More
on Supergirl and how the show
squandered what they had with James Olson. As I said last time, there’s plenty
to love about Supergirl, but it’s
also fallen short in places, and those aren’t insignificant. Today, I’m looking
at how the show torched Kara/James (Kara/James-related spoilers.)
While
the beats of the romance/love triangle in season 1 can be trite – so much
will-they-won’t-they, Lucy as a stopgap, the jealous rivalry between James and
Winn – the actual dynamic between James and Kara is just lovely. He’s
positioned a little bit as a mentor to her, given that Clark nudged James
toward National City in the hopes that he’d befriend and help Kara, but their
relationship doesn’t come across as significantly imbalanced, and even though
James is generally cast in a supportive role to Kara, he doesn’t feel like he
stops existing when he’s not onscreen with her. I like that James is caring and
encouraging, that he trusts Kara’s strength, and that he doesn’t mind
contributing to the fight in his own way.
One
of my favorite moments in the story of Kara/James is when Bizarro kidnaps James
in order to hurt Kara. At that point, neither Kara nor James are open about
their feelings for one another, but of course Bizarro knows how Kara feels and
tells James as much, revealing her plan to get to Kara by hurting the person
she loves. Over the course of his capture, James admits his own love for Kara
to Bizarro as, rather than try to fight his way out, he keeps her talking,
doing what he can to connect and empathize with her. In this way, he’s able to
stay alive until Kara comes to rescue him.
Despite
any aforementioned triteness in the triangle plot, the heart of the Kara/James
ship is steered firmly in the right direction, and when they finally get
together in the season 1 finale, all signs point to the coming romance between
them. But then, the show was canceled on CBS and subsequently picked up by the
CW, and somewhere in that changeover, the entire trajectory of Kara’s love life
shifted.
Because,
even though season 2 begins at literally the same moment season 1 ends, the
show somehow manages to give Kara a complete change of heart. She denies, even
to herself, that that’s what’s going on at first, but as she and James plan
their first date, Alex immediately pegs that she’s pretending to be more
excited about it than she is. Kara dances around the issue for a good chunk of
the season 2 premiere before coming to the conclusion that she needs to do some
work on herself, with the corollary that she’s now convinced that she and James
are “best as friends.”
Not
only does this revelation come pretty much out of nowhere, it’s also strongly
undermined by the fact that that very episode also gives us our first glimpse of Mon-El, who will be Kara’s next
love interest. True, they won’t actually get together until a fair amount later
in the season, but it adds such insult to injury that the show lays the
groundwork for Kara’s new beau in practically the same breath that she cuts
things short with James because she needs to do some self-reflection on her
own, without guys.
It
makes me mad because there’s a lot I like about Kara/Mon-El (even though, as
with James, there are a number of cliché missteps in bringing their romance
about – the show really struggles to
write strong romantic plots for Kara,) but my enjoyment of it is also tainted
by how they tossed James aside to bring it about. Like I said in my Crimes
Against James post, James’s screentime and focus as a character never recovered
after Kara broke things off with him, and then it was only a matter of time
before Mehcad Brooks was ready to move on to other opportunities.
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