The Final Write Up

So, I'm terminating this experiment.

It's partly because Supergirl is a terrible show that offends me on many levels, but if I'm being completely honest, it's because it commits a far more terrible sin: it's boring. When informed that there was an upcoming crossover with The Flash, rather than be excited (as I usually am for such crossovers), I instead groaned (as any such crossover will doubtless make for a bad episode of The Flash, and only a mediocre episode of Supergirl). Even my natural curiosity about how it is possible to explain the existence of Kryptonians in The Flash/Arrow universe with nary a mention till now isn't enough to engage my interest.

So, I'm done. I may check back at the start of Season 2 to see if it has improved, but in the meantime, for those still watching Supergirl, you fall into one of these categories:

• You're enjoying it. It takes all kinds. I wish you the best, and hope that the show continues to entertain you.
• You dislike it, but not as much as I do. In time you'll likely transition to one of the other categories. In the interim, I wish the best, and hope that you find its high points worth suffering through the low points to reach.
• You dislike it as much as I do, but for some reason you're still watching. You are a better person than I, and I aspire one day to possess a fraction of your endurance and stamina. But I have no immediate desire to join you in martyrdom - you have my thanks, and my best wishes, but not my support. Bad shows deserve to die on the vine, so that better shows may replace them; by continuing to watch a show you acknowledge is as bad as I feel it is, you are helping to keep that show alive.

For any of my readers that have gotten this far, thank you for your time.

Episode 8: Hostile Bakeoven

Episode 8 starts a trend of beginning exactly where the last episode left off. Generally speaking I'm all in favour of a show that is brave enough to do that, as long as it is done properly, but it has to remember to realistically portray things that a passage of time would otherwise cover.

Jessica Jones, for example, runs without any significant time skips. It's not like 24, where the show is in real time, but there are few points where any time more than a night's sleep is skipped. In this excellent (if not flawless) show, the technique leads to real dramatic tension. Supergirl, on the other hand, seems to forget that Kara has a secret identity at times, and blithely assumes we'll never notice anything implied by on screen events.

But we'll get to that in a moment.

So, Astra and her goons have suits that apparently protect against Kryptonite. This is not an idea that is necessarily stillborn. Canonically lead works to block Kryptonite radiation, and certainly I can permit that Kryptonian technology can come up with a flexible fabric that incorporates the same sort of radiation resistance. On the other hand, such a suit would have to be full coverage to work, and given that the suit exposes the entire head, it's clearly not entirely material. Instead, this must work as some sort of force field that only screens out Kryptonite radiation. I can just about let this slide - it's weird, since the force field is probably not skin tight and there's no easy way I can imagine to have it flow over the body in such a way that there wouldn't be weak points or overlapping, but to be fair there are certainly weirder super-science gadgets than this, and we don't see enough of how this works to be sure that it doesn't have such weaknesses. I do know that regardless of this I'm not sure I'd want to carry around a Kryptonite knife, in case the power fails, but then again I can buy that Astra is made of sterner stuff than I.

But this initial fight doesn't seem to suggest that even Kara is very affected by the knife. To be clear here, the effects of Kryptonite are to cause a Kryptonian's powers to fail, and to sicken (and eventually kill) the Kryptonian with continued exposure. To put it another way, Kryptonian skin isn't proof against anything except Kryptonite; it is just that Kryptonite causes the skin to no longer be proof against anything. You don't need a Kryptonite bullet - you just need to expose the Kryptonian to Kryptonite, and then shoot them with a standard steel jacketed ball of lead. Kara definitely looks apprehensively at the knife, but she doesn't seem to be sick and she certainly is not losing her powers, as the goons are clearly having to use their own Kryptonian strength to restrain her. I'm just not sure how this is supposed to work. It's true that there's never been any real consistency in how far away Kryptonite works, or how quickly it works - after all, Superman Returns has Kal-El lifting up an entire island laced with the stuff and dragging it into space, whereas Superman The Movie has the same character almost drowning in a swimming pool with a small lump of it around his neck. But this still doesn't really seem right to me. And the fact that Kara's escape plan is just "jump off a building" seems very difficult to swallow; there are three other Kryptonians, all of which are at least as fast as she is (we'll get back to that below), and all of whom have the same advanced senses. How exactly is this escape working?

One possibility is that Astra wanted Kara to escape. This seems superficially plausible, since she later throws a fight, but if that was her intention why bring along two goons? Astra is certainly dangerous enough on her own, and it's a lot more plausible that Kara would think she'd genuinely given one Kryptonian the slip rather than three of them.

Let's check in on Kara's sister Alex for a moment. Start with the clichéd and awful "trust me" when Kara asks why Hank is no longer a concern. I'm wracking my brains here, and I can think of absolutely no reason at all why it serves anyone's interests to keep Kara in the dark about Hank's true nature. This is just needlessly over-dramatic. Why would you tell an admittedly competent but still very much normal human your secret, and then forbid her from telling her superpowered sister? Need I remind the writers that Kara was the adopted daughter of the very same missing father? Why would Hank not have sworn to protect both daughters? I suppose we can assume Hank swore Alex to secrecy, but it's no easier to see why he'd do that than why Alex would voluntarily withhold the information. We certainly are led to believe that if Kara kept a similar secret neither Hank nor Alex would be sympathetic. Are they intentionally being written as hypocrites?

Mind you, hypocrite is about the least of Alex's flaws. The episode once again shows the sparring chamber, bathed in what one has to assume is Kryptonite radiation to make it a fair fight. Again, Kryptonite is supposed to be deadly, not merely a power sucker - I remain very much unconvinced that the writers are being consistent here, since they certainly implied the opposite with the knife: the chamber removes her powers but (presumably) doesn't otherwise harm her, while the knife clearly didn't remove her powers but (judging by Kara's caution) could harm her. But leaving that aside, this sort of full contact sparring is ridiculous. Neither Kara nor Alex wear any kind of padding; assuming this sort of training is routine for DEO agents, they'd constantly have a large injury roster. Anyone that has done any sort of full contact martial arts will note that you always train with safety first in mind; nobody is served by getting injured in training.

But it's what happens after the sparring that stains Alex's character further. I mentioned in previous entries that Alex is prepared to kill innocent, unarmed civilians - she escalates to lethal force immediately. Now, she's encouraging Kara to do the same, with her reasoning that Astra was "prepared to kill you." Even if it that were true, the good guys are supposed to be better than the bad guys; Kara isn't supposed to be a Wolverine type of hero. But the very real fact is that this is not true; quite clearly, Astra let Kara go and explicitly stated that she didn't want to hurt Kara. Now, you can obviously have Alex argue that Astra wasn't being truthful - and as events play out that seems a completely fair deduction - but no such conversation occurs; Kara accepts Alex's assertions as if the writers had just watched a completely different episode up to this point.

I want to get on with what happens after Kara and Astra have their second fight, but just prior to that the Scoobies consult Lucy on the legality of wiretapping the chairman of the board in the episode's B plot. Lucy, up until very recently, was a commissioned major in the Army. Presumably, therefore, she was a military lawyer. That makes perfect sense, and even accounts for her relatively high rank given her youth.

The law is a very complicated system. Lucy likely wouldn't have studied much in the way of corporate law since she was an undergraduate. And yet she rattles off answers to the Scoobies without even needing to look at any reference materials. Now, fair enough, the questions that were being asked ("Is it OK to wiretap this guy without a warrant?") are not exactly deep, but if we're prepared to accept that they were trivial questions, then we should be prepared to accept that a few minutes Googling would have answered them. Was there really no other way to bring in the actress for this episode?

OK, Astra flies out to the middle of the city and, effectively, calls out her niece. There is so much wrong with this fight that I'm going to have to struggle not to bore anyone, and the problems begin immediately. When Kara approaches Astra from behind, Astra is surprised. This very episode reminded us of Kara's super hearing, which means Astra should have heard her niece coming and, at the very least, faced the right direction.

Then the fight itself goes all Man of Steel on things, with buildings being used as a backdrop for smashing through. Now, there are many criticisms of Man of Steel that I could make, but this is not the forum for it - suffice it to say that the movie going audience quite reasonably noted that Kal-El should not have been so blasé about the massive civilian casualties fighting in a densely populated urban environment would naturally result. Kara had less choice than Kal-El did here, but she still could have at least avoided smashing Astra through a building. In all fairness, at least Kara does make a token effort to destroy some debris before it hurts anyone, but this is clearly an afterthought.

How exactly does this fight end? We see Kara about to punch Astra in the "I'm about to deliver a lethal blow" pose, while Astra looks on in (apparent) fear. And then Kara (correctly) decides not to kill her aunt, at which point Astra... faints? She was clearly conscious, and then she was clearly sufficiently unconscious that Kara was able to drag her back to the DEO. Do Kryptonians just collapse if they are heroically defeated?

The DEO put Astra in a cell. Kara comes to talk to her, and Astra shows Kara the doo-hickey from the past that was mentioned in the flashback earlier in the episode. Jet back a bit - what? Why would you not search your prisoners for that sort of thing before imprisoning them? It's bad enough that she was permitted to wear her original clothing (she really should have been in the DEO equivalent of prison greys - we saw last episode that they do have these), but they didn't even remove what is clearly alien technology of unknown purpose from the prisoner? Do they just not have enough female agents to perform a proper search? Is it against some sort of DEO equivalent of the Geneva Convention? Normal prisoners are not even permitted to keep shoelaces; why would you permit them to keep what may be a highly advanced weapon?

(And I mean that in all seriousness; at the very least it is a communications device, and we really don't know exactly what it does).

More generally with Astra, I would have preferred the story to actually follow through on the idea that she was a "terrorist that thought she was a freedom fighter". The whole getting captured plan is extremely suspect as written; if she genuinely wanted to give her side of the story to her niece, it makes a (tortured) sort of sense, but as nothing more than a "distraction" it's very weak. There's no way that the DEO could have known or prepared for the eventual attack of the Kryptonians and their alien allies, and one could even argue that Astra's whole plan gave up the advantage of surprise.

As a side note - clearly, the cell that contains Astra must be designed to negate her powers. One imagines it uses the same frequency of Kryptonite radiation that the sparring chamber uses. Why, then, can Hank not read Astra's mind? Is their immunity to mind reading innate to the point that it functions even whilst powerless? Does anyone want to take bets on whether they remember that in future episodes?

Moving on, we now have a superpowered brawl, where we finally see superspeed for the first time. I am forced to wonder - do only male Kryptonians have superspeed? We haven't ever seen Kara or Astra exhibit this, and I was all set to conclude that Kryptonians don't have it in this continuity, but now we've just had an on-screen confirmation that they do. It's hard to believe this is a gender based dimorphism; did the writers just forget to include superspeed in all previous episodes when it would have been useful? (Not that here is any better. Maxwell Lord's anti-Kryptonian weapon would be a lot less useful if the target was able to move out of the way, but they don't think to do that. I guess we can assume that they arrogantly thought it would just bounce off).

As a big revelation at the end of the episode, Cat now knows the secret. The funny thing here is that it's supposed to suggest that Cat is really clever, but honestly? Everyone who knows Kara should be suspicious after last episode. She had, at the very least, a sprained arm (and it was quite probably broken). Her co-workers saw her with the sling. As this episode takes place right after, the fact that Kara is no longer wearing the sling, nor giving any indication that she was ever injured, should be a huge red flag. Her secret identity protocol sucks.

But there's something about Cat that bugs me. Calista Flockhart always pronounces the name of our heroine as "Kira". I've not mentioned it to this point as I thought it was part of the joke - that Cat couldn't be bothered to learn the real name of her assistant, and that Kara was too demure to correct her. This is now harder to defend; she definitely doesn't think of Supergirl as the same non-entity, and as such I have to wonder whether it's just that nobody has bothered to correct Calista on the pronunciation. In other words, I wonder if I've been giving the writers more credit than they deserve. :)

Let's find out next week whether Cat starts to pronounce her assistant's name correctly. See you then!

Episode 7: Subhuman For A Day

The last episode ended with Kara cutting herself on smashed glass. I didn't comment on this, largely because there was nothing to really comment on at that point (unless I wanted to be snarky and observe that her invulnerability hasn't been established sufficiently - I could reasonably ask why I'm supposed to even be surprised that she can be cut, if a long fall or a non-Kryptonian level punch can harm her). It is only in this episode that we discover what caused this power loss.

She used her heat vision too hard.

I hope that sentence is as ridiculous to read as it was to write. Apparently her brutal murder-by-melting of Red Tornado last episode has somehow rewritten her Kryptonian heritage out and replaced it with pure human, with no exceptional abilities at all. This is stupidity personified, but apparently Superman has suffered similar power losses since don't-call-me-Jimmy mentions that he's always fine after about 48 hours.

I'm wondering now if the writers actually even know what show they're writing for. It's true, being struck powerless is hardly unknown in the source material, but it is always either a major event (for example, when Superman "died") or else is a result of exposure to Kryptonite (or both). There is no precedent for losing your powers just because you melted a robot, especially when you consider that she flew away after doing that. Even if I grant the premise - let's say that Kryptonians are basically human, except they are like solar power batteries, and they can use their stored power to effect super strength, flight, etc. - and I by no means am prepared to concede this (see below) - then she wouldn't have been able to fly off. Or, if we're saying that her flight consumed the last of her powers, then presumably she'd have been aware of feeling weak or whatever, and not have been surprised by getting cut.

But the whole idea is preposterous in any case. Kryptonians are capable of flying through space, which either means that they can store a lot of solar energy (such that they have no real limit on expenditures), or else all the energy does is make them more or less powerful. Perhaps they can't fly as fast, or hit as hard, if they're drained. They'd still be fundamentally Kryptonian, not human.

This is enough of a ridiculous premise to make the entire episode unwatchable, but let's take a deep breath and proceed regardless. After Kara breaks her arm (from Jimmy-I-prefer-James shove to safety), she is next seen with don't-call-me-Jimmy's jumper tied around in a crude sling. The dialogue indicates that she didn't go to the hospital (I'm coming back to this in a moment). In the very next scene, with no time passing, her crude sling has been replaced with the sort of simple sling a first aid kit might have - and yet she has not received any first aid, she hasn't been anywhere that would have such a sling, and I'm forced to wonder once again just how lazy are the people making this show? Were we really expected not to notice this? What was even the point? It would have been easier to not make this mistake - to make this error, someone had to deliberately change her "costume". The mind boggles; I can only surmise that there was a deleted scene somewhere involving a paramedic or something, but there doesn't seem to be any time for that scene to have occurred. (Changing slings on a broken arm is hardly the work of seconds).

I could note here that for a broken arm, with no pain killers, Kara barely even seems to remember she's hurt. But perhaps Kryptonians have a high pain tolerance - I am willing to let this slide, just because there's so much more to get to.

Right, let's look at Kara's decision not to bother with hospital because she believes her arm will heal when she gets her powers back. I have to ask - on what basis could she possibly conclude this? She's obviously never been powerless before, she has therefore never been in a situation that would suggest such an injury would heal. Kryptonians do not have regeneration in their power set. It's really hard to hurt Superman, but if you can hit him hard enough to break a bone, bruise him, or cut him, it has to heal at about the same speed a human in excellent physical condition would heal. The classic example here is Doomsday; even before "killing" Superman (a condition he was essentially resurrected from with technology, not his superpowers), he'd managed to cut, bruise, and otherwise injure the Man of Steel, and these wounds persisted. Now I know that comic book canon is not necessarily the canon of the TV show, but if Kara really can regenerate why haven't we seen it before? A simple fall required bathing in a tanning bed to restore her. You can argue that it isn't necessary for the show to be consistent with the comics, but it should at least be consistent with itself.

Let's assume, for the sake of sanity, that it is possible for Kryptonians to overtax themselves in the manner that the episode asks us to believe. I can buy Jimmy-I-prefer-James knowing, as he's Supes' best bud, but if Maxwell Lord knows (as he clearly does - he mentions that he knows Supergirl is powerless) then it must be common knowledge, or at least not a particularly well kept secret. Does that seem right to anyone? To me, it suggests that Superman must have lost his powers on multiple occasions in order for the pattern to be observable - again, really? Is that the sort of precedent you want to set? Doesn't this mean that the show will now have to be very careful to never have Kara exert herself more than she did against Red Tornado, or else risk yet another plot hole? Does anyone really believe that that's never going to happen? (It really didn't look as if what she did to Red Tornado would have taken more out of her than some of her previous fights).

One more thing about the power loss before I turn to the plot holes from the "B" plot - don't-call-me-Jimmy falls down an elevator shaft, apparently scaring Kara enough that her powers suddenly return. (Yes, that's ridiculous. I have bigger fish to fry, but I'll note it in passing). From her mild-mannered assistant costume, she switches to her Supergirl costume before diving to catch him. Now there's nobody else around here - nobody will see her. Is her branding really important enough to risk the love of her life plummeting to his death? Remember, literally a moment ago she was powerless; is it remotely realistic to believe she would suddenly be so confident in her ability to save Jimmy-I-prefer-James that she'd take time to change first?

But that's the "A" plot. The secondary plot deals with the DEO, and revelations about Hank and Mr Danvers. I have a few points to cover here.

Let's begin with our further questioning of her sister's moral compass. She calls Kara after the dust settles and says that "everything's OK". Excuse me? 3 agents are dead, and 1 of them is dead specifically because of your actions. The DEO isn't that big an organisation; these are people that Kara probably chatted about the latest reality TV episode with around the water cooler, or at the very least they are colleagues of her sister. This is callous, almost sociopathic, and disturbing coming on top of her remorseless killing of an unarmed human last episode. I don't get the impression we're supposed to think her sister is a borderline psychopath, but that's the picture being painted.

We're told that her foster father and the real Hank Henshaw went to Peru to track an alien. Now, I admit, geography isn't my strong suit, but nonetheless I am pretty confident that Peru is not actually one of the United States. This implies that the DEO is actually an international organisation - if so, then the President (last episode) has even less authority than he otherwise would. I mean, surely the US wouldn't send in black ops (they were going to kill the alien) to a neutral/allied country, right? (OK, OK - let's not think about that too much, it's depressing).

It is nice to know that the DEO of the past at least did follow basic police procedure and have their agents work in teams. I point this out because Kara's sister almost always works alone, and there's never been any suggestion that this is unusual. It's certainly possible that SOP have changed, but this is a strange change to make (especially given that Kara's sister is quite bloodthirsty when she's on her own).

I have a feeling we're supposed to sympathise with Winn to some extent. He's clearly in love with Kara/Supergirl, but she's just as clearly uninterested in him romantically. Unrequited love - hardly an unusual trope in a television series. But he comes across in this episode as exactly the sort of entitled idiot that gives men a bad name.

Here's the thing: people are not games; you don't "earn enough points" and then "win a relationship upgrade". It doesn't matter if you are nice to her, she doesn't owe you sex in return. And if you were only being nice with that goal in mind, then you're not a nice guy. There is far too much of this attitude amongst men in the real world (particularly young men or teenage boys) to let it slide in a television show with a female protagonist; by acting as he does, Winn immediately moves from "cool friend of Kara" to "person she'd be better off without". Again, this would be acceptable if this was the intended interpretation, but it isn't - the writers and director ought to be ashamed of this portrayal, and I can only hope it does not make a recurrence, or else Winn will be a very difficult character to like. The real shame here is that Kara's crush on don't-call-me-Jimmy is portrayed realistically; it's clear that Jimmy-I-prefer-James does not share her feelings, or at least not to the same degree, and that's entirely believable - sometimes, no matter how heart breaking it can be, love is not reciprocated. The correct response is to support your friend (as Kara does to don't-call-me-Jimmy, congratulating him on moving in with Lucy) rather than belittle them for "taking advantage", as Winn seems to do here.

To end on a positive note, the special effects for the Martian Manhunter reveal were good, and it's nice to see the arc moving along. Next episode we seem to be having Kara encounter her aunt once more (lucky they waited until she had her powers back, isn't it?) See you then!

Episode 6: Egg Faced

The episode opens with some fairly tame retreads of the love triangle, along with the introduction of Cat's mother. Reasonable conversations were had between many of the characters, and for a moment I thought I'd have very little to talk about with this episode.

Fortunately, that was just my impatience, as it quickly took the leap into mediocrity I've come to expect. There's a few things to unpack here, I'll take them one at a time.

Let's consider General Lane. Usually, this character is written as a gruff, no-nonsense sort who is very difficult to get along with, but at the end of the day he's a patriot and loves his daughters. It seems that the Supergirl version of the character is omitting the positive traits - but that's not a criticism in and of itself. It's entirely fine for the show to do its own variations on characters - encouraged, even. But in their efforts to make him thoroughly dislikeable, the episode opens a number of plot holes. To begin with, either Supergirl is considered a US citizen, or she is not. The only way she could be considered a US citizen is if they assume she has another identity that has the necessary paperwork. That is problematic - traditionally, the reason that Superman (and Supergirl, as a derivative character) gets away with no mask is partly because he gives no reason for anyone to suspect he even has a secret identity. Batman wears a mask; he's clearly hiding his identity - Superman doesn't. In effect, Superman is Clark's secret identity - Clark is the one wearing the mask (as is Kara, of course). While I have promised not to complain too much about paper thin disguises, this sort of mould-breaking where apparently now people do suspect the Supers of having secret identities makes it considerably trickier to keep that promise.

But let's accept for the moment that she's a US citizen. She's not military, not even officially working for the DEO (which could be considered a paramilitary organisation) - she's a civilian. The President cannot generally issue orders to civilians, executive order or no. But even if he could, this particular order is life threatening - even on the face of it, the order is to fight a superpowered let's-not-call-it-a-robot, but we find out later in the episode that the robot is intended as something that can kill a Kryptonian. (It's clear from General Lane's banter with Hank Henshaw that he hopes the outcome of this fight is Supergirl's death, or at least serious injury). A specific executive order from the President to have a civilian risk her life in a non-emergency situation - it's just utterly ridiculous that we'd be expected to believe that's reasonable. (I'm going to avoid the obvious question of why you'd test Red Tornado against Supergirl instead of Superman - let's just say it's because thanks to the DEO they know how to get hold of our heroine).

Of course, if she's not a US citizen, then the argument can't even get off the ground; the President would have no authority over her whatsoever. In such a case you could say that the executive order was more of a "do this or get deported" deal; that's actually a lot more plausible on the face of it, though it raises the unsettling questions of how exactly you deport someone like Supergirl, and whether or not you really want such an individual with a grudge against your nation.

The fight itself goes reasonably well, with Supergirl using innovative tactics and generally overpowering Red Tornado easily, tearing off one of its arms. Then Red Tornado pulls a new power out of its red backside and goes perfectly invisible - sure would have been handy to use that in the fight - and flees the scene in a way that cannot be tracked. General Lane, deciding to kick a puppy or two in case we still had any residual sympathy for him, decides to blame this on Supergirl.

Let's just let that sink in. We have a civilian who volunteers to risk her life to go along with your blustering unenforceable "executive order" (because the only reasonable conclusion is that the General was lying here and hoping he wouldn't get called on it), who is now somehow responsible for the escape of a machine that has just revealed a previously unknown capability. There's no possible world in which you could consider that remotely Supergirl's fault, and this ought to be immediately obvious to everybody present. Lane risks being relieved of command for such a ridiculous assertion. This scene closes, however, with a new plot hole - he says that the reason this is a concern is because Red Tornado might inflict civilian casualties.

Round 2 of the Red Tornado Versus Supergirl battle is kind of boring, to be honest. Essentially they trade one blow each, and then the robot creates a tornado and buggers off. There's a few things to observe here, but the one that immediately leaps off the screen is that Red Tornado now has two arms again. I realise they described the let's-not-call-it-a-robot as some sort of bio-mechanical device, but Maxwell Lord saw the arm and described some of the damage as what happens to metal when it is cooled to absolute zero (and let's just note in passing that this is a canonical statement about what Supergirl's breath can do in a few seconds - it can lower the temperature by at least 300 Kelvins). So the arm is metal, at least in part. Regeneration cannot explain how it has two arms again - it would need a source of components to construct it. The obvious implication is that it returned to its creator who repaired it, but at this point in the episode we don't yet know the creator is still in the picture. Nobody comments on the fact that it has regrown an arm. There is not even a passing, "I see it's repaired itself" type of comment. Did the writers just forget that Supergirl had torn an arm off?

And again, the ability to create a free standing tornado is a new power. Supergirl breaks it up somehow (I assume she was just flying really fast in the opposite direction, which is the traditional way Superman or The Flash handles this, but the special effects don't really show us what happens here). Why Red Tornado doesn't throw up a couple more of these is an interesting question, as it doesn't seem to have had any motivation to show up here at all other than to fight Supergirl; certainly it cannot be said to have been losing this second fight, as it had barely started.

But Supergirl does the right thing here, recognising that the tornado is going to cause a lot of civilian casualties - which is exactly what General Lane was worried about a couple of scenes ago. Yet of course he once again blames her for letting it get away. By this point it's reasonably clear that Lane is just a flat out villain, so I can understand him blaming her, but nobody challenges this. Supergirl attempts to defend her lacklustre performance by saying that it was fighting more intelligently, rather than simply pointing out that she had to stop the tornado ripping its way through down town. Even if Supergirl is not really confident enough to defend herself in this manner, her DEO colleagues are both willing and able; neither her sister nor Henshaw do so.

Finally, we catch up with the creator who is apparently telepathically controlling Red Tornado, and when he dies the let's-not-call-it-a-robot becomes sentient. This is just... OK. Let's dissect this.

The movie Spiderman 2 has a genius nuclear physicist invent some robotic arms that will allow him to fine tune an in-progress fusion reaction - a truly great invention. And then, casually, it is revealed that, "Oh, by the way they are also artificially intelligent." That's like saying you have invented a cup holder, and casually revealing it to be in a flying car. The point is that this "telepathic interface" is a far more impressive invention than a mere let's-not-call-it-a-robot that can move its arms really quickly. The military applications alone would be enough to ensure that the creator never got fired.

Next, let's acknowledge that Supergirl's sister kills an unarmed human being. We've seen that the DEO have access to alien technology, but even disregarding that, surely just knocking him out would have been sufficient. It's not as if Supergirl couldn't beat Red Tornado - she'd already defeated it twice, and I think it's reasonable to suppose that someone distracted by fighting for his life isn't going to be able to control the let's-not-call-it-a-robot at peak efficiency. A few episodes ago Henshaw was saying that they should ignore a superpowered threat because they were only focussed on aliens - that there were other services (such as just local cops - again, this is an unarmed human being, and not a particularly skilled combatant) to handle other threats. Yet her sister goes in alone, without backup, and shoots to kill. That's a somewhat unsettling attitude for a Supergirl Scooby Gang member to adopt.

Finally, let's hit the whole "Red Tornado is now sentient" issue. Leaving aside that this is another "look at this cool cup holder I invented - I built a flying car to show it off" example - the creator has apparently managed to write code that with minimal self-modification has achieved sentience - we now see that Supergirl is prepared to kill as well. I realise Red Tornado is a let's-not-call-it-a-robot, but it's now an intelligent, sentient creature, and it isn't even attacking anymore. Rather than try to capture it, or reason with it, Supergirl turns on the heat vision and melts the poor thing. Was it even really responsible for its previous crimes? To say that it was invokes a "sins of the father" mentality.

Morally, this was an extremely troubling episode for Supergirl; in this universe, not only are there very high ranking military officers that are just flat out bullies, not only does the President have the right to order innocent civilians to risk their lives for military experiments, not only do shady-but-generally-good-guy organisations face unarmed normal humans with shoot to kill tactics, but even our titular heroine feels no remorse about flat out murdering intelligent, sentient beings.

I could remark on several other troubling aspects of the episode. For example, in the dinner with General Lane and Lucy, when the General decides to be a complete monster to his daughter's boyfriend, why doesn't Jimmy-I-prefer-James just leave? This is not the casual mean-but-well-intentioned thuggery of Cat's mother, this is outright disgust; nobody would reasonably be expected to stay and finish dinner in those circumstances.

Or I could note that despite the fact that Kara has deep seated anger issues stemming from her childhood, a few punches at a car (where did she get enough spare cash to score a car that she can just casually destroy, by the way?) and suddenly she's cured - no therapists in this universe are needed, it seems.

Or fast forward to the end, when Lucy apparently resigns her commission to stay with don't-call-me-Jimmy. It doesn't work like that. Even in a normal occupation, you're required to give notice if you're quitting, and in the military you cannot voluntarily terminate your service early. She could, of course, just go AWOL, but the clear implication here is that what she is doing is completely legal (her father is merely annoyed, not "you realise you're going to go to prison for desertion" annoyed).

But I think I've said enough about this one. See you next time!

Episode 5: Why Do They Do It?

I make no attempts to avoid spoilers in these reviews. You are hereby warned.

One of the problems with at least the early episodes of Supergirl is that they don't seem to have any arc content. When I get around to discussing episodes 1-4 I'll look at that in more depth, but episode 5 at least starts to break this mould.

There are two main plots in this episode - Kara babysitting Carter (Cat's son), and the James/Lucy/Kara love triangle. It's tough to see which of these is really the "A" plot, but given that (entirely incidentally) the former leads to the action sequences, we'll assume that's the main focus of the episode.

Now, Cat is somewhat overbearing, and a control freak. But we're clearly intended to believe that she loves her son and is actively involved as a single parent; she gets baby sitters, which means she doesn't have a full time nanny or the like. Here's the thing - Carter looks to be at least in his early teens to me. I can understand wanting a babysitter here to, say, get him dinner or make sure he gets to school, but from all appearances Cat's not even gone for a full day - Carter stays in the office, rather than being tucked in with a bedtime story. Does such an apparently well mannered shy teenager really need a babysitter for such a short time? Could he not just order pizza, do his homework, and maybe stay up a bit later? When the babysitting subplot first appeared I was expecting a child of perhaps 10 or 12 - old enough that you don't feel guilty about a short trip away, but young enough to still need constant supervision. Maybe it's an American thing - I wouldn't have thought Carter needed a sitter here.

Of course we get the cliché that Kara completely forgets about picking up Carter from school. As I was watching this with my wife, I commented, "There's no way out of this scene - they're going to have to jump cut." Kara flies to school. How does she get Carter from there to the office? She doesn't have a car. Perhaps Carter was expecting a taxi or even limousine, but in that case it would be waiting for her and Carter. How does she explain the fact that she is at the school without any visible means of having gotten there? I'm not saying it's impossible - off the top of my head, she could pretend to be breathless and say that she couldn't find a taxi in all the traffic, so she'd run all the way - but this sort of thing deserves at least a line of dialogue - to just blithely assume we wouldn't notice this is insulting.

But perhaps Carter is a superhuman himself, capable of teleportation. I mention this because later in the episode, with the cliché of the babysitters not noticing when the kid leaves (you had one job, guys!), he is suddenly at the launch of the new super train. Since Supergirl has to fly to get there, we can surmise this is not within walking distance of the office. It's certainly possible he caught a bus or a taxi, but if he's independent enough to do that it raises even further doubt on whether or not he needed a babysitter in the first place.

Now, the later events of the episode make it clear that Max is "testing" Kara, so we can take the literal truth of the suggestion that there is no way to override the train with a pinch of salt. But he clearly expects this assertion to be believable. Even if an eccentric billionaire decided to risk millions of dollars on a train without basic override safety features to prove some obscure point, it beggars belief that this would be considered legal. Certainly he may be bribing whatever officials are needed, but his bold assertion, "I can't; it's automated" would still seem very dodgy. I'm certain the number of people willing to ride on such a train would be reduced, perhaps considerably. Modern trains in the real world barely need a driver, but he's there for safety reasons anyway - when something goes wrong, human judgement is still valuable to avoid or minimise crises. In a world that contains supervillains, I cannot imagine there is less need for this sort of oversight. Would you really feel good about automated systems in a world that demonstrably contains individuals like Brainiac? (Though I suppose it is possible Brainiac does not yet exist in this continuity).

The biggest missed opportunity here is the two bombs. There is a clear parallel here to the first Superman movie, where Christopher Reeves' Kal-El must stop two nuclear missiles. He was, famously, unable to do this and ended up having to time travel to achieve his goal. It would have been nice to find that Supergirl was able to succeed here in stopping both, rather than having to rely on being bailed out by her male co-worker instead. Indeed, Supergirl's decisions here are morally dubious; she concentrated on the bomb that had more personal consequences than the one that was more dangerous. (An aside - how could Maxwell Lord have predicted she'd make that decision? If you recall, the only reason she does so is because Carter is on board, which was entirely unpredictable. Unless - did... did Maxwell Lord send a car to fetch Carter from the office? :) ). However, this isn't a flaw as such, and the superhuman abilities revealed by Hank here serve to advance the arc storyline - I'm just noting that it looks like a missed opportunity.

Supergirl's apparent lack of invulnerability comes up again in an emphasised manner. Firstly, she shouldn't be harmed by the bomb or the fall at all, since neither involve Kryptonite or a comparable-to-Kryptonian level of physical force. But let's accept that she isn't as invulnerable as Kryptonians classically are; when she is recovering from the fall, it is mentioned that it is something that would have given her cousin pause, with the clear implication that Clark is more invulnerable than Kara is.

Now, I can accept that not all Kryptonians are equal. Assuming standard gender biases, all else being equal I could accept that Clark is tougher and more invulnerable than Kara, the same way that human males tend to be stronger than human females (and even ignoring gender, classically Clark is a big, powerful looking gent, while Kara is a lot more slender and not supermodel tall). But there's a flip side - if that's true, then for much the same reasons Kara ought to be better than Clark in some ways. Since she's lighter, wouldn't it follow she could fly faster, or react more quickly? I'm wondering if the show is setting a dangerous precedent here in outright stating that Supergirl is a less powerful version of her cousin. We can accept she lacks experience, but this seems to be saying that even her potential is stunted by her unfortunate equivalent of dual X chromosomes.

A minor note - does it not strike anyone else as unlikely that the control obsessed Mama Bear Cat Grant wouldn't fire her less than adored assistant Kara over this? Certainly Carter wasn't hurt, but from Cat's perspective that was entirely just good luck - Kara had encouraged Cat to go, remember, by promising she'd look after Carter. However much I don't think the kid really needed a sitter, that was the premise of the episode, and it's tough to see how Kara could have failed much more completely here.

I could comment here on how Maxwell Lord is essentially Lex with the serial numbers filed off. Genius? Check. Billionaire? Check. Obsessed with a Kryptonian? Check. But in all fairness you could say the same about Brainiac too, and I feel that if Superman is allowed to have two very similar villains in his rogue's gallery, Supergirl should be allowed at least one. Canonically Maxwell Lord has these characteristics (plus possibly mind control, depending on where we are along in this history here), so we'll let this slide; it's nice to see that we have an overarcing villain, and by now I feel we must just accept the fact that this show is going to parallel Superman fairly closely as it certainly doesn't seem as if it has any intention of striking out in a new direction.

Why Pick On Supergirl?

There's a new superhero show, aired on CBS in the US (and on FoxTel in Australia), devoting itself to the adventures of Supergirl. As a big fan of the Marvel shows (mostly on Netflix in Australia - specifically Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Agent Carter, and to a lesser extent Agents of SHIELD) and a moderate fan of the DC shows (which are also currently on FoxTel for new episodes in Australia, such as The Flash and Arrow, and to a much lesser extent Smallville, although I do confess I watched all 10 seasons of the latter), this was a must watch for me as soon as I saw the pilot being advertised. I will confess that I was never really much of a fan of Supergirl in her comic form. I did see the (terrible) movie starring Helen Slater (who appears as Supergirl's foster mother in the current series), and I've read Crisis on Infinite Earths and Infinite Crisis, but basically I only know her comic book character on a fairly superficial level.

With that said, I would be utterly amazed to find that fans of her in the comics were less critical of the current television incarnation than I am.

Why pick on Supergirl? Am I suggesting that everything in The Flash or Arrow is awesome, or that there are no silly episodes of Agents of SHIELD? In a nutshell, because it's easy to find criticism of all of the latter, but most reviews of Supergirl appear to be largely positive. I find this somewhat baffling, as in my opinion Supergirl is a terrible show that, even only 5 episodes in (Australia is somewhat behind here), my wife and I watch only so we can criticise just how bad it is. There appears to be a niche here, and while I'm not the best qualified to fill it, fill it I shall regardless.

Because I've waited 5 episodes to get around to this, and because FoxTel (unlike Netflix) only keeps around the most recent episodes, I'm going to have to wait to give an in depth critique of the first 4 episodes. In this post, therefore, I'll cover the general problems with the series, and the specific episode criticisms will begin with episode 5 next post.

There are two obvious problems that anyone that wants to make a show about Supergirl will have to address.

Firstly, the show's star cannot help but be viewed as derivative, as she is derivative. There would be no Supergirl without Superman, and her cousin gets all the attention. By its very nature, any show about Supergirl has to tackle this somehow, and there are a few routes that could be chosen. One could deliberately make the show about the "scrappy underdog", embracing the fact that the heroine is constantly overshadowed by her more famous family member - although this is always going to be a tricky proposition for a Kryptonian protagonist. Alternately, one could strike out in a new direction and focus on what makes the heroine different from her cousin - ignoring the obvious gender distinction. These options are not exhaustive nor mutually exclusive, and the show does seem to be trying to mix both of these. I would argue, however, that the worst idea is to constantly remind the viewers that Superman exists, that he's better than the heroine, and that he can and will intervene "off screen" if his cousin fails. I am not suggesting that Superman should never be referenced, nor even that he should never appear, but that to fall back upon him as deus ex machina (in only the third episode of the series) invites all sorts of comparisons that cannot help but work against the heroine - it undermines her as a character, perhaps irrevocably, and removes the sense of agency (a problem all too familiar with female leads, but one that we could be forgiven for being unexpected in a show about Supergirl).

Secondly, the very name of the character is problematic. "Girl" as a noun applied to adult women is demeaning, an example of infantilisation, and utterly inappropriate in a show focussing on a female superhero - an all too rare vehicle. There is very little that the show can do about this; decades of history calling the character "Supergirl" cannot be shed because of political correctness no matter how inappropriate. The pilot recognises this problem and attempts to effectively "reclaim the word" by having Cat Grant proudly use it to describe herself, but it's far from clear this is effective. The parallel being drawn here is to compare it to the use of racial epithets that have been reclaimed in similar ways - as Tim Minchin famously proclaims, "Only a Ginger can call another Ginger Ginger." But the analogy is very imprecise; "girl" is not an offensive term in an of itself, but rather a patriarchal term when applied to adult women. The use of the term to demean women (even unconsciously) is all too common even in our politically correct environment when the use of racial epithets would be (rightly) frowned upon. The term does not need "reclaiming" as much as "replacing". I freely confess here that I can think of no real solution to this dilemma, however; there really is no choice but to call our heroine Supergirl, and assuming you're committed to the idea of an adult lead (not an unreasonable choice - we've already had 10 seasons of Smallville, after all) then you need to do something to explain why she would choose that moniker.

Both of these are fundamental issues that even the best writers would struggle to work around. As such, both can be overlooked, at least to an extent, since if you cannot get past these issues there is no show.

However, while I would like to simply acknowledge the issues and move on, the writers are making it very difficult to do this by constantly focussing on the issues and bringing them back into the foreground. The most obvious example here is that the show parasitises Superman for its main cast. We have Hank Henshaw, Cat Grant, Lucy Lane (Lois' sister), and especially Jimmy Olsen. Olsen, in particular, is a constant reminder of a better show we could be watching focussing on what appears to be a character that the writers would prefer to be writing about. Olsen's presence cannot help but remind us of Superman, and the fact that he's part of the main cast (in effect, part of Kara's "Scooby Gang") means that we are going to be reminded of this constantly. In episode 3 we find out that he is both able and willing to cast "Summon Better Protagonist" when our heroine is in trouble - it's true, Clark promises at the end of that episode that he won't be doing that again, but can they really put that genie back in the bottle? Even the opening narration of the show mentions Superman, as if we wouldn't be able to understand a show called Supergirl without reference to her more famous cousin; it practically screams inferiority complex.

For Smallville fans, the fact that Kara flies a lot is refreshing. Unfortunately, that's really about the only superpower she seems to demonstrate any consistency with. In the course of the first five episodes, we see Kara struggle to overpower several opponents with strength (it's certainly not true that Superman is stronger than everyone, but he's physically stronger than much of his rogue's gallery - it is a little galling that a guy in a mech suit can pose such a challenge to his cousin). Her heat vision and X ray vision appear to work OK, but her invulnerability appears to be highly limited. Kryptonite has yet to make an appearance in the series, and yet Kara has been frequently injured despite her invulnerability (in one case simply by a long fall, which ought not to cause her even bruising). And judging purely by the first 5 episodes I am forced to conclude she lacks her cousin's super speed entirely - she can fly reasonably quickly, but she apparently lacks the super reflexes and running speed. I am often forced to wonder if the special effects cost for the flight is so expensive that her other powers are too difficult to portray consistently. Certainly it is tough to present realistic challenges for an invulnerable superhero, but surely if you're not prepared to actually do that then you shouldn't tackle a show based around a Kryptonian in the first place. (And it must be noted that Smallville managed 10 seasons without discarding Clark's invulnerability, so I'm not overly impressed with the "it's too hard" argument).

I should take an aside to state that I do not find the casting problematic. Certainly Hank and James are canonically white, but they are hardly Aryan icons; colour blind casting is a good thing, and the performances of both Mehcad Brooks and David Harewood are perfectly competent. Callista Flockhart's Cat Grant is a very interesting and nuanced character, and Melissa Benoist in the lead role seems to be doing the best she can given the quality of the material she has to work with.

Furthermore, there are some obvious problems I could cite that I will not, because they are genre necessities. For example, it is naturally ridiculous that Cat could interview Supergirl and never realise that she is actually her personal assistant (even if you want to suggest that Cat never really looks at Kara, her son most certainly doesn't have that excuse, nor do any of the other reporters working for her). Similarly, I don't think too many flying heroes (of either gender) would agree that a skirt was a good costume choice, and even with superspeed (which I don't think Kara has) putting on pantyhose or stockings isn't the sort of thing you want to be doing in a hurry. But I don't think Clark could really wear those red boots under his shoes, either, so I'm going to let that slide. Either you accept the genre's conventions, or you do not - we're here to talk about Supergirl, not superhero tropes in general.

Lastly, I'm not going to bang on too much about problems that the writers didn't create. It's unbelievably heartless that Clark would just drop off his cousin at an orphanage to be adopted, but that's canonically what actually happened in the comics. One of those little dirty secrets in the House of El, that they don't bring up at family gatherings. The symbol being for the House of El rather than an S is also something that is basically the canonical explanation now (however coincidental it is that it just happens to look like the first letter of her code name).

With all the above in mind, could you still make an enjoyable show? Well, of course you could; few shows are flawless. Does Supergirl manage to transcend its flaws, then? Join me in looking at each episode, while we find out together. :)