Part A of the Supergirl season
Dec. 9th, 2018 12:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
talkswithwindWith Elseworlds starting this week, the A part of the season is now done. Some impressions.
Some notable events this season:
The disillusionment she ended last season with has remained. SuperGirl is now the disappointed-enemy, and she's no longer giving Kara low-key flirts. She still hasn't connected the dots between Kara and SuperGirl. Her thing with James Olson has cooled off as she works through what I feel is a mourning period. And like the Luthers she was raised by, she deals with excessive emotion by being coldly analytical.
We still get flashes of the emotional Lena, but they're cut off whenever she catches herself doing it. That ain't healthy. But then, a healthy approach to emotions is something decidedly lacking in the CW shows generally (cough Alex cough).
Becoming best-science-buds with her ExecAdmin was a twist I didn't expect, but was needed in order to allow Lena to not be an intense loner in her lab. I liked their scenes, in part because Lena was less guarded in them. Together they pulled a rabbit or two out of their sciency hats to save the day, all the while secretly sciencing up a replacement for SuperProtection.
With the mid-season cliff being the President demanding that Kara unmask, I suspect the B half of the season will see Lena dealing with the betrayal of Kara/SuperGirl anew. Possibly enough to be the big-bad, but she may be the feint hiding the true bad.
The utter joy of Manchester Black
I didn't know about him before his introduction, but they introduced his character in the way that reverberated with Major Character so I had to google it. He did not disappoint.
He was also utterly gorgeous. Just leaving that there.
I've said that Black was the best thing to happen to this season, and I'm standing by it. He was so radically different than SuperGirl, and was a needed contrast. He was first-season Green Arrow, when Oliver was murdering his way across Starling City to reclaim the city (but much better acted). His motivation was utterly believable, and his being clearly on-side with SuperGirl -- yet with a radically different approach -- was the kind of spice this show needed. I loved every scene he was in, even when he was torturing Jon Jones.
If we see him again, it'll either be as a bit-player or as someone who is less murdery. I was thinking backdoor-pilot myself, but that's a far, far hope.
Xenophobia and presidents
Bruce fucking Boxlightner!
Right. So tackling this topic was entirely a stab at current events and I was mostly OK with it. With one exception though; a fear-of-the-other movement like that would pick up not just aliens but the usual American others. The writers weren't overt about this, but they were touching on it. Both of the black men who attempted to engage with these people ended up getting shafted, and anytime one of the Liberty people took a mask off it was a white guy. I kept shouting
The episode where they show Ben Lockwood radicalizing gave me chills. Ben may have been taken down, but the movement is very much there. The B-part of the season will be dealing with these chucklefucks.
Nia
She was a Named Character from the moment she walked on, even though it took a few episodes to find out why the camera was liking her that much. The actress is trans, and the character came out as trans in an episode. An outing that might have been retconned in the last episodes of the season when we find out that she's an alien. That scene had the line, I always knew who I was, in it, so it may have been a hat hung on the coming-out earlier in the season. Or not. I'm marking that down as something to watch for in the B-half.
We also got a few lines with a woman that read as trans to me, with an unknown relationship with Nia. In the scene where we find that Nia has been avoiding sleep to avoid the visions. If that was two transwomen living together, that's very appropriate.
I'm still liking her as an addition to the team, and thrilled they actually cast a transperson in the role.
Some notable events this season:
- First trans actress in any of the CW superhero shows.
- Who has an equally trans friend/partner we saw in one scene.
- The introduction and benching of Manchester Black.
- Lena being every Slytherin ever (OK that's not new)
- Lena becoming ScienceFriends with the woman who started the season as her executive assistant.
- The writers tackling xenophobia as the A plot.
The disillusionment she ended last season with has remained. SuperGirl is now the disappointed-enemy, and she's no longer giving Kara low-key flirts. She still hasn't connected the dots between Kara and SuperGirl. Her thing with James Olson has cooled off as she works through what I feel is a mourning period. And like the Luthers she was raised by, she deals with excessive emotion by being coldly analytical.
We still get flashes of the emotional Lena, but they're cut off whenever she catches herself doing it. That ain't healthy. But then, a healthy approach to emotions is something decidedly lacking in the CW shows generally (cough Alex cough).
Becoming best-science-buds with her ExecAdmin was a twist I didn't expect, but was needed in order to allow Lena to not be an intense loner in her lab. I liked their scenes, in part because Lena was less guarded in them. Together they pulled a rabbit or two out of their sciency hats to save the day, all the while secretly sciencing up a replacement for SuperProtection.
With the mid-season cliff being the President demanding that Kara unmask, I suspect the B half of the season will see Lena dealing with the betrayal of Kara/SuperGirl anew. Possibly enough to be the big-bad, but she may be the feint hiding the true bad.
The utter joy of Manchester Black
I didn't know about him before his introduction, but they introduced his character in the way that reverberated with Major Character so I had to google it. He did not disappoint.
He was also utterly gorgeous. Just leaving that there.
I've said that Black was the best thing to happen to this season, and I'm standing by it. He was so radically different than SuperGirl, and was a needed contrast. He was first-season Green Arrow, when Oliver was murdering his way across Starling City to reclaim the city (but much better acted). His motivation was utterly believable, and his being clearly on-side with SuperGirl -- yet with a radically different approach -- was the kind of spice this show needed. I loved every scene he was in, even when he was torturing Jon Jones.
If we see him again, it'll either be as a bit-player or as someone who is less murdery. I was thinking backdoor-pilot myself, but that's a far, far hope.
Xenophobia and presidents
Bruce fucking Boxlightner!
Right. So tackling this topic was entirely a stab at current events and I was mostly OK with it. With one exception though; a fear-of-the-other movement like that would pick up not just aliens but the usual American others. The writers weren't overt about this, but they were touching on it. Both of the black men who attempted to engage with these people ended up getting shafted, and anytime one of the Liberty people took a mask off it was a white guy. I kept shouting
James Olson should know better than that!...when he was doing his attempting-reason with these xenophobic assholes.
The episode where they show Ben Lockwood radicalizing gave me chills. Ben may have been taken down, but the movement is very much there. The B-part of the season will be dealing with these chucklefucks.
Nia
She was a Named Character from the moment she walked on, even though it took a few episodes to find out why the camera was liking her that much. The actress is trans, and the character came out as trans in an episode. An outing that might have been retconned in the last episodes of the season when we find out that she's an alien. That scene had the line, I always knew who I was, in it, so it may have been a hat hung on the coming-out earlier in the season. Or not. I'm marking that down as something to watch for in the B-half.
We also got a few lines with a woman that read as trans to me, with an unknown relationship with Nia. In the scene where we find that Nia has been avoiding sleep to avoid the visions. If that was two transwomen living together, that's very appropriate.
I'm still liking her as an addition to the team, and thrilled they actually cast a transperson in the role.
