S:TAS reviews: Identity Crisis

Though Identity Crisis is an admittedly contrived piece of work—doppelgänger, clones, secret laboratory, noble idiot—one has to admire that the producers never miss a chance to play with expectations. If the main plotline is only fair, then the patronizingly moralistic opening minutes that tonally contradict the bulk of the story demonstrates how even such a banal entry is atypical of Saturday morning television. Serving a two-pronged purpose, this opening, which is not entirely implausible as S:TAS filler, also raises certain expectations in the viewer who, aware of the inconsistency of all television, might shrug his shoulders and conclude that this will amount to little more than cloying didacticism in the vein of The Underdwellers of B:TAS, unprepared for the jolting scene in which Superman rescues Clark Kent from a plunge off the side of a cliff.

The episode doesn’t entirely supersede its opening segment; no matter how enjoyable Bizarro’s character is and no matter how snappy the one-liners, Identity Crisis is little more than condensed, watered-down variations on classical themes, as well as rife with implausibilities. Bizarro is fun, but does he represent much more than the usual clone/doppelgänger baggage of standard science fiction instinctively slapped on by writers penning a story that practically writes itself? Lex Luthor’s wry humor doesn’t disappoint, but his seemingly indefinite sojourn in his mountainside laboratory comes across as unlikely and it stands as one of the few times in Superman that Luthor fails to amount to more than a mere domineering mastermind. The climax is a gallery of clichés, managing to incorporate a timed bomb, sudden epiphany, and heroic sacrifice before closing on a trite, affirmative appraisal of said heroism.

But what proves fascinating about Identity Crisis is the titular crisis, in one sense one of the various riffs on archetypal sci-fi storylines but in another abject from them. Bizarro believes himself to be Superman because he is a defective clone programmed to think as such, but his perception of himself conforms to a very simplistic rubric of basic virtues. Superman rescue building. Superman fix bridge. Superman save Lois. Unlike other versions of the charmingly dumb hero, Bizarro’s childish stupidity is not a prerequisite for his heroism; his heroism exists in spite of his stupidity and lack of better judgment, both of which lead primarily to destruction. While so often the noble idiot stands angelically apart from those around him, whose intelligence seems to have automatically endowed them with bitterness, Identity Crisis presents a far more open view of what it means to be a hero, ultimately deciding that the will to do good is the highest virtue, and that it is not selective. The biologically deterministic moral perspective is shaky (“he came from good stock”) and would seem to contradict my conclusion (and it is also the very thing that the DCAU’s grandest statement, Epilogue, sets out to rebut), but it is not authoritatively insisted upon.

Bizzaro’s World, a superior sequel, will come along to stretch Bizarro’s self-perception to its most emblematic, arbitrary extremes, in a sense doing away with the sentimental morality in favor of a comic-surrealist extravaganza. Even so, Identity Crisis is too sincere to discredit, and even directs its grounding theme of identity confusion towards the development of Lois’s and Superman’s relationship, which starts off brazenly and winds up in a state of subdued, unspoken awareness.