Superman TAS S02E06 Review: Me Am Superman

Superman: The Animated Series, Season 2, Episode 6: Identity Crisis

Bizarro arrives on the scene and the episode's... okay? It's a bit messy thanks to the relatively weak and slow-paced opening of Superman just saving people and doing generic Superman things, before he saves Clark Kent and it's revealed that, oh, this is a fake Superman. It's a bit weird why Luthor would let the Superman clone basically fly around and do Superman stuff with no real end-game beyond a test drive -- you'd think a test drive would work better in a lab. I feel that the story would've made more sense if Bizarro broke free from Luthor's lab and thought he's Superman, instead of Luthor apparently aware of Bizarro's existence and running around and fighting Superman but just brushes it off. 

Bizarro, of course, fights with the real Superman as his skin flakes off and he turns chalk-white, and his brain degenerates to "who am me". He's so convinced that he's Superman and not 'Bizarro', as Mercy so delightfully calls him, and his attempts to try to 'fix' things like a building that's supposed to be demolished or an opening bridge, or trying to go on a date with Lois while bumbling it up, ends up nicely painting him as a more tragic character. It's not quite enough, though, mostly because the Luthor side of the plot is kind of flat and weak with Luthor getting some pretty eyeball-rolling moments of villain-twirling mwa-ha-ha moments in front of Bizarro.

Of course, at the end, the image of Superman saving Lois ends up turning Bizarro's morality around, and he decides to save Lois, knowing that he's not Superman after all and a clone. It's not a perfect Bizarro episode, of course, but while the plot's a bit weird, the portrayal of Bizarro himself is certainly well done -- a soul who thinks and tries to prove that he's the same ideal that is similar with Superman but ends up realizing deep down that it's not.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Bizarro is an imperfect, chalky-skinned clone of Superman created by Luthor and has been one of Superman's oldest and most iconic enemies. In the comics, Bizarro spoke with a backwards-speak ("Me no am Bizarro" means "I am Bizzaro", for instance) and is often depicted as a confused soul who tries so hard to be Superman his sense of right and wrong is warped. This particular origin story seems to be based on the post-Crisis vesrion of Bizarro, in particular the montage of trying to 'fix' things that aren't broken.