Memory Lane

I've been watching the first season of Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, which came out on DVD not long ago. I always did enjoy the show, a fact which I'm sure some of you will find contradictory, given my general disdain for comic books and superheroes.

The thing is, my major complaint with most comics (superheroes in particular) is that I don't find the characters compelling. I feel that the stories told really don't have anything to do with making a character face something personal. They're just "situations" which the hero resolves by the final page. There are exceptions to this formula, and typically, those are the stories I embrace... the newest Batman movie and the Spider-man movies being fine examples of this.

Lois and Clark, despite having all the trappings of superheroness, was fundamentally a series very much along the lines of Moonlighting. A strong man and woman who don't quite always get along, but are great together. Will they or won't they get together? (One could argue that, like Moonlighting, the series started to go downhill when they ultimately did.)

Anyway, in watching these episodes of Lois and Clark, I've been particularly struck by Teri Hatcher's performance as Lois Lane. See, for the past year, I've come to know her mainly as klutzy Susan on Desperate Housewives. She's sort of like the pratfall, egg-on-the-face version of Kim Bauer, bounding from one disaster to another, just without the life-threatening elements. And even though I've laughed at these moments quite a lot (her literally burning down the house, her karoake rendition of "New York, New York," etc.), I've still ultimately found her the least interesting of the four main women on the show. There's whole heaping helpings of nuance to Bree's stories, and considerable depth going on with Gabrielle and Lynette. But Susan is often there only for comic relief. And now that I'm reminded how good Teri Hatcher was on Lois and Clark, I feel her material on Desperate Housewives is quite a disservice to her.

Then again, considering she's already won a Golden Globe and Screen Actor's Guild Award for Desperate Housewives (and is the likely woman to beat for the upcoming Emmys), maybe she doesn't mind so much.