3 out of 5

Developed by: Greg Berlanti, Ali Adler, Andrew Kreisberg

covers season 1

I’ll take a dose of The Flash with some girl power and a piss-poor rogues gallery, pleez.  …One order of Supergirl a’comin’ up!

This is a concise summary.

If you’ve watched The Flash, you’ve appreciate the way Berlanti and Kreisberg navigated away from the excess soapiness of Arrow for something that nabbed onto all the right camp elements of its comic source while still respecting that source and, overall, serving its own internal characterizations and narration with generally smart and fun writing.  Supergirl takes that even a step further by plastering constant smiles on everything, very much thanks to Melissa Benoist’s endearing representation of the forever-positive Kara El character and an incredibly fun supporting cast that, sure, each fill the required roles – nervy oddball (Winn, played by Jeremy Jordan); love interest (Jimmy Olsen… played by Mehcad Brooks); tough but caring parental figure (S-Girl’s normal-life boss, Cat Grant, played with gusto by Calista Flockhart as a gender swapped J.K.Simmons’ J. Jonah Jameson); wisdom-bestowing bestie (Alex, our lead’s sister – Chyler Leigh) – but also get just enough depth to function as proper story foils and not just cameo one-line droppers.  The lineage from show to show is pretty interesting, but the ploy by the time we get to Supergirl would seem to be to push the Golden Age vibe as much as possible, which is fitting for heroes wearing that big S, whether Man or Girl, and refreshing during this era of media which sees a lot of “dark” interpretations of things.

And when Supergirl keeps it fairly simple, with battles-of-the-week and Kara’s growing pains, the show is truly a blast.  I dropped the “girl power” bit at the top, which is definitely a simplification, but acknowledging that the show does seem to lean toward more of a feminine point-of-view, Supergirl even approaches inspirational greatness at points, throwing aside expected gender tropes and giving us a hero that can flip through various emotional states and give all of them – the bold ones, the kickass ones, the vulnerable ones – credibility.

But then there are times where Supergirl tries to get a bit more complicated, and then the obnoxious times when we remember that these creators started their hero TV work on a CW show.  The former results in some incredibly boring episodes involving attempts at ongoing story lines with uninteresting villains: other Kryptonians and Max Lord.  The other Kryptonians are Phantom Zone escapees, which is cool in concept but the show has a tough time dealing with the power discrepancy (that Supergirl ain’t so super in comparison) and the proliferation of these baddies really distills their sense of threat.  And Max Lord is Lex Luthor lite, which is the heading of a subchapter on what’s grating about Supergirl: when it reminds us it’s not about Superman.  It’s a tough balance, having to acknowledge the Big S, and that balance occasionally teeters too much to one side when the show too blatantly nabs a Superman story or concept and just plants Supergirl on top of it.  In the latter instance – the CW thing – Kara has stupid ass relationship bullshit drama with her boyz and people fall in love.  This was horrible on Arrow, and horrible on Flash, and I’m really confused if we still care about these things on TV shows.  Can we not have a show where people just aren’t forced into relationships?  Can’t people just be cute and flirty and happy as individuals?  Is it a teen thing?  I don’t know.  But gawd, the wasted screentime of Jimmy and Kara love bungles.

So: we’re left with a show that hasn’t really found a meaty idea to sink its teeth into, and when it tries – via villains or soapy drama – it comes up way short.  But the show is far from falling flat, as the plentiful moments where those teeth-sinking attempts are put on the backburner are really a joy.  Someone smarter than me can figure out how to wrangle that into something bigger and better for season 2.  Or someone with CW instincts can go full Arrow and poop more drama everywhere.  We’ll see.  Either way, the Supergirl team has scored a pitch-perfect cast and an overall appealing tone to keep me tuning in for further adventures.