Supergirl [CW] - US pace - [**Spoilers**]

Eleanor Attractive Teaspoon

Eleanor Attractive Teaspoon wrote: »

I read this thread and look at it on sky. No spoilers would destroy it for me!

Start a Sky-pace thread?
This thread often is ahead of watching it the next day from the US

MJohnston

In fairness the title says both US pace and Spoilers!

CastorTroy

I went with spoilers because I know I sometimes forget that something aired, especially after a break and click into threads, only to see a new episode has aired. So was just in case this happened to others clicking in here without realising a new one was out.

And yeah was referring to max's copy

I'm enjoying it, but I personally wish they'd just stop having the IM conversations between Superman and Supergirl. It just feels like it is hammering the point home.

Deleted User

Deleted User wrote: »

I'm enjoying it, but I personally wish they'd just stop having the IM conversations between Superman and Supergirl. It just feels like it is hammering the point home.

Yeah but you gotta think Superman would be all over several Kryptonians posturing around earth

Agent Coulson

Laura Vandervoort ( Smallville's Supergirl) joins the cast playing

Indigo

Patty O Furniture

CastorTroy wrote: »

I went with spoilers because I know I sometimes forget that something aired, especially after a break and click into threads, only to see a new episode has aired. So was just in case this happened to others clicking in here without realising a new one was out.

And yeah was referring to max's copy

No problem, it's a force of habit here for me too,

I thought at first, he had rescued max's copy who got hit by lightning & fix her to her revenge again, as it looks like she hadn't made it out yet?

Agent Coulson wrote: »

Laura Vandervoort ( Smallville's Supergirl) joins the cast playing

Indigo

Hah, that'll be interesting,

I'm not too familiar with that character, i wonder for how long, & is her last show still going Bitten?

Mr E

The latest episode was the first misstep I think. The scenes on Mars looked awful, Hank willing to sacrifice himself to the race that killed his family was stupid, and the fact that the monster kept shapeshifting to the senator (even after being found out) was ridiculous.

Next week looks like it might be better.

youngblood

Didnt think it was that bad to be honest, liked the martian element to it, less wire work with supergirl and less female cover songs in the background would improve it nicely

Sudden Valley

The scenes on Mars were too reminiscent of the Holocaust. Cat is really getting too much air time, she is a very one-note character to me. I wish they would develop a season arc.

CastorTroy

So they kept the nice White Martian alive so it won't tell anyone else that Hank is a martian? Why did he even appear to it in human form?

I wonder what the gender break down of the audience is. They are obviously pitching at tweens but is it costing them the traditional super show fan

DMcL1971

Deleted User wrote: »

I wonder what the gender break down of the audience is. They are obviously pitching at tweens but is it costing them the traditional super show fan

Well, I'm a 45 year old bloke who doesn't read comics, finds most superhero movies boring and I love it.

DMcL1971

DMcL1971 wrote: »

Well, I'm a 45 year old bloke who doesn't read comics, finds most superhero movies boring and I love it.

So not the traditional super fan audience then?

Flash is a fun lighthearted show which so far avoids most typical gender crap (Iris is a hell of a lot better than last year) and is killing it audience wise.

Arrow has gotten very melodramatic and is getting complaints.

Supergirl is lighthearted but the melodrama is laid on thick and the twilight/hunger games/etc format of central female hero in a love triangle and such is very prominent

MJohnston

I don't really see much difference between Flash and Supergirl in terms of melodrama to be honest. Perhaps you just find it plays out differently on those other shows because it's happening to male characters? The Flash started off with exactly the same amount of soapy elements, and they're still there this year with Patty and Barry, and Iris and her mother/brother. I think it's a process for the writers of these shows - they start with some cliched character connections, and that allows them to get on with starting to write them. Once they've written a handful of episodes they start playing off of successful and unsuccessful elements and shifting things around. They've dealt with the Winn obsession (in quite a good way as well), they've basically ignored Jimmy and Kara over the last couple of episodes, and they've turned Hank Henshaw from a bland authority figure into the most interesting part of the show.

Sure - I really wish the Arrowverse shows and Supergirl would hire decent dialogue editors, but generally once they all get through their first half-seasons, they start nailing it.

MJohnston

I don't really see much difference between Flash and Supergirl in terms of melodrama to be honest. Perhaps you just find it plays out differently on those other shows because it's happening to male characters? The Flash started off with exactly the same amount of soapy elements, and they're still there this year with Patty and Barry, and Iris and her mother/brother. I think it's a process for the writers of these shows - they start with some cliched character connections, and that allows them to get on with starting to write them. Once they've written a handful of episodes they start playing off of successful and unsuccessful elements and shifting things around. They've dealt with the Winn obsession (in quite a good way as well), they've basically ignored Jimmy and Kara over the last couple of episodes, and they've turned Hank Henshaw from a bland authority figure into the most interesting part of the show.

Sure - I really wish the Arrowverse shows and Supergirl would hire decent dialogue editors, but generally once they all get through their first half-seasons, they start nailing it.

Iris and her family isn't forced tween relationship crap. It's a good story.
Cat's would have been an example but too rushed and layered with Kara's over sentiment.

Did you miss Winn already thawing (he'll be back and still in love) and Jimmy Kara were throwing eyes.
It's one episode let's see if they tone it back continuously.

I've said from the start that I think it's just foot finding and think it'll smooth out

MJohnston

Iris and her family is still melodrama and soapy though, I'm not saying it's crap, you just can't argue that on the surface it's any different than Cat and Adam - the difference is we've spent some time with Iris and Joe and so it means something more now. But then, now we're going through stuff with the Supergirl characters, and it'll mean later in the season we'll have a greater connection to them too. Winn's actions during the last episodes are entirely logical to me, and if they continue to go down the "him being love" road, then because of how they addressed that all in the Toyman episode, we'll have to assume that it's because they have bad-guy plans for Winn - there can be no accident there. Jimmy and Kara are probably going to be very much the Iris and Barry of season one, which ended up in a nicely platonic place by the end of the year.

MJohnston

MJohnston wrote: »

Iris and her family is still melodrama and soapy though, I'm not saying it's crap, you just can't argue that on the surface it's any different than Cat and Adam - the difference is we've spent some time with Iris and Joe and so it means something more now. But then, now we're going through stuff with the Supergirl characters, and it'll mean later in the season we'll have a greater connection to them too. Winn's actions during the last episodes are entirely logical to me, and if they continue to go down the "him being love" road, then because of how they addressed that all in the Toyman episode, we'll have to assume that it's because they have bad-guy plans for Winn - there can be no accident there. Jimmy and Kara are probably going to be very much the Iris and Barry of season one, which ended up in a nicely platonic place by the end of the year.

I agree but I stated that Iris/Wally and Cat/son is similar but was too rushed in the latter. It serves to grow characters. And is completely gender neutral.

Going back, it's the Twilight/Hunger Games effect that I am curious about. The central heroine being the pin of a love triangle, with it being blatent Model looks guy vs Nerd best friend. It smacks of committee trying to be relevant and thinking that they cracked the tween girl market.

Hopefully it will be toned back but I am like you sensing a potential Toyman Jr. plot a coming (which will at least fit with the current dynamic) or just have him get over her and crack on with someone else. It just seems forced at the minute

MJohnston

Except it hasn't proven to be a love triangle at all - she doesn't want to date the nerd best friend, and her feelings for Jimmy haven't exactly been stated clearly yet.

Regardless, I think you're letting the genders blind you - Oliver Queen went through his share of Sara/Felicity love triangle stuff (not to mention Tommy/Laurel from Season 1) and Barry Allen had plenty of it in season one with Iris and Linda Park. I wouldn't call this a Twilight/Hunger Games effect, it's just something CW have always used - Buffy (albeit it was UPN/The WB back then) with multiple love triangles, and Smallville again with multiple love triangles. The execs obviously have this belief that it attracts a certain amount of viewership, and to be fair, it's led to Arrow having 2 (arguably 3) spinoffs, so it's hard to argue that it doesn't work. If a little bit of that stuff is what it takes for us to have the Green Martian genocide, or King Shark, or Gorilla Grodd, or the multiverse, or whatever ridiculous comic book thing depicted genuinely and impressively onscreen, I'll take it.

And we all complained about arrow/flash and they were never as pronounced as SG (Katie Cassidy terrible acting aside)

Are you honestly telling me that SGvl has not ramped it to 11 it's dripping in pseudo girl power bull. SG is a strong enough character and pkayed well enough to not need it. Fine if you don't see it but my other half certainly does as have several posters here

MJohnston

It was there in the pilot and the second episode, but it's been significantly more subtle since then. It probably stands out so much to people because it's so rare to see. And I don't care either way - we've had decades of male power fantasies on TV and movies, a little bit of evening the odds is fine by me.

Sudden Valley

I think it's only ever Cat bringing in gender politics at every opportunity. Her favourite phrase seems to be "as a woman, Cara, you must/mustn't...". The series does treat the invasion of the Kryptonians quite bizarrely there seems to be no panic whatsoever in a city that could attacked at any moment by these superhumans. The love triangle, as I see it, is more between Jimmy, Kara, and Lane.

Agreed about the Kryptonians. I'm sorry but Superman would hardly let Kara take on several of them alone, regardless of her needing her space or not

CastorTroy

The flame breath was obvious, but I didn't see how they could tell that she fired ice beams and kryptonite made her stronger since she just collapsed, degraded then flew away.

And not only did the kryptonite bullets make her stronger but also made her costume darker and reversed the shield on her chest.

They're really enjoying setting up the next episode these days.

MJohnston

Really enjoyed that, especially as they could have taken the "she's pure evil" path with Bizarro very easily, but instead they picked the more interesting route. Some nice little action moments too - I especially liked Bizarro body slamming Kara who just flew away instead of hitting the ground.

The mix of wire and CG worked much much better this episode

iguana

I want to like this show so much more than I do and I think it's because it's trying to do too much. I get why Kara wants to keep her job with Kat. She feels it helps humanise her and working fulltime at the DEO would separate her too much from humanity. And clearly Kat reminds her of her mother in some way so she wants to stay close to her. But what purpose do her Scooby gang serve? What can Winn and James do that the DEO with it's greater resources and trained agents couldn't? They aren't her friends. Winn is in love with her and when he told her it was too painful to just be her friend she should have accepted that and let him move on. She's in lust with James who is coming across as a cape chaser, head wrecker and appalling boyfriend. And the show has gone from love triangle to love square to love pentagon and now back to square again. And the only chemistry seen was between Benoist and her actual husband who has been shuffled back off.

I'd love to see a soft reboot of the show where either James and Winn were written off or James just committed to Lucy, Winn leaves/goes evil/realises he is gay/anything that isn't pining after Kara who clearly isn't attracted to him. And the show just moved on from a whole lot of uninteresting "romance" plots. If the showrunner feels a need to have a romantic interest, I feel it would be better to take a leaf from the old Lois and Clark series and give her a new boyfriend, Alex or someone else, and have him not know her secret for a while. Have fun with that and then have a big reveal and show them navigating their relationship once he knows. Lois and Clark was a silly series but it managed to make that silliness it's strength. Though I could do without Kara ever marrying a frog.

And Max Lord's swift descent into uber villain was too quick. I thought having him be someone who wants to do good but with Machiavellian methodology and an understandable unease with what having a Kryptonian running around his city could mean was an interesting approach. I was interested in watching him slowly evolve into a dangerous villain all the while seeing himself as the hero of the piece. To instead have him as an out and out mustache twirling villain who knows Kara is Supergirl and is threatening her foster mother by episode 12 seems like a waste of so much potential for great characterisation.

iguana

I want to like this show so much more than I do and I think it's because it's trying to do too much. I get why Kara wants to keep her job with Kat. She feels it helps humanise her and working fulltime at the DEO would separate her too much from humanity. And clearly Kat reminds her of her mother in some way so she wants to stay close to her. But what purpose do her Scooby gang serve? What can Winn and James do that the DEO with it's greater resources and trained agents couldn't? They aren't her friends. Winn is in love with her and when he told her it was too painful to just be her friend she should have accepted that and let him move on. She's in lust with James who is coming across as a cape chaser, head wrecker and appalling boyfriend. And the show has gone from love triangle to love square to love pentagon and now back to square again. And the only chemistry seen was between Benoist and her actual husband who has been shuffled back off.

I'd love to see a soft reboot of the show where either James and Winn were written off or James just committed to Lucy, Winn leaves/goes evil/realises he is gay/anything that isn't pining after Kara who clearly isn't attracted to him. And the show just moved on from a whole lot of uninteresting "romance" plots. If the showrunner feels a need to have a romantic interest, I feel it would be better to take a leaf from the old Lois and Clark series and give her a new boyfriend, Alex or someone else, and have him not know her secret for a while. Have fun with that and then have a big reveal and show them navigating their relationship once he knows. Lois and Clark was a silly series but it managed to make that silliness it's strength. Though I could do without Kara ever marrying a frog.

And Max Lord's swift descent into uber villain was too quick. I thought having him be someone who wants to do good but with Machiavellian methodology and an understandable unease with what having a Kryptonian running around his city could mean was an interesting approach. I was interested in watching him slowly evolve into a dangerous villain all the while seeing himself as the hero of the piece. To instead have him as an out and out mustache twirling villain who knows Kara is Supergirl and is threatening her foster mother by episode 12 seems like a waste of so much potential for great characterisation.

All very valid. You'll get shot down here for mentioning love triangles or rhombus or whatever though.

Lord was a very wasted opportunity; he should have been a slow boil, developing a paranoid fear of SG over time and even perhaps in a relationship with Alex.