Supergirl (TV series, Season 1)
Sep. 26th, 2016 04:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroKara Zor-El was sent to Earth to look after her baby cousin Kal-El…but she got stuck in the Phantom Zone for 24 years and arrived when Kal-El was all grown up. A decade later, she’s out on her own and decides it’s her turn to be a hero.
It’s very cute, if formulaic--there's a lot of "this worked on The Flash so let's do it again". Kara is utterly adorkable; the show is occasionally a bit preachy with the girl-power message and much more bright and light-hearted than this style of show in general. But I like the light-heartedness—much like the Ms. Marvel comics, a little optimism in the face of so much “dark and gritty” is pleasant.
Casting-wise: Conversations get much less awkward when people start referring to Superman / Clark by name (i.e. episode 2); and I’m glad they cast an actor in the role for season two, because the “near-misses” with him are absurd. James is the hottest Jimmy Olsen has ever been, which works both with the timeline and with him as the love interest. Villainous Aunt Astra apparently took lessons at the Porn Parody School for Over-Acted Supervillianesses; I’m sorry the various roles the actress had were sidelined, but honestly, she wasn’t very good. Took me a while to place a couple of the guest stars, but I appreciated seeing Anya as Agent Chase, and Rider (who is also Melissa Benoist’s real-life husband) as Adam Foster.
The wire-work special effects are sometimes better and sometimes worse--flying fights are a bit wonky. For that matter, fight scenes tend to involve super-speeding or flying at someone, stopping, and then punching them. I understand the needs of special effects budgets and good visuals, but seriously. Inertia, people!
The fact that Kara (and the Phantom Zone criminals) has been on earth for over a decade--and Superman has been active for even longer--means it makes a lot of sense that the DEO has a grand collection of synthetic kryptonite weaponry. And I found their ability to synthesize blue kryptonite to hurt Bizarro very quickly didn’t hurt my suspension of disbelief at all.
I find it interesting that they use a number of comics characters who are usually heroes as villains in this show. Red Tornado, Jemm Son of Saturn, Maxima. (And Vartox, who was apparently merged with LSH villain The Persuader.) Even Max Lord, who was rebranded as a villain in recent years, but he was nominally a hero first. Here, he keeps his wealth and media savvy, but also gets a Luthor-esque engineering brilliance. (They’re using him as Lex Luthor.) The white martians have no moral ambiguity at all: they’re space Nazis. There’s nothing subtle about it; they herded the greens into concentration camps and burned them.
The Flash crossover episode is adorable when it's being snarky and kind of terrible when it's trying to be dramatic. Kara and Barry geeking out over each other is such fun, though.
SPOILERS: Hank Henshaw is a brilliant bit of misdirection, because in the comics that was the name of the evil Cyborg Superman. Here, he's secretly J'onn J'onzz.
The season wraps up very nicely: Supergirl saves the world, Kara is recognized for her efforts by Cat, J’onn is pardoned and reinstated by the DEO, Kara and James get together, the Kryptonians are all either in stasis in space or in captivity, and all is generally well. They’ve got a couple of plot hooks to carry into next season (Jeremiah’s fate, the contents of the new Kryptonian ship), but if the series ended here, it would be reasonably well-resolved.
Overall: While not as highly recommended as The Flash, I thought this was a fun superhero show and I had a good time with it.
It’s very cute, if formulaic--there's a lot of "this worked on The Flash so let's do it again". Kara is utterly adorkable; the show is occasionally a bit preachy with the girl-power message and much more bright and light-hearted than this style of show in general. But I like the light-heartedness—much like the Ms. Marvel comics, a little optimism in the face of so much “dark and gritty” is pleasant.
Casting-wise: Conversations get much less awkward when people start referring to Superman / Clark by name (i.e. episode 2); and I’m glad they cast an actor in the role for season two, because the “near-misses” with him are absurd. James is the hottest Jimmy Olsen has ever been, which works both with the timeline and with him as the love interest. Villainous Aunt Astra apparently took lessons at the Porn Parody School for Over-Acted Supervillianesses; I’m sorry the various roles the actress had were sidelined, but honestly, she wasn’t very good. Took me a while to place a couple of the guest stars, but I appreciated seeing Anya as Agent Chase, and Rider (who is also Melissa Benoist’s real-life husband) as Adam Foster.
The wire-work special effects are sometimes better and sometimes worse--flying fights are a bit wonky. For that matter, fight scenes tend to involve super-speeding or flying at someone, stopping, and then punching them. I understand the needs of special effects budgets and good visuals, but seriously. Inertia, people!
The fact that Kara (and the Phantom Zone criminals) has been on earth for over a decade--and Superman has been active for even longer--means it makes a lot of sense that the DEO has a grand collection of synthetic kryptonite weaponry. And I found their ability to synthesize blue kryptonite to hurt Bizarro very quickly didn’t hurt my suspension of disbelief at all.
I find it interesting that they use a number of comics characters who are usually heroes as villains in this show. Red Tornado, Jemm Son of Saturn, Maxima. (And Vartox, who was apparently merged with LSH villain The Persuader.) Even Max Lord, who was rebranded as a villain in recent years, but he was nominally a hero first. Here, he keeps his wealth and media savvy, but also gets a Luthor-esque engineering brilliance. (They’re using him as Lex Luthor.) The white martians have no moral ambiguity at all: they’re space Nazis. There’s nothing subtle about it; they herded the greens into concentration camps and burned them.
The Flash crossover episode is adorable when it's being snarky and kind of terrible when it's trying to be dramatic. Kara and Barry geeking out over each other is such fun, though.
SPOILERS: Hank Henshaw is a brilliant bit of misdirection, because in the comics that was the name of the evil Cyborg Superman. Here, he's secretly J'onn J'onzz.
The season wraps up very nicely: Supergirl saves the world, Kara is recognized for her efforts by Cat, J’onn is pardoned and reinstated by the DEO, Kara and James get together, the Kryptonians are all either in stasis in space or in captivity, and all is generally well. They’ve got a couple of plot hooks to carry into next season (Jeremiah’s fate, the contents of the new Kryptonian ship), but if the series ended here, it would be reasonably well-resolved.
Overall: While not as highly recommended as The Flash, I thought this was a fun superhero show and I had a good time with it.
