Bringing Down the House is the sixth episode of the first season of Superboy from 1988 featuring John Haymes Newton as Clark Kent / Superboy, Stacy Haiduk as Lana Lang, and Jim Calvert as T.J.White.  Perhaps not the most action-packed and special-effects filled episode we’ve seen, but one that demonstrates the wide range of Superboy episodes as it returns to the familiar ground of contrasting beauty with evil.

No pre-credits sequence this time, but we’re back to the new-style opening sequence.

Clark and T.J. are talking to the manager of a local baseball park and amusement park. He’s had threats from some anonymous person who wants to take over the parks, but the interview stops when a voice claiming that a bomb will go off in thirty seconds comes over the tannoy. Clark hears a car pulling away that has a squeaky wheel.

With his X-Ray vision, Clark sees a bomb inside the baseball.

To calm the crowd, the game continues but Clark has to move fast. He substitutes for the hitter.

He hits the ball clear out of the stadium and it explodes safely in the sky.

Judd, a popular young singer, is in town to get his honorary masters in music and he’s agreed to do a concernt for the student body.  Lana and three friends play groupies while Clark and T.J. report on his visit.  (Any Sliders fan will doubtless recognise Sabrina Lloyd next to Lana.)  Lana is smitten with Judd.

T.J. and Clark interview the manager again at the amusement park while Lana spends time with Judd. The manager tells stories of sabotage and threats, but nothing major league life-threatening like today’s bomb.

Clark feels pangs of jealousy when he sees how much time Lana is spending with Judd.

On the way to the Ferris Wheel, Judd finds a unique matchbook cover and he reveals to Lana that he collects rare things.

While Clark tries to keep his emotions under control, the wheel stops and another booming warning threatens.

The manager is presented with another offer while the backup generator kicks in. He refuses and is beaten up for his trouble. The next day, Judd gives his entourage a guided tour around his mansion. This includes a collection of neon signs and the world’s biggest comic book collection.

You know it’s a fantasy when girls go “wow” to a guy’s comicbook collection!  His favourite collection is apparently a collection of cars.

T.J. (with Lana) stages an impromptu photo shoot.

As they go back inside, Clark hears a familiar squeaky wheel which reveals the man behind the threats.

Judd saves Clark and is shocked to find his manager is behind the threats.  He dials for the police and tells Clark to go indoors.  Clark goes to tell Andy, the park manager, that the case is solved but he’s not in his office.  Clark smells a rat.

Andy is being put in the path of the rollercoaster. In the sky, Superboy hones in on a particular squeaky car wheel.

Superboy stops the rollercoaster just in time.

Superboy “picks up” Judd’s manager while Judd’s concert ends and Lana is invited to see his private collection.

The collection appears to be a collection of ancient torture devices, but Judd’s musical aspirations go one higher than that. Clark meets T.J. to tell him about the attempt on Judd’s life. Judd’s manager has told them that Judd is behind it all. Clark is ready to go to the police until T.J. tells him that Lana went off with Judd a short while ago.

With Lana tied to the rack, Judd tells her that his collection isn’t torture instruments – it’s the screams of torture victims, and Lana is about to add to his collection. He stretches the rack. Lana screams and Judd tells her that she isn’t as good as some of the others. Superboy breaks in.

He releases the wheel on the rack and then prepares to punch Judd’s lights out. Lana knows this would kill him and she shouts for Superboy to stop.

While recuperating, Lana asks Clark what Judd meant about the “others” and Clark reveals that the police found bodies buried in the basement of the house. That was Judd’s last “collection”. It turns out that the only reason he wanted the park was because he couldn’t have it.

Just before the end credits, we get a short sneak preview of future episodes.

This is another episode that was edited when broadcast, so we got no understanding of the threat Lana was in or what Judd’s obsession was. From the brief glimpses we saw in the dark, some kind of torturing seemed to be going on – but nothing was mentioned of the death screams being recorded by the manic musician, or the “others”.

The episode is a solid one, although it does pull together a couple of overdone cliches. There’s the villain being the boyfriend of the regular female character, allowing her to be rescued by the hero; and there’s the extortion of the amusement park which allows for ample stock footage. Superboy as a character isn’t used to great effect here, but we do have Clark using his super-powers including, for a rarity, his super-hearing – which is quite the irony given that the villain is a singer.

Stacy Haiduk looks gorgeously 80s as usual, Jim Calvert gets to do next to nothing, and John Haymes Newton has the opportunity to play jealousy as Clark. Meanwhile, a young Sabrina Lloyd goes almost unnoticed in Lana’s circle of friends.

The episode feels a little too short to tell the story of all that’s going on here. The character of Judd is far too complex to be a throwaway villain (the actor had no opportunity to flesh out the character). Clark’s jealousy needs to be explored more – especially the question of why he doesn’t just do something about his feelings for Lana. But, most of all, there’s the question of why and how Lana fell for Judd so totally, enough to go on secret journeys to dark rooms with him. Regardless of what she might find there, it’s fairly certain that no guy would be about to suggest a Sunday school picnic!

But this is one of the better early episodes simply because of how much goes on in it. It may not be as super-powered as some, nor as epic as others, but it does its job well.