tofutan

I agree that those interesting themes were not touch upon enough and the story lacked a proper big emotional resolution. But to me they at least got close to brushing up on interesting issues, as in those episode where Kara finds out the truth and they clash about it. IMO so far s3 hasn't really done anything like that, it's even worse so far in bringing up potential, such as James sitting in board meeting with the most powerful people of the city and then not doing anything with it and it's not like s3 either returned to doing meaningful photography or delving into something new, like James being a powerhouse in the city. I thought James being the first and one of like 2 people we know who got murdered by nazis was insulting to all hell. That new Supergirl trailer looks a bit bland to me. Too many dark and samey looking locations. I had hoped the trailed for this team up would instead play up the fun factor. It seems like we'll have Reign battles non-ship for 3 episodes in a row.

Personally I didn't think that it was that out of left field that after things not working out with Kara he'd have a bit of a masculine identity crisis and I've read some decent meta about how James showed some undercover signs of being a bit vain in season 1 already. But I can see how that might not appeal to fans who had James in a different mental "box". Either way, I never saw it as an attack on James character but the writers trying to give him something that made it easier for them to write stories for him because they could use him to tell stories that could parallel problems in the other stories. I'll be very disappointed if they don't use James/Lena to at least tell a "should I tell her about being Guardian/at what point?/will she be cool with it?" story. But then again S3 has been pretty disappointing in a lot of ways already so they might not even bother with this really, really obvious story potential.

And if a story is badly executed then I'm not gonna pretend it's well written even if I like the outcome as a concept. Just because the concept of "James is a sweet and supportive friend of Kara who never does anything wrong" or "Kara has a group of female friends rather than primarily male friends like in season 1" might be appealing as a concept to people doesn't mean that it can't be executed badly. And the show going "tell don't show" on us with Lena/James and Sam/Kara, were what the characters say directly contradicts what we as the audience SAW, is bad writing. For the record, I agree that a huge problem of the Guardian storyline was that it never climaxed. It felt like it should have climaxed as him either giving up on Guardian because he learned his lesson that it was a mistake or it should have climaxed with Kara admitting in a big moment that she was wrong about him and that it's a good thing that he's Guardian. The ending of the season felt like it sort of put in groundwork for the first option with the episode where James is upset that people are scared of Guardian, but then he clearly doesn't give it up. And he is still doing it this season even though we don't see as much of it. But he didn't get his proper moment of validation either. So don't get me wrong, I'm not claiming that the Guardian arc was super well written. But to me it still very much fulfills the requirement of "characters having a life of their own". And compared to s3, it was, you know, an actual ongoing story rather than just random scenes that go on in the background. IMO James still got meatier material in some of the Guardian episodes than he has gotten all this season so far, especially since imo the writers really screwed up James and Lena getting together. It just feels like they couldn't care less if they don't even bother putting in a minimum of romantic buildup. Again, maybe this will change, but we are a third of the season down and it's pretty frustrating to me that if there's supposed to be a story there that it still hasn't really started. But to me that is more a sign of the bad writing of season 3 than a complaint against he bad writing of season 2. If s3 didn't want to continue the Winn/Lyra storyline all they would have had to do was to drop us a sentence that they broke up, it's not like there was no groundwork with the arguments they had the last time we saw her. Just like they still haven't told us what happened to Lillian Luthor after the s2 finale. Did she go to jail? Is the on the run? Was she exhonorated? To me those are all examples of the bad, careless, lack of attention to detail writing that s3 is riddled with and that shows up in the writing of all the supporting characters. And I don't see how "Alex was gay, but in self-denial" is a bigger out of the blue wtf than "Alex has always been obsessed with being a mom she just never mentioned it ever before". So it's not like s3 isn't doing their own share of "cheating" with characterization. As you said, it was a thankless task but he got screentime and got to express emotions. Which to me beats the thankless role he has this season where he is there for Kara and gets rewarded by Kara telling a character she had 2 conversations with that she never had a best friend, but she has best friends now in Lena and Sam. => two people she's constantly lying to because she doesn't care enough to share her secret with, while she couldn't wait to share it with her work friend Winn in season 1. It just feels like the show is trying to pull the wool over our eyes to FORCE this storyline to fit, but they don't actually want to put in the work to build it up. Which is exactly why s3 imo suffers from A LOT of bad writing, even if the general focus and themes of the season might resonate with you more. I just want better attention to detail writing and it bugs me that they are so bad at that in s3 when they used to be better at that in s1 and even in s2 as well.

LOL, that must be one of the most vague episode descriptions I've ever read.

I would rather have a character be abrasive rather than a character be nothing than just a yesman. Especially since I didn't find the season 1 story of waffling between Kara and Lucy all that compelling either. S3 doens't have this problem, but then again, I'd argue James hasn't had a story in s3. He had a story setup but the show has done nothing with it. James is getting very close imo to "sexy lamp" syndrome. I'd rather have a character I can sink my teeth in, who has strengths and flaws that get explored, than a character who comes across as pleasantly agreeable furniture. I hope it's getting better now that they have started the Lena/James bit, but I can't shake the feeling that it's gonna be very predicable in rather than exploring his character they will just have James protect Lena to signal to the audience that he is now sexy again. I think it's very telling that rather than having James and Lena have meaningful conversations and fall in love over it, the moment they want him back in sexy love interest territory, they bust out the Guardian tech again. It's because they don't actually know how to write for pleasant furniture James. And I have no problem if anybody said "Supergirl Season 3A was successful in returning to a more hierarchical main character structure which is exactly what I think it should be like". But to me it's just exactly the opposite to claim that s3 has been good for supporting characters (remember: to me Alex is not a supporting character) especially when to comes in the context of praising Legends for being a show that really gives all their characters space. IMO Winn and J'onn have received the clearest downgrades with Winn just having no story whatsoever and J'onn's father storyline being treated extremely shoddily. James to me also loses out and even Lena's story suffers from being extremely choppy (I think she is hardest to compare since she wasn't a regular cast member in s2, only a guest star). The way they didn't bother to properly build up James and Lena is imo just insulting and I just hope that maybe it will get better now that they are officially a thing? Maybe the writers are more excited for writing for them as a thing than they obviously were about making them a thing? Again this is not that huge a problem. I even generally agree with the approach that Kara and Alex are the most important characters and the show stands and falls with the quality of their storylines. I just couldn't disagree more with the sentence that this season has had good writing for the supporting characters. "getting to stand next to Kara" is not the same as "good writing". Proper build up and character continuity and lack of plotholes and show don't tell are good writing. Something that the show violates a lot this season, particulary in the supporting characters' storylines. ==> I'm not even asking for the story structure to be more like season 2. I think both approaches have their benefits and drawbacks. But I would like those supporting stories to be better written. And it bothers me because they were so much better at this in the past, both in s2 and s1. Sometimes just a single line or additional scene would have done to improve the quality of those supporting storylines (like give J'onn a few lines about how awkward it is with his father around if you are not gonna show the father for X episodes, or give us an in universe reason like experiences power troubles to explain why J'onn can't go into the field, either gives us some scenes building up James/Lena or intentionally write them as a Winn/Lyra style couple that just explodes without prior build up and then goes from there, rather than telling us about scenes that were never shown on screen. Or like stop pretending that Kara and Sam are best friends and "sisters" (especially since Sam doesn't even bother to tell her "sisters" that she is having blackouts, doesn't sound like a very deep friendship to me). The storyline works just as well if Kara "just" thinks that Sam is a very sweet and pleasant and good person she just got to know rather than trying to tell us that this relationships which had like 2 scenes together is suddenly more meaningful than friendships we have seen consistently since season 1). I have no problem with people liking 3 over 2, I just don't like it when people claim things about s2 that are blatantly not the case (like: the supporting characters had no life of their own in s2 when season 2 was all about giving everybody and their dog their own homelife) You can still like s3 better because it does better in categories A, B, C and D which matter to you without having to claim that it's doing better in all categories. s2 can do things better than s3 but still be worse to you if it's a category you just don't care about like let's say "number of talking robots" or "number of times the Fortress of Solitude has been shown" or "amount of awkward social issues metaphors using aliens".

http://ew.com/tv/2018/01/11/spoiler-room-shield-blindspot-greys/

This season relies way too heavily on people acting like like plot devices rather than people. Like, we are supposed to buy that Sam suddenly has this meaningful friendship with Lena and Kara, one would think she would mention to her friends that she is having weird episodes.

Seriously, why hasn't a single person asked them: 1.) Who the other people in their 6 pods are? 2.) Why they were 12.000 years in the past anyway, what the heck were they doing there? It's like, wtf, they basically live in the DEO's basement and nobody asked them who the other people in cryosleep are? They should at least have established the rules of timetravel like by having somebody asks whether they can leech off some future technology from the Legion or get some future knowledge and the Legion saying no.

Yet another Supergirl trailer, showing off a lot of Reign with her priestess mentor (does she have a name yet?)

She hurt her foot according to what she wrote on Instagramm and some people think that's why there are crutches in the background of the Kara/Alex picture. If Chyler was injured in real life, maybe that explains why Alex is baby sitting Ruby in the next episode/maybe she was originally to also go on the Fort Rozz mission but they had to rewrite that on short notice (which again would fit Pedowitz saying there was a production delay on Supergirl for reasons not related to AK's firing).

It just seems weird to me that you'd call that "the characters finally getting a life of their own" when to me s3 is bascically exactly the opposite. To me s2 fulfills "life of their own" way more because the storylines were actually progressing without Kara. It just seems like a huge contrast when what sparked the discussion originally was praise for Legends for Tomorrow because Legends actually lets non-main characters have storylines together and then people turn around and say James (despite not doing much) feels like he "matters" again just because he is doing nothing next to Kara than last season when he got a storyline about slowly bonding with Winn which imo culimnated/climaxed when James told Winn he considers him a brother now. On Legends, nobody would ever consider that character and relationship development somehow does not count just because Sara is not around when Mick has a deep storyline about his messed up father supported by Nate or just because Sara so far has paid little attention to the Amaya/Zari/Totem storyline. For the record, I don't think that s2 had flawless or great writing either, but imo the "nuts and bolt" writing is just so much worse in s3 and particularly for supporting characters, it's been a huge drowngrade, particularly due to 1.) this tendency for storylines to just stop/the associated characters to disappear without in show explanation or reason and then resume again at a later point even though that's not how normal people would react to situations. Ie if your dad who you thought was dead and who was abused and tortured for years was back in your life that would be a big deal to you. The show could have solved this by throwaway lines (if I didn't want to show it on screen) like "I'm taking some time off to spend with my father" or "my father right now is doing X, he is fine, thanks for asking". 2.) character relationships take completely unrealistic leaps without the show providing the scenes to justify them. The show constantly uses scenes that never actually happened/they never bothered to show us tp justify moves it makes. The James/Lena move in episode 9 could easily have been improved by like one scene where Kara calls him out on liking Lena in a previous episode and them talking about it and maybe the occasional throwaway line by Kara about how Lena is (like when he came to the DEO to sing the praises of Karamel). That would have shown his point of view, better built up James and Lena by letting us actually know more about what he feels for her (is it a crush? sexual attraction? feeling protective of her? is he weirded out by being romantically fond a Luthor? hesistant to pursue it because she is his boss? insecure about her wanting him or him fitting into her life?) and built up the James/Kara friendship a bit more and let it feel more natural. Or do the opposite, have Lena confide in Kara about digging James before 9 or have Kara or Sam call her out on it or at least exchange knowing looks any time before 2 seconds beforer Lena and James jump each other. The show didn't even bother to tell us what happened after the kiss? We see them walking the streets together, so what happened? Did they sleep together? Did they feel the kiss was a mistake and agreed to go back being professionals? Did they agree to try and date? I feel like I have no idea what the current state of James and Lena's relationship is because the show didn't bother to show us their feelings after the kiss just like they didn't bother showing us the scenes of what Kara referenced had been going on between them. Things just "happen" rather than events and scenes leading into each other. I don't fault anybody for LIKING s3 better, but to me statements like "characters getting a life of their own" (indicating that that wasn't the case before) or that this season has been good for supporting characters are just not justified by what I see on screen. There has been a lot of clumsy writing this season and supporting characters are particularly hit hard by it. ==> That doesn't mean that s3 can't be better by most people's metrics. Kara and Alex ARE the main characters so if those two have more consistent writing now that is worth it a lot to make the show feel more consistent overall. But imo on the fringes, the writing has been cutting a lot of corners and imo the supporting storylines and relationships are hit particularly hard by it. And to me that comes across as the show not really respecting those supporting characters if they don't bother writing them consistently and have them react to the events in their lives in any kind of realistic fashion. I do think the show dropped the ball on James Guardian storyline in s2 for example by tying it back in thematically with Mon-El's heroism story. But to me it still felt like a logical progression. James wants to be a hero, James intiates steps to make it happen, James encounters obstacles (like when Guardian is framed for murder), which is what one would expect to happen and overcomes them, James is found out by Kara and it leads to conflict, James deals with "leadership problems" when Winn's girlfriend wants on the team, James encounters limits to what he can achieve as Guardian when he realizes that people don't look up to him the way they look up to Supergirl. They picked a topic for him and explored various angles of it. James and Lena dealing with running CatCo together is a concept that looks neat on paper but so far nothing has been done with it. In ep2 James was upset that Lena didn't invite him for meetings, Lena indicated that she would bring him along to meetings now. This is the extent of "stories about running CatCo". Oh right, there was this throwaway conversation where Lena wants to run ads that are disguised as articles (one of things that are commonly considered one of the shittiest popular journalism practises), James doesn't like it, but with one throwaway line it is decided that it should be done anyway. Them clashing over this could easily have been an entire episode B plot. None of this has lead to meaningful actual storylines to explore this concept, something that was the case with Guardian (James deals with being framed, James deals with Winn getting injured on the job, James clashes with Kara over whether as a human he is strong enough to put himself into danger, James deals with leadership decisions, James deals with whether he is not inspiring enough). BTW, speaking of things that were not followed up on, remember how the reason started with it looking like Kara and Reign were sharing a dream? Which was all weird because it looked like Alura was in Sam's dream too? The creature from Reign's dream showed up again when she had a vision of the hologramm lady and there was something that could be a veiled reference when Kara and Sam both mentioned that they've been having trouble sleeping. But other than that? There's been no progress on that whatsoever, I'm not even sure whether they just forgot about that.

True. I remember I always thought it was a manip because the head and the body don't look well proportioned together. Makes you wonder though how they came up with the look for the suit though. Did whoever made the manip paint it? Or paint over some Superman costume with other colors? I just thought maybe there was a remote chance that it was a mockup the show did during the planning phase maybe. In other more spoiler-y news, behind the scenes with David Harewood, Chyler is definitely out and about shooting again.

There was a picture I've sometimes used in online articles of Chris Wood in a red Mon-El suit where he is sort of looking down? Was that a manip or from like a costume test or something? I always wondered about that. Because if that was a manip that person can really pat themselves on the back because I think I've seen several websites and youtube channels use that as an illustration.

Guardian matters because it was about James exploring something he wanted. (and on a meta level: he matters to the show because that way they can do additional action scenes that cost less special effects money than the Supergirl scenes). He might not matter to the world, but he matters to James. Why shouldn't James get to explore his heroism or J'onn gets to explore his heritage, especially since the point of these stories is usually to create overarching themes or serve as parallels to other stories. To me a more multicast approach is when characters get their own life rather than just serving the lead. It's a matter of taste when they say, no, actually they prefer a setup that his hierarchical around the lead where supporting characters serve the lead and don't have meaningful storylines with each other. That's fine. But then be aware that that's what you are saying: I prefer the hierarchical lead structure, just like it was in season 1. But as far as supporting cast getting screentime in actual storylines, season 2 was definitely more there than season 3. And the "choppyness" of the stories is a perfect example. Like the constantly disappearing M'yrnn. Or take Morgan Edge. So in 5 Morgan Edge is dealt a major blow by having his plans foiled, but he still manages to walk off scott free by none of the evidence sticking to him. Then suddenly 4 episodes later Lena is on the kill list of a gang. The *logical* way to write this story would have been "Morgan Edge is dealt a major blow, that's why he starts plotting his revenge immediately" or "Morgan Edge has been dealt a major blow, because of this he is involved in some sort of legal battle, but as soon as he's back he puts his next plan into motion". Instead things on SG S3 just happen randomly. Characters don't behave like real people because they are "on a break" while Kara cares about other things. It's like nobody is moving while Kara is not looking rather than people having a life of their own. And I genuinely don't understand how you can just ignore the show just leaving out huge chunks of the story by just telling us they happened (ie Sam helping Kara with her problems, James and Lena flirting). In what universe is that good writing? Just because you think that the show scores higher in one category (being integrated/having more screentime with Kara) doesn't mean that those flaws in other categories don't exist (even if those are not categories you care about). Supergirl s3 is badly written on a bare bones nuts and bolts level because events happen randomly rather than linking into each other, characters often act like scene dispenser when he show has some time left over to feel like showing us M'yrnn again rather than acting in a timely fashion and the show several times presents us relationships taking huge leaps in intensity despite not showing us any of the linking scenes. (by comparison, Alex/Ruby is not badly written when it comes to build up, people just understandably hate it because they don't like the idea of where it is going, but on a writing level the show has put in actual effort to them slowly getting to know each other rather than rushing things and giving us insight why Alex feels certain things and then invested considerable time to have Alex deal with these things and reflect on them. This is the show actually putting in the work to build this story, it just happens to be wasted on a story that everybody hates because they hate the concept of the outcome)