Decapitations are MUCH harder to do than movies and TV would have you believe. Ask Mary Stewart. A thrust on the other hand is surprisingly easy. Assuming the sword is basically a backup weapon, it makes sense to go for the thrust if possible as it has a better chance of a kill, rather than the training it would take to pull off a clean decapitation.
Fully agreed, but in order to do that they need to keep the threats contained to National City.
A dozen Kryptonians who plan to <unspecified> the entire human race doesn’t qualify as a local threat. Every superhero in the DC Universe should be rallying to defend against them, and their combined might should just barely succeed. And even that would be implausible.
A dozen Kryptonians in a military hierarchy should pretty much lay waste to the entire planet, with Supergirl, Superman, Martian Manhunter, the Flash and whoever else combined presenting little more than a speed bump. It’s basically 12 on 3, counting every non-Kryptonian together as worth 1 Kryptonian.
Yes, I’m finding the dozen Kryptonians actually being impeded in any way by just Supergirl to be a leeetle much. Even Supergirl + Manhunter. My thinking, currently, is “Supes shows up for Reactron? But this, he’s nowhere? Must be off-planet again :rolleyes:”
I sure hope not, because if so I’m going to be incredibly annoyed for the remainder of this series that Supergirl didn’t take her dead Aunt’s doo-dad.
Also, how the hell would it stop bullets but not a sword? A bullet hits with about a bajillion times more force than a sword thrust.
In real world terms, it’s my understanding that the type of impact makes a big difference. So, for instance, Kevlar body armor which provides some protection against gunshots is actually not particularly effective against stabbing weapons. But that’s definitely in the “I read that somewhere once” category…
Maybe they work like those shields from Dune, when they only work against matter above a given speed?
No?
I got nothin’.
I had to give up, I removed Supergirl from my recorded series list. I want to like the show but it is too damn stupid and infuriatingly so.
I had given up because of the relentless emotional-bonding scenes, then caught the most recent one where Supergirl gets grabbed by the Black Mercy and the treatment is so inferior to its source material that I’ve re-given up.
Well, at least they were smart enough to pick some good source material. (I can just hear the writers’ meeting: “Gee, ya think we could get Alan Moore to write an episode?”) Thought I might show this episode to my wife who hasn’t watched at all.
And the Supergirl actress did “righteous, pushed too far” anger pretty well.
But she’s still better at “awkward, trying too hard to please”… does that SO well that watching her at work is still fun.
Did Kara get some more fight training? Supergirl’s fight with Master Jailer was probably the best I’ve seen so far on the show, arguably the best among all the Berlanti/DC shows (i.e., Supergirl, Arrow, The Flash, Legends of Tomorrow). Rather than an awkward slugging match, this fight - with all the chains - had an almost balletic quality about it. Showed a little bit of superspeed, too, which will serve Supergirl well when she meets the Flash.
Did she kill Master Jailer? Sure sounded like his neck snapped, and they didn’t do a ‘show him in a cell’ scene.
I have to admit that seeing Supergirl chained spread-eagle in the air made me forget about the fight for a moment. She’s getting to be a better fighter, which makes sense to me since she recently begun her superhero career.
I find it quite odd that the DEO agents all show up for battle in full helmet gear while Alex leads the charge with no helmet. Then she sees the glow under the floorboards- “hand me that crowbar”. Of COURSE nobody goes into battle without packing a crowbar!
Benoist really sells the awkward Kara, she deserves an Emmy for her work.
Come on, Jimmy. The only way to regain Lucy’s trust is to spill Kara’s secret? I think Kara needs to date Winn just to throw Lucy off the scent.
That new assistant- hate the character but the actress is great. Bitchy Kat perfectly stuck the shiv in Kara, making her assistant #2. Then the scene where she tells Jimmy about her past judgment as a reporter was very well done. Calista Flockhart is excellent in this role.
Couplea Comments:
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There’s no way they could have done it, but I liked the original Master Jailer better (Superman 331-332?). He’s pure camp and but he’s probably the last of the “gimmick” Silver Age bad guys (ignoring total lusers like Big Sur(?) and Colonel Computron). I have a warm spot in my heart for him. That said, why is he called "Master Jailer when he’s actually an executioner? At least with the original guy, he was Arcade-ish: fiendish traps, not head-lopping-off-ing.
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The big question I’ve got about the bitchy new Assistant #1 is “Does Cat fire her before or after she becomes Silver Banshee?” Just like naming the police guy “Draper” (Master Jailer’s ID is Karl Draper), naming bitchy assistant #1 Siodobhan (or however it’s spelled) is kind of a giveaway.
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The Jimmy/Lucy thing just doesn’t work for me.
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Neither does Jimmy. I love the actor, but he’s not “Jimmy Olsen” (and not because he’s black). Jimmy isn’t this 30+ year old deep-voiced, gravatias filled mentor figure. I’d love the actor to have been someone else.
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Yeah, they handwaved the Flockheart “Kira” vs “Kara” thing, but was it planned or did they do it because Flockheart can’t pronounce “Kara” or what?
Like this show overall, this episode was decent, but a missed opportunity to be great. Did the DEO not even consider the idea that they should collaborate with this guy? After all, he’s doing exactly what they’re doing, isn’t he?
There could have been a great story arc where they started out working together but eventually started to find his methods too extreme, etc.
(Or even better, it could play out kind of the way it did, and then it turns out at the end that the professor was making up his “oh, it was just to save my family” story and was in fact a mass murderer, but good-hearted Kara let him go free, or something.)
Not being a comic book expert I did not know who Siobhan Smythe was, but figured she would be somebody. I have not heard about Silver Banshee before hearing about it online.
Brian
Did I miss something, how did they handwave it? Flockhart is good, but I’m not quite sure the writers have figured out her character yet. Is she such a callous boss that she can’t even be bothered to get her assistant’s name right, or is she the calculating type who’d get it wrong on purpose to keep her staff intimidated and on their toes?
There is much that this show gets right, but it has a bit of a Three’s Company problem; if the characters would just talk to one another for two minutes they could save themselves boatloads of drama. Now Hank doesn’t want Kara to know it was Alex who killed her aunt. She will find out. And then she’ll stress out about not knowing who she can trust, but it will bring them closer in the end. No lie on this show lasts for more than three episodes.
I always thought Flockheart was just unable to pronounce it right* and then they came up with the handwave to explain why Cat was doing it.
When we met her son a few episodes back, he said something like "Wait…“Kara? Mom keeps calling you Kira. What is your name, anyways?” and Kara replies that to everyone else, she’s Kara, but to Cat, she’s Kira.
*The same way Portia de Rossi (from Better off Ted and Arrested Development) couldn’t pronounce certain works with a correct American accent.
That doesn’t quite explain the why, though.
I remember on Good Neighbors (The Good Life in the UK) Tom’s former boss (the few times he’s seen) used to get people’s names wrong. It’s played as him being the sort of doddering upper-class twit who can’t be bothered to know the names of those beneath him. At the end, he reveals it’s just been a trick to keep people on their toes and so they’ll underestimate him. Cat is portrayed as sharp and savvy enough to pull the same sort of thing, but then I’m never quite sure the writers have put that much thought into it.
I’ve always taken the kira thing to be Cat’s way of telling Kara she didn’t ‘respect her’ essentially - saw her as a whiny assistant (but generally competent) - I seem to recall a few times Cat calling her Kara correctly when Kara did something worthy of respect. Something of an ‘earned respect badge’.
Since Kara is always trying to get Cat’s respect, it plays into those things.
Cat did call her “Karla” once, when Kara actually said something that she thought was good. Then Kara frakked up and she was back to being “Kira”.