Superman & Lois ep. 12

Superman & Lois is back, and on my birthday, which was a nice treat!

Likes:

I'm very happy that the mind control thing didn't drag on. I have gone a lot into detail on why I dislike mind control here. Very happy that he managed to break free himself, though with the help of a "pep talk" from Steel. He was sort of freed by "with the power of love", which is a bit cliché, but I think it was handled and acted well here. 

Love that Steel is now an ally. Really liked the scene when Lois told him who Superman is to her. I like his soundtrack. Need to go back to some previous episodes and see where else it plays. 

I liked Jon and Jordan's team-up this time as well. Jon as the motivator, Jordan as the ears. Loved how Superman shouts for Jordan, and then he finally hears him. I really liked the conversation between Jordan, Superman and Edge as. You don't usually get to see super hearing used that way, as a two-way conversation, since it's not a very common superpower. 

The Kent family reunion at the end was so lovely!

Slight dislikes:

"It's been a long time since you felt pain, hasn't it, Kal?" This line makes no sense. I guess Edge doesn't know about all the stuff that has happened in the last 12 episodes, but it just sounded weird to me as a viewer. So far Superman's been stabbed, shot, and gassed with Kryptonite, blasted with a sonic weapon, blasted with Jordan's heat vision, whacked repeatedly with Steel's hammer...  

I sort of feel like the possession plot is a bit too thin. Why did they need Superman for Zod to possess? Why not just another human, when they get powers as part of the process? Was it to get Superman out of the way? Hard to kill I guess? 

Also, Superman agrees to be possessed so that Edge doesn't kill his family. Then he resists the possession. Shouldn't Edge just threaten to kill his family again if he doesn't stop resisting? And Zod or Edge is probably going to kill them after Superman's taken over anyway. I sort of would have preferred if they managed to trap him and forcefully make him undergo the process. Then him resisting would have made a lot more sense. But oh well. Not a big deal.

The Cushing family water fight was cute, but the moment and the happy music felt so incredibly out of place. It was properly jarring.

Other thoughts:

No clue who John Diggle is. From what I read on Reddit, he's from one of the other Arrowverse shows. I've only watched a few seasons of the Flash + a few episodes of Supergirl. I feel like this show benefits a lot from only vaguely being related to the other shows, so I hope they keep that up, and avoid introducing too many characters from the others shows.

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And then at the end, something unrelated to this episode specifically, but related to super hearing. I was reading a review of a fanfic on reddit that pointed out that super hearing like Superman's shouldn't really work, because of the speed that sound waves travel: 

"He hears everything, as it happens (...). Obviously, sound waves travel slowly, so even if Superman could hear a gunshot from all the way across town and get there in the blink of an eye he'd find that the victim was dead before he ever heard the sound."

This is something I never considered before! I'm always a fan Superman's powers following some sort of vague physics rules. But I guess in this case I'm perfectly fine with just handwaving this away by saying "it's a superpower". But it's an interesting thought.