Supergirl (TV Series, Season 4)
Jul. 12th, 2019 10:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroKara Zor-El is one of many alien refugees from many different planets who have resettled on Earth, but not everyone’s okay with that. (There’s also an amnesiac clone of Kara in Kasnia, but we’ll worry about that later.)
Sticking to the tried-and-true formula of “ripped from the headlines just with thinly-disguised alien metaphors”, Agent Liberty riles up Americans with hate and fear. The Joe Biden-esque vice president transforms quickly into a Trump-analogue who’s both a racist asshole and a puppet to much smarter people. The show’s wish-fulfilling and relentless hope for humanity (most noteworthy, various military officers respond to pleas to ignore unjust orders by doing so; and the American public is convinced that the liars in power are actually crooks by well-researched and fact-based news articles) sometimes feels even more unrealistic than the flying and laser eyes. I mean, Trump hasn’t put on power armor and attempted genocide repeatedly, but it would feel more realistic if next season notes that 41% of the electorate still would vote for Lex Luthor if the election was tomorrow. (His turning the sun red to kill Superman and also wipe out life on Earth was clearly FAKE NEWS.)
Nia Nal is introduced as a transgender character played by a transgender actress. Yay! And in a subtle but poignant nod, it’s noted that only female Naltorians get the precognition powers. (There’s a bunch of fridge logic bound up in the science of that, but you know what? It was clearly meant as “trans women are women” and we should take it as such.)
Brainiac 5 is used badly, but that’s the common problem of super-intelligent characters: Plots generally require people to be stupid, at least some of the time. His 12th-level intellect basically makes him good at finding useless patterns in data and good at dodging attacks. In pretty much everything else, he’s dumber than most of the other characters. (In the comics, the average human had a 6th-level intellect and a genius like Lyle Norg was somewhere around an 8th-level. This gives us a reasonable scale from which Brainy can’t outpace everyone like a supervillian. If Wynn is somewhere around 2nd-level in this scale, there’s no feasible reason Brainy should be worse at Wynn’s job.)
Manchester Black got tiring very quickly; when they finally dropped him and brought in Lex Luthor to be a Big Bad, it was a welcome change. The writing in the back half of the season, once they stopped focusing on Agent Liberty and started actually paying off things they’d been building up all season, was much better.
And when James’ sister showed up and immediately had scenes with Alex, I knew they’d be getting together before the season was out.
It looks like “Leviathan”, which was somehow the manipulating force behind all of Lex Luthor’s manipulations (and Eve) will be the big bad next season. Along with Lena likely having some kind of psychotic break after shooting her brother and learning pretty much everyone she trusted was lying to her. That is, after they deal with the Crisis and all of the Monitor’s nonsense: He drops off J’onn’s evil brother Ma'alefa'ak and picks up Lex’s body (presumably to revive him for more appearances), and I’m sure he has other shenanigans in the bag.
Overall: This season improved as it went along and I’d argue that it saw the show’s best villain so far. It’s not high art; it remains overly preachy and the writing is often mediocre; but I enjoy it.
Sticking to the tried-and-true formula of “ripped from the headlines just with thinly-disguised alien metaphors”, Agent Liberty riles up Americans with hate and fear. The Joe Biden-esque vice president transforms quickly into a Trump-analogue who’s both a racist asshole and a puppet to much smarter people. The show’s wish-fulfilling and relentless hope for humanity (most noteworthy, various military officers respond to pleas to ignore unjust orders by doing so; and the American public is convinced that the liars in power are actually crooks by well-researched and fact-based news articles) sometimes feels even more unrealistic than the flying and laser eyes. I mean, Trump hasn’t put on power armor and attempted genocide repeatedly, but it would feel more realistic if next season notes that 41% of the electorate still would vote for Lex Luthor if the election was tomorrow. (His turning the sun red to kill Superman and also wipe out life on Earth was clearly FAKE NEWS.)
Nia Nal is introduced as a transgender character played by a transgender actress. Yay! And in a subtle but poignant nod, it’s noted that only female Naltorians get the precognition powers. (There’s a bunch of fridge logic bound up in the science of that, but you know what? It was clearly meant as “trans women are women” and we should take it as such.)
Brainiac 5 is used badly, but that’s the common problem of super-intelligent characters: Plots generally require people to be stupid, at least some of the time. His 12th-level intellect basically makes him good at finding useless patterns in data and good at dodging attacks. In pretty much everything else, he’s dumber than most of the other characters. (In the comics, the average human had a 6th-level intellect and a genius like Lyle Norg was somewhere around an 8th-level. This gives us a reasonable scale from which Brainy can’t outpace everyone like a supervillian. If Wynn is somewhere around 2nd-level in this scale, there’s no feasible reason Brainy should be worse at Wynn’s job.)
Manchester Black got tiring very quickly; when they finally dropped him and brought in Lex Luthor to be a Big Bad, it was a welcome change. The writing in the back half of the season, once they stopped focusing on Agent Liberty and started actually paying off things they’d been building up all season, was much better.
And when James’ sister showed up and immediately had scenes with Alex, I knew they’d be getting together before the season was out.
It looks like “Leviathan”, which was somehow the manipulating force behind all of Lex Luthor’s manipulations (and Eve) will be the big bad next season. Along with Lena likely having some kind of psychotic break after shooting her brother and learning pretty much everyone she trusted was lying to her. That is, after they deal with the Crisis and all of the Monitor’s nonsense: He drops off J’onn’s evil brother Ma'alefa'ak and picks up Lex’s body (presumably to revive him for more appearances), and I’m sure he has other shenanigans in the bag.
Overall: This season improved as it went along and I’d argue that it saw the show’s best villain so far. It’s not high art; it remains overly preachy and the writing is often mediocre; but I enjoy it.
