I thought Melissa Benoist was gorgeously adorkable as Kara/Supergirl. The “devil Wears Prada” boss wasn’t TOO obnoxious; Cat Grant was a tough boss but she had some justifications and reasoning plus Calista Flockhart played it very well (for some reason I was thinking that was Sarah Michelle Gellar, whu?). The speech about “girl” was decent.
I liked the Jimmy Olsen character too, he was pretty charming and had good rapport with Kara. The IT guy seems extraneous.
On the other hand, I thought the whole bit with the Kryptonian prison ship was weak. Superman hasn’t been working the past 20 years rounding them up? Is he just hanging around off camera so Supergirl has someone to live up to? I think the trend of giving the heroes and villains origins that are tied together can be weak of not played well. Sure it gives Supergirl a responsibility to get them because she was nominally responsible, but sometimes a villain can be just a villain. Plus Vartox killed himself. Why Vartox, why?
So all the pieces are set up for the storylines and arcs, and the show had a decent start. I think they just need to dial back a bit on the nasty boss and the “what it takes to be a girl hero” stuff. Nobody did that to Superman did they?
I enjoyed it with reservations. Dammit, everyone knows that her earthly name is Linda Lee, not Kara. Just one more set of the “LL” initials that populate Superman’s world.
Melissa Benoist should be in the dictionary under cute. She’s simply adorable and born to play this part.
I have a hard time believing Kara didn’t let herself fly on occasion. Who could resist?
The origin story is at odds with the classic DC Argo City story but on the whole unimportant to the story. As we all know, every superhero movie or television series must start with the origin.
But really, Supergirl needs her sister to tell her to keep fighting the guy with the axe? I would think survival would be enough. And if I was Kara, I’d say “next time I’ll let your plane crash you ungrateful bitch” to her sister.
What’s up with not letting cousin Kal-El appear in full? Contract issues with DC. I mean, they own both characters, why not license them both? And why isn’t Superman rounding up those Kryptonians?
The show seemed a little weak, especially by the end. But I seem more miss than hit with the Super Hero shows. I like The Flash, Agents of Shield & Agent Carter so far, the rest don’t work for me. She seems to have a large group already that know her identity. Why the IT guy and where did he get the extra tough fabrics from? Just weird but minor.
If I am not mistaken her step-parents were a former Super Girl (Helen Slater) and a former Super Man. (Dean Cain).
I don’t know the mythos of Supergirl, is the evil aunt from one of the comic book arcs?
I enjoyed it and I think it will be a father/daughter thing to watch with my 10 year old.
Is it just me or did they go to great lengths to avoid using the name Superman? There was a few Kal Els, some "Big Guy"s, a lot of “He” and "Him"s but no Supermans that I remember. It was conspicuous enough that it kind of took me out of the show a bit.
I liked it. It was bright and fun like the Flash which I also like. The weakest part was all the serialized elements they felt like they had t set up. I would be fine with Supergirl just kicking butt and taking names each week (with maybe some two parters etc.).
I thought it was kinda terrible. It was just a big bundle of tired cliches. Do we really need another “girl is unsure of being a superhero because she’s a girl” narrative? Did the bad guy really need to be yet another “in my culture girls can’t be warriors” misogynist asshole?
The non-threatening but cute IT guy who, not so secretly, is in love with the main character needs to go, soon. I did like Calista Flockhart’s character. There’s a whiff of competence to her that usually isn’t there in the “bitchy lady boss” character.
The absence of Superman is really noticeable and it’s really clear they don’t want the character anywhere near this show. He’s Superman for gods sake. He can be to China and back before lunch. He could easily have a five minute face to face with his only living relative. Instead he sends a inexplicably handsome and self confident Jimmy Olsen in his stead. I haven’t read Superman comics in a long time but the Olsen i remember was more lanky nerdy guy. When did that change?
I felt this show has the same problem as the Flash: everything is spelled out and nothing implied or left to subtext. For example: Did we really need the sister character to give a speech about her jealousy of Supergirl? Was there really no other way to convey that information?
Another example the ending scene where Supergirl’s aunt spells out her plans for earth. Maybe there could have been little mystery there? Maybe leave the audience to wonder a tiny bit why Supergirl’s mom is seemingly evil. But no, it needs to be absolutely clear she’s her aunt.
I liked it well enough to start watching The Flash and Arrow, which I hadn’t been a regular watcher of before. Same producers, and although there aren’t likely to be crossovers at first, they’re presumably in the same TV universe. As for teasing us by mentioning Superman, but not showing him, the producers acknowledge the relationship, but ultimately the show is about Supergirl. According to executive producer Ali Adler:
I liked it. I’m so glad that there isn’t a superhero show that isn’t trying to outdo the rest as to how dark they can be.
I thought it was a cute idea not to mention Superman by name. It did suffer from pilotitis, since so much had to be set up (though I did like that they got her origin over in the first ten minutes).
None of the changes to the mythology bothered me. Given the setup, calling her “Kara” made sense (she was younger than the original Supergirl – I remember the comic well), and there was no reason to change her first name.
Having the big bad the evil twin sister of Kara’s mother is an interesting idea. Kara is emotionally attached to her mother, and seeing her twin is going to create all sorts of tension.
There are a lot of things I didn’t like, but overall at the end of the show it was good enough to watch the next episode. Melissa Benoist does the character well, if there’s fault to be found it’s not in her.
I found it charming…which can be the death knell to a series (I’m not certain if my finding it that way, or if it is that way rings that bell). I was also buried in featured secondary characters. Something which may, or may not spread the subplots a bit thin.
I liked the episode. It had some pilot problems, with super clunky exposition, especially her voiceover at the beginning, but nothing too terribly bad. I was somewhat skeptical about a superhero show on CBS, but so many reviews were good and I’m glad I watched.
I really liked Kara/Supergirl, she was perfectly cast. Her coworker friend who has a crush on her could be fun or annoying; his line about her being a lesbian was super awkward. I really hope that they don’t lay it on too thick with the love triangle stuff, because that stuff was the worst part of the first season of The Flash. Although it does have one advantage over The Flash, in that both of Kara’s potential love interests know her secret identity, instead of the hurdles that were jumped through to keep things secret from Iris on The Flash.
I really liked Calista Flockhart, I don’t know how realistic she is as a media mogul, but she fit in well, and did the bitchy boss thing perfectly. The conversation about Supergirl/Superwoman was weird though, I don’t know if we are supposed to agree with the boss and think “Girl power yeah!” or think that she didn’t quite get the point. I understand that they felt a need to address the “girl” part of the name, since Supergirl was introduced in 1959 and times were different then, but that just felt awkward.
If you liked Supergirl, you should definitely check out The Flash, it’s similar in it’s fun and the excitement about being a superhero. Arrow is also good, but much darker.
The dancing around about Superman was somewhat awkward, but it was the pilot and they were setting things up, so hopefully it will be better as it goes on. The comparison to Veep makes a lot of sense. I can see that they don’t want Superman overshadowing Supergirl. And it’s probably hard to cast for, and they wouldn’t want to spend all that time finding the perfect Superman and just use him for one or two quick scenes.
I’m quite sure that they said “Superman” once and only once, when he was taking her out of her pod, right before giving her to her adoptive family. Definitely odd.
I agree with most of the criticisms of this episode, but on the plus side many of them are somewhat specific to a pilot episode. So hopefully future episodes will have more of what’s charming and less of what’s clunky.
I’m pretty sure “hey, where is Superman during all of this?” is just something that we’re going to have to stop asking, much like “how is Barry Allen so totally terrible at using his powers?”.
I’ve never watched any of these shows or followed the Superman mythos which I think is an advantage. For some reason I decided to watch this. I guess I liked it. I’ll watch it again. What kind of bothered me is that I’ve seen Super Girl being held up as a role model for young girls, yet she can’t do amazing things unless she unleashes her super powers. When she’s herself she doesn’t have much self-esteem. What’s the message? You have to have super powers to be confident and do awesome things? One of the “awesome things” was putting an axe through a Bad Guy’s chest. I’m not sure how I feel about that, either.
Speaking of coworker friend, did he trip anyone else’s gaydar? Halfway through the episode, when it became clear that he’s desperately in love with Kara, my wife and I looked at each other and said, “But I thought he was gay…”
