lois and clark is the only iteration of superman i've ever really enjoyed, because instead of being a demigod who spends all his time hanging out with the rest of the justice league or brooding in his north pole cavern or fighting other demigods, he's just some fucking guy living in an apartment, saving little girls from falling pianos, talking his problems out with his doting parents, and regularly being outsmarted by a rich dude who runs y combinator for petty supervillains
over powered protagonists aren't easy to write
take modern day doctor who, you know, the "the doctor leaves his box, loses his screwdriver, the doctor finds one or the other, and saves the day" doctor who of moffat
the trouble with writing an overpowered character whose only flaw is being "a brooding piece of shit" is that the only character development options you have are "being flawless" and "temporarily not being a brooding piece of shit", along with "finding new reasons to be miserable without any meaningful change". that, and if a character spends 100% of their time doing extraordinary things, they stop feeling extraordinary
not to go all hbomberguy on sherlock here, but
nothing demonstrates this more than the doctor who episode, blink. it's patently the best episode moffat has written, and it's also the only episode where he wasn't allowed to make the doctor the main character of the story
when moffat was forced to write actual characters, he managed it, but when the focus is on "the god from the box" we end up with plot arcs that feel like they've been extracted from a 2000s era webcomic.
(the sort of webcomic that started out as "four regular roommates having a normal life" and is now 80% shonen manga and 35% author's barely concealed fetish by volume, but i digress.)
moffat simply cannot stop himself from "oh no, the mommy dom is after me" and "time to be the world's smartest man and pull the answer out from my asshole"
anyway, yeah, where was i
overpowered characters are fun because things escalate wildly, or the farcical elements of trying to hide their power, but they still have to be characters. with lois and clark, it really is about clark kent, a guy who loves a girl, and wants her to love that version of him, the one with flaws, emotions, weaknesses — rather than the mask he puts on to save people
he may be overpowered, sure, but he isn't played as a deux ex machina, his primary conflict can only be solved by mortal means. the episodes themselves could work just as easily with a guy with two part time jobs, ceo and line cook—even if it's way more fun to write antagonists with laser guns and super science,—it really isn't about superman's swiss-army-knife patchwork of abilities.
but well, with doctor who it's all "oh i'm a lonely god boo hoo, time to save the day by simply being the strongest in the world, wait, wait, some unresolved thread from my past has come to haunt me again" and i am absolutely sick of it
