[NAS] Return Of The Prankster

TV Programme: The New Adventures Of Superman
Season: 2
Episode: 15
Date I watched this episode: 09/08/2009
Time since I last watched this programme: 9 days.

I must admit that The Prankster is quite a cool villain. Some of the pranks he pulled, both in this episode and the earlier "The Prankster", were pretty clever and quite funny. His return was fairly greatly anticipated, but the delivery here just wasn't great. It wasn't Bronson Pinchot's acting though (which was great by the way). Instead it was a problem with the choice to restrict the pranks to be based around a single device, so that the writers limited themselves to a really quite repetitive story.

Each section of the episode involved Kyle and Victor making some modification to the device, making it slightly better, and then attempting another attack based on freezing someone. This meant the episode ran somewhat like a list, with attack after attack, and nothing to really grip you. While some of the pranks (such as the "Hi Lois" thing - with the lights) were really funny, there did seem to be just a load of filler in between them.

Probably what let it down the most though were the characters. After a few episodes of more interesting villains, Kyle's sidekick here was just the kind of ridiculous, slapstick sidekick that we've seen in the early part of the season. Victor was just so stupid and such a mess of a person to be cringeworthy. The secret service agent Kerrigan was just cheesy; he was funny at first but then was overused. And Kyle Griffin's dad was just not believable: he didn't have the same obvious motivation as the others.

As well as the obvious references to "The Prankster", this ep also had some references to "The Eyes Have It", in fact it bore several similarities to that episode, and Kyle used the technology developed there to modify his own device. This was nice to see as the episode storylines often lack continuity in this programme as a whole.

The Jimmy/Lois "side storyline" was pretty uninteresting, as with most Jimmy Olsen storylines. It was just too simple and didn't really add anything; again it was a bit of a time filler. Jimmy did warn Lois that he wouldn't be an easy person to live with, so I do feel a bit sorry for him, but as a whole this story didn't add anything to either action or character development.

As a whole this episode was painfully average, which is a shame since it could have been so great. We can pick out good moments, but mostly I did not really find this one very enjoyable.