Supergirl
I’ve been seeing good buzz for the new Supergirl show on the Mary Sue and Tor.com for ages now, and this week, the show finally premiered. Picoreview: I liked it! It had a few heavy-handed moments in it, and it does suffer from the whole “need to do the origin story” problem that just about all superhero storylines do. But on the whole I quite enjoyed it. Melissa Benoist as Kara is awesome. Callista Flockhart as Cat Grant was sublime, and plus, I hadn’t realized her character was in fact Cat Grant, who I also adored from way back in the days of Lois & Clark.
Mehcad Brooks as Jimmy James Olsen was an unexpected treat. NICE change of pace for Jimmy Olsen. 😀
Plus, the plot did some things right out of the gate that I was not expecting either. And in general I just really appreciated the overall upbeat, optimistic “yeah actually I have superpowers and I WANT TO HELP PEOPLE and did I mention HOLY CRAP FLYING IS AMAZING” attitude of it all. So yeah, I’ll be sticking around for at least the next few episodes to see what happens next.
The Mary Sue has their recap post for the episode up. Tor.com also has a review post up, talking in particular about how the episode establishes its intent re: feminism. I’m more or less on board with both of these posts, which will be no surprise to y’all. I did find the “rah rah feminism” a bit heavy-handed, but on the other hand, not unwarranted either–particularly in this day and age where so often, feminism is taken as a bad thing. There are folks out there that need to be reminded that yes, girls can be superheroes too.
But now that we’ve gotten the origin story out of the way, I look forward to Kara actually learning to be more effective with her powers–and hopefully, less dialogue gymnastics to try to keep everybody from having to identify Superman by name, or explain why he’s off camera and can’t be arsed to actually, y’know, pick up a phone and call his cousin every so often.
Because yeah. Flying IS freggin’ awesome. And so is a superhero show that brings some light and optimism to the watching.