"Better a fallen rocket than never a burst of light."
~ Tom Stoppard, The Invention of Love

Saturday, July 2, 2016

Supergirl (2015-Present)

*Disclaimer: Over the seasons, I’ve come to truly love Supergirl, handwavy silliness and all. However, that doesn’t change the fact that seasons 2 and 3 featured a major Latinx character played by a white actress. The extra-irritating thing about this is that, in the comics, Maggie Sawyer is white, so they could’ve just had the white actress play her as white. But they specified Maggie as a PoC in her first appearance and established her as clearly Chicana in season 3. Why?! It’s so frustrating – “diversity points” don’t count when they’re not real diversity, and this was an important example of Supergirl failing to live up to its own ideals.*

 
It took me a little while to get into Supergirl, and overall, I definitely rank it below the Marvel shows, but I still enjoy it.  (Side note:  I do think the Jessica Jones comparisons are unfair.  The two series/characters are so hugely different, and the fact that they’re both female-led superhero shows that premiered around the same time doesn’t mean Supergirl has to be Jessica Jones in order to be good.)  Over the course of its first season, quite a few bumps got evened out, and I hope it continues to grow and improve.

First off, let me cop to knowing only very basic Superman 101 and nothing about Supergirl, so I can’t speak to how well it stacks up to other adaptations or the comics.  What I can tell you is that, at the same time baby Kal-El was sent away from the dying planet Krypton, his tween cousin Kara was sent after him in a separate pod, the idea being that Kara would take care of Kal-El and help him as both adjusted to living on an alien planet (Earth) whose yellow sun gave them godlike powers.  However, Kara’s pod is knocked off course and waylaid in some sort of time stasis, and by the time she finally reaches Earth, Kal-El has already grown up and become Superman.  He sets Kara up with an adopted family to have a typical life on Earth, but of course, that’s only going to last so long.  As a young adult, Kara uses her powers in an impulsive rescue and ends up revealing herself to the world as a superhero.  She works on getting used to the hero game, going through a lot of trial and error while she tries to balance her work at the DEO (a super-secret, alien-monitoring government organization) with her secret identity as the personal assistant for a self-impressed media mogul.

The show is very conscious that Supergirl is a female superhero, and that can be both awesome and groanworthy, sometimes in equal measure.  I like how the series plays with gender double standards, such as people scrutinizing Supergirl’s outfit, being far quicker to judge her for her mistakes, and generally assuming she’s out of her depth.  Kara has some great scenes with her boss Cat, who, as the head of a media empire, knows a thing or two about the tightrope of being a woman in power (Kara’s relationship with Cat is pretty neat, as is her relationship with her adopted sister Alex.)  At the same time, though, things sometimes veer over to the preachy side, making the characters feel more like mouthpieces for feminism than feminist characters. 

It’s also probably the sunniest comic-book adaptation I’ve ever seen – although it can go to some serious places, particularly when it deals with Kara’s displacement from her home world, the go-to vibe is all shininess and positivity.  This can make it cheesy sometimes (and even when it does come to the more serious stuff, some of the villains are definitely cheesy,) but it also makes it feel noticeably different than so much of the Dark!  Gritty! stuff out there.  Melissa Benoist (who I now realize was terribly wasted in the absolute worst seasons of Glee) is fantastic as Kara, adorable as a basket of puppies while also being compassionate, strong, out of her element but determined to learn, and just alien enough to remind you that Earth is her second home.  When the dialogue gets too pointed or the tone gets too saccharine, she’s what grounds the show and makes Kara feel real and human – or rather, Kryptonian.

Warnings

Comic book violence, language, occasional drinking, sexual references, and thematic elements.

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