Time and time again, “Superman & Lois” managed to tug at our heartstrings by evoking contrasting feelings – building up wholesome moments followed by emotionally devastating ones—and the fifth episode of this season, titled “Head On,” holds testament to that. In the previous episode, we saw Lois and Clark handling the situation of Candice’s abusive, jailbird-like father, Emmit Pergande, and Lois offers for Candice to stay in the Kent household until she finds a place of her own. Bruno Mannheim threatened John Henry Irons with the prime Earth’s version of his sister and her family’s lives, and Lois decides to get admitted into the Hob’s Bay medical facility, funded by Bruno, in order to simultaneously continue her cancer treatment and do investigative work about the kingpin’s illegal metahuman experiments. This episode ventures further into Bruno’s nefarious schemes as well as highlights the plight of the sufferers of a terminal disease like cancer.
Spoilers Ahead
A New Day
The episode opens in the Kent household, with Lois preparing to go to the Hob’s Bay medical center for her second round of chemotherapy. The same day Smallville High School is going to arrange a Valentine’s Day dance at a local clubhouse, and Lois is adamant about attending that to see everyone having a good time, despite the repeated requests by her family members not to go through such stress. Candice has settled in nicely in the Kent household and is sharing a loving bond with Lois. Outside the house, Sam shares his concerns with Clark about the risk of getting admitted into the facility being run by Bruno Mannheim and given the fact that he’d previously attempted to threaten John Henry and made murderous attempts on Lois and Superman, he fears for Lois’ well-being and misplaces her priority. However, Lois is too headstrong to listen to anybody, so she sets off with Clark to reach their destination.
At the facility, Lois goes through all the necessary procedures while Clark is present there to lend support to his loved one. They look up the encouraging messages written by the cancer survivors and try their best to encourage each other, but a faint expression of anxiety is perceptible on Clark’s face. Lois makes a desperate attempt to search for Dr. Hook’s (the one who did metahuman experiments for Bruno) files by roaming across the facility, dragging her still-attached IV stand with her, and making Clark wait for her return.
Small Town Affairs
While Clark and Lois are busy in Metropolis for treatment and investigation, the rest of the characters get busy preparing for the dance night in Smallville. At Kent Farm, Sam brings ATVs and spends the day racing with Natalie. In Nat’s Earth, Sam used to be her grandfather, and it feels good to see Sam trying to make her feel at home on this Earth with little gestures instead of rushing in like he used to do earlier. Meanwhile, Matteo, the boy with whom Natalie bonded in Metropolis, comes to visit her in Smallville and expresses his wish to join her in the dance event.
Jonathan offers to help Kyle Cushing after spotting him by the roadside with his car flatlined. Kyle appreciates his goodwill, and after a friendly chat, he asks Jon to assist him with the fireman drills on weekends. Jonathan is delighted at the offer and accepts it then and there. After all, you don’t need powers to be a hero, and while Jordan can deal with bigger threats across the world, Jonathan can keep his feet on the ground and help people all the same.
In Smallville Square, mother-daughter duo Lana and Sarah try to reconcile their somewhat strained relationship over breakfast at the diner when Junior, the deceased Mayor Dean’s son, appears and wrongly accuses Lana of his father’s death. Lana is dumbfounded, and she later opines to Chrissy that if only Junior had known about the corruption Mayor Dean indulged in, he wouldn’t have accused her like this. Chrissy remarked that unless Lana is exposing the entirety in public, accusations like these will be frequent, given how people are still confused about Dean’s murder.
During the dance event, everyone gathers in the clubhouse dressed to the nines and participates in the dance. During their dance, as Matteo comes closer, Natalie gets weirded out and leaves. Sam follows her and gets to know that, being too isolated from socializing for too long due to all the problems she had to deal with since an early age, Natalie never got a hang of forming relationships and stuff. Sam shares his lack of emotional availability that stemmed from his wife leaving him three decades ago, and therefore he can understand the dilemma Nat is going through. Getting assurance from Sam that her actions weren’t too out of place, Natalie calls her grandfather for the first time. It feels great to see Sam taking time off of his duties and, in general, making an effort to form an emotional connection with someone, and that too with Nat, who needs people close to her to make her feel at home in an Earth that is so alien to her.
Meanwhile, Jonathan gets to know from Candice that she has found a place to stay, which is at her aunt’s and quite a distance from Smallville. The only time Jon can afford to go see her is on weekends, and Jon asks Kyle to shift the schedule of the firemans drill if it is possible. Kyle asks him to prioritize, and Jon gets into a dilemma. After Candice gets to know about this, she emphasizes that Jon takes his drills seriously and attends them on the weekends. She speculates that they’ll work something out about the meeting, but neither of them is sure how. Sarah meets with Junior and learns that his previous unwarranted responses were caused by the anguish over his father’s death. Later, as Lana arrives to check up on Sarah, she learns about this too.
An Emotional Recognition
While Clark anxiously waits for Lois to return, a couple of cancer patients admitted there engage in a conversation with him. Clark listens to their account of how physically and mentally draining the disease is, and their first-hand experience with suffering from the illness, as well as losing people close to them, gets to the Man of Steel.
In the meantime, Lois sneaks inside different areas of the health facility and confronts Bruno Mannheim himself. After Lois accuses the kingpin of experimenting on people who have a reduced lifespan due to cancer, Bruno tries to appeal to Lois’ generous side instead by showing how much he has done for his community. He recounts that toxic waste disposal near Suicide Slums resulted in her mother’s cancer and eventual death and that he vowed to make a real change thereon, and he did so by creating the clinic and the state-of-the-art research center to tackle that disease and wresting control from the giants that left their neighborhood in utter negligence for so long. Bruno tells Lois that he will assist in her treatment in any way possible, but he won’t allow her to sabotage his ‘noble’ mission of ‘saving’ his people. After the treatment procedure ends, Lois returns with Clark.
After his interaction with Superman and Steel, Bruno makes his presence felt during his conversation with Lois too. It’s interesting how he chose to approach each of the individuals: with Clark, he attacked his insecurity and humanity; with the tough cookie, which is Steel, aka John Henry Irons, he unabashedly flaunted his villainous side; and with Lois, he tried to appeal to the generous humanist side of the investigative journalist.
A Job For Superman
After Lois and Clark return to their home, Clark urges her not to put a strain on herself by going to the dance event, but to no avail. Just as they dress up and are about to leave, a distress signal from the DOD alerts Clark of an attack conducted by the supervillain Deadline. Previously, along with Henry Miller, another cancer victim supervillain, James Distefano, who is better known by his superhero name Deadline, was released on parole by Judge Reagan, and Bruno experimented on him to give him powers as well. Clark arrives, and a fight ensues, with Deadline gaining the upper hand due to his intangible phasing powers, but Clark manages to knock him down after catching him off guard. However, the delay gives the villain enough time to get his hands on confidential information from the DOD, and he leaves.
After returning, Clark sees that Lois is unable to go to the event as the effects of the chemotherapy hit hard. Hurting mentally and physically, Lois admits that she should also consider others opinions regarding her treatment and try to be less reckless. Later, the rest of the family, consisting of the twins, Sam, and Candice, return from the event, but they have forgotten to take the pictures to show Lois. Clark arranges a small dance in the room instead. In the meantime, Jordan introduces his granda Sam to a dating app. Talk about the return gift of the super suit.
Will Bruno Create A Second Version Of Bizarro?
The next day, Lana tells Chrissy that she chooses not to reveal Dean’s corruption to the people of Smallville and instead wants them to remember him as a good man. Perhaps the interaction with Junior and his grieving state made Lana consider otherwise. In the Kent household, Candice leaves for her aunt’s home with Jon, and everybody sees her off. Sam shares his concern about a significant problem with Clark: the fact that the confidential information stolen by Deadline had the locations of some of the DOD’s extremely important assets, one of which has been missing. The scene shifts to Bruno’s underground hideout, which shows Bruno has his hands on the corpse of Bizarro.
We last saw Bizarro in the second season of “Superman and Lois,” when he was murdered by an X-kryptonite-powered General Anderson. This version of Bizarro came from a subverted Earth, which the villainous Ally Allston tried to merge with prime Earth. In comics, there are multiple origins for this ‘subverted Superman’ supervillain, which consist of both his coming from a Bizarro-World and a failed clone made from Superman’s DNA. Now that Bruno has both the DNA and the corpse of Bizarro, he will definitely resurrect him and try to control his nefarious schemes. Hopefully, we will get to see more of the antiheroic, tragic side of the character this time. Also, given the fact that Lex Luthor shares a connection with his clone origin, and he, too, is set to appear in this season, we will look forward to their possible meeting as well. Bruno getting Bizarro’s possession seems like an almost cruel prank, given how he loathes Superman and ends up having a corrupted mirror image version of him.
