Week Of December 11th 2015 In Review #Supergirl #ScreamQueens #XMenApocalypse #NewYearCountdown

Week Of December 11th 2015 In Review #Supergirl #ScreamQueens #XMenApocalypse #NewYearCountdown

All Supergirl pictures courtesy of CBS unless otherwise noted.

With my little mini-vacation over for the next week and a half before my big year-end finale vacation which goes from the 21st or 22nd until MLK day in the New Year, I've been biding my time soaking up all the latest news and events going on in the world of entertainment. And even though it's two weeks after Thanksgiving--the time when normally the TV wasteland kicks in--and Star Wars is the movie that will clearly dominate this holiday season, there is still plenty else to talk about on all levels. We'll begin with Supergirl (#Supergirl).

Monday's Supergirl on CBS, while not the winter finale, supplied more than enough wow, shock and awe for fans to light up the internet and Twitterverse with mind-blown reactions. The funniest thing is that much of the episode was rather bland for the titular character. After overexerting herself fighting Red Tornado, Kara experienced her first short circuit, temporarily losing her powers. As she suffered through the throes of being Human For A Day (ha! That was the title of the episode. I snuck that in there. Huh? In hindsight I don't know why I thought that was clever. Moving on), National City suffered through an earthquake.

In her humanity, Kara bleeds for the first time, gets a cold or some other sneezy disease, breaks her arm and needs rescuing by James. Sadly, the one lesson she learns comes when she cannot save a man from dying on the street. Just as the comic book Superman learns, she can't save everyone.

She eventually regains her powers when she is told by the dork that likes her (again, not bothering to shoot an email, private message tweet or phone call her cousin's way) that she can regain her powers more rapidly by having a burst of Kyrptonian adrenaline. She gets this burst when she sees James in deathly trouble in an elevator shaft after having saved some people from the upper levels. Her powers back, she rescues him from falling to his death and the day is saved.

The biggest shock for the fans came in the form of gloriously over-the-top Black guy--that beautiful man of ridiculous looks, perfectly delivered one-liners and overly awkward protectiveness over Supergirl and her sister. While at the DEO headquarters (that's the Department of Extraterrestrial Operations) the earthquake accidentally knocks out the power temporarily while he and Kara's sister are in the middle of moving a villain to a different cell. With the power of mind control, the villain escapes to roam the halls before they can get back-up generators running.

Now in lock down, over-the-top Black guy orders his crew to stay in the one safe place they know he isn't while he and two others go hunting. The alien takes over the brain of the two other soldiers, making them kill each other. Kara's sister disobeys orders and runs after her boss, taking another soldier with her who also falls prey to the mind control. Having learned the previous week that her Black superior not only worked with her father but was around when he died, she distrusts him and handcuffs him to a shelf while she tries to go stop the alien alone.

Bullets not working, her anti-mind-control device about to stop, Black guy swoops in and saves the day, defeating the rock hard alien with his bare hands. Now, she has hella questions. How could he defeat the alien in a game of fisticuffs, and all sorts of craziness. He tells her the story of her father dying and the real original Black guy dying while in pursuit of a perceived hostile alien. The alien turned out to be friendly but in trying to capture him, somehow the two DEO agents died, but not before the alien tried saving the life of Kara's adoptive father played by Dean Cain. Cain told the alien to look after his daughters which Black guy has been doing ever since. The big reveal came at the end of the story when over-the-top Black guy revealed himself to be J'onn J'onzz AKA Martian Manhunter.

Didn't See That Coming 

For those that don't know, in the comics, Martian Manhunter is a big deal. While never the most popular on his own, he is most famous for two things: being the sole survivor of the once thriving Martian race and being one of the founding members of the Justice League. Yes, he routinely fights alongside Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, The Flash, and Green Lantern. Unlike the other aliens, he is not humanoid looking enough to blend in, but does have the power to shape-shift into anyone. 

KGBeast? Looks more like Martian Manhunter

Why is this a big deal? Recently, an article came out discussing the make-up of the film version of Martian Manhunter and if he would even be part of the Justice League. A few studio insiders said they didn't know if they'd include this iconic character because he may be too difficult to do on screen authentically. Well, if they needed a format, they just got one in a big way. This leads me to the rumor that Callan Mulvey pictured there, is actually going to be playing Martian Manhunter in the new Batman v Superman. I know that there was a very persistent rumor that he was actually going to be playing K.G. Beast, however, that was never fully confirmed and in the spirit of not packing the film with too many Justice Leaguers, it's no wonder why the producers would want to keep him under wraps, but to me he naturally looks like the alien and wouldn't have to have any kind of reveal save for saying his name in the movie since he is a shapeshifter.

Moving on, FOX's Scream Queens (#ScreamQueens) had its season finale this week and boy was it... long. For those that remember my initial three week roundup review on this (click #ScreamQueens up top to read it), I initially gave this a fairly low grade as it was a little too ridiculous. While it toned down some, I did skip three or four episodes at a time only to binge them when I got the chance, as wasting an hour each week on this wasn't to my liking. I almost didn't watch it at all during November and binged at least four episodes on Thanksgiving night, but I digress.

All pictures of Scream Queen courtesy of FOX unless otherwise noted.

Ending the shortened season with a two-hour episode, the first hour moved along nicely with Grace's psuedo-boyfriend confessing to being the 4th killer who joined only after non-gay gay Boone caught him snooping around and was about to kill him. Oh yeah, side note Boone (played by Nick Jonas) was one of the killers just in case you didn't know. Back to the boyfriend, he said he believed in what Boone was trying to do by wiping out the KKT sorority house and only joined because of that, but then he killed Boone and crazy Gigi (the loon that raised Boone and his twin sister in a mental asylum) in order to stop all the killing, but the third killer, Boone's twin sister, remained.

After sending the missive of all missives (which I thought was technically done very well with the writing being on the wall) The Chanel or Chanel #1 or Chanel Oberlin (played by Emma Roberts) became the most hated person in the world when it accidentally went out to everyone on campus. Gag! This whole set-up really did nothing but waste time to me and was a poor lead-in into a ridiculous scene that had my mouth gaping and asking, "did these fools just try to fit in an after-school special message on suicide?" Yes. Yes, they did. Quite possibly the most disingenuous show where everything was a gag, satire, or spoof on the horror genre, and had almost no real emotion explored on any level suddenly stopped about 25 minutes in to give us a PSA on "Suicide is never the answer. You shouldn't even joke about that." Look, I've dealt with the issue in my works before too, but never did it not fit the tone of what I was doing. This whole scene from the missive to the idiotic death attempt to Zayday trying to make a point that young people shouldn't kill themselves all could have been cut without anyone noticing or caring.

In fact, I felt this way about half of the episode which had me questioning why it was two hours long. Listen, outside of the real King (that guy Stephen King. Maybe you've heard of him), I am the king of long-windedness. I just finished writing a book during NaNoWriMo that is 118,000 words long unedited and will probably increase by 2000 words before the final draft. However, I try to make every scene relevant in some way that thrusts along either the character development or the action. On this last episode, there was more exposition and flashback than anything. Little action, little killing and scenes that went on and on.

The big reveal came at the beginning of the second hour which preceded a full half hour accuse-fest to finger each of the remaining Chanels as the killer (don't shake your head at me. I'll ignore it if you will). After the first hour of Zayday and Grace going through the school records of each of the remaining girls--a feat made possible by a sex scene betwixt Jamie Lee Curtis and Oliver "Dad-bod" Hudson--they came back to reveal that Chanel number six AKA neck brace girl played by Lea Michele was the killer. The only reason she was believed not to be the killer was because she had a stiletto heel stuck in her eye supposedly put there by Chanel number five played by Abigail Breslin.

The first half hour became so ridiculous that it was revealed that Chanel five's parents wanted to disown her and took this opportunity to throw her under the bus. But apparently Breslin wasn't alone as Chanel number three played by Billie Lourd (surprise, she's Princess Leia's real life daughter; didn't know it until I saw this picture.) helped her. The most ludicrous and convoluted story of them all, she supposedly had split personality disorder and had been taking killing advice from her father Charles Manson. Her other dark half would use the advice to kill her fellow sisters which she would be completely unaware that she did.

This might have been enough if the show didn't spend another seven minutes putting The Chanel in a similar scenario, fingering her as the mastermind behind it all. Why did she do it? Kind of because she could. All three of them arrested by major sleuthing all-star Chief of police Denise Hemphill (played by Niecy Nash who was literally the best part of this show for me), all was solved and fair.

And then the real killer continued revealing her plan. Yes, the real killer was Lea Michelle's Chanel number six, the "brainy" twin of Boone who, not only jabbed the heel into her own eye making sure not to puncture the actual eye, but methodically planned her entry into the inner-sanctuary of KKT all to get revenge for her dead bathtub-birthing mama. After growing up in the asylum, she was only allowed in because she posed as a handicapped student and Dean Mensch needed more diversity, unlike her brother Boone who just pretended to be a Dickie Dollar scholar while never enrolling in the school in the first place. My god, if you think this review is long you should have watched the episode.

The Chanels all disowned by their parents (Chanel number one's parents disowned her after the world-hating thing), all three of them tried representing themselves in court to which the Black judge determined they were crazy as they had slept through much of the trial. He sentenced them to life in the asylum where they each actually found happiness.

The dean and Grace's father engaged in a real relationship as she wrote a best-selling book on new new feminism which basically says the same as current feminism. While she figured out Lea Michele was the killer she didn't turn the girl in after having killed her husband and the deceptive minx knowing about it.

Now, Grace and Zayday with the help of Chanel six all turned around the KKT house to be inclusive. Those two were spared because they were nice to Chanel 6 on the first pledge day at the beginning of the year, not to mention Grace is her half sister by blood through their father. All was well, save for at the very end when the red devil killer snuck into the asylum as The Chanel slept and lorded over her with a knife. One last scream of horror for everyone and the end. Why the episodes felt so laborious, I don't know. As I said, I think they could have cut out entire scenes and it wouldn't have mattered. They could also have cut some scenes shorter like the goodbye between Denise and Chad which wasted four minutes of screen time on nothing. This honestly felt like they knew they had been commissioned for a certain amount of episodes and needed a ton of filler to make that goal.

Can't move on fast enough from that one. Maybe if they have another season next year as it was originally intended as an anthology like American Horror Story, it will be better but until then, I am left with a bland taste in my brain-mouth.

Finally, the week ended today on the release of the new X-Men Apocalypse trailer. Check it out below if you haven't seen it yet.

Quick caveat, I am not a huge X-Men fan and never was. While I enjoyed the exploits of Wolverine, the group as a whole was too varied, too angsty, too everything for me. Not that I hated any of the movies, books, or cartoons I just always thought, "oh, those are nice." With that said, I have to say I am very unimpressed with this trailer. Just as the music for the Batman v. Superman trailer disappointed me with it's one note-ness, so too did this with its lackluster ominous tone. If this is the end, why doesn't it seem like it? Maybe because we know it isn't from the Days of Future Past? I don't know.

Also, I have to say I never liked the choice of Oscar Isaacs as the villain. In stature, face, and voice, he never seemed foreboding enough to me. Forgetting his height as he can grow or shrink to infinite sizes as shown in the trailer, his voice doesn't instill terror and his face still looks silly to me like it did in the first images from the movie. Will this be good? Maybe, but from the first trailer, I am not impressed nor eager to even see it at this point.

What do you think? Were you watching any TV or film this week or were you too busy with holiday preparations? Did you see the big reveal on Supergirl? Are you excited to see Martian Manhunter? What about Scream Queens? Was this show even on your radar? How did you feel about the finale? And what of the new X-Men trailer? Did it get you excited to see the movie or are you apprehensive about the visuals? Let me know in the comments below (hint: click the no comments button if you see no comments).  

Check out my new 5-star comedy novel, Yep, I'm Totally Stalking My Ex-Boyfriend. #AhStalking

If you’re looking for a scare, check #AFuriousWind, #DARKER, #BrandNewHome or  #ThePowerOfTen. For those interested in something a little more dramatic, check out #TheWriter. The full first season is out now NOW exclusively on Amazon. If you like fast action crime check out #ADangerousLow. The sequel A New Low will be out in a few months. Join us on Goodreads to talk about books and TV, and subscribe to and follow my blog with that Google+ button to the right.

Until next time, "he calls them the four horsemen."

'He got that one from the Bible.'

P.S. A quote from the trailer, but seriously what is up with all the God and religious references in comic book movies these days, especially when referring to the villain? Can we stop trying to make all religion evil? I'll think of a better sign-off next time.

Amazon
Goodreads Author Page
Goodreads Books Similar to TV Shows
Twitter@filmbooksbball

Up, Up, and A, Uh... Hm? Where Do We Go After Up? #Supergirl #PremiereWeek #3WeekRoundUp

Up, Up, and A, Uh... Hm? Where Do We Go After Up? #Supergirl #PremiereWeek #3WeekRoundUp

All pictures courtesy of CBS

Once again it is that time, ladies and gentlemen. It's been on for three weeks (wow! That went by fast). It's time for Supergirl's (#Supergirl) three week roundup. My initials thoughts for this show were sparse as it premiered so late into the fall season that I didn't see the need to think about it much. Suffice it to say that I enjoy all comic book stuff (frankly, I enjoy anything with a good story that can entertain me) and give most of it a chance just because I like seeing the stuff. Fun fact: I also really enjoy TV so, yeah. Amidst the crowded marketplace that is the comic book movie/TV shared conglomeration multinational corporate universe, how is the latest superheroine doing? More hot and cold than Katy Perry in that one song that she sang. God, what was the name of that song?

Supergirl, starring Melissa Benoist as our titular character, follows the exploits of the supposedly lesser known cousin of the man in blue, Superman. For those who don't read the comics and didn't see the 80s film Supergirl of which I have fond memories of seeing, let me give you a little back story. As covered in the premiere, Kal-el's parents weren't just idiots who were going to send their baby son off to some alien planet alone while they died. Instead, they decided to send his cousin Kara-el in her own pod. A girl of 13 at the time of the planet's destruction, she was to take care of her baby cousin and make sure he was protected from whatever foolishness might pop off on earth.

Well, things didn't go as planned when her spacecraft got knocked off course and ended up spending 24 years trapped inside the phantom zone, which is neither a floating piece of thin glass like in the original Superman movies nor penis-shaped pods that go into a spaceship in Snyder's Man Of Steel. Here, it is somewhat of a cosmic mist/black hole/event horizon type thing. They try not to bog the viewer down with specifics but what we do know is that somehow after 24 years of frozen time in that zone, her pod escaped and crashed to earth.

Already established as Superman, her cousin finds her and her pod and brings her to the Danvers' family (do not get that confused with Marvel in any way) where she lives out her days with an older sister, gasp! Flash forward about 12 years and we find are humble hero being anything but heroic. A near carbon copy of her cousin, she finds herself wearing glasses, some of the cutest skirts and dresses I've seen in a while (yes, straight men do notice stuff like that) and working at a digital and print media empire founded, formed and run by Cat Grant played by TV vet Calista Flockhart (glad to see her back after Brothers and Sisters). Hence, Catco subs in for the Daily Planet, and National City (hey, that used to be a Midwestern bank for which my mother worked) is the fill-in Metropolis.

Funny, this city's Jimmy Olsen is the same Jimmy Olsen, though he's six feet of black hunkiness and prefers to be called James (OK, that may have gone too far, but I can admit when another man is attractive). Played by Mehcad Brooks, James just moved from Metropolis. Now, the pulitzer prize-winning photojournalist is running the photo department for Catco. It is established pretty early that not only is Superman very well established as he was wearing the costume when he found Kara years ago (somewhere around 11 or 12, meaning he's around 36 after spending 24 years on Earth without her; I did so many maths there), but he also has had enough time on earth to let a few people discover his secret identity. That probably means that Lois knows who he is by now. I guessed within the first few minutes that he sent James there specifically to look after his cousin Kara and maybe push her to become her own eventual hero. What he probably didn't expect were the goo eyes she'd make at James.

Is it hot in here, or do I just have the Fever?

That's right, if I were her friend I would give Kara a brush machete for Christmas to clear out some of that safari grass because she has the deepest jungle fever that I've seen allowed on prime time at 8pm on Monday nights in a long time. Never mind the fact that her other colleague who is a bit of a nerd (what Jimmy was to Clark Kent) has a huge crush on her, her guy is of the tall, black, bald and handsome variety, not to mention older. Due to what I see as one of the biggest problems of this show which I will cover later, he doesn't let on to knowing that she is Clark's cousin right away, so they have to do this dance which was a total farce in my eyes.

Currently a regular 24-year-old woman waiting to make her mark on the world, she lives alone in an apartment which is clearly too expensive for her if National City is any bigger than a pea. Her sister, played by the always lovely Chyler Leigh (still miss you on Grey's; still think Not Another Teen Movie is so underrated; we won't mention Taxi Brooklyn) has a talk with her before leaving for a flight. As luck would have it, Kara sees the flight in danger hours later and flies up to save it, performing her first heroic feat. Things get dicey when people complain about how she saved the flight, having to turn the plane on its side, scraping the wing across a bridge and landing the plane in the river where it slowly sank after all the people were rescued.

A clear novice, heroism felt good and contrary to her sister's demands not to reveal herself, she does. First she tells her love-struck coworker that she saved the plane because she, too, is a Kryptonian. Then she goes through a quick 90s Clueless shopping/getting ready for a party montage to find a proper superhero costume. No, seriously, she just had everything she needed lying around. The red boots, the golden belt, the modest but stylish skirt--I'll give you the S and even the cape but really? Come on!

And out to save more people. As she tries being a hero again, tracking down her first ever super-powered enemy, she gets into a real fight with him and realizes, "holy cannoli, I don't know how to fight." She is saved by, wait for it... wait for it... her sister! What? I know, right?

Turns out, her sister Alex works for an organization called the DEO--Department of Extranormal Operations. And in this organization is where I found my most beloved character. The head of the DEO is this deliciously over-the-top black guy that delivers his lines so perfectly that they run the line of complete cheesy camp and realistic seriousness. The closest thing I could think of to describe him would be the pilots or Leslie Nelson's character in the Airplane movies. His constant scowl and bad mood make me want to do nothing more than flick his nose and watch him freak out about it.

Anyway, Alex has been working for the DEO for a while. Since Superman's arrival, the governments of the world felt they needed to keep watch for more aliens. Remember that strange ill-explained phantom zone? Apparently Kara wasn't the only one in there. During her escape, her spacepod somehow tugboat-ed out a larger prison vessel which crashed on earth too. Housing not just Kryptonians but prisoners throughout the galaxy (or universe, whichever) this dropped a clue to the history of Krypton. It seems they served as galactic peacekeepers/jailers. With Krypton gone villains who got locked away by Kara's mom (a judge there) want revenge on the remaining Kryptonians as well as to take over the world. The DEO's job is to stop that. After a little back and forth about how she isn't ready and is just a hindrance whereas Superman is built for this, they support her in a fight against the big guy that was throwing her around.

Kara saves the day by heat visioning the crap out of his ax and standing nearby as he killed himself, talking about something that was coming. The day saved, she escapes with few scratches and lives to be given the moniker Supergirl by Cat Grant. There's some back and forth about calling her a girl as opposed to a woman, and Cat explains it away to make it sound cool. James tells her he knows her secret and gives her a present from Clark--an indestructible cape. I want to delve into what's wrong with this show so much, but I still have two episodes to get through.

The second episode shows more of what the first bad guy eluded to. Kara's gallery of rogues is led by a very familiar face. Before the planet exploded, Kara's mom sentenced one last criminal to the phantom zone, her own twin sister. Outside of the mind-blowing fact that Krypton had twins just as Earth, we are to understand that she was a general (cough General Zod cough) who wants to subjugate the planet. Why she hasn't already done this, I don't know as she has plenty of supervillains on her side.

My mother's evil twin sister Astra... or the other one. 

Kara's first brush with kryptonite, she and her adopted earth sister fight in a training chamber so Alex can teach her tactical sparring. She doesn't learn much but does leave sore. Cat not only treats her like crap but wants James to use his Supes connections to get her an exclusive sit down with Supergirl or else he's fired. She also suggests the heroine start small and work her way up to big stuff after she ruined an oil tanker by ripping it open when trying to pull it away from a fire--eco-disaster.

Over-The-Top Black guy, you make my day.

Taking the advice, she does start small, stopping robbery, saving snakes named fluffy from trees--the usual stuff. But when a bug-alien that disguises itself as human kills and feeds on power, she has to stop him, unknowing that he works for her aunt. She and her aunt tussle as her sister defeats the bug. Over-the-top black guy makes some snappy comments about not calling her Supergirl and it is revealed that he, too, is some kind of enhanced human or alien as his eyes occasionally glow red. Finally, to save James' job, she goes and talks to Cat.

The third show opened with the continuing interview where Kara reveals that she is Superman's cousin. James then slips up and blurts out that Clark Kent is superman (is there no secrecy anymore). They find a little office space down the hall from their desks that no one uses that they decide to make into their psuedo-base, and I was like whaaaa? So, you're really just gonna have your superhero HQ in an office down the hall from where you work? OK. And to top it all off Cat made Kara treat that redheaded man like a redheaded stepchild. "That's hair-ist!" you say? First off, don't yell at me, because the show decided to pick on the ginger. The villain of the week: Reactron, a human poisoned with radiation who lost his family during a Superman rescue mission. Now, he uses a suit to fly and fight against all superpowered beings but especially against Superman--he's nearly killed him a few times.

When he nearly kills Kara she is saved by her cousin who swooshes in last minute and rescues both her and this other guy who thinks she's nothing but a menace. The hero she is, she throws a fit about not needing his help and how James was wrong for calling him because she could have saved the day herself. Then, during Cat's party later that night, the guy comes back with his suit supercharged and tries again to kill her. James runs distraction and gets the guy to chase him while Kara is fed info on how to stop him, which she subsequently does. Her confidence at an all time high, she goes to possibly ask James out the next day but finds that Lois Lane's younger sister is there to visit James. As it turns out, she also has a fever hailing from where the lion sleeps tonight as James is implied to be her ex. Kara sulks and chats with Superman on the computer to cheer herself up. And as if the show couldn't get anymore cheesy, they end with her and Alex eating while the song "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" plays in the background. Are you serious? Boy, where do I begin on my critique.

What's my rating? I give this show a B-. Before you chomp my head off superhero fans, let me explain. A few years back I was ordered to write a book entitled The Provocateur by a group of people. Not my proudest work, one of the things in the book is the idea that women are constant imitators and rarely originators outside of bringing life into this world. In other words, they will take something already formed and created by men and make it theirs. I know, that will piss off plenty of female readers but while the female Ghostbusters, the planned female version of Ocean's Eleven, the Expendabelles and a slew of other movies play into this very trend, none of them top Supergirl's imitation.

My laser beams glow blue because I don't want to be mistaken for Superman

I really like this show, but it is hella frustrating for the show to be packaged the way it is. As much as it tries to stay away from Superman, they mention him every single episode between every single commercial break. We get it, Kara doesn't want to be known as the lesser female version, but if she spent less time bringing it up, maybe people wouldn't notice. Oddly, this leads to my biggest gripe with the show--there wasn't enough Superman, or rather enough of his influence.

From what the show tells us, Kal-el found his cousin out in the middle of nowhere and dropped her with a loving family (Dean Cain from Lois and Clark, and the original Supergirl from the 80s movie). After that it suggests that was the last time she really saw or talked to him, and that even though he knows she is probably one of the only other people in the world who is similar to him, he isn't the least bit concerned with her. Even taking into account the crystals in his fortress of solitude, he doesn't want to know about what his parents were really like, how kind they were as an aunt and uncle, how much they really loved each other, or how Krypton was. What was it like to go to school there, to grow up there, the sunsets, the sunrises, etc.

This is your family! Don't contact me ever for anything. Love, Superman.

Apparently, he doesn't care about any of that because he's too busy saving the world? Also, he knows that she'll be dealing with superpowers but it seems he never showed her the fortress, or the crystals, or taught her how to fly, or anything... ever! Listen, I know that there's some filling in of the audience that needs to be done, but to have Kara be just as clueless about her cousin as everyone else is, if not more subverts one of the main purposes of the show and it also paints Superman in an even worse light than Man of Steel did. Superman is kind of a dick to not share or care anything about his little cousin. I understand family riffs and all of that, but there shouldn't have been any of that. Superman is acting more like Batman every day.

As I mentioned up top, one of the main purposes of the show was to be a pillar of feminism and femininity which I can understand. But I feel in more ways than one that the show misfires drastically on this thrust. First off, they called out Millennials (as is the cool thing to do now) as being the whiny bunch that constantly needs help. Not going to say that is or isn't true about some of the Millennials I've known, but I will say that it doesn't look good to possibly offend the very viewership you covet. Then, Supergirl plays directly into this. 

Not only does the show play into the stereotype that women don't know what they want (help or no help), but that they do need help. She has the entire DEO to help her defeat villains. Superman had, what, Jimmy with a camera and Lois who, let's be honest, was more of a hindrance than a help? She has a set-out model for what to do and how to be and she still complains because she feels it's unfair to compare her to Supes because he's a man? Because none of her criticism could be genuine like what Supes got as a hero, it all comes from a sexist slant? Ugh! Essentially the entire show is not Supergirl, not a story of its own making that could have taken these strange and wonderful turns, exploring how it is to adjust to a culture after living in another one for so long or figuring out how to be a better superhero than those that came before you. No, this is Superman in a skirt. This is why people (both men and women) complain about stuff like the new Ghostbusters, because the only change made is a gender swap. And with so much rich back story waiting to be mined and a virtually new character (people didn't look fondly on that 80s movie like I did), they could have done some really cool stuff. Instead, we get the same, "you aren't ready. Hide your powers. You can't do this. Oh you're a girl. I'm gonna prove that I'm just as capable as a man," shtick we've been getting for years from other superhero shows (minus the girl part). This was also the complaint people had with the shared universe thing for DC because they wonder how new superheroes will act when the old ones have been around for years. "Well, they'll act the same way and have the same struggles." Maybe, but not likely.

With that said, should you be watching? Yes. Look, with all of the stuff that's on Mondays at 8pm, it is difficult to type that definitive yes in there, but I did it because I do like the show. I enjoy the cast. I had doubts about Melissa (really only because I wanted a natural blonde for the role as Supergirl is supposed to be) but she does a fine job with what they give her. And that over-the-top black guy can give Hotels.com's Mr. Obvious a run for his money, and is worth the price of admission alone. As far as the female audience, though I actually find Crazy Ex-Girlfriend to be a smarter show, I think this is more family-oriented and has less chance at producing dead air. Don't, however, expect something ground-breaking. Also, don't listen to those supposed Hollywood insiders that say that this will revolutionize TV and film superheroes because Hollywood won't be afraid to make a female superhero anymore. Don't know where they got that BS, but Hollywood was never afraid to make a female superhero, otherwise the original Wonder Woman show, the 80s Supergirl and practically the first three X-men movies wouldn't have even gotten made, let alone Catwoman.

What do you think? Am I being too hard on the show? Were you expecting something a little different like I was, knowing that Kara hadn't come to earth as a baby? Were you expecting for her to at least have some family contact with Clark? Do you even watch this show? Let me know in the comments below (hint: click the no comments button if you see no comments).

Check out my new comedy novel Yep, I'm Totally Stalking My Ex-Boyfriend. #AhStalking

If you’re looking for a scare check #AFuriousWind, #DARKER, #BrandNewHome or  #ThePowerOfTen. For those interested in something a little more dramatic, check out #TheWriter. The full first season is out now NOW exclusively on Amazon. If you like fast action crime check out #ADangerousLow. The sequel A New Low will be out in a few months. Join us on Goodreads to talk about books and TV, and subscribe to and follow my blog with that Google+ button to the right.

Until next time, "she's got jungle fever. He's got jungle fever. They both got jungle fever. They're in love."

P.S. I think I'm paraphrasing but Stevie Wonder couldn't have said it better. I'll try to think of something better next post.

Amazon
Goodreads Author Page
Goodreads Books Similar to TV Shows
Twitter@filmbooksbball