Headscratchers / Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman

• Maybe I've just forgotten, but how did Lois and Clark decide to handle the fate of "Clark Kent" after Superman leaves Earth for New Krypton? I know they apparently didn't give it much thought, or at least QUALITY thought, given that their excuse for Clark missing Superman's farewell speech was that he was out seeing the reaction to the news...
• Clark did not become Superman until the near the end of the two-part pilot. Why, then, was he wearing glasses before that, when he was not trying to maintain a dual identity? The same question applies to the alternate universe Clark who was wearing glasses despite not being Superman until the end of that episode.
  • He didn't become Superman, but was still going around saving people. The glasses help maintain his anonymity as no one would suspect the bespectacled, easy-going, nerdy farmboy as the same guy who stopped that speeding bus or rescued all those people from that wildfire.
  • Also, John and Martha both wear glasses themselves. Clark's glasses lend more plausibility to the story that he is their biological son and possibly inherited their vision problems.
    • Well first and foremost, it's public knowledge that his parents adopted him. Also it's pretty obvious they couldn't be his parents give his obvious Asian features. Also as we saw in trip to the past, Martha and Jonathon didn't wear glasses originally. It's the result of old age. But I do agree that the glasses could still mask his identity out in public. It throws off the descriptions of him just a little. Can't tell eye color or some other features because the frames are obstructing them.
    • Is it public knowledge he was adopted? Pretty sure at least one version of the story had it that they found him near the start of winter, John and Martha just stayed on the farm over the winter, and when they turned up back in town during spring were all "Hey turns out Martha was pregnant how about that". I don't recall if that was the story they went with in the series or not.
    • In "Tempus Fugitive", it's revealed that Martha Kent is sterile and had just learned that by the time they found baby Kal-El. That means she and Jonathan couldn't lie to the people and hope her medical doctor wouldn't assume they abducted the baby.
    • In the main timeline, it's not Martha but Jonathan; he reveals it was "his fault we can't have kids".
    • I don't remember so much about Lois and Clark, but Depending on the Writer in the comics there is sometimes the implication that several folks in Smallville are a little aware that there's something odd about Clark, and some kind of connection between Clark and Superman, but because the Kents are so well-liked and well-respected (and of course, well, Superman) and the folks of Smallville are classic decent small-town folk, there's an unspoken agreement to keep schtum. Some stories also have Martha and Jonathan at very least clue in the local doctor (who, thanks to doctor-patient confidentiality, would be unable to reveal the truth without their consent anyway).
    • Childhood photos of Clark in Jonathan and Martha's home show him without glasses. In the Lois & Clark continuity, rather than being a clumsy nerd, young Clark was a moderately athletic nerd; just that his real love was journalism. It's likely he wore glasses only when he started actually working for newspapers, living in larger cities^note Kuching, the city in Borneo where Clark would likely have lived while working for the Borneo Gazette, is about the size of Baltimore. (The real Borneo Gazette is an online portal and wasn't founded until 2009. An American employed by a Borneo newspaper was more likely to work for the Bulletin, which was specifically founded for expatriates, or the Post, the largest daily newspaper in English.) liable to run into situations where he'd need to do super things, around lots of other smart, observant people.
• In "Never on Sunday", Clark believed that John Hendricks was the ringleader of the gun-smuggling operation in Jamaica, but then found out he had a clean background check, and was therefore framed. Couldn't the gun smuggling have been his first offence?
  • It could have been, but people generally don't tend to go straight from "completely clean slate, never committed a crime in their lives" to "running a large Jamaican gun-smuggling operation" without getting their permanent records at least a little smudged along the way.
    • Two words. Walter White.
    • Four more words. Is a fictional character.
• When Superman briefly self-exiled from metropolis because he was convinced he was an environmental risk, why did Clark Kent decide to quit his job the very same day? Likewise, Kent returned around the exact same time Superman returned. Why not put in a mild bit of effort to avoid arousing suspicion such as staggering your two weeks notice a little bit later?
  • Because Clark Kent and Superman are the same person, and if Superman being around poses an environmental risk, then Clark Kent being around poses the exact same risk. As far as he's concerned, he doesn't have the luxury of waiting around for two weeks, he needs to be gone yesterday, because if he waits around for two weeks as Clark Kent then he still potentially risks contaminating the city and causing the deaths and injuries of untold thousands. And since if Clark Kent being absent without explanation for two weeks is going to raise just as many if not more questions (such as "why has Clark completely noped out of here without any explanation whatsoever?"), he hands in his notice then and hopes no one asks too many questions. As for when he returns, he wants to get Clark Kent back up and running again as quickly as possible, so just hopes that no one thinks to ask any awkward questions.