Supergirl S01E03 Review: Co-starring Clark

Supergirl, Season 1, Episode 3: Fight or Flight

Now I know I have been bashing Supergirl for a fair bit for the past two episodes about its rather slipshod writing and its poor handling of sexism or feminism or what have you. And it's a fair criticism, in my opinion -- because this episode shows how you can properly do commentary on sexism during the interview between Supergirl and Cat Grant, with Cat going all "are you planning on starting a family?" and Supergirl just delivers a simple, damning answer with "nobody ever asks my cousin these questions." No need for a full rant that lasts a minute, no need for obvious 'is it because I'm A WOMAN' line with punctuated emphasis. Just well-crafted, well-timed dialogue that's not in my face all the time. Granted it's not the best way to throw in another feminist line a minute into the episode, but it's subtle enough not to be annoying. Baby steps, people.

This episode is easily the strongest of the three episodes I've watched so far. Scripting has improved, and trimming away some of the weaker points from the previous episode -- Astra in general, one-dimensional gimmick villains, boring DEO scenes and obligatory feminist rants -- have certainly improved this episode to be, well, relatively enjoyable and up to the par set by other superhero shows. 

That doesn't mean that this episode isn't without its flaws, of course, but those annoy me a fair bit less than the ones from the first two episodes and are far more tolerable. The whole girl flick complicated romance web thing is definitely being set up and I have no interest in shit like that, but it appeals to someone (and more importantly, the main intended demographic of this show) and so far it's not distracting enough, so I don't mind too much.

Now the main theme of this episode is Supergirl trying to be her own person, be her own hero, without needing help from Superman... so ironically the villain of the week is someone who has had encounters with Superman before. Superman himself makes an appearance later down the episode to further bruise Kara's ego, despite her insistence that she needs to strike out on her own and just be Supergirl without being beholden under her cousin's shadow.

Now, granted, logically speaking it's a completely moronic move as why would you intentionally cripple yourself for a sense of self-gratification? What if, say, because Supergirl flies in half-cocked like she did, Reactron kills her or a bunch of civilians? Why not have Superman and Supergirl work together until, well, Supergirl irons out her inexperience? Of course it can't really work in context of a show that's only limited to showing Superman from the back or obscured with lens flare or via text messages, but I really thought the rather petulant 'I need to do this on by own because I'm independent' seems to generally go against the grain of the message of teamwork that these superhero shows generally teach.

Especially since, what do you know, Supergirl only ends up defeating Reactron with teamwork and the help of James, Alex and Henshaw. 

I get it, Supergirl wants to be the hero the way his cousin is, and that she wants to build up a sense of self-esteem especially since Cat Grant's bitchiness seems to be focused on tearing her confidence down and comparing her to Superman, but really it kind of undermines the whole 'I am independent' bit of Supergirl when she can't, y'know, handle Cat Grant's massive amounts of criticism.

Also, whatever the fuck happened to the 'accepting help on Krypton' speech that Kara herself gave last episode? It's not too far of a stretch that Kara's just being bullheaded in her attempt to prove herself, but still.

Yet it ends up being all right, because of Main Character Syndrome and by the end of the episode she proves that, well, she can too be an adult and beat up psychotic nuclear-powered armoured men. It's just that the way the show goes about it is pretty roundabout and kinda hypocritical.

Reactron is a fun, appropriate villain for this episode, too. Vartox and Hellgrammite are just generic monsters, and Astra is just bland all around. By giving Reactron a backstory, it really puts him way above just another villain of the week. Sure, he's still flat, but the fact that he's actively hunting Supergirl for personal reasons -- to hurt her cousin -- really works well thematically with Supergirl trying to strike out independently from Superman. The fact that Superman apparently couldn't beat him is rather on-the-nose, but hey, whatever works.

The action scenes are still good, too, with Reactron's nuclear blasts and whatnot making him a somewhat credible threat against Supergirl. Reactron is a pretty significant character thanks to certain actions concerning New Krypton in the more modern Supergirl comics, so it's nice to see him around here, showing that they're not just going to randomly pick obscure Superman villains.

Speaking of visuals, despite the nice action scenes and nuclear blasts and flight and whatnot, the bit with the molten lead just kinda looked really bad.

Also holy crap I try not to be annoyed by it, but the blue heat vision really pisses me off.

Superman, of course, ends up rescuing Kara during the midway point. Which, while the show makes a point to cause Kara to explode at James and have James apologize so badly and admit that he's a coward... isn't a bad thing. Because if Superman hadn't intervened at that point, Kara would be super-duper independent... and also fucking dead. Yes, it's a dick move for sure for James to not have faith in Kara and press the big red button on his watch (which, I have to note, delightfully looks so retro) to summon big cousin. But doing it because she's inexperienced and fighting a villain that's implied to have defeated or at least escaped Superman before is a pretty good reason.

Thankfully the show doesn't really try to villify Superman for his rescue of Kara, and just pops in to add the self-esteem drama. I do like the show cheekily explaining his lack of concern and hanging around after Kara's been nuclear-blasted to the face by having him go deal with a volcano or some shit, and I definitely like how Superman, or, well, Clark ends up still being able to have lines via text-messages. It's a nice and welcome cheat, if you may, to allow Clark to interact with Kara while still following the show's mandate of never giving him a single spoken line or show his face. Because, well, without this short scene of interaction and a nice gesture of faith (and smileys!) Clark really ends up looking like a douche who doesn't even care enough to give his cousin the time of the day and tells his best friend to do it for him. Good show, that small texting scene.

Cat is still insane and treads the line between entertaining and irritating with such grace. She leans a lot more towards the former mostly because the show dials down more on her insane brand of bitchiness and has her just make unreasonable demands like moving that poor ginger out of the way, and the whole 'I am a writer' and subsequent coffee scenes are quite funny.

James is a bit better, but still uneven. The ship tease with Kara oh-so-obviously reacting to every single person that mentions Jimmy Olsen is an obvious indication that they're going to milk this love-triangle-square for all it's worth. James summoning Superman, again, really shouldn't be villified, and balls for him running around to distract Reactron, but right now he doesn't really have much going on for him other than look handsome and be, well, the Superman substitute. His position as Superman's best friend makes him kinda like this middle-man and he says all the things that Superman should probably say to her, while taking all the blame because James is the one that presses the button. He's the experienced one of the CatCo team, though for whatever moronic reason spills Clark's identity to Winslow all by accident. All the while we've got James's own self-worth problems to deal with and how he's so scared all the time and it ends up being kinda cluttered and messy. 

Not to mention, well, the whole love triangle thing. Oh, who would've known that James has an old girlfriend that drove all the way from Metropolis to see him? The role of James' old squeeze is taken by Lucy Lane, who, in fact, was the general go-to romantic interest for Jimmy Olsen in the old Silver Age stories. She ends up marrying Ron Troupe (who, rather hilariously, is a black Daily Planet reporter) in the comics, but we'll see how it'll go here. 

Winslow ends up building this secret monitor base in an abandoned room in CatCo and just keeps trying so hard to get out of the friendzone while James just so effortlessly cuts in dances and interrupts his explanations. Fucking Winslow is really what Jimmy Olsen should act like, not this James Olsen fellow. It's bad enough when you rewrite a relatively iconic character to be the exact opposite of what he traditionally is, but you're just being moronic when you include another character with basically the same personality as what you just written out.

I really have no interest in the pairings at all, in no small part because of how the characters' behaviour are just cliched caricatures of the friendzoned nice friend, the pretty nice girl and the handsome confident awesome dude. Very trope-y.

Alex gets some cute sister-y moments, but the show dials down on the flat DEO scenes and lines and makes her a lot more interesting. Hank Henshaw still is mysterious with his sinister glowing red eyes but ends up helping Supergirl. Nothing too exciting to write home about.

Maxwell Lord's introduction is... underwhelming. It's clear that they just want to establish Maxwell Lord as this billionaire first before delving into whatever sinister plan he may have cooked up, and they seem to go for a more jackass-y version of Tony Stark or Bruce Wayne. Sure, he's rich and he's super-brilliant and he's smarter than the scientists he employs and he's altruistic enough to let Reactron kidnap him instead of his employees, but he also fires people randomly and generally acts like such a smarmy tit especially with the big reveal that, hey, he says Superman saves him! How freaking childish. Also, Cat Grant totally owns him in being a smarmy tit department, so he ends up being underwhelming.

Also there's that future train thing that's probably going to help turn National City to resemble the City of Tomorrow that's associated with Superman in the comics. Even though that title belongs to Metropolis and not the awfully named National City.

All in all there's a lot of things going on against this episode, but they're nowhere in the quantity or severity that hurt the first two episodes. And, yes, it is just the third episode. It's far more palatable and interesting than the first two, that's for sure, and I do really hope the show improves beyond this. Because the really childish 'Supergirl is bummed out because no one gives her credit' plotline is really wearing thin after three episodes, and honestly don't you want to break the stereotypical mould that women only care about how the world perceives them? This is a step backward from that. But hey, credit where credit's due... it's a decent episode. I wasn't pissed off like how I was while watching the first two.