Supergirl : Pilot

Outside of the Grand Trinity of Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman, I never paid much attention to anything going on in the DCU. If it wasn’t something that happened to those three characters or they weren’t involved in it, I very much didn’t care. Yeah, okay, I read a little Teen Titans and Legion of Superheroes, but that’s about it. So you can probably understand why I wasn’t wilding out, about this new series, involving Supergirl. I didn’t even watch the original movies. I only know some of her back stories because she’s related to Superman, someone I actually care about.

Well anyway, there’s a show about her and in the interests of not being an unfair poopyhead, I feel I should review the first episode. And it will keep me busy til Into the Badlands and Ash Vs. The Evil Dead, which already has me asking questions just from watching the trailers, and if you ask me, that’s the first step to actually caring about a show. I think it’s very telling that I’ve watched several trailers for Supergirl and not wondered a single thing about the series.

Okay! I’ve watched the show. I’m not feeling the love. I don’t hate it, though. I just think the show is not aimed at me. I’ve read some reviews that say the show is awful, but I somewhat disagree, and some people would say I’m biased before seeing it. Well, yeah! Still not a Supergirl fan. Supergirl just is not an interesting hero to me, but I’m sure she speaks to aspiring teenage girls, all over the nation.

I watched it and I think it may be aimed mostly at women in their twenties or something, because I just wasn’t feeling it. I don’t know if it’s the acting, or dialogue, or what, but it feels like a show written by some very young people, for very young people. At one point, I just turned off the sound because I got tired of listening to the characters talking. There’s not enough depth in it for me, although I appreciate that some people may have found the episode quite moving, especially Kara’s conversations with her sister, which sounded too fast and glib for me.

There were also too many annoying tropes. Like, the bitchy boss, the annoying date that goes wrong because the guy is a jerk, Kara’s crush on Jimmy, and that younger guys unrequited crush on her. I’m over forty and I’ve watched a Helluva lot of TV, so I am well familiar with SciFi/Fantasy tropes on TV, and this show is loaded with them. Too many for my tastes and patience. Someone who isn’t as familiar will probably not be unduly disturbed by them.

The action was exciting to watch but still kind of dumb. At one point, Kara gets called out by one of the villains, gets angry, and goes storming out to the place he said they should meet . I knew that was a mistake. She got her ass thoroughly kicked, just like I knew she would. Seriously! She has no  fighting experience. She thinks the ability to punch something really hard is enough to take care of business. It’s not! She needs to get some training and martial skills, or she needs to think smarter during a fight, or she’s going to continue to get her ass spanked. She gets saved by the convenient arrival of her sister, who happens to be a government agent, of some sort.

I really, really wanted to like that actress too. I liked her when she was Supergirl, but I hated all the twitching, blinking, stuttering and nervous ticks she engaged in as Kara. That shit was just annoying and she’s the kind of female character  I have nothing but contempt for. And I’ve seen all these White female characters before, in the movie The Devil Wears Prada, which I also intensely disliked.

However, I did like James Olsen. He was kind of cool and acted like a mature adult who was in a completely different show. I think he had good chemistry with Karah, though. So, that’s good.   

Okay, it’s sounding like I hated the show. I don’t hate it, but I was very tired and had little patience for it. But hey! I hated Arrow when it first aired and now I can watch it without twitching. Okay, I still don’t love Arrow but I can tolerate looking at it.

Maybe, given time and some rewrites, Supergirl will be okay, too.