach and Jake

[Tripp]

Just have to pop over here to say, I loved "Lois & Clark". Though it did feature the Superman movies, I always thought Clark deserved to be the main character, making Superman the alter-ego.

And "Green Glow of Home" is my favorite episode of S1.