This episode is a real rager, by which I mean there are two full sequences dedicated to adult men throwing fits. Spoilers follow for Superman & Lois Season 4, Episode 06, "When the Lights Come On."

"When the Lights Come On"

Superman looks at the people of Earth and says, I want to be one of you, so I'm going to work hard every day of my life to prove that I deserve to be among you. Lex Luthor looks at Superman and says, how dare you stand above us, looking down at us, and devotes his life to knocking Superman down to his level. That's always been a part of Lex's plan--to prove that Superman is no better than him--despite thinking that he is better than Superman.

The new dynamic here that we don't usually get to see outside of the comics is that Lex knows that Clark is Superman. Instead of fighting Clark as Clark and Superman as Superman, he can now approach either identity with whatever kind of attack he has in mind.

Clark sets Lex off when he helps a woman decide not to sell to Lex. Adie had planned to sell her farmland to Lex, but Lana asks Clark to go with her. Things get awkward when Clark starts to realize that Adie might know his secret identity. Clark and Lex face off directly in the town's bar, where an entire room's worth of people turn down millions of dollars to stand with Clark--reinforcing again that his alterego may be influencing their confidence.

If this is indeed true, then it proves Clark's worst nightmare true. In a moment when he is no longer fully Superman, people are standing up banking on the assumption and hope that Superman will be there. Whether they believe that or not is irrelevant. For Clark, his Kryptonian gifts as are as big a risk to humans as they are a gift that he uses for their sake every day.

The first time this comes to roost is when Lana wakes up to the smell of natural gas in her home and is attacked and nearly strangled by Lex's prison buddy, Otis. While Sara ultimately saves Lana, her security system--installed by tech genius John Irons--failed, and none of the Kents were able to hear her for various reasons.

This is, of course, sets Clark into a rage, who heads into town to scream at Lex; this is the angriest I can remember seeing any Superman ever. Lex flips the streetlights around them into Red Sun mode, though, putting Clark at what Lex believes is a disadvantage. Lex is always furiously doing pushups and lifting weights, and can't imagine that a depowered Superman could possibly fight him. But they fight, and Clark whups his ass decisively. He gets beat up in the process, sure, but he wins.

And in both of their eyes, so does Lex. Lex thinks he's proved that Superman is no better than him. Clark thinks Lex has proved that he's no better than Lex.

That's not how it reads for me. Lex pulled Clark down to his level physically. If Clark had still had his powers, he never would've thrown a punch. Clark is, despite how many punches he throws as a matter of his calling, a deeply gentle man. He treats every interaction with a feather-light touch. In challenging a weakened Superman and lighting up those red lamps, he took Clark's chains off, and then found out what happens when you threaten a man's friends and family and then take away the limiters he put on himself. He proved that, even when Clark is human, he doesn't stack up. I hope the show does interesting stuff with this.

Meanwhile, the Kent boys are coping with superheroics in their own ways. Jonathan is overdoing it, zipping all over the world to help people to the point of exhaustion, hoping to make up for the shortcomings of his father and brother. Jordan is essentially pretending he doesn't have powers and shutting out the world so that he doesn't make things worse again.

These are both ways that Clark could've responded to his calling. We saw Jordan begin to give in to the excitement of it the same way that Bizarro Superman had on his own world a couple of seasons back before finally stepping away entirely this year. For all three Kent boys, right now, it's about finding a balance. Jordan has to learn the responsibility and patience to use his powers while Jonathan needs to learn to step back and remember that he still has to be a human, too. Clark, finally, needs to balance his newfound humanity with the responsibility he feels to be everyone's savior. This manifests as Lois noticing Clark's hair graying and Clark fixating on it.

Things end with Lex's assistant, Amanda, returning to him and saying he needs a killer suit. If you've met Lex Luthor before, you know that means some kind of exosuit. Doomsday seems to be out of the picture, but I'm wondering if the monster won't return to save the day at the last moment when Lex seemingly has the advantage. At the least, though, I think that these last four episodes are heading toward a showdown between Lex and all three Kent boys, and I'm wondering if we'll see all three suiting up in variants of the Superman outfit.