Category: Reviews

True story: Despite being a Smallville superfan, I have had zero interest in Superman & Lois since the day it was announced. For one, it overlaps with Supergirl’s own run on The CW (which we now know to be ending), and TV’s Girl of Steel has already and liberally borrowed from her cousin’s comic book lore. Plus, this iteration of Clark and Lois comes with, ugh, teenagers.

Well, here is today’s headline from the Smallville Gazette: Superman & Lois works. And oftentimes it is quite wonderful.

Picking up some amount of time after the events of the Arrowverse’s “Crisis on Infinite Earths” — the ripple effects of which (among other things) doubled the number of Clark and Lois’ sons and apparently aged them a bunch — Superman & Lois stars Tyler Hoechlin and Elizabeth Tulloch, reprising their roles from Supergirl. Premiering Tuesday, Feb. 23 as part of a two-hour event, the supersized pilot kicks off with an extremely efficient and highly engaging montage narrated by Clark, that recaps his arrival on Earth as an infant, hits several of the usual beats (including him dorkily meeting Lois), and brings us to where we are today.

Clark and Lois are colleagues at the Daily Planet when the series opens, while twin sons Jonathan (Little Fires Everywhere‘s Jordan Elsass) and Jordan (Alexander Garfin) are respectively a confident high school QB and a loner diagnosed with social anxiety disorder. The family’s life in Metropolis seems fine enough, though Dad is “away” a lot for work, and even when he’s home, Jordan tends to retreat to his video games (where he fights against Superman. #SuperAwkward).

A series of unfortunate events shakes up the Kents’ existence and sets the stage for a trip to Smallville, where reunions await Clark and onetime girlfriend Lana Lang Cushing (Entourage‘s Emmanuelle Chriqui), as well as the two brothers and Lana’s eldest daughter Sarah (13 Reason’s Why‘s Inde Navarrette). Erik Valdez (Graceland) plays Lana’s fire chief husband Kyle, who between shading Clark’s “abandonment” of his hometown and defending tycoon Morgan Edge (Tyrant‘s Adam Rayner) to rat-smelling reporter Lois strikes just the right note of low-key menace.

Jordan and Jonathan Kent

The Smallville visit also paves the way for a crisis that leaves Clark no choice but to finally reveal his superhero identity to his sons — resulting in an array of reactions that really kick the series into whole other gear, and steer the brothers on distinct paths.

Rounding out the cast is Dylan Walsh (Nip/Tuck) as Lois’ father, General Sam Lane (conceived here as a bit less of a militaristic blowhard and more as a duly concerned father whose super son-in-law is on speed dial), while Wolé Parks (All American, Vampire Diaries) plays an ominous stranger who enters Superman’s orbit. More on him in a bit.

As directed by Lee Toland Krieger, the 90-minute pilot is every bit as cinematic as you have heard, and then some. It has none of the slick veneer of, say, The Flash or Supergirl, and it certainly is not gritty like Arrow. Instead, the earthy feel and tone (showrunner Todd Helbing wrote the script based on a story by him and EP Greg Berlanti) is best likened to Berlanti’s own Everwood and… the parts of Man of Steel that weren’t busy leveling buildings and endangering thousands of innocents.

How did Superman & Lois win me over, despite my resolve to be apathetic? For one, we simply haven’t seen this live-action Clark and Lois story before, as struggling parents. And because of that, it perhaps never dawned on anyone that Clark could be, well, a bit of a crappy dad, regularly missing family events and gravitating toward the (preternaturally?) athletic son. Those dicey topics, and the way the first episodes get into them, are different and interesting.

Secondly, the youth cast is quite good — more perfect picks by Arrowverse casting whiz David Rapaport. As Jonathan, Elsass evokes a warmer version of This Is Us‘ teenage Kevin; Navarrette is winning as Sarah, who grapples with issues/meds akin to Jordan’s; and Garfin brings just enough light to dour Jordan that we root for the lad’s turnaround. Among the new adult cast, Rayner (an English actor) gives Edge a slightly sassy international bent, while Sofia Hasmik (the Mad About You revival) is a nice splash of comic relief as Smallville journo/Lois Lane superfan Chrissy Beppo.

Of course, the best Superman stories have a compelling villain. I like that, at least based on the first two episodes made available to press, we do not seem on a path toward disposable Meteor Freaks of the Week. Instead, Parks’ character — and all that he represents, as is jaw-droppingly revealed in Episode 2 — promises to fuel a lot of story, and story that might go in directions you do not expect.

Lastly, and on a superficial level, the design and “sculpting” of Hoechlin’s supersuit is a tremendous upgrade from anything he has sported before, and on-camera is far more in the style of Supes’ most recent big-screen incarnation.

THE TVLINE BOTTOM LINE: Superman & Lois flies the Arrowverse into brand-new territory — and we’re along for the ride.

Even given TV’s current obsession with rebooting and reviving anything and everything, The Equalizer is an curious choice. The original 1985-89 CBS series, starring Edward Woodward as a spy-turned-private eye who cleaned up a crime-ridden New York City, is only a hazy memory to most viewers and plays like a dusty relic these days. (He did most of his business via pay phone, and advertised his services with a classified ad in the newspaper.) But the Equalizer brand recently got a revamp with a pair of Denzel Washington films, and CBS’ new take — debuting this Sunday, Feb. 7 after the Super Bowl; I’ve seen the premiere — is an efficiently built thrill ride, bringing the franchise firmly into the 2020s and providing a perfect starring vehicle for Queen Latifah, who makes the whole thing click into place.

Latifah plays Robyn McCall (a play on the original’s Robert McCall), a former CIA operative who’s back home in NYC after a series of international missions, but still haunted by bad memories. She’s trying to lay low, but she’s hounded by a former CIA colleague named Bishop (Chris Noth), and she ends up coming to the aid of a young girl who witnessed a murder and then finds herself framed for it. “Who do you go to if you can’t go to the cops?” the girl asks, and that inspires Robyn to set up her own justice-for-hire side hustle, untangling conspiracies and fighting for the downtrodden in a brave new world of deepfakes and driverless cars. (Oh, and she posts her ad on social media this time.)

Yes, this is all pretty standard-issue CBS crime drama fare from Castle EPs Andrew Marlow and Terri Miller, but Latifah’s star presence gives it an edge. She has an easy charisma and an air of authority as Robyn — and she’s also a major upgrade in the fight scenes. (She’s much more convincing kicking butt than Woodward ever was.) It’s easy to root for her as she takes on villains like a smug Elon Musk-ian tech guru in the premiere: “You think you can buy and sell the whole world,” she tells him… and he can’t, dammit! The premiere also delivers on the action front with a series of high-octane stunt sequences, including Robyn pulling off a daring prison break on motorcycle — although it’s hard to tell if we can expect this level of eye-popping effects each week, or if they blew their entire budget on the premiere.

The Equalizer assembles a rock-solid team behind Robyn as well, with NCIS alum Liza Lapira as sharpshooter Mel and Adam Goldberg as bearded hacker Harry backing her up. (A procedural is only as good as its crime-solving team, and I could pretty easily see these three busting crooks together for about 200 episodes or so.) Noth is intriguingly enigmatic as Bishop, using old-school spy tactics to stay in touch, and he and Latifah have a unique vibe that’s worth keeping an eye on. Plus, it’s always good to see Lorraine Toussaint, here playing Robyn’s Aunt Vi, on our TVs.

I wish I got to see more than one episode, just to see how these relationships develop. The scenes with Robyn and her bratty teen daughter Delilah (Laya DeLeon Hayes) feel a little hackneyed at first, but they also have a nice, eye-opening moment where Robyn takes her to a women’s prison and points out that most of the girls there are Black. There’s an unspoken layer of social justice to Robyn’s mission, and I wonder how far they’ll push that angle in future episodes. (The premiere bends over backwards to show the NYPD cops aren’t the bad guys.) But it has a strong foundation to build from, thanks to Queen Latifah. Long may she reign.

THE TVLINE BOTTOM LINE: With explosive action scenes and a star turn from Queen Latifah, CBS’ Equalizer reboot puts a solid new spin on an old franchise.

Each episode of FX on Hulu’s A Teacher is preceded by a content warning I’ve never seen before: It warns about “sexual situations,” but also “depictions of grooming that may be disturbing.” And it’s needed, too, because A Teacher — debuting Tuesday, Nov. 10; I’ve seen all ten episodes — is certainly disturbing, depicting a sexual relationship between a high school teacher and a student in unprecedentedly graphic detail for a TV series. (It’s so nerve-wracking to watch unfold, it’s almost like a horror movie at times.) But it also badly fumbles its execution, with a fundamentally wrongheaded approach to the central relationship that often left me yelling, “What are you doing???” at the TV… and not just at the characters.

Kate Mara (House of Cards, American Horror Story) stars as Claire, a new English teacher in a Texas high school. (The setting brings to mind Friday Night Lights, which left me wishing this series had even a tenth of the heart and authenticity that FNL did.) Claire wears low-cut sweaters as she reads Dylan Thomas to her students, including Eric (Love, Simon‘s Nick Robinson), a popular senior and soccer captain. Soon, she’s tutoring him for the SATs, they’re bonding over a shared love of Frank Ocean… and a spark between them ignites a forbidden flame that leads to dire consequences for everyone involved.

It’s all shot handsomely, with a cool soundtrack — Hannah Fidell writes and directs several episodes, based on her 2013 indie film — but the tone is, if anything, too romantic. A Teacher plays too often like a star-crossed love story instead of what it is: a crime, an act of abuse and a massive breach of ethics. (Occasionally, a side character will point out how wrong all of this is, but they’re brushed aside in favor of more dreamy close-ups.) Robinson is actually 25, and so Nick seems older than high school, which blunts some of the shock value… but that also plays into the show’s problematic tendency to romanticize their relationship. The fact is that Nick is underage when his relationship with Claire begins — they celebrate his 18th birthday together — and while I get that the characters don’t think they’re doing anything wrong, that doesn’t mean the show shouldn’t challenge them on that.

There’s no real insight to be found here, either. Fidell seems to be going for a naturalistic vibe, but the dialogue is flat, with no wit or sparkle to it, and the characterization is bland and riddled with clichés. (Eric’s teen pals are all one-dimensional lunkheads that fail to even register.) Mara and Robinson are fine, but they’re never given enough depth to resonate as characters. Mara is well-cast, at least — she has haunted eyes that fit with Claire’s erratic nature — and Claire is given plenty of reasons to make a mistake like this. (Her inattentive husband is starting a band; what could be worse?) But because the scripts are so underwritten, we’re never given a chance to empathize with or even understand her decisions.

I did watch all ten episodes just to see what happens to Claire and Eric, and their bubble eventually does burst, with later episodes examining the painful aftermath months and years later. But it all unfolds along predictably miserable lines, and confirms that there’s not really ten episodes’ worth of story here to tell. A Teacher is just an uncomfortable, frustrating viewing experience, and not in the ways it’s meant to be. An honest, sensitive look at a relationship like this and the damage it inevitably does could work, but it would have to walk a very fine line in order to succeed, and this attempt stumbles way off course. In hindsight, those content warnings at the beginning? They sound more like a belated apology.

THE TVLINE BOTTOM LINE: FX on Hulu’s A Teacher tackles a taboo subject, but does so with thin writing and a disturbing romanticism that leaves a sour aftertaste.