S01.E01: Pilot

[Danielg342]

The thing about Superman being a (largely) unseen character is that there will be episodes where Kara is told she is “Earth's only hope”...only that she isn't, she's got an ally who seems to be uninterested in helping her. If they can find a good justification for that, I'll accept it, but for now, it doesn't seem right to me to have Superman around if you're not going to use him.

[Kromm]

They could make it so that it was shown she was actually overconfident, is shown to be overconfident while facing her biggest test yet -- dozens of super-powered villains, headed by her own aunt.

 

The way things have been framed, for the past 12 years, various supervillains have been lurking around Earth building up their plans for world domination or whatever. Also on a smaller scale, there are 12 years of muggings, bank robberies, plane crashes and other calamities that she apparently did not intervene in. 

 

If I were to retool it, I would scrap the foster family (we can just have the cameos elsewhere), have Supergirl come to Earth as a 18-yo so that the "girl" part fits, have her start helping people right away (because it kinda makes her look awful to be like "I've always wanted to help people...but inexplicably didn't for the last 12 years."), and have the aliens show up around the same time too and disperse. I would have Kara and Kal communicate via super-secret messaging so that it doesn't look like she got basically left to fend for herself. I'd have the DEO just assign Alex to her as her roomie/handler/etc.

That just sounds like it's exchanging one bag of contrivances and cliches for a different set of contrivances and cliches. I don't see how it's any better.

[RemoteControlFreak]

Clark has only been the bumbling klutz in the Christopher Reeve movies; all other incarnations, he was and is a mild-mannered reporter.

 

I liked it. I didn't love it, but I liked it and it wasn't all angsty and grim and so in that sense, it was refreshing. 

I never said klutz.  Please don't add words to my quote.  I said Clark is bumbling and mild-mannered, which has always been true.

Edited October 30, 2015 by RemoteControlFreak

[fastiller]

The thing about Superman being a (largely) unseen character is that there will be episodes where Kara is told she is “Earth's only hope”...only that she isn't, she's got an ally who seems to be uninterested in helping her. If they can find a good justification for that, I'll accept it, but for now, it doesn't seem right to me to have Superman around if you're not going to use him.

Unless they updated it to "National City's only hope"...?

Edited October 30, 2015 by fastiller

[Danielg342]

Unless they updated it to "National City's only hope"...?

I guess...kind of like how Superman stays out of Gotham.

Still, there's going to be a moment where Kara will face a challenge that should be too much for her to handle alone and could have been resolved if only Superman would help her out.

[Kromm]

I guess...kind of like how Superman stays out of Gotham.

Still, there's going to be a moment where Kara will face a challenge that should be too much for her to handle alone and could have been resolved if only Superman would help her out.

Okay, but the comics deal with this all of the time. Of course Superman and Supergirl guest star in each other's books, but it's a lot less than you'd think they would in most of the modern books.  Usually this is because they have long story arcs where they don't want to commit the other character to being involved in case there's a conflicting story where the other character is having a big arc in space, or temporarily evil, or temporarily dead, or time traveling, or some other weird comic-bookish complication.  Anyway, the point is.... whatever lame reasons might exist for it, even in the DC comics proper, they constantly have situations where the strongest other person on the planet besides yourself might come in handy... and is nowhere to be found. No explanation given (at least directly) in most cases. It's just become a standard element of the comics, I think. So them using the same er... do I dare use the word "logic"?  How about "convention"? Well, that's not surprising at all.

 

Heck, if you think about it, why isn't The Flash constantly bailing out poor Oliver Queen? He's not. He guest stars a few pre-set times per season now, but Ollie's usually constrained to his typical "help" and not the guy he knows best equipped to help (and even if Flash doesn't have super-senses to know Ollie and the others DO all have cellphones and it takes Barry like minutes to run between the two cities). The point is the stories can't be written that way. There's really no sense in writing a Green Arrow story where you have to assume that The Flash could always help him.. so why not?  You have to write the opposite way, and it's equally true for Supergirl and Superman, just with the added element that they don't want to show Superman anyway.

Edited October 30, 2015 by Kromm

[that one guy]

 

I have to admit that I'm not a fan of the cynical nature and skepticism of the public that is portrayed in the super hero shows of late.  Though there were some cheesy lines in the Reeve movies, at least the public liked Superman and the cops were grateful for his help.

 

I think I would be freaked out. IRL I do not support vigilantism, or even civilians being armed. In a civilized society, the state has a monopoly on the legitimate use of force, and uses it according to policies established through a democratic process. Citizens have surrendered their right to punch each other etc to the state as part of a social contract.This allows for democracy to exist rather than rule of the biggest and strongest. Rescuing airplanes is fine, as is fighting aliens with the sanction of the DEO, the duly constituted authority. But the crap Batman pulls is out of line and blatantly illegal, and he belongs in Arkham with the rest of the criminally insane.

Speaking of tropes, I hope there's not a love triangle with a brooding, inaccessible bad boy on this show. Jimmy (James!) seems to actually be a nice guy who is kind and supportive and seems like he'd actually be good for Kara. I'm not typically a shipper, but wouldn't it be nice to have a genre show where someone actually had a healthy relationship?

[Jordan27]

I thought Melissa's portrayal of Supergirl and Kara were enchanting.  I especially liked her innocent Kara persona which was great when she was telling her friend on the roof who she was.

 

They did handle, although somewhat surprisingly, the problem when you have someone with super powers.  Creating bad guys who are a challenge can be daunting.  Buffy did a great job of it.  But here, they had Supergirl being taken down by the gov't and bad guys with super powers too.  Plus, she got hurt.

 

I like Jimmy and her friend.  Flockhart's character is way over the top and is irritating.  Who would work for her any length of time and especially if you had super powers.

 

The gov't guy was ridiculous.  You have a girl with super powers and you have to battle guys with them and you're alienating her.  Made no sense.

 

Interesting beginning, but not outstanding.  I'll wait and see where they take it.  I'm in for the duration because I like everything Superman and all super heroes.  I like Flash and Arrow which, at this point, are better shows.

 

 

 

 

[arc]

Seems more like the love triangle the pilot was setting out would be Kara, Jimmy James*, and Winn Schott**.

 

* Well shoot, now that I saw it written out like that, that one guy, I have to call him that. "Jimmy has fancy plans, and pants to match."

 

** I still can't believe that's his name.

[GHScorpiosRule]

I saw a version of her story were she went and trained with the Amazons on Paradise Island, but that was because she had no ability to control the powers she had when as nearly an adult, her ship surfaces on earth. This Kara doesn't need to know how to keep her powers under control. She's got that covered in spades. She's probably TOO good at controlling her powers. What she needs is practice with her powers. And I guess that's what she's going to get each week.

<snip>

See, I'm the opposite, I don't think people would have any difficulty separating universes. Nobody complains they can't separate Sherlock from Elementary or the many, many earlier Sherlock Holmes series of movies and shows. Why is it so hard to separate comic book characters?

Right! That was Bruce Timm's Batman/Superman: Apocalypse, the sequel to Batman/Superman: Public Enemies (Both which TOTALLY ROCKED, although Apocalypse should have used Michael Ironside to voice Darkseid; Andre Braugher's a good actor, but he was totally miscast to voice Darkseid; he didn't have the scary menace that Ironside does). And yep, this version of Kara had to be taught English, and Bats brought Diana to take her to Themyscira to be trained so she could learn to control her powers.

I know I have no problem separating universes, which is why I have no issue with not seeing Supes here. Plus like someone else stated, if he kept showing up to "help", it would take away from Kara. This show is about her and her story/journey. Just because he's not here, I don't think he doesn't care.

I never said klutz. Please don't add words to my quote. I said Clark is bumbling and mild-mannered, which has always been true.

I wasn't trying to put words in your mouth, but point taken about adding "klutz" when I was trying to clarify. But my original statement is still true, that Clark has only been "bumbling" in the Christopher Reeve movies, not anywhere else. Superman Returns also, but only because Routh admitted that he was trying to be like Reeve's Clark from the first two movies and not his own Clark.

Edited October 31, 2015 by GHScorpiosRule

[BkWurm1]

Seems more like the love triangle the pilot was setting out would be Kara, Jimmy James*, and Winn Schott**.

 

* Well shoot, now that I saw it written out like that, that one guy, I have to call him that. "Jimmy has fancy plans, and pants to match."

 

** I still can't believe that's his name.

It's my understanding that we should add "Jr" to his name.  :D

[Kromm]

It's my understanding that we should add "Jr" to his name.  :D

That might (to some) count as a spoiler (except it's been widely reported in the press, so I guess it's an open secret).

[MarkHB]

Was the pilot exactly the same as the leaked version? 

Pretty close; the main difference I can think of was that the original had a shot of young Kara sitting in her pod, looking around the Phantom Zone through the window after she got trapped there.  That one really muddled the narrative so I'm glad they cut it.

 

It's 2015, writers. No homo jokes are not funny.

 

I want to point out that the sole writing credit for the actual script went to showrunner Ali Adler, who is herself a lesbian.  While that doesn't excuse the line, it wasn't a bunch of straight bros sitting in a room who came up with it.  My gut feeling is that she was going for "guy assumes he knows what girl is going to say, particularly if he can make it about what he is interested in, i.e. dating her."

 

 

He who must not be named will never show up but I wonder if they'll ever get him to do a voice only appearance.  That scene on the roof with Jimmy (er, James) should have been with Superman but if he couldn't get away from Metropolis he could have at least picked up a phone or recorded a message.

 

I'd like to see Kara up on the roof solo, talking to Superman... because they can hear each other even though he's in Metropolis. One-sided conversation, sure, but it's what I might do if I had those powers and a cousin who did, too.

 

I remember how wierd it was with the 80s syndicated "Superboy" series where he's in college and later in his 20s being called "Superboy"! Most of her incarnations in the comics Supergirl was an actual teenage girl. Then she gets killed off during "Crisis on Infinite Earths" in 1985. I remember the poignant moment in  the final story for the Silver Age version of  Superman "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?" written by Alan Moore right after Crisis:

 

 

The killer part is that the next page has Lois, who is narrating, saying "He never said what happened that night, but the next morning... it looked like he had been crying," over a full-page pic of Superman sitting on a bed in the Fortress, looking like he's bawling his eyes out.  Brilliant, brilliant sequence.

 

And this one... which is um... just read it (it does however claim that cousin marriage is unlawful on Krypton... even if Supes seems oddly enamored of the idea.

 

I have always assumed that the real reason they're cousins is to prevent them from having a family who could just take over the planet.  My gut feeling is that that may be part of the story coming in the (Elseworlds) comics in November in "Dark Knight III: The Master Race."

 

Two more things that stuck in my mind about the pilot.

1. Kara's job must pay fairly well for a CEO's assistant. Her apartment is really spacious and I'm assuming National City has a population of at least 500,000+ and she lives downtown.

2. When her tech guy tells her about the armed robbery and asks her if she can stop a bullet, she says "I think so". I guess that she would know Superman can stop bullets and she figures she's also bulletproof, but that's something you'd want to test out first before getting in the way of automatic machine gun fire. See if a knife can cut you or something like that.

 

1. Not to mention the large collection of artwork she has stacked against the wall like she's running a flea market. 

 

2. One of the audition sides had her saying in that scene, "Hope so... I've never been shot!"

 

They did not explain how she got out of the PZ but it was implied that someday that mystery might be revealed.  I have a feeling that Kara wasn't interested in being an athlete, she probably would see it as cheating anyway. Right now, Kara is an assistant but often assistant to the big boss is a good way to get your foot in the door to the business.  I'm not entirely sure what Kara's ultimate goal is (writer? publisher? boss?) but I got the impression that she hadn't been at this job very long and it wasn't what she'd expected.

I think I said in the pre-release thread that "I wanted to make a difference and instead I'm making coffee" is not an uncommon feeling among many young adults.

[jaytee1812]

I want to point out that the sole writing credit for the actual script went to showrunner Ali Adler, who is herself a lesbian.  While that doesn't excuse the line, it wasn't a bunch of straight bros sitting in a room who came up with it.  My gut feeling is that she was going for "guy assumes he knows what girl is going to say, particularly if he can make it about what he is interested in, i.e. dating her."

This, along with a few other things, made Winn seem like a bit of a creep. He assumes if she doesn't want to date him it's because she's a lesbian, and the first costume he tries to get her into is as skimpy as possible. I know nothing about the storylines in DC comics but these scenes both suggested to me he was being set up as a future villain.

[lion10]

This, along with a few other things, made Winn seem like a bit of a creep. He assumes if she doesn't want to date him it's because she's a lesbian, and the first costume he tries to get her into is as skimpy as possible. I know nothing about the storylines in DC comics but these scenes both suggested to me he was being set up as a future villain.

 

Yeah his "of course you don't want to date me because you're a lesbian" comment was ridiculously gross.  I can't fault him for trying to get her in that first costume though.  

[jaytee1812]

Melissa's a hot woman but that first costume did nothing for her.

[sinkwriter]

 

Did not expect the twist with the evil aunt who's an identical twin of her dead mother!

 

That was the only part I didn't like. Evil aunt, really?

[Danielg342]

Okay, but the comics deal with this all of the time. Of course Superman and Supergirl guest star in each other's books, but it's a lot less than you'd think they would in most of the modern books. Usually this is because they have long story arcs where they don't want to commit the other character to being involved in case there's a conflicting story where the other character is having a big arc in space, or temporarily evil, or temporarily dead, or time traveling, or some other weird comic-bookish complication. Anyway, the point is.... whatever lame reasons might exist for it, even in the DC comics proper, they constantly have situations where the strongest other person on the planet besides yourself might come in handy... and is nowhere to be found. No explanation given (at least directly) in most cases. It's just become a standard element of the comics, I think. So them using the same er... do I dare use the word "logic"? How about "convention"? Well, that's not surprising at all.

Heck, if you think about it, why isn't The Flash constantly bailing out poor Oliver Queen? He's not. He guest stars a few pre-set times per season now, but Ollie's usually constrained to his typical "help" and not the guy he knows best equipped to help (and even if Flash doesn't have super-senses to know Ollie and the others DO all have cellphones and it takes Barry like minutes to run between the two cities). The point is the stories can't be written that way. There's really no sense in writing a Green Arrow story where you have to assume that The Flash could always help him.. so why not? You have to write the opposite way, and it's equally true for Supergirl and Superman, just with the added element that they don't want to show Superman anyway.

Maybe I'm too used to police procedurals where things are- presumably- meant to be realistic and follow a basic logic, but I still feel like it's too lame a cop-out. Still, I could let it go if the episodes turn out to be knockout entertainment (which I don't think the Pilot was, but mileage varies), and perhaps fanwank that Superman's more interested in personal glory than actual responsibility in this universe.

[shapeshifter]

Watching it made my elderly mother laugh for the first time since my dad's passing two weeks ago, so I will support the show in any way I can. My mom said she liked it.

While I'm thinking about it: Whose idea was it to put this show on at the same time as Gotham? I know, there are finite times you can run the program which doesn't run counter to other DC shows, but a little effort would have been nice.

I quit Gotham because of villains dismembering victims. I don't expect this show to go for graphic gratuitous violence, so: Different audience. IMO.

The Mentalist missed an opportunity to have an evil twin for Rigsby. Heh.

I commented to my daughter that the invading escaped prisoners with superpowers from out space were an allegory for Donald Trump's vision of immigrants crossing the southern border of the U.S. being criminals, drug dealers, etc., and that Super Girl serves to show they aren't all like that--which is still a xenophobic perspective. My daughter just rolled her eyes, but then that is why I post here instead of boring relatives with my thoughts on TV shows.

Edited November 1, 2015 by shapeshifter

[Kromm]

Maybe I'm too used to police procedurals where things are- presumably- meant to be realistic and follow a basic logic, but I still feel like it's too lame a cop-out.

There are tons of contrivances with (most) police procedurals that are less overt than the ones a show like Supergirl has, but are probably far greater in number.

[MarkHB]

CBS has the full pilot with commentary here.

[ratgirlagogo]

 

I don't think people are less patient today.

Me neither.  It's not the audience that has lost patience, it's the networks paying the bills.  I'm certainly patient enough to stick with this show past the goddamned PILOT before I start ranting about what a POS it is.  I'll give it some time.  Plenty to like here.  I have never ever liked Callista Flockhart, and have to grudgingly admit she's probably perfectly cast here, just because of the dislike Viewers Like Me feel for her.

 

Didn't Alex say that Kara's alien DNA meant she couldn't even get pimples? How do they explain that cute little acne scar next to her left eyebrow?

Mr Rat was wondering how she managed to pierce her ears - if she had to do it with her own laser vision refracted in a mirror the way Superman cut his hair.

 

I'm bi and I laughed at the lesbian joke.

[Chas411]

I liked it. It wasn't great but it reminded me of old school Lois and Clark with Dean Cain and Teri Hatcher and I loved that show.

It's weird seeing Chyler Leigh play the serious character in a show. I'm used to seeing her as he hysterically awkward deer in headlights type.

Is Jimmy Olsen being set up as a potential love interest? Because I got gay vibes off him. I'm probably way off but I just couldn't buy him as a love interest.

[Kromm]

Is Jimmy Olsen being set up as a potential love interest? Because I got gay vibes off him. I'm probably way off but I just couldn't buy him as a love interest.

Jimmy, Winn...different people seem to be getting "gay vibes" off every guy on the show. I suppose Hank (the DEO guy) must be next. And then they'll have a three-way!

[Chicago Redshirt]

That just sounds like it's exchanging one bag of contrivances and cliches for a different set of contrivances and cliches. I don't see how it's any better.

 

It's better IMO because the current version has Superman, Supergirl, the villains and the DEO all being strangely passive for a dozen years and (as far as we know) will have inexplicably have little connection between Superman and his cousin now that they are both adults. My proposal would change much of that. YMMV in terms of whether that's a change that matters.

 

I said Clark is bumbling and mild-mannered, which has always been true.

 

It's been traditional that Clark is bumbling and mild-mannered. But basically in most versions of Superman from the 80s to the present (with the exception of Superman Returns), Clark has been a stand-up, non-bumbling guy. The traditional version had Clark Kent as a bumbler so that no one connected him to being Superman.

 

Starting with "The Man of Steel" miniseries, the take became more that Clark Kent was more or less the real face of the character, and he adopted the Superman persona more as a disguise. Clark Kent has become an award-winning journalist  and a high school football star in at least some incarnations.

 

Is Jimmy Olsen being set up as a potential love interest? Because I got gay vibes off him. I'm probably way off but I just couldn't buy him as a love interest.

We had a talk between Kara and her sister where the sister said something along the lines of "When you meet the right guy,you'll know it. It'll be like 'Ka-Pow!"

 

And shortly after meeting Jimmy for the first time, she said "Ka-Pow!'

 

So there is apparently interest from her end.

 

Presumably Jimmy is on some level interested, but I suppose it would be weird to have the Cockblocker of Steel potentially overshadowing any attempt at a relationship/fling.

Edited November 2, 2015 by Chicago Redshirt

[Chicago Redshirt]

Maybe I'm not understanding what you are trying to say, but I don't think Kara should have been helpig from the get go, because she was 12. Was she supposed to help stop and fight crime during her adolescent years? I mean, I'm sure the public can see that she's young and I don't think they'd be accusing of her of not being there when she was still a kid.

 

I like to think that Supes helped her with her powers before he left; I'll have to rewatch, but wasn't there a scene with him and Kara, with Kara being played by Benoist and not the 12 year old Kara?

 

Regarding Superman not being around to help Kara. I don't have a problem with that because Kara does not live in Metropolis.  She's in National City; I'm not familiar with the Supergirl comics so I don't know if that is where she lives; either way, Supes is busy helping people/fighting criminals in Metropolis and Kara is doing the same where she is. If she needs his help, I think she would reach out to him. This is Supergirl, not The Adventures of Superman and Supergirl.

 

In various versions of Superman/Superboy, Clark had been discreetly saving people for years before putting on the costume. I mean, every day in any given city, there are a half-dozen muggings, fires, medical emergencies, accidents, etc., that someone with Supergirl's power set could foil or help out with, let alone larger-scale incidents like plane crashes and natural disasters.

 

As far as the pilot indicates, Kara has always had a desire to help people, but saving the plane that her foster sister was on seemingly was the first time she has done so. So that bugs me a little, as there are literally thousands of lives she could have saved or helped in that time frame but apparently didn't. (I'll of course stand corrected if Kara had been sneaking out and saving people behind the scenes too).

 

Even if you cut her some slack because she was only 12 when she first landed, that doesn't explain her apparently not doing anything else for the past 6 when she was an adult.

 

And I'm not necessarily inclined to cut her that slack. As someone who grew up to 12 on Krypton, I'm guessing she is probably more mature than an Earth 12 year old. 

 

The thing is that both Superman and Supergirl have the ability to fly at amazing speeds.So even assuming Metropolis and National City are across the country from one another, they can meet in person within minutes. Not to mention phone, text, e-mail, etc. etc.

[legaleagle53]

In various versions of Superman/Superboy, Clark had been discreetly saving people for years before putting on the costume. I mean, every day in any given city, there are a half-dozen muggings, fires, medical emergencies, accidents, etc., that someone with Supergirl's power set could foil or help out with, let alone larger-scale incidents like plane crashes and natural disasters.

 

As far as the pilot indicates, Kara has always had a desire to help people, but saving the plane that her foster sister was on seemingly was the first time she has done so. So that bugs me a little, as there are literally thousands of lives she could have saved or helped in that time frame but apparently didn't. (I'll of course stand corrected if Kara had been sneaking out and saving people behind the scenes too).

 

Even if you cut her some slack because she was only 12 when she first landed, that doesn't explain her apparently not doing anything else for the past 6 when she was an adult.

 

And I'm not necessarily inclined to cut her that slack. As someone who grew up to 12 on Krypton, I'm guessing she is probably more mature than an Earth 12 year old. 

 

Even in the comics, though, while Kara did do super-deeds to help people from the time she arrived on Earth at the age of 15, she did so discreetly and under the strict supervision of her cousin for the first two years of her life here.  He insisted on keeping not only her identity, but her very existence a secret during those two years in order to train her in the use of her powers and to give her time to adjust to Earth culture.  While yes, Superman could be somewhat draconian at times in the way he enforced the agreed-upon "secrecy at all costs" policy (he refused to let her be adopted, for example, because he felt that she was too inexperienced to cover up her secret identity), the events of the pilot as we saw them show why such discretion was necessary as Kara learned to use her powers and to understand earthly things.  Letting her use her powers unfettered without any experience or training at the age of 12 would have been disastrous -- even Superman himself had to undergo self-training with the help of his foster parents before he began his own superheroic career.

[Chicago Redshirt]

^I mostly agree with this. However, some super-saves would likely be possible based on raw ability. Kara, as far as we know, was not trained in how to catch an airplane. She just went out and did it.

 

Even if we accept that 12-year-old Kara was not in a particularly good position to save people because of lack of maturity or training, I don't see that as applying to 18-year-old Kara (when she is old enough to make her own choices), let alone 24-year-old Kara. She had ample opportunity to seek training from Superman, or the Danvers or numerous others. 

[BkWurm1]

^I mostly agree with this. However, some super-saves would likely be possible based on raw ability. Kara, as far as we know, was not trained in how to catch an airplane. She just went out and did it.

 

Even if we accept that 12-year-old Kara was not in a particularly good position to save people because of lack of maturity or training, I don't see that as applying to 18-year-old Kara (when she is old enough to make her own choices), let alone 24-year-old Kara. She had ample opportunity to seek training from Superman, or the Danvers or numerous others. 

I can't help but find it unjust to lay such a standard on Kara.  Everyone, powers or no powers, has the ability to help others more than they likely do.  If we aren't going to rag on the average earthling for just having a normal life and not devoting all their spare time to volunteering and giving all excess money to charity during their teens and early adulthood, then Kara gets a pass too on using her formative years to figure out her place in the world.

 

Hey it's great if she's made saves or if young people do volunteer in some manner.  That's great.  But if someone suddenly at 24 decides to make such things a priority in their lives, I'm not going to say it's a cop out because they should have been doing it all along. 

[Chicago Redshirt]

The main reasons I don't think it's placing an unfair burden on Kara are 1) she claims that she always had this drive to help people and 2) as someone who has the power set she does, she has such an incredibly high ability to help people, even without exposing her secret.

 

Yes, we could all give more to charity or volunteer or whatever. But when someone self-proclaims, "I've always wanted to give to charity and volunteer" and yet has not despite being a multi-millionaire with no real time obligations, I think it's totally fair to question the validity of that statement.

 

That's basically what we have in Kara.

 

To compare/contrast with other folks, Spider-Man as a teen just wanted to get paid before his uncle's death taught him he needed to put his power to use.

 

Or Buffy had her self-pitying moments, but from when she was a teen has been doing what she can to help people.

 

There's just a big disconnect between Kara's words and inaction IMO. 

[BkWurm1]

 Yes, we could all give more to charity or volunteer or whatever. But when someone self-proclaims, "I've always wanted to give to charity and volunteer" and yet has not despite being a multi-millionaire with no real time obligations, I think it's totally fair to question the validity of that statement.

 

Questioning the strength of her desire versus her fears of not just fitting in is one thing but this:

 

As far as the pilot indicates, Kara has always had a desire to help people, but saving the plane that her foster sister was on seemingly was the first time she has done so. So that bugs me a little, as there are literally thousands of lives she could have saved or helped in that time frame but apparently didn't. (I'll of course stand corrected if Kara had been sneaking out and saving people behind the scenes too).

 

This frames the issue as blame for NOT saving them rather than questioning the depth of her desire to help.  And I find that an unfair burden.  More than that, I have trouble with the idea that her life belongs to something else without giving her the chance to come to that conclusion herself.  It sounds to me like the she's being dismissed as unworthy because of the opinion that she should have always been doing it anyway so anything she does is not good enough now and she gets no points for helping because she owes it to the world. 

 

It's just a more cynical viewpoint that I don't share I guess.  Each to his own.   

 

Nice seeing your posts again, FYI.  I think I remember you from TWoP days of Chloe and Smallville.  :)

Edited November 3, 2015 by BkWurm1

[Chicago Redshirt]

Thanks!

 

Maybe I should reserve judgment more until we get more backstory on how much the Danvers/Superman raised her to keep quiet and why, or if she operated in secret or what.

 

But I can't help but feel that it would be hard for someone with Kara's abilities to stand by and do nothing in all sorts of deaths and emergencies came about and consider herself a hero and great person. 

[jay741982]

I agree with you, but I also think we can add on wanting the audience to develop with Kara. She doesn't know how to fight, she's shaky on flying, plus she's got to learn how to work with the government agency and all it's toys. There's a lot of room for character development if they go this route.  Plus, by having the sister being part of the agency we can see them really bond, maybe? I mean secret agent sis did admit to feeling inferior, so that would be a nice route as well.

I overall liked this episode. The writing was not so good, but for something like Superman/Supergirl I don't pay as much attention to it. I want character beats and fights, so the pilot mostly hit that for me. It had a couple touching moments, super powers, I really liked James Olsen, and I'm willing to give Kat some more time because it seemed like she was really excited to be able to save the tribune- even after she had tried to play it off like she didn't care.

 

What I didn't like was the coworker with a crush. The gay joke, the costume scene dialog, he came off very white boy nerd with privilege. And the preview clip of him being offended that James knows. I could do without this guy. Someone who read the comics, please tell me he isn't the love interest. I'd rather see her with James. Also the villain and the talk about women bowing to men dialog was really cliche, and I think hurts what seems to be the message of the show (female super hero= super hero). I don't know, putting women as the powerful characters doesn't mean the show will actually use them in a beneficial way, so this could end up as a good show or really messed up.

From what I read: in the Comics Jimmy Olsen Is like her Lois Lane so to speak. And Winslow Schott(Her male friend on the show) Is the Villian The Toymaker in the comics. The Toymaker appeared in a few episodes of Smallville as well

[AudienceofOne]

Just watched this and I have to say this was a really pedestrian and derivative pilot. I have literally seen all this before and having it wrapped up in eons of pointless exposition didn't help. I get that Felicity is just Chloe Sullivan rewrapped (and I don't have a problem with that) but there were enough Smallvile references in this without have Kara being Chloe-meet- Felicity.

 

Also, I could have done without her sex constantly being brought up like her being a woman (worse, a "female") was like this BIG THING. It is 2015, not 1955. Enough with this shit already. Having a female superhero should not mean you have every second character remarking on her sex like they can't quite believe it. It reminded me of that awful line in the otherwise good SG-1 pilot where everybody in the room with Sam Carter was like, "But she's a GIRL".

 

Other than that, there was nothing really wrong with it. It was just, as I said, pedestrian.