Unfortunately, the premiere does get bogged down in its own alien semantics, particularly once the show introduces the clandestine Department of Extra-Normal Operations, which ends up straining the relationship of Kara and one of her family members. The entire DEO premise – from the characters who fill it to the set – is Supergirl finally scraping the bottom of the superhero origin story barrel. It also brings out an overall worry for the show’s supporting cast, thanks to the introduction of its most grating member, DEO head Hank Henshaw (David Harewood), who’s about as nuanced and subtle as an exploding planet.
While Jordan is great as the overenthusiastic BFF, Brooks’ way-too-buff Jimmy Olsen feels unwarranted, and Kara’s sister Alex (Chyler Leigh) appears to exist solely for pep-talks. Without the sweet home base and cast of colorful tertiary characters, Supergirl simply feels lagging in those departments, doubly when compared to creator/producer Greg Berlanti’s Arrow and The Flash.
Thankfully, she – and the show – bounces right back from it all, especially in some noteworthy action sequences that feel exciting and real, even though most of it boils down to a lot of things and people crashing through walls. Superman’s lone Achilles’s heel makes him hard to relate to, and to build a movie around, so it’ll be interesting how the writers maintain that for an entire series with his younger cousin. To start off with, they’ve made Kara appear slightly less powerful, more reactive to punches, and that lends a scrappy force to the fighting, but as she gets stronger they’ll have to continue coming up with creative ways for the audience to ever worry about her potential for losing.
The villain they throw at her in the pilot is a tad generic, but links into the Kara’s backstory in an interesting way, and leads to an after-credits reveal (of course) that further cements Supergirl as what should be obvious: an enthusiastic, girl-powered take on the growing popularity of the superhero-on-the-small-screen genre. And although that female-focused message doesn’t have much to say right now other than “girls can kick but, too!”, its simplistic delivery ties in with the show’s overall straight-forward storytelling to culminate in an unexpectedly affecting premiere.
Overall, Supergirl is more akin to The Flash than Arrow or Daredevil, the new show leaping and bounding with creative plots that straddle real-world woes with interplanetary shenanigans, wardrobe montages with alien lizard men, and still leaving a few minutes for Ally McBeal to debate the semantics of the feminist’s approach to naming a superhero. The fact that it’s not only not a mess but one of the best new shows of the fall – and on a network whose genre offerings have been flailing in recent years – is, well, super.
