The TV Series History
The Second Season
By the time the second season appeared in 1989, John Haymes Newton had vanished into the Phantom Zone. Well, not really, but due to some traffic violations and a demand for a pay raise, Newton was dismissed and was promptly replaced by 31 year old Gerard Christopher. Gerard is generally considered the best of the two Superboys by fans of the series. He was a Superman fan before he got the Superboy role and therefore knew a lot about how the character was supposed to act. Gerard was also more muscular than Newton so he looked more like a college-age Superboy should. Gerard had Superboy's personality down perfect from day one, but his Clark was not all that hot to begin with. The second season Clark was an extreme nerd. Much more so than Christopher Reeve's Clark in the Superman movies. Many times Clark's nerdiness seemed overplayed. But throughout the season Gerard's Superboy was right on the money.
Two more significant changes were made before the second season aired. Scott James Wells, who played Lex Luthor in the first season, was replaced by Sherman Howard. Howard was several years older than Wells, so some explanation had to be made as to Lex's sudden aging. The season premiere took care of that. "With This Ring I Thee Kill" introduced the new Luthor and explained that Lex had plastic surgery to age himself 15 years and even poured acid over his vocal cords to deepen his voice. All of this was done as part of his revenge on Superboy. Luthor made himself look exactly like industrialist Warren Eckworth, who was developing a powerful weapon called the Superboy gun. Lex killed Eckworth and assumed his identity, then used the Superboy gun to paralyze the boy of steel. This episode showed us a new side of Luthor. In the first season he had been a schemer. Fixing sports games, stealing items found on an archeological dig to sell for profit, and such were Lex's common feats. In the course of the second season premiere he had killed his friend Leo along with Eckworth, forced Lana to marry him, and paralyzed Superboy. The new Lex was more villainous than ever before.
The character of T.J. White also made his departure this season as Clark's new roommate Andy McCalister, played by Ilan Mitchell Smith, came into the series. Andy was portrayed as a schemer. He always had some kind of get-rich-quick scheme in mind and was always looking to Superboy for ways to make money as well. He tried to get hooked up with Lana several times as well, but had no luck. Andy was a major character throughout the season, and made one final appearance in a third season episode called "Special Effects".
The second season featured a great change in tone. Gone were the common thugs, gangsters, and the like. Superboy now faced more exotic enemies. The second season introduced Bizarro, the imperfect duplicate of Superboy, in "Bizarro, the Thing of Steel" and "Battle with Bizarro". Mxyzptlk made a second and final appearance in "Mr. & Mrs. Superboy". Also introduced in the second season were Metallo, the man with the kryptonite heart, the Yellow Peri, Young Dracula, and Lex Luthor's assistant and companion for the rest of the series, Darla.
It was in the second season that Clark finally learned of his heritage. For all of his life, he never knew where he came from or why he was sent to earth. In "Abandon Earth", two beings calling themselves Jor-El and Lara appeared in Capitol City on Clark's birthday. Clark heard of their arrival on the news and met them as Superboy. He was told that he was taken from them as a baby and they had searched for him for years. The trio of Jor-El, Lara, and Superboy worked together to stop a terrorist attack and then Superboy agreed to go home to Krypton with them. But, alas, it all turned out to be a hoax. "Jor-el" and "Lara" were really two alien beings who kept an intergalactic zoo. They captured Superboy, as well as Lana and Andy, to be specimens in the zoo. After Clark's true identity was revealed to Lana and Andy was found dead, Superboy and Lana escaped from the zoo with the help of the zoo custodian who was also captured by the aliens. He used the technology of the spaceship that housed the zoo to send a warning to himself in the past and essentially reversed everything that had happened. So, Superboy didn't learn his heritage after all. But it did make for a great episode :)
The second season ended after its 26th episode, "Johnny Casanova and the Case of the Secret Serum". (One of the worst eps IMHO) Now it would be time for the series to make its greatest change of all.....
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