Ricky Church reviews the fifth episode of Superman & Lois season 2…
After a couple weeks off the air due to the Olympics, Superman & Lois has returned with a brand new episode that pushes the threat in a new direction and brings its stories much closer than they were before. ‘Girl… You’ll Be A Woman, Soon’ nicely advanced the plot and many of the characters own motivations, though it also is at risk of repeating some of the same major plot points as the first season.
On the Superman front, the episode had plenty of good moments for the Man of Steel as he continued his search for Bizarro and what exactly his doppleganger is. It actually tied very well with Lois, giving both characters great scenes as Clark and Lois brainstormed together for their own individual stories before realizing they were looking into the same thing from different angles. It’s very interesting how Ally Allston is much more connected to Bizarro than it initially appeared as it seemed like Lois’ mission to take her down would have been its own story for the season. Instead, we were treated to a brief flashback of Ally as a child followed by her attempting to sway Chrissy in her group against Lois.
The connection also provided yet another great fight scene between Superman and Bizarro, making that the third episode in a row the two have fought. It would have been easy for their fight to feel repetitive after their previous two encounters, but any repetitiveness was put to bed quickly as Superman clued in to the opposite nature of Bizarro from his powers and weaknesses and utilized the ex-K to defeat him. It also seems the right time to give Bizarro more insight and personality as he had an intriguing first meeting with Lois, delivered his first lines and his main goal in coming to Earth. It’s the perfect time to elevate him before the fist fights become too much and too formulaic.
However, there is also a sense of repetition in these revelations. Bizarro coming from another multiversal Earth to stop a threat before it can grow in order to save his planet and this new Earth rings very much of John Henry Irons and Morgan Edge in the first season. He came to Earth for very much the same reasons in order to avert Edge’s plans and Superman dominating the planet. It’s obviously too soon to tell how it will play out, but the fact these story beats are so similar to last year’s, right down to the DOD leader having misgivings about Superman’s role in all this, is a bit concerning.
Aside from the world-ending plot, a large portion of the episode dealt with Sarah’s quinceañera, her coming-of-age party. The episode had a pretty good balance of the main plot and this event, but the build up to Sarah’s party delivered several nice character moments whether it was with her family or a heartfelt conversation with Jordan. Emmanuelle Chriqui gave a great performance as Lana throughout the episode, particularly during her speech for Sarah, and Eric Valdez also showed how much tension Kyle was under as his affair threatened to become public. The way Sarah found out seemed a little contrived as she and Jordan were in just the right place at the right time to overhear his conversation, though it didn’t seem to come out of nowhere as the show did plant the idea earlier that she needed to get away from the attention which led to Jordan and Sarah’s nice scene. It was a pleasant surprise to learn Lana knew about the affair, subverting a more dramatic story of her finding out with plenty of relationship troubles. In this way it felt like their struggle was played much more realistically than is typical of a CW drama and Chriqui, Erik Valdez and Inde Navarrette were all great together.
‘Girl… You’ll Be A Woman, Soon’ featured some nice progression of the story as it avoided falling back on the same type of fight between Superman and Bizarro, though it interestingly also fell back on many of the same significant beats that were featured in the first season. Hopefully it won’t get to feeling too similar as the season continues and we learn more about who Ally Allston really is while Jon deals with his growing addiction to ex-K and the fact it’s unlocking his Kryptonian genes only when he takes it. It provided interesting if familiar points for the story to go.
Rating: 7/10
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