Welcome back all you Supergirl fans! My confidence in the show’s ability to handle it’s themes has been shaken a little bit by some of this week’s developments but bolstered by others. It’s just unfortunate that it has so many references to another show I recently finished recapping. Lynda Carter, you will be missed and as always, spoilers ahead.
1. Shallow Graves
Last week, the Graves siblings were fun. They were off the wall baddies, clearly working for someone other than themselves, and more fitting to be in an episode of Gotham, where we know the scenery is made of chocolate, than in Supergirl. I expected them to stick around, popping in and out throughout the season, especially after Mercy got away. What I didn’t expect was to already be sick and tired of listening to the two of them speak.
I don’t know what directions they’ve been given but whatever they are, those directions have sucked any fun out of these characters, leaving only a husk of over & under acting behind. They speak and act without any shred of nuance and have been given nothing to do but standard villain stuff. I don’t believe that these two are real people within the context of this world.
It’s like if someone dropped Liquid from ‘Metal Gear Solid’ into the show — the performance is on par, anyway. He works in the context of his game but if he were to be transplanted elsewhere, his batshit lines like – “you got all the old man’s dominant genes. I got all the flawed, recessive genes” – stand out like a sore thumb. On that point, the whole sequence at L-corp felt like I was watching a video game level, right down to the taunting via whatever convenient screen was nearby. How’d she even hack into those to have back and forth communication? That seems like a very flawed design.
Additionally, after setting up Liberty as the villain behind the villain last week, this week it seems like Mercy is the one actually calling the shots. Good for her but why bother with presenting Liberty as the “mastermind?” Make it Mercy all the way and have Otis be her super-loyal, slightly manic brother/henchman. There’s nothing endearing me to these two and if they were to disappear next week, I wouldn’t even bat an eye. I don’t care what they’re up to because their plan is straightforward and Liberty is the one all the mystery is ascribed to. This was a big misstep.
2. Brainy Vs. Brawn
Have I said that I love Brainy? Because he’s my favorite character at the moment. He gets the best lines, is one of the most solid actors in the series and his plots have been small but impactful so far. This week is no different, where the hacking of Brainy’s image inducer causes him to learn about the all-too-human cruelty that lies within people you think you know, when they discover that the picture they’ve created for you is not the reality. He is saved by Nia, who has her own crisis of confidence in the shop, and uses that to fuel her own plot thread. This was a clever way of connecting all the plots, without it feeling too coincidental, and then having them all diverge again. Good job!
3. Journalistic Integrity
As the season hunkers into its themes, attempting to comment on and reflect the current state of the USA, I can’t help but feel like the writing needs to get a lot less on the nose if it’s going to be able to sustain itself throughout the rest of the season. There were glimmers of that this week. The constant reminder that the newspaper had to tell both sides of the story and the very, very, very obvious avoidance tactics Jimmy was taking was like being hit over the head with a hammer. Find a better way of representing these facts. Show them through quiet moments, moments of contemplation. Actions that seem off. Take the time to set these things up – you have all season, after all.
This is really apparent during the workplace harassment of the dryad. Jimmy steps in after completing his own mini-arc for the episode, which was rushed to all hell, and tells the reporter that this is not acceptable behavior. She then turns around, like she was hypnotized, and apologizes. No shame on her face and the rest of the office was laughing too prior to this, instead of showing a variety of reactions. It was a moment left a sour taste in my mouth. It was WAY too quick and resolved itself in an wholly artificial manner. Jimmy’s stepping up was a great moment & so was his handling of the situation but the way the show represented the rest of the office was tonally dissonant and showed a lack of careful thought.
Continued belowNia’s speech to Jimmy, on the other hand, was very well thought out, despite it being a little clunky. What it lacked in smoothness, though, it made up for in Nicole Maines’ delivery and in the importance of its content and the clear presentation of the content. Much of the discussion around this season’s main plot will be about the real life issues it is paralleling. Discussions of passing and xenophobia have already being broached but, much like the X-men, it’s been through the lense of a fictional group that act as stand-ins. By having Nia BE transgender and operating in this world, it allows the story to broaden its discussion and give voice to those who are too often robbed of the ability to speak for themselves.
4. Red Shirt. . .But in Star Trek: TNG
They have failed to make me like Jensen and WHY OH WHY must every season contain a season regular that feel unnecessary and is just utterly unlikeable. Mon-El last season (although he got exponentially better) and now Jensen this season. He’s been in, like, 5 scenes and he already gets under my skin. Why’s he betraying the DEO? Is he that susceptible to the Earth First movement? Oh, we’ll get to that in a sec but first, Jensen has so little character right now. He’s a plot pawn, being used to move things along, and to act as ONE more face at the DEO now that there’s only two we recognize.
If they wanted to make the DEO feel like a more integral part of the show instead of window dressing, they’d give their background characters more defining traits and more scenes. They don’t even have to be large roles but make this place feel alive. Jensen ain’t cutting it so his angry face at Brainy elicited not a fear at what he would do, but a resigned and angry yell at the TV at his stupidity.
5. Commander Sheridan as Mr. President
It’s funny, I’ve now reviewed two shows in which Bruce Boxleitner, of Tron and Babylon 5 fame, was a replacement actor for a character in a position of governmental/military power. For those who followed my Babylon 5 reviews, I’ll talk more about this next year. Needless to say, when the news broke that they had cast someone as the character who would succeed Lynda Carter’s President as, well, President, I wasn’t really paying attention. When they then announced that that person was being replaced by Bruce Boxleitner, I laughed and wrote a note to mention it whenever he made his first onscreen appearance. He’s going to be a joy to watch.
I can’t say much about him yet because, well, he was in one scene so far. However, I can use this to talk about the rather unfortunate choice of angry human chants, namely, “Earth First.” The problem with this is that it invites comparison to B5’s handling of the same subject, a sentence which break my heart because it was topical 24 years ago and it’s topical again, and so far, this portrayal doesn’t hold a candle to the B5 one.
Part of that reason is that Supergirl is not a slow burn show and is built on a seasonal-model. They need to get to the action and can’t lay the seeds for the same kinds of reveals. Additionally, the heavy handed nature of the delivery of the messages of the show mean that, as I said before, the dialogue is going to tell a lot more than the show is going to, well, show.
5.5. Cheating with Two Mini-Thoughts
I love how Liberty’s characterization is so different from last week’s tease. He’s talks like a motivational speaker, without the overly dramatic deep-voiced bull. This makes him all the scarier because he’s an amalgamation of two modern peddlers of hate & fear: the ones at the rallies and the ones who hide behind anonymity & bots on the internet. I hope they are aware of this and don’t muck it up.
Why is Nia a better Supergirl than Supergirl this week? Every sentence out of her mouth, save for the cryptic Batman-esque line behind the pizza shop, is something Supergirl should be saying. The call to action. The call for hope but also to stand for truth and justice, not hate. I don’t get it but if there’s at least one character who is embodying the Super-traits in full, that’s a good sign.
Continued belowThat about does it for now! What did you all think of the second episode? It’s always hard to follow a season opener but I think they did an OK job. Let me know in the comments and I’ll see you all next week for the continuation of a whole lot of this week’s plot threads. Good on them.
Funniest Line of the Night:
Brainy: “Barney of the Apple and Olives pizza.”
