Supergirl S01E01 Review: Fetching Coffee

Supergirl, Season 1, Episode 1: Pilot

Supergirl is a show that I was absolutely soured towards thanks to all the promotion. By rights it should be a show I enjoy -- it's another show about a DC superhero, one of the flashier ones even, and as a kid I really liked Supergirl from both the cartoons and the comic-books. This show should've really appealed to me. But the original trailers basically painted this show as something that's basically the most generic chick flick ever, but with superheroes. And while you can have superhero stories take place in various genres (Ant-Man is a heist movie, Jessica Jones is a noir detective show, Guardians of the Galaxy is a space opera, Agent Carter is a period piece) it's a different thing trying to shove in as many overtly-girly tropes and 'look at us being feminists' lines into a TV show. And, well, it's one thing to be feminist and to have gender equality in the show, but it's another thing to bludgeon viewers in the head with as much subtlety as an explosion in a Michael Bay movie.

Yes, granted, a show shouldn't be judged merely on the standards of whether it meets the criteria for being a satisfactorily feminist show. And it's unfair to judge an entire series after watching a pilot episode, which have generally been hit-and-miss as far as most TV shows go. But man, this pilot is absolutely underwhelming. They've shoved in so many cliches into this episode that I'm honestly not quite sure what to make of it.

It's one thing to have a character be treated unfairly due to her gender -- it's a fair topic to pursue, even if shows like Agent Carter are less than subtle about portraying it. It's another thing for Supergirl's first episode to have Kara whine about how she got into CatCo simply because the founder is the most powerful woman businessman or another. Or to have Kara go on a rant about how she should be called Superwoman because of -insert the most blase feminist speech-. Or to have Kara and/or Alex go "why, is it because I'm a WOMAN?" Or to have the villain come from a utterly cartoonishly stupid "in my world women bow to men" alien. Again, it's a pilot episode and I shouldn't be too hard on it, but man, there's lack of subtlety, and there's this. 

In retrospect watching this pilot episode mere days after I finish Jessica Jones -- a superhero show also starring a woman and tackling mature topics with a female-dominant main cast yet doesn't stoop so low as to insult its viewers' intelligence by going all "so you think I can't take him because I'm a woman?" The fact that the writers think those lines exist to make viewers root for Supergirl really does the opposite job of trying to show a powerful female character and instead highlight what seems to be the character's subconscious feel of inadequacy... something that really shouldn't be. 

Anyway, all that talk about handling feminism with the subtlety of a piledriver aside, the pilot episode itself... well, it's underwhelming, just like most pilot episodes. 

The action scenes are cool, though, and other than my displeasure at colouring Supergirl's heat vision blue (what the actual fuck, visual effects people) most of it has been pretty cool. You've got Supergirl flying around in all the Superman poses, absolutely obliterating that truck by flying in front of it, and even saving a plane as the episode's highlight point. That plane rescue was pretty cool.

I also don't have much problems with Supergirl herself, or, well, Kara Danvers as she's known. Her backstory pilfers mostly from the post-Crisis Kara Zor-El version of the character (if I start discussing the many many women to have taken the mantle Supergirl we'll be here all day) though with the twist that Superman let her grow up with the Danvers family. Like the comics, though, despite departing Krypton at an older age than Kal-El, she arrived on Earth stuck at the same teenaged age while her cousin's grown into this icon and protector of the planet. It's just that all this backstory is delivered in gigantic chunks of exposition. And while it makes clear the whole concept behind how Supergirl is born before Kal-El but is younger, it does feel a bit inelegant how the show just drops all the backstory in one go.

The structure of the episode also suffers. While Kara's actress does an adequate job at portraying a cheerful young woman with self-worth and self-esteem issues -- her big conflict this episode is whether she's good enough to be a hero like her cousin, and everyone around her seems intent on putting her down. It's just that the way it's handled is so cliched. Kara gets discouraged, gives up, side character gives her a pep talk, she comes back. And it's done so rapidly without room to breathe.

The scenes in Cat Co. are also pretty much padding and if this is going to be the selling point and the location where most of the scenes take place, I don't really like it. Cat Grant, Jimmy Olsen and Winnslow Schott are all based on actual characters from Superman comics, but none of them behave anything at all like the characters they're based on, but rather fit the cookie-cutter moulds of characters from a girly romance show. Winnslow Schott, otherwise known as the gimmicky classic villain Toyman to DC fans, is the most generic awkward nice-guy in the friendzone ever. Cat Grant, who's a reporter and a close friend to Clark Kent, is the most stereotypical rich bitch ever, though this version of Cat is at least entertaining enough.

And Jimmy Olsen? Jimmy is one of the most iconic characters in Superman lore. Hell, in most adaptations Jimmy generally gets in before Supergirl does. And the core of his character is that he's this geeky nice guy, a sharp contrast from Superman being, well, Superman. Yet the two are best buddies. I don't mind the race lift... but really, they turn Jimmy Olsen into this... big handsome dude that's obviously the 'nice hot jock' foil to Winnslow's 'friendzoned nerd'? They really should've cast someone that fit to the mould of 'Jimmy Olsen, but black' instead of casting a random supermodel-level black dude. Honestly beyond the affirmations that, yes, Jimmy Olsen knew Superman and hails from Metropolis, you'd be hard-pressed to know that this is supposed to be Jimmy Olsen. None of the Cat Co. crew really interest me.

Yeah, I'll go with what the show does and call him James instead. He's clearly not meant to be the same character.

The main plot of this episode is Kara breaks out her superpowers to save the crashing plane with her foster sister, Alexandra Danvers, on it... and ends up being thrust into the spotlight. This ends up to her being hunted down by two parties, namely your standard MIB-expy DEO (Department of Extranormal Operations) and by a group of alien criminals who just happens to have it out for Kara's mother. Apparently when Kara's ship went out of the Phantom Zone, it dragged along a Kryptonian prison with it, unleashing the alien criminals contained within it onto Earth.

And while it's cool that they're incorporating pieces from DC lore so early in the game like the Phantom Zone and the Kryptonian criminals trapped there, it also doesn't really hold up to inspection. Why hasn't these alien criminals been active from the moment of Kara's crash-landing and chose only to be active now? Why are there aliens that aren't Kryptonians in a Kryptionian prison? Why hasn't Superman hunted down these criminals? 

It's an easy way to provide Kara with a steady supply of villains, though, and it's apparently being commanded by Kara's aunt so there's some kind of organization and hierarchy. There's also some semblance of a far-reaching plot with them apparently having a mysterious plan or some shit going on. It's fine. The throwaway starter villain, Vartox, who's just an alien villain who comes from an culture where MEN RULE (-groan-) with a Star Trek prosthetic head protrusion. Vartox's absolutely generic, has generic powers to let him go toe-to-toe with Supergirl, although at least he doesn't dress or look anything like his comic counterpart, pictured here. Seeing that shit in live action... ugh.

The DEO is headed by Hank Henshaw, better known to DC fans as Cyborg Superman (or sometimes just the Cyborg, but that'll confuse you with the Victor Stone version of Cyborg). Who's a gigantic psychopath that blew up Hal Jordan's city. And, well, Hank Henshaw here... is your generic authoritative figure that initially seems like an asshole that hits all the asshole tropes. "Go back to fetching coffee!" Man, the quality of scripting in this show is atrocious.

Alexandra Danvers (who as far as I know isn't based on a character from the comics) is a fun character, Supergirl's foster sister and the two bounce dialogue off each other pretty well, and it's a nice plot twist that Alex ends up being apparently a kickass superspy as part of the DEO. We get another juvenile "am I in this organization because my sister is an alien" self-worth plotline, but it's handled with more elegance and resolves itself more subtly at the end of the episode. 

Also the DEO has access to Kryptonite dart-guns and clamps, enough to hold Supergirl down. Yeah, they're going hard and fast at establishing elements of the lore, which is a point in its direction.

I'm also pleased with the amount of Superman references here. Obviously they can't show Superman's face, and the shots are angled to make sure that the glare of the sun obscures the Man of Steel, or we only see part of his body or the picture is too zoomed-out to make his features, but Supergirl's takeoff-from-Krypton truly incorporates all the elements with Kal-El, which is nice. We also get references to Superman being an icon in Metropolis, being best buddies with Jimmy Olsen, his first outing as Superman being a plane rescue, we get references to the Daily Planet and all that. Superman, by virtue of being, y'know, Superman, also casts a pretty long shadow.

I think I'd be remiss not to mention that they try their very best to avoid naming Superman and use strange euphemisms... but I'm told it's just for the duration of the pilot. Good, because they handle 'not saying Superman's name' with the subtlety of a brick to the face, and it gets absolutely annoying. 

Also apparently Superman asks Jimmy James to keep an eye out for Kara Danvers if she should decide to be a hero, which is kind of a dick move on Superman to Kara, revealing her identity like that, and to James, basically forcing him to change where he work just in case Kara decides to go super-heroing... awfully convenient that Vartox decides to attack a plane around the same time that James moves into National City, yeah?

National City. Ugh. I hate typing that name. Yes, they have to set this away from Metropolis to have Supergirl have her own city, but bullshit like Star City, Central City and Coast City get leeway because they were named like, in the 60's or something. National City has no such excuse. 

Overall, though, it's more of a cliche storm than anything, with a lot of the burden falling squarely on shitty scripting and an over-reliance on cliches and girly-show tropes. I can't deny that I absolutely appreciate all the comic book nods, though that does not immediately make a show good. The episode definitely lost my attention several times when it's just blathering about random stuff which is the opposite of what a pilot episode should do. It definitely doesn't deserve the rave reviews that the internet seems to give it -- just because a show stars a woman doesn't mean every single feminist in the world needs to be fan dumb and go 'rah rah awesome show'. That goes to the people that think every single superhero show is good, too. It's not unwatchable and has decent moments, in no small part helped by the fact that Kara's actress is a genuinely fun lead, but it has a long, long way to go before it becomes a properly good TV show.

We'll see if I can give enough of a shit to watch episode two.