Like a lot of people have said, my first exposure was the Super Friends on Saturday morning. That's not when I fell in love with Superman, though. On the show he was a cipher to me. My clearest memories are of Wonder Woman and the Wonder Twins.
It wasn't until the Superman movie that I started liking Superman. Even then, though, I was delighted by Lois. Especially when Superman II came out and she friggin' threw herself in the Niagara River to get Clark to confess his true identity. That, and the way she pursued a story onto the bottom of the elevator on the Eiffel Tower (distracting herself by spelling "Pulitzer") cemented her in my mind as the epitome of ambition and courage.
And then, you know, I was a teenager and, while I might catch one of the Superman movies on cable, I didn't give the characters much thought. At least not until I was in my early twenties, recently married, unexpectedly pregnant, and living far from family (I was adrift and scared to death, is what I'm saying) and saw something about the new Superman show. For nostalgia's sake, I decided to give it a shot.
OMG, was I hooked! If I'm ever lucky enough to actually meet Deborah Joy Levine, I may just swoon at her feet. Her version of the characters made them real to me. They weren't cartoons, they were real people. It was a revelation to see Clark be the real person and Superman the disguise. Even better, Clark wasn't perfect. He had flaws and that made him all the more attractive. Perfect is boring. I was prepared to loathe Dean in the role because he didn't have blue eyes, but he won me over. He was charming and yet he found lots of ways to gently needle Lois. I liked that a lot better than the "Golly gee" Clark in the movies.
Teri Hatcher was perfect as Lois. Tough-as-nails on the outside. Take-no-prisoners when it came to a story. But then she could go home and get sappy over a soap opera. I loved that she had that softer side.
After the first couple of seasons it was like the gave both of them lobotomies and they were much too saccharine and the show started to lose me. I can find moments worth watching in the later episodes, but not as many as those first two seasons.
I watched an episode of Smallville and was disenchanted. Superman Returns had great special effects, but it didn't have the heart and soul that LnC has for me. I'd much rather ignore the cheesy effects in the show and concentrate on the relationship between Clark and Lois. It spoke to me then and it still speaks to me now.
