“You wanna know how strong, I am, Luthor?” He bends a sword and casts it away–clang!

“You wanna know how fast I am?” He picks up a revolver, checks the loads, and fires at wide-eyed Lex–only to catch the bullet inches from Luthor’s chest. Superman drops the hot slug in the startled entrepreneur’s hand.

Of course, Lex is cool as a cucumber. He calmly threatens random death and destruction should the Man of Steel continue to operate in his town. Superman is thrown for a while, but he gets back up in the saddle or, rather, back up in the sky.

The fourth episode was a charming throwback to the old George Reeves series involving a gang of invisible thieves plaguing Metropolis.

I liked the little touches of humor and whimsy that mark these episodes: Here’s Perry telling Jimmy about seeing Elvis in Vegas. Here’s Lois, dirty and limping on one high heel into the newsroom, having received a mild lesson in humility from Kent. Here’s the dream Clark has in which his co-workers approach him in Superman costumes, laughing at him.

I admit it. I’m a Superman junkie. That certainly explains why I’ve continued to torture myself with SMALLVILLE. Though I watched pretty much every episode of L&C as originally broadcast, I disdained its “cuteness” and, as it seemed then, its obsession with sex.

But never say never again. After eight years of SMALLVILLE depression and whining, LOIS AND CLARK has leapt upwards in my estimation. Not only was nobody worried about flights and tights, the show was fun! Oh, they toyed with sex, of course, but, unlike his current TV incarnation, at least Clark waited until he got married. What’s more, he wasn’t ashamed to be who he was–the tights-wearin’, never-swearin’, horns-blarin’ hero.

Hallelujah! Amen.