Wednesday, April 26, 2023

My Review of Superman And Lois 3x06: "Of Sound Mind"

 

Written by George Kitson
Directed by Diana Valentine

Mannheim: "Peia, I am going to save you."

Could it be that Bruno Mannheim's great big scheme with experimenting on sick people with X-Kryptonite and Superman's blood be something more wholesome? Instead of making an army of super soldiers, maybe just maybe Bruno's motivation was love all along? If so, this just got a lot more complicated.

In the six episodes so far we've heard a lot about Bruno being poor, wanting to help places like Suicide Slums and Hob's Bay and he was pretty forthcoming to Lois about his mother's battle with cancer. Now Onomatopoeia revealed herself to be a woman named Peia and guess what, she's someone who has also interested rather meaningfully with both Clark and Lois these last two episodes.

It's clear that Bruno loves Peia and his motivation seems to be about saving her and he did in the past. Except now she's getting weaker and her powers are weakening too, meaning that Bruno has even more pressure to prevent her death. As twists go, it's a surprisingly affecting one here.

Peia alone has been an intimidating villain whenever she's clashed with Superman and this episode alone she almost took out both the Man of Steel and Jordan, who took his guide out for a test run and also learned that Kryptonite doesn't effect him the same way as his father to both their surprise. It was a nice way to reveal that particular advantage to Jordan this week.

Peia had some great scenes with Lois where she praised the efforts Mannheim was making with helping people, making the final reveal of their real relationship not jar while at the same time both Lois and Clark dealt with the hard issues over her cancer battle too. Clark spent most time in denial over it before the end of the episode forced him to confront his own fears on the matter.

As for the rest of the episode, the writers remembered that Sophie existed and had her run away because she felt like no one cared about her. Then Sarah and Jonathan found her, the latter gave a good pep talk and Lana wasn't best pleased about Kyle and Chrissy being a couple. However that didn't stop Kyle from wanting to make his relationship with Chrissy public as a result.

- Jordan didn't seem happy with the idea of Jonathan and Sarah hanging out and I have a horrible feeling where this will end up going. Jonathan did go from "Rusty" to "Lil' Kent" at the fire station. 
- I'm assuming Mannheim's secret research bunker has lead lining to stop Superman from seeing where it is, right?
- No John Henry or Natalie in this episode and Deadline died due to Mannheim refusing to help him. 
- Chronology: A month since the events of the previous episode.

Of Sound Mind does somewhat trundle along at first, not really doing much that we hadn't already seen before picking up pace in the second half. The Mannheim and Peia connection does add a nice complicated layer to things.

Rating: 7 out of 10

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