So when is the Flash / Supergirl musical crossover?
(Both Melissa Benoist and Grant Gustin were on Glee)
Brian
(seriously, it would be cool to have her sing)
I agree with a lot of what’s already been said; rather heavy on clunky exposition, but kinda unavoidable in a pilot episode. We’ll see if they overcome that as they go. Let Kara and her sister act like they’ve actually known each other all their lives, that sort of thing.
Melissa Benoist is utterly adorable, and I thought she did well with the secret identity bits. It’s not enough to just put on a pair of glasses, but she played the role a bit differently, too. The only thing is, Superman is usually played as acting deliberately awkward/geeky as Clark Kent. I didn’t get that impression with Supergirl; it seemed as though the geeky side was who she actually is, and she had to act confident as a superhero. It will be interesting to see if they keep her that way, or if she becomes more confident but has to pretend to be her old self around the office.
Yeah, but a good superhero story requires suitably-powered villains. Someone who can fly and shoot lasers from her eyes isn’t gonna find much of a challenge with run-of-the-mill bank robbers. I read somewhere that that’s one of the challenges of a good Superman story, finding an adversary who actually presents a challenge to him. Maybe the showrunners were just trying to load the universe up so they’d have options for later.
That tripped me up too; I thought he was supposed to be the gay best friend.
And her mother’s name is Alura In-Ze; Zor-El was her husband, not her father.
I thought she was going to be a teenager and when I saw she was an adult, I bitched out loud. “Supergirl? Supergirl!?” I mean, there is a Superwoman in the DC world. What the hell? And no, Ally McBeal’s handwaving does not make up for it. She’s not a damn girl.
Besides that, I liked it. Also, I don’t want to start no shit or nothing, but I think her best friend IT guy is there to balance the color wheel, if-you-know-what-I-mean. It was only one espisode but my shipper heart has her and “James” already having bi-racial super babies.
When she was trying on her outfit they should have shown a shot of the guy looking at her and saying "Nice ‘es’ " before cutting to her showing the outfit with the “S” on the chest.
Um, isn’t your handle “BigGIRL”?
Of course, I’m not a dog either, but you know what I mean.
While I am a drunken wise man. 
Boy, are you stuck in the pre-Crisis universe! 
These days, when she uses an earth name at all, it’s usually Kara Kent. Often she doesn’t even bother with a secret identity, spending most of her time as Supergirl. And Danvers also has nice Silver-Age precedent. I actually think naming her “Kara Danvers” is a nice portmanteau of her various names over the years.
But they are using, and sometimes repurposing, names from the comics. In addition to James “Don’t-Call-Me-Jimmy” Olsen, the names Cat Grant and Hank Henshaw are also comic book names, both of them having rather different characters than they do here.
I’d like to know how much they paid Dean Cain to stand there and smile. Poor guy, they couldn’t even give him one line? Helen Slater got one!
I liked the show without loving it. It was awkward in places, but I found Melissa Benoist quite likable, and the rest of the cast did pretty well in their parts, even when those parts are fairly by-the-numbers so far. The exception being the geeky IT friend, whose acting was incredibly weak.
Speaking of the geeky IT friend (whose name, IMDB tells me, is Winn Schott–God help us). I admit I’m surprised at how many people thought he was gay. The very first thing he does is nervously ask Kara out, and get visibly disappointed when she turns him down. I understand getting a gay vibe off of some of his mannerisms, particularly during the costuming scene, but I thought the show clearly established him as interested in Kara right out of the gate.
I thought Callista Flockhart’s exposition about why it’s okay to be called a girl was clunky as all hell, but I do like that the name Supergirl has been thrust on Kara against her will, contrived as that may be. I almost would have preferred if they’d broken the fourth wall and said, “That’s what she’s called in the comics, so we’re stuck with it.”
I will likely watch the next few episodes, and hope that the strong elements get stronger and the weaker elements drop out. I do agree that it’s nice to see a superhero show that apparently isn’t determined to be Dark-'n-Gritty, and the fact that a fair number of people know Kara’s secret is actually a nice change, and solves a lot of storytelling problems that superhero shows are often plagued with.
This^^^.
Liked it, hope it gets better, will keep watching if for no other reason than I’ve been a fanboi of Kara’s since the Silver Age and want this to fly, dammit!
God Amighty, how can you have MISSED it? Superman was the Jesus of the 20th century!
(and for the record, I am actually Cliff Edwards, communicating with you from beyond the grave)
Didn’t the sister have a line about how Supergirl was immune from human viruses? So how did she get what appears to be a chicken-pox scar by her eyebrow? Sorry but that’s the first thing I noticed about Melissa Benoist, in spite of how adorable she is. I supposed I should remember the MST3K line “it’s just a show, I should really just relax”.
That was Kryptonian Chicken Pox she had before coming to earth.
Kryptonian women use their father’s names until they marry, then take their husband’s names. Thus, when Alura In-Ze married Zor-El, she became Alura Zor-El (or sometimes known simply as Zara El). Just as Lara Lor-Van became Lara Jor-El once she married Jor-El.
Well, the feminist fan-service is more than compensated by Zor-El being at best a peripheral character, while Allura and her twin are far more prominent.
And yes, I noticed the typo, but too late. Alura Zor-El sometimes is known as Alura El.
Darn right I am. That was the best age of comics.
I thought it would be awesome if Flokhart’s character would have used “Great Caesar’s Ghost!” as an expletive as an homage to Perry White from the old Superman TV series. Only us old farts would get it but still…
Not really. Superman for years fought villains who weren’t particularly super powered (e.g., the Toyman, the Prankster, Lex Luther, Brainiac, Terra Man). The key to writing a great Superman story is to have a clever villain, something you rarely see these days. Anyone going up against Superman has to do it indirectly and in a way that doesn’t involve brute strength. You create a challenge by out-thinking him.
Jimmy Olsen should be a small awkward nerdy guy, not a smart confident strapping guy. They got the character names mixed up.
The thing that bugged me, outside of clunky pilotitis which is nearly unavoidable, was that her sister got recruited to the sooper sekrit anti-alien organization, and proceeds to spend the rest of her time there telling her sister to not be a hero. Also, not telling her about the 20 bad guys that have been waiting to murder her. Also, never having her practice using her powers. Because when super-power hardened killers are after your sister, clearly the best thing to do is stick your head in the sand and pretend they’ll go away.
Also, I really disliked the boss guy that just wants Kara to go away. Um, you’ve already got one kryptonian that spends his free time saving the world, why wouldn’t you want two? All I got out of him was some nebulous xenophobia. I wouldn’t have blamed her at all if she had that as her villain origin “Oh, I decided to use my superpowers to save lives and stop crime, and bozo over here wants me to go serve coffee to some bitch. How about I serve my boot us his ass!”
But seriously, this show could have 10 times the flaws and I’d still watch. Melissa Benoist is superb in the role and I bet she only gets better.
(As far as potentially gay IT guy, yea, he is narratively supposed to be straight, but he’s so far into metrosexual and effeminate (which really need to go away as gay stereotypes) that I can see why everyone is being thrown for a loop. Dude needs to man up and ask Kara out again.)
I can see a lot that’s new to this version. A few things seem “off” to me, and I can see how it could go wrong.
But I enjoyed the first episode.