Supergirl TV show on CBS

Completely agree, the dialogue and story makes me cringe.

I’m happy they aren’t doing krypton-prison-monster-of-the-week. That would make a poor show even worse. Move the plot along, by all means. Just write a better plot.

They’re actually filming this right now at the Redondo Beach pier where I work. Something about a van and I saw a few FBI agents.

After three episodes, I’m solidly in the “meh for now, hope it improves” camp. I’ve got lots of practice ignoring the lack of realism issues, and the special effects are nicely done for TV. Plenty of cheesy dialog too, sadly, but some of it is funny. My big problem with the show to this point is characterization. Other than Alex Danvers, everyone is a one-dimensional caricature: tech nerd, cool artist, hardass military dude, whatever. I’m OK with that in some cases (Cat Grant) but it doesn’t work at all for Jimmy or Winn. Maybe it’ll follow the Agents of SHIELD trajectory and get good after a rough start.

I thought they did a pretty good job this week of using Superman without him actually appearing on screen (except as a blurry outline). They’re kinda hitting us over the head with the “she’s her own independent person” theme, but I don’t mind it too much. If you’re going to do a Supergirl series, you have to deal with Superman somehow, and the sooner the better.

I’m mildly ashamed of myself for not realizing until this week that DEO Director Hardass is named Hank Henshaw, aka the Cyborg in the comic universe.

I suppose I should feel more ashamed than I am that I watch this. The show feels like it hasn’t ‘clicked’ yet…still finding its feet. I’m getting tired of Kara essentially using “I don’t know what I want to be yet” as an excuse…show us how she finds herself and her place in the world, not whine about it. This week’s episode really felt ‘CWed up’ with the romance and teen banter, but I should have expected it. I do hope, as well, that they pull an Agents of Shield and start taking risks…push boundaries.

P.S. For someone that is supposed to have super speed, she sure took a lot of energy blasts over and over and over…

She should just carry around a flimsy car door for that sort of thing. It seemed to be pretty impervious.

Also, it seemed a bit incongruous that she blames Olsen for not having faith in her, immediately after recovering from an energy-blast-induced coma. I want my flying invulnerable super-strength heroine to have a bit more of a realistic perspective.

I can’t help but like the actress, she’s so perfect for the role. And the general Silver Age tone of the thing is quite nice, and the fx are great. It’s just a shame the dialogue and relationship convolutions are so twee and nothing anyone does makes any sense :(

This really is the key to the show’s appeal, isn’t it? Melissa Benoist is just so darn winsome. Everything else in the show has that fake network TV sheen. It’s glossy, superficial, predictable, repetitive. But Benoist’s charisma outshines it all. I don’t imagine the show is long for this world – their ratings have been dropping each week and CBS can’t be happy – but I’m glad it introduced me to a really good actress who I look forward to seeing in other stuff.

Yeah, twee is such a perfect word for it.

By the way, you can tell Clark and Kara are from another planet by the way they text each other, using full words and none of the usual text argot. No human being would ever text that way!

-Tom

I’m looking forward to when Corp IT reviews the IM logs and sees that last exchange. “WTF…?”

Like the rest of you, I’m enjoying watching the actress, but the show is ringing hollow for me right now. I enjoyed that Supergirl makes this speech about how, since she grew up on Krypton, she knows how to speak to someone about loss. I figured “oh, cool, so they are going to come from the direction that Superman punches first ask questions later, but Supergirl tries diplomacy and empathy”…and it immediately fails and she has to resort to slugging it out with Junkyard Ironman.

My 14-year-old is having second thoughts about committing to this show. She now opines that it’s “pretty cheesy”… which could be the kiss of death. I asked her to expand on that, and she pointed to the bare-stone walls of the secret government agency’s lair – “Who does that? You’d put up walls, right?”

Awesome.

THere’s also the inherent problem of Superman/girl’s superpowers being completely uninteresting. Unless kryptonite! I’m sure I don’t need to hash that out in front of all you nerds. But, yeah, since pretty much every encounter with bad guys has come down to punching, it doesn’t seem like the writers have any interesting solutions to the Superman Dilemma.

Ouch. Hear that, CBS? You’re not grabbing either of your target demographics: nerds who appreciate Melissa Benoists’ considerable charm, and tween girls.

-Tom

It seems that CBS hasn’t yet learned the lesson everyone else has been learning - get actually good scripts and get them performed by actually good actors (although the actors are ok in this), with actually good cinematography, fx, etc., and have it all put together by actually good directors - IOW treat superhero stuff with the same respect you’d treat anything else - and it does very well.

So you’re saying I’m from another planet? I like the sound of that.

As for the show, while I appreciate it wants to set a certain tone, and Supergirl herself does sell that well, I agree with everyone that the scripts are lacking. While I do try to resist my tendency to pick nits, and the light tone and theming mean I do give it wider berth, this is pushing against the limits for me. I don’t really watch TV, but my wife has a high tolerance for terrible. So she’ll probably keep watching while I do what I normally do when she watches TV, something else.

Side question:

Isn’t Carol Danvers Ms. Marvel?

I was thinking the same thing when, in the pilot, it is revealed that Kara was raised by the Danvers and not the Kents. I just assumed it was the show’s way of kind of sticking it to Marvel.

Supergirl’s secret identity as Linda Danvers was established a long time ago. Wikipedia says "Linda was adopted by Fred and Edna Danvers in 1961, becoming “Linda Lee Danvers.” Also according to Wikipedia, Carol Danvers first made a Marvel comics appearance in 1968. I assume neither side meant to cause any kind of confusion, although you never know.

So they kept the Danvers name for this show, but decided it was easier to just call her Kara rather than have an “Earth name” of Linda and a “Krypton name” of Kara. I doubt the Marvel use of the Danvers name had anything to do with it. Had they actually used “Carol” for one of the sisters, then maybe it would be a poke at Marvel, but as it is, not likely.

I got caught up on this today. It’s fun, stupid as FUCK, but fun. I’ll likely keep with it.

Perd Hapley!

The story of my interest level is: It’s medium!

I thought tonight’s episode was a step up, though that’s not saying a whole lot given what the first 3 have been like. Seemed to flow better, anyway. I thought Live Wire was fairly well done, as comic book villainy goes, though it would have been nice for Leslie to be established as a background annoyance for a few episodes first. The humanization of Cat seems premature, but then, everything in this show’s story progression has been moving at breakneck speed.

It seems that CBS hasn’t yet learned the lesson everyone else has been learning - get actually good scripts and get them performed by actually good actors (although the actors are ok in this), with actually good cinematography, fx, etc., and have it all put together by actually good directors - IOW treat superhero stuff with the same respect you’d treat anything else - and it does very well.

CBS treats its other shows with respect? I thought it just churned out generic crime procedurals and shitty comedies?

I’m with you there. Forget about her superpowers, she’s super, super, attractive.

I noticed Perd too! His casting was my favorite part of the show so far.