Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman
Season 1, Episode 17 (20 Feb. 1994): “Foundling”
by Daniel LeVine, Bill D'Elia

Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman - Season 1, Episode 17

Title: “Foundling”

Medium: television series episode

Original airdate: 20 Feb. 1994

Publisher:
Written by: Daniel LeVine
Directed by: Bill D'Elia

11 characters in this story:

Character (Click links for info about character and his/her religious practice, affiliation, etc.)	Religious Affiliation	Team(s) [Notes]	Pub.	# app.
Superman (Clark Kent)	Methodist / Kryptonian religion	Kryptonians; Super Friends...  The Justice League		13,409
Lois Lane	Catholic	Raleigh College [Superman's girlfriend, then wife]		3,859
Jimmy Olsen	Lutheran	The Legion of Super-Heroes [Superman's pal]		1,896
Perry White	Baptist; Elvis worship (ordained)	[Superman's (Clark Kent's) boss; Daily Planet editor]		1,574
Jonathan Kent	Methodist	[Superman's adoptive father]		816
Martha Kent	Methodist	[Superman's adoptive mother]		827
Lex Luthor	Episcopalian (lapsed); Nietzschean atheist	Injustice League; Secret Six...  Secret Society of Super Villains; The Injustice Gang; The Legion of Doom		1,508
Inspector William Henderson		[police commissioner; police detective]		123
Jor-El	Kryptonian religion	Kryptonians [father of Kal-El (Superman)]		251
Lara	Kryptonian religion	Kryptonians [biological mother of Kal-El (Superman)]		166
Cat Grant	Catholic (lapsed); promiscuous hedonist	[Daily Planet gossip columnist; co-worker of Clark Kent]		140

Timecode: 0 minutes, 49 seconds:

A glass-like globe that (in an earlier episode) Clark Kent found stored within the space craft that brought him to Earth suddenly begins glowing in the middle of the night. Clark awakes, walks over to it and picks it up. This triggers a holographic message from Clark's biological father.

Jor-El: My name is Jor-El, and you are Kal-El, my son. The object you now possess has been attuned to you. That you now hear these words is proof that you survived the journey in space and have reached your full maturity. Now, it is time for you to learn your heritage. To that end, I will appear to you five times. Watch for the light . . . listen and learn. [The message apparently now transitions into a recitation and recording of a scene from Krypton.] Time grows short, and we continue to search. The immensity of space is both a blessing and a curse. In that near infinite variety, there must be some place suitable.

Note that in the subtitle for the scene above, we read "In that MERE infinite variety..." The actual word spoken is NEAR, not MERE. The phrase is "In that near infinite variety..." This error in the subtitle appears to simply be a transcription error. The word is slightly difficult to hear with Jor-El's slight English accent and a swell of musical underscore at that moment. It is unlikely that the script ever called for Jor-El to say "mere infinite variety," which would make little sense, even on Krypton.

Jor-El: [continues narrating the scene from long ago on Krypton] Hope and desperation drive us in equal measure. Lara works by my side. She is tireless and endlessly patient. Considering what is to come, this is my greatest consolation . . . that we are together.

In the scene Clark is watching, he sees the room shake. The destruction of Krypton seems imminent. Jor-El takes his wife Lara in his arms and holds her close. The scene or vision ends, leaving Clark to ponder these things in his heart. He picks up the globe in his hands and looks to the sky. Clark now speaks his own birth name - his "true name" in some respects - for the very first time.

Clark Kent: Kal-El.

[End of scene. Opening credit sequence rolls.]

In the next scene we see that Clark has returned to Smallville to talk to his parents about what he saw.

Timecode: 3 minutes, 22 seconds:

Jonathan Kent: Tell me more about this globe.

Clark Kent: It was in the ship that brought me to Earth. When Lois and I broke into Bureau 39's warehouse . . . I hid it from Lois. I never really knew that it was anything more than it seemed . . . maps of Earth and Krypton . . . until last night.

Martha Kent: But . . . Why now? You've had it for months.

Clark Kent: I don't know, Mom. Except that . . . Jor-El said that it was attuned to me. Maybe it and I weren't supposed to be separated for so long. Maybe it just took a little while for it to warm up.

Jonathan Kent: Well, the people, Jor-El and Lara, any memory of them, at all?

Clark Kent: None . . . I've gone my entire life now knowing how or why I was left on your doorstep. There are so many questions left unanswered. What was Krypton like? Who were my parents? Did everybody there have powers like me? Will I continue to age normally? Can I die? Now I'm about to find out.

[End of scene.]

Timecode: 4 minutes, 58 seconds: Jimmy Olsen is reading a science magazine as he walks over to the desks where Lois Lane and Cat Grant are sitting.

Jimmy Olsen: Huh.

Lois Lane: What?

Jimmy Olsen: Well, according to Metropolis Science Magazine the statistical probability that any two people living in Metropolis are blood-related is over 90%.

Cat Grant: You and I are related?

Jimmy Olsen: Well, as long as both our families have lived in the area for the last three generations.

Cat Grant: I don't think so.

Lois Lane: I don't know . . . [Lois makes a point of looking at Jimmy's face and then Cat, as if comparing them.] Definitely a family resemblance.

Cat Grant: I don't think so.

Jimmy Olsen: You wanna bet, uh, that you and I are blood relations?

Cat Grant: Okay. What are the stakes?

Jimmy Olsen: If I win, a night of passion.

Cat Grant: Yours or mine?

Jimmy Olsen: Well, optimistically, ours.

[Cat looks at Jimmy as if to say, "Oh really? What has a young, inexperienced boy such as yourself have to offer a sexually experienced woman such as myself other than an awkward, unsatisfying tryst?"]

Jimmy Olsen: Realistically, mine.

Lois Lane: And if you lose?

Cat Grant: When he loses.

Jimmy Olsen: Name it.

Cat Grant: You . . . repaint my condo, top to bottom, every room. Pink fades.

Lois Lane: [Acting as the judge for their wager.] I expect detailed family histories, including charts, on my desk no later than tomorrow afternoon. Also, blood tests.

Timecode: 6 minutes, 59 seconds: Perry White has just announced that Lois Lane and Clark Kent are finalist nominees for a prestigious journalism award. Now he asks Lois how her latest news story is going.

Perry White: How are you coming on that piece with the recent crime rise in Metropolis?

Lois Lane: Oh, uh, gathering information, checking sources, compiling data, that sort of thing.

Perry White: Oh. That bad, huh?

Lois Lane: I'm looking for an angle.

Perry White: Well, now, Lois, angles just don't drop from the sky. We've got to create them. Now, that committee vote on the Meriwether Awards is just a few days away. Let's show them a nice strong finishing kick. Huh?

Lois Lane: Yeah.

Lois Lane shows an enthusiastic face, but really we can see that she is frustrated. She doesn't have an angle for this story and she has no other good story she can work on right now. Perry White walks away. Lois pounds her pencil on her desk a few times, exhibiting her frustration. She rests her forhead on her hand. Then she hears Clark Kent's phone ring and she listens to Clark's side of a conversation.

Clark Kent: Clark Kent. [Listens to the phone for a moment. A look of worry passes over his face.] I'll be right there.

Clark hangs up the phone. Lois has been watching him and she is curious about what is going on.

Lois Lane: What?

Clark Kent: My apartment's been robbed. I have to go.

Lois Lane: Oh, Clark, how awful. I'm so sorry. That must be so violating to have some absolute stranger pawing through your personal belongings. I mean, to endure that sort of . . . [An idea strikes Lois.] Wait! I'm coming with you. [Lois looks up to the sky and utters a quick prayer of thanks] Thank you.

Lois at first just handled the news that Clark's apartment was robbed as if she was a friend. But then she realized that the "angle" she has been looking for to drive her Metropolis rising crime rate story has literally "fallen from the sky." She feels, at least to some extent, that the break-in at Clark's apartment and/or her overhearing him take the call about it is all divine Providence. This is why she looks upward as if addressing God and says "Thank you." Somebody up there must be looking down on her kindly to give her this angle which may well dramatically enhance the quality of her news story.

Timecode: 15 minutes, 36 seconds: We see Cat Grant and Jimmy Olsen looking at very large sheets of paper with family trees on them. Their genealogy / family history research continues. They discuss some of their relatives and ancestors for a few moments.

Timecode: 21 minutes, 6 seconds: Clark Kent has found the teen-aged boy who robbed his apartment and stole the globe from Krypton. Obviously this globe is very valuable to Clark. It is the only thing that can tell him about his actual planet of origin and his biological family. Yet the boy now says he sold it to some guys and has no idea who they were or where the globe is now.

Clark could be furious at the boy, but he takes pity on him. The boy shivers visibly from the cold. Clark takes off his own suit coat and offers it to the boy, visibly enacting the Biblical injunction in Matthew 5:40: "And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also."

Clark literally takes the coat off his own back and gives it to the thief who stole from him.

Clark Kent: [Notices that Jack is shivering from cold.] Jack. [Takes off his own suit coat.] Here. Take it. It's freezing, take it.

Once he is wearing the coat, the boy gives Clark one last look and runs away.

In the next scene Clark talks to his parents on the phone, explaining what happened to the globe. Clark says he has never felt so exposed before. He worries what will happen if somebody else uses the globe to see messages from Jor-El. Jack (the thief) told Clark that he saw some of the message, so Clark knows this is possible. Clark tells his parents that he worries that this globe, if it reveals too much, could put him and everybody close to him, including his parents and Lois, in danger. Yet, despite all these reasons that Clark could have been angry with the thief, he still let the young man go and he still gave him his coat.

Timecode: 24 minutes, 23 seconds: Lex Luthor has obtained the globe (from the thief Jack, in an earlier scene) and now he touches it without the gloves he has been using to carry it without triggering it. He sees the second of the five messages from Jor-El which recount Clark Kent's Kryptonian origins. Simultaneously, Clark Kent sees the same vision in his mind that Lex Luthor (and Luthor's assistant Nigel) watch in the presence of the actual globe.

Jor-El: [Narrating while the scene is depicted or a recording shown] Unmanned Kryptonian probes have explored every corner of the known galaxy and beyond. For thousands of centuries, we received data back from those probes. I have every confidence that given enough time we can achieve the conversion to a manned vessel. But we will have the time? [The room we see Jor-El and Lara in shakes violently.] There is an ancient Kryptonian saying. "On a long road, take small steps." Precision and care are the watchwords. Yet we still have far to go.

At the end of this 2nd message, we see Lara looking at her infant son (Kal-El). Perhaps she and her husband are already thinking that they might be able to send the baby into space.

It is interesting that with such an advanced civilization, one that has been sending probes throughout the galaxy for thousands of centuries, the Kryptonians have never sent out manned missions of space exploration. This fact is rendered clear in this scene, but it is implicit in most tellings of the Superman origin story. If the Kryptonians did have a space program when their planet was destroyed, they would have been able send far more people away to be safe from their planet's demise. Instead, only Kal-El, the son of Jor-El is sent, in a converted space probe that could accomodate only one small child.

One can only wonder at what religious or ethical beliefs or deeply-held taboos prevented Kryptonians from using their impressive technology for manned space travel.

Timecode: 25 minutes, 51 seconds: In the offices of the Daily Planet, Jimmy Olsen and Cat Grant continue their genealogical research. Also, note that in this scene, we see Cat Grant wearing a cross necklace for the very first time. A previously episode in which she went to Catholic confessional solidly established the fact that Cat Grant is Catholic. But she has never before worn anything to suggest this religious affiliation - until now. Has all this discussion of family history and relatives and ancestry prompted Cat to think about the faith she was raised in?

Jimmy Olsen: Wait a second. Wait a second! Look at this. Your mother's half-sister Elaina, by your grandfather's seocnd marriage, married for her third marriage, a man named Stanley Nugent.

Cat Grant: Ooh. I never did like that guy.

Jimmy Olsen: And Stanley was, in fact, my great-aunt Edna's son out of wedlock, to a man named Dave Wilson, Uncle Dave, who she later married, but not until after her marriage to Uncle Harvey.

Cat Grant: This is a nightmare.

Jimmy Olsen: Well, coz, your place or mine?

Jimmy here suggests that because he has established that he and Cat Grant are related to each other, he has won their little wager. Thus, he asks her to give him his reward by having sex with him.

Cat looks bothered and walks away. This may be the first time we have ever seen Cat actually turn down a chance to have meaningless sex with a man. Cat has established on multiple occasions in the past the fact that she is not attracted to Jimmy. In fact, in this very episode she has expressed revulsion at the idea of being intimate with Jimmy and she has generally demonstrated that she is unimpressed with him as a man. In fact, earlier in this episode she said that if she were to learn that she and Jimmy were genetically related, she would have her genes altered.

Perry White tells Lois Lane that her story on the crime wave in Metropolis is excellent. He particularly likes the personal angle, which causes Clark to muse that he is glad his robbery came in handy. Clark is clearly upset about something, even though he has now got all of his things back - all except the globe. He has told Lois that the only thing still missing was an insignificant keepsake, but Lois can tell it meant more to him than he is telling her. Clark leaves after Lois tries to confront him about it. Lois is visibly upset. Timecode: 27 minutes, 21 seconds:

Perry White: Lois, are you okay?

Lois Lane: No.

Perry White gives Jimmy Olsen a look that tells him to make himself scarce.

Jimmy Olsen: Nature's calling.

Jimmy leaves the room.

Lois Lane: Okay, lay it on me.

Perry White: What?

Lois Lane gives Perry a look that says, "You know exactly what I'm talking about."

Perry White: Oh. I suppose you expect me to pry into your life to try and find out what's bothering you and then relate it to some obscure event in the life of Elvis Presley. Well I-- I'm just not gonna do that.

Lois Lane: Why not?

Perry White: Well, for one thing, any connection I made would probably be vague and not particularly useful. And for another, if I did that, it would seem like I cared more about telling my story than helping you with your problem.

Lois Lane: I don't think I can trust Clark anymore.

Perry White: Would you care to tell me why?

Lois Lane: He lied to me.

Perry White: Oh, well, uh . . . Don't you lie to him?

Lois Lane: Of course. I lie to him all the time.

Perry White: Whoa. I'm just not gonna go near that. Uh . . . Well, look, what do you want to do abou this? Have you tried facing him?

Lois Lane: Wha? You just saw. I just gave him every opportunity.

Perry White: Did you tell him that you know that he lied to you?

Lois Lane: No.

Perry White: Well, see? Maybe there's a reason.

Lois Lane: How could there be?

Perry White: Well, just ask and find out. Now, look, Lois, sometimes it's easier to fix something when it's still together than it is to, well, let it fall apart and try and fix it later. I mean . . . assuming that it's still worth fixing. So . . .

Lois interrupts Perry White's sincere but not entirely effective attempt to help her and give her advice.

Lois Lane: Chief? I think I like the Elvis stories a lot better.

Perry White smiles upon hearing this. He likes telling parables from the life of Elvis.

Perry White: Next time. I got a million of them.

[End of scene.]

Timecode: 32 minutes, 6 seconds: Lex Luthor and Nigel witness the third of five messages from Jor-El, in which Clark Kent's biological father recounts his Kryptonian origin. Clark Kent is not present with the globe when Lex does this, but he also sees the vision - in his mind.

Jor-El: There is no longer any doubt. The chain reaction has begun. As panic spreads, the population awakens too late to its fate. Our future is inevitable. At last the computers have located a suitable destination, a planet physically and biologically compatible with Krypton, whose inhabitants resemble ours and whose society is based on ethical standards which we, too, embrace in concept, if not always in deed. The inhabitants call it simply Earth.

Lois Lane has two Polaroid photographs that the thief Jack took of the globe and a projected image of Jor-El from the image. She knows more than Clark is telling her, she is angry, and she finally confronts him about it. He explains to her exactly where he got the globe: from the Bureau 39 warehouse that they broke into together. This just makes her more angry, and she is upset that Clark must have known the globe had some connection to Superman, yet had told her nothing about it. Timecode: 34 minutes, 27 seconds:

Lois Lane: Bureau 39. My Bureau 39. I was right there and you didn't even tell me. You just picked it up, put it in your pocket, took it home, kept it?

Clark Kent: Yes.

Lois Lane: Knowing full well that it probably had some connection to Superman and that I, your partner, would killt o know about it.

Clark Kent: We weren't partners then.

Lois Lane: Then, Clark? Try never again. You lied, you stole--

Clark Kent: Betrayed.

Lois Lane: Don't edit my tantrums, Clark! I won't be responsible.

Clark Kent: And you never lied to me, Lois?

Lois Lane: You grew up on a farm in Kansas. I grew up in Metropolis.

Clark Kent: So?

Lois Lane: They're completely different standards.

Clark Kent: That is so ridiculous!

Lois Lane: What if it belongs to Superman? What if it's something he needs? How did you feel when somebody took your stuff? You know, he has feelings, too.

Clark Kent: Yeah, I know. So. What? This is about Superman?

Lois Lane: No. This is about us. How can I ever trust you again?

Their conversation is interrupted when the phone rings. It is Denny, the thief Jack's brother. Lex Luthor's people have taken Jack, in an effort to find out where he obtained the globe.

Timecode: 37 minutes, 36 seconds: Lex Luthor, Nigel (and Superman/Clark Kent from afar) see the fourth message from Jor-El.

Jor-El: We have installed the hyper-light drive and tested it as best as we can. So much is unknown. Contained within this sphere is the navigational computer that will guide the ship through the maze of hyperspace, as well as this account of our final days.

Timecode: 40 minutes, 0 seconds: Lex Luthor and Nigel have fled from Lex Luthor's secret art vault where he kept the globe, because Superman has found them. Superman now listens alone as the globe deliver's its fifth and final message.

Jor-El: I try to picture where you are now as you hear this last chapter. What you look like. Are you alone? What have you become? Lara and I will never know. But that you should live to experience this, that is enough. We are content. We give you to Earth, to a realm called America, and a place called Kansas. Remember us. Do not regret our passing. All is fate.

We see Jor-El and Lara seal the ship with their infant son inside. Then we see the planet Krypton as seen from space. The spacecraft speeds away from the doomed planet. The planet explodes.

As this scene ends, we see Clark Kent telling his Earthly parents the story he learned from the globe. Timecode: 41 minutes, 2 seconds:

Clark Kent: I wasn't abandoned by my parents. I was saved.

Martha Kent: But why couldn't they save themselves?

Clark Kent: I don't know. Maybe it [the globe] does. Maybe it'll tell me someday.

Timecode: 43 minutes, 33 seconds:

Jimmy Olsen: Hey, hey. What about the, uh, the big night?

Cat Grant: Yeah, I've been meaning to talk to you about that. I'm afraid I'm gonna have to declare that bet null and void.

Jimmy Olsen: Null and void?

Cat Grant: You know, Jimmy, I've always thought you were really cute. And before . . . well, who knows what might have happened. But now that I know we are related by blood . . . I just can't go through with it. I mean, after all . . . we're family.

Cat laughs, pinches Jimmy's cheek, and walks away. From her delivery of these lines, it is clear that Cat is not really concerned about their so-called "blood" relatedness. She simply doesn't want to do Jimmy and she is using this as an excuse to avoid doing so, despite having lost their bet. Jimmy looks crestfallen.

Jimmy Olsen: It's not illegal.

The process of listing characters who appeared in this source is not yet complete. Webpage for Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman - Season 1, Episode 17 (20 Feb. 1994) created 6 January 2008. Last modified 11 June 2014.

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