Welcome back all you Supergirl fans! Sometimes these episodes are quite timely and well crafted. Other times they veer way too hard into overly simplistic moralizing and questionable execution. “Blurred Lines” takes its title and leans HARD into the latter, despite ostensibly being about the moral greys we often live in and accept for other, more personally important reasons.
Needless to say, I wasn’t particularly thrilled with last night’s episode but, all in all, could’ve been worse. Could’ve wasted a very cool alien villain in the same way Midnight was. . .
As always, spoilers ahead.
1. These Ten Tips Will Get Your Sets to Look Perky
It’s been four seasons since the esteemed Cat Grant was written out of the show thanks to the move from CBS to The CW i.e. from LA to Vancouver and they still cannot figure out a way to make CatCo a compelling setting. Even Jimmy seems more chipper now that he’s been unceremoniously kicked out of the Editor in Chief’s chair. It’s a setting, much like the DEO, that has stopped feeling like a place and feels like a set in the worst of ways. It’s window dressing for the organizations they should be and are more plot silos than lived in places.
For all the flack I give season one’s writing, and CBS’s inexplicably poor utilization of their CG, they knew how to make a set feel alive and to utilize the space in a way that bolstered the story rather than hung behind it. Part of it really is down to Calista Flockheart no longer being in the room. She exuded an aura that filled the offices and commanded the space. There hasn’t been a character since then that has done the same. Snapper Carr was a poor replacement and by the time we got to Jimmy, they’d basically sidelined the whole journalism thing and he was given jack-all to do.
Now, even though she’s stock villain of the week for legacy media (and I have thoughts on this,) Rojas’s introduction is maybe the closest thing to this we’ve gotten. . .other than Nia, obviously, but, again, sidelined at CatCo with the changing of the season. For the first time since that first season, I have the feeling that CatCo is a building (two floors but still) and that there is a presence that is overwhelming the entirety of it. It’s not an unwelcome change. Will it last? Who’s to say. It certainly seems like William Day is going to be the focus for a bit until Rojas can unleash her grand scheme of being. . .a billionaire tech mogul who wants to bleed legacy media dry with a pivot to video.
A bit on the nose there, isn’t it Supergirl?
2. You Won’t Believe Who’s Haunting The Fourth Estate!
I have a bone to pick with the premise, or at least presentation, of Rojas’ changes for a number of reasons. First off, it power washes over all the legitimate problems of modern news organizations being acquired by large conglomerates or powerful, opinionated venture capitalists/billionaires. Where is all the in-universe discussion of management unlawfully changing the terms of their contracts? Or the sudden change in an editorial slant, such as cutting the political cartoonist because the owner doesn’t like how he satirizes politicians or “must-run” commentary segments masquerading as news?
Instead, the episode chooses to focus on an ill that is plaguing the journalistic field: revenue, or a lack thereof. How do you generate revenue on news in today’s market? Force subscriptions? Run tons of ads? Have pledge drives for donations or subscriptions? A combination? If it is ad based, how do you drive people to the site? Are the ad rates even any good? And if you don’t have the funds to pay for journalists to make good stories, how do you get people to click and keep clicking?
And was the old method even a good one, or is it just the one that worked for a good while and that we’ve gotten used to?
These are all tough questions and ones that aren’t really addressed. What we get in place is Kara, up on high, complaining about how CatCo is turning a profit thanks to puff pieces and quizzes, as if that precludes CatCo from still doing fantastic journalism; roll back the clock to the early days of color photos in papers and you would hear the same bemoaning of the death of journalistic integrity from New York Times writers. It’s not that Kara’s wrong but the episode seems to be placing the emphasis on the wrong aspects of Rojas’ regime change. The problem isn’t the new tech changes but instead the relentless pursuit of profits at the expense of quality instead of pursuing profits to bolster the creation of those articles.
Continued belowIt’s saying the Buzzfeed model is evil instead of what it is, different and built for the dynamic internet rather than the printed page. It’s also a victim of the ad based economy and the poor rates they pay. Then there’s the pivot to video bemoaning which, while true in its devastating effect, was not the result of the media’s owners being evil but instead ignorant.
Basically, I’ve been thinking about these couple paragraphs from his newsletter all morning and it may have coloured my thoughts this week:
The end result was that a whole bunch of journalistic operations spent money on video, fired print/text journalists to pay for even more video, and then hey guess what nobody ever watched those videos and you got no clicks and nobody saw your ads and you ran out of money and died.
This was entirely intentional on Facebook’s part and people need to stop pretending otherwise.
–Warren Ellis, Orbital Operations 20 October 2019
Life’s a lot more complicated than 42 minutes plus 18 of ads can capture.
3. Sidelined for Reasons Unknown? You Won’t Believe What Happens Next
OK, stepping down from my soapbox. Is Kelly being slowly sidelined? Because, like, after all my hopes for last week, the end of this episode makes it seem like she’s just gonna be off the show for a good while. Am I reading this wrong? Like, she’ll be back because she’s got special eyes now and can see Sean Astin, I mean, Ma’ala’fek when he’s cloaked but for now, she’s going to be hidden with Jimmy? No, wait, he was in the previews, he’ll be back.
Hopefully they find something else to do with Kelly and that she won’t be gone too long. Though I could really take a break from the aw, shucks Sherridan she’s got going on.
4. The BEST Camera Techniques You’ve NEVer Heard OF
Y’all, the camera work this week was not very good. I rarely notice, because it’s pretty homogenized, which is both a blessing and a curse, but there was something really lacking in the direction and cinematography. That scene where J’onn had the revelation about his brother and who mind-wiped people, which was a pretty toothless twist for us but a decent one for J’onn, was almost completely undercut by the lifeless shot he was in and the stage-like positioning.
Seriously. If this were a high school play, David Harewood would be on stage left, with a spotlight on him, talking to some invisible person in the fourth row during the whole thing. Harewood gives it his all and kudos to him for that scene but dang was the emotion lost on me. Carl Lumbly though acted through the poor camera work and shows just how damn good he is. I’m so glad we got to see some more of him.
(OK, so apparently the guy who directed the episode is an award winning director so what do I know?)
5. Can We Guess Which Theme You Are By Your Ice Cream Preferences?
The theme of this episode was boundaries. The theme of this episode was boundaries. The theme of this episode was boundaries. The theme of this episode was —
I think you’ve gotten the picture.
They really wanted to hammer the idea of the importance of boundaries but also when it is important to cross them and also when crossing them is the worst possible idea this week and they. Just. Kept. Beating. It. Into. Us. Subtlety was never in the cards but you’d think they’d take the foot off that gas just a hair? It’s also not a particularly well approached theme.
Again, they tried to approach it with the mindset of “Blurred Lines” but it ended up coming out muddled and confused. Kara crossed a line for Lena but that’s OK because it was for a friend but it also wasn’t? Basically the whole conversation of Alex and Kara was me to me and would have made for an interesting exploration of when boundaries are flexible and how but instead it’s a few simple story beats that get the job done to advance the plot and not much else.
Continued belowSame with Kelly. She comes to the conclusion that trusting people is bad but, like, no? Her friend came for help and while it turned out not to be him, being open wasn’t the issue. The issue was not taking Alex’s worries seriously and being cautious because there was a shapeshifter around. Those are two different things.
Again, they don’t have the time to explore it because the show is being pulled in a million different directions again. I said it throughout last season but Supergirl works best when focused and building towards something. They’ve got the planting seeds better this time around, now they’ve just got to deliver episodes that are good enough to make us want to reach that point. It can be done, but first they’ve got to trim some of the extra branches.
That about does it for now! Did I miss anything. . .other than the monster of the week that’s almost as forgettable as Midnight from week one? Oh, and Lena’s evil plan to mind control everybody. Oh, and Brainy and Nia broke up but I don’t want to talk about that because it’s too painful and I’ll probably get the chance next week. Let me know what you all thought in the comments and I’ll see you next week for a martian hunt. Until then, stay super y’all.
Best Line of the Night (and worst pun):
J’onn: “NOoooooo, H’ronmeer’s Curse.”
Supergirl (after punching spider tattoo lady): “You’re really starting to bug me.”
