Supergirl is a hit! Despite a lot of whining from male comic book geeks and MRA types about its SJW attitude, the show had great ratings for its premiere, and pretty decent reviews as well, overall.
This week, the DEO investigated a chemical robbery that turned out to be a feeding, as a Hellgrammite (Justice Leak), one of the aliens that Kara/Supergirl (Melissa Benoist) accidentally brought with her when she passed through the Phantom Zone. It turns out the Hellgrammite eats DDT like it’s going out of style (which it has), which annoys supervillain Astra (Laura Benanti), who wants her alien underlings to keep a low profile on Earth until her plan is in motion. Astra decides to use him as bait to lure her niece Kara to her doom. Kara has other plans.
In fact, after causing an embarrassing oil spill while trying to keep a tanker from exploding, and getting her ass kicked by her sister Alex (Chyler Leigh) in a kryptonite-infused DEO fight room, Kara decides to take a step back and handle lower-level disasters like armed robberies and pets in trees (a little girl’s snake named Fluffy, to be precise). So when the Hellgrammite strikes, the DEO are the ones who go after him, and when Supergirl doesn’t show, he decides to bring Alex to Astra, hoping it will get the alien queen off his back.
Naturally, Kara steps up to rescue her sister. She’s shocked to run into her aunt, whom she assumed died on Krypton, because mom never told her that Aunt Astra was a baddie, and was sent to the Phantom Zone. Alex dispatches the Hellgrammite pretty easily, but things look dicier for Kara until DEO chief Hank Henshaw (David Harewood) shows up with a kryptonite knife and pokes Astra pretty good. Sure, Hank saves the day this time, but a glimpse of him at the end of the show reveals that he has scary red demon eyes. Or maybe they’re cyborg eyes? If you’re a fan of the comic book version of Superman, you might have an idea. In any case, it’s clear that Hank is not the gruff but lovable commander he appears to be.
The second episode of CBS’s Supergirl had pretty much the same strengths and weaknesses as the first. It’s full of likeable, attractive characters, and even the less likeable characters at least seem to be, well, characters.
Cat Grant (Calista Flockhart) not only eats boozy breakfasts with Ruth Bader Ginsburg, she also has pretty solid ideas about how Supergirl might improve her public image, which she unwittingly reveals to Supergirl herself. She’s also a pretty terrible boss, treating Kara like a stooge, and threatening to fire James (not “Jimmy”) Olsen (Mehcad Brooks) if he doesn’t get her an exclusive interview with Supergirl. Flockhart has fun in the role, and for a superhero TV show, the character and our feelings toward her are fairly complex.
Kara’s confrontation with Aunt Astra also has a surprising emotional element to it, thanks to the strength of the two actors. While she’s mostly evil incarnate, Astra seems to feel a genuine connection to Kara. She also claims that she’s trying to save the Earth, after having let Krypton be destroyed, and aside from the fact that her plan involves wiping out humanity, one suspects she may have a point, eventually.
Kara’s pep talk to James, who despairs of ever being able to get out from under the shadow of superheroes, is fairly affecting, too. The writing is pretty standard stuff, but again, the actors are strong enough to put it across with some genuine emotion. And Supergirl’s inclusive approach to fighting for good has a less fascistic bent to it that that lone wolf Superman’s.
On the negative side, the show’s plotting is contrived. The Hellgrammite just happens to grab Alex, and he gets away with it far too easily. Hank is sharp enough to bring a kryptonite knife to face Astra, but for their attempted capture of the superpowered Hellgrammite, the DEO only brings standard handguns. The special effects are far too cartoony, probably partly due to budget limitations, and the action is mostly indifferently choreographed and shot. That heat vision battle between Supergirl and Astra was an embarrassment. The fight between Alex and Kara was an exception, in that at least it didn’t feature characters transforming into animated blobs to fly across the room at each other.
Overall, the show remains a fairly entertaining hour, with a refreshing take on femininity and power. In 2015, a superhero show with a likeable female lead and assorted other strong women characters and a little girl who loves her pet snake should not really be groundbreaking, but the sad fact is, it is, and while it has its flaws, I’m still grateful that it exists.
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