Supergirl

[Angua]

Isn't there a thread for this already? Searching isn't bring it up.

Anyways, season 2 question (not really a spoiler as it's basically just a theme)

Season 1 was basically 'all the other aliens are bad because they all escaped from the super prison that also crashed when supergirl crashed to Earth. Fair enough. Season 2, the aliens have all turned into a metaphor for refugees and immigrants, which is not at all explained? (I mean, I'm all for the metaphor as a theme for a show, but this one just appeared)? Like, what are all these aliens now doing on Earth? There was obviously a galactic community out there beforehand because Kara knows all the powers of the other aliens (guess only Kryptonians, and [redacted] seemed to get special Earth powers), so why aren't all these innocent aliens on planets that have actual space travel, and intergalactic trade. It doesn't sound like there's a war going on (except on Mars), and the Kryptonian star seemed to be the only system that was affected there so no mass catastrophe on that front.

I'm now imagining all these new aliens as Anthropologists and the like, come to Earth to blend in and study our culture. Maybe there's a niche Earth tourism industry popping up, and people wanting to trade our native goods and wares.

[Zohar]

I think most of the previous Supergirl discussions happened in The Flash thread ("the 'The Flash' thread"?). Yeah I think we're just meant to assume all these aliens hung out on Earth before S1? The DEO certainly existed for a long while - not sure if before Superman's public persona or after, but it seems like they've been dealing with other aliens as well, seeing as they're professionally trained in combat and such, and not a bunch of librarians or something.

I suppose it could be argued the aliens were here all along, but S1 put them in a more prominent spot in the public eye.

[Angua]

You know, I don't think this show is going to last that long. Pro-immigration messages, saying that climate change is real....

[Zohar]

Having seen the latest episode, I can see where you're coming from.

The current Jimmy Olsen storyline is kind of dumb. I enjoy pretty much everything else, especially Alex's storyline.

I love how honest and open the show is, and it's interesting to see how that translates to different stories they choose to tell.

[Angua]

I'm hoping that once Jimmy's latest thing is established it will work better. I find this show seems to be super bad at introductions? Like, if you stick with it, it all pays off, but the starting point is cringeworthy.

Also, yeah, I'm liking Alex's storyline as well. Still trying to figure out how I feel about

Spoiler:

Mon-el.

[Zohar]

Spoiler:

I like that he's an actual gray character and not straight-up good or evil. We haven't really had that in the show. Hank was at some point, Ms. Martian might be that, and the president might as well. But so far, they haven't had enough story for that. I hope he actually doesn't become a hero, I'd rather have that presented as a choice for people, that you can work in other ways. I'm not sure I agree with Kara that you must employ the strength you have to protect others, just because you were born with it.

[Angua]

Spoiler:

Yeah, Kara is being pretty annoying about it. Pretty much most other aliens (judging from the cage fights) seem to be super strong, but only Mon-El seems to be at the end of this talk. NOthing to the Martian Girl who has even shown that she likes to fight.

I did find it a bit annoying that Mon'El was taken down so easily by Kara though if they are supposed to be similar strengths. I thought he was a body guard, and to royalty at that

[Zohar]

Spoiler:

To be fair, he is out "on parole" and Kara's been placed in charge of him. I understand her wanting him to act nice, he's technically her responsibility. But that doesn't mean he needs to go be a hero. It's not like she used her powers until 1.5 years ago, and Hank wasn't especially using his powers until she came along, either.

[Angua]

So, that got pretty dark. I guess we're hitting serious mode for the end of the season, but jeez.

[Zohar]

Haven't seen it yet, but I guess I have expectations now. In other CW-related news, this week's Jane the Virgin was fantastic.

[TimelordSimone]

and so, season two draws to a close

Spoiler:

- god I missed Cat Grant so much it was wonderful to see her again
- Lena Luthor is a delight I'm glad she's apparently getting promoted to main cast
- is James Olsen even still in this show
- The whole 'aliens as persecuted minority' metaphor they sort of tried to run with didn't really work because they constantly undercut their own point?
Like, you have a gay woman draw the obvious parallel with the alien bar, and also have Kara decide she's cool with tech that allows people to out aliens (though not her, ofc) in the same episode? gross.
Finale specific, I get that it's superhero nonsense and you need A Big Button To Defeat The Alien Army but given their attempts at the persecuted minority metaphor (they literally did a deportation plot) I feel like poisoning the atmosphere for an entire species (who have no home!) is, uh. iffy, at best.
- me: "I don't care about this heterosexual romantic subplot". me, as they say goodbye, with tears in my eyes: "I... I don't care... about..."

[Angua]

Spoiler:

I thought the double standards with the uproar about sewing the atmosphere with kryptonite at the end of the last season which was never-should-be-done thing cause supergirl and superman are good was really awful. Especially now that we have lots of good White Martians. There should have been another way, but nope. One evil queen was too much for the entire race to be written off.

I was still heartbroken when Maunel left though. sniffs.

[Zohar]

Spoiler:

Eh, I kind of disagree on the big death button. For one thing it looks like most Daxamites were like "Whatevs, we didn't even want to live
on this planet" and just left. Doesn't surprise me after their queen apparently has lost all honor and such? Hardly any Daxamites died (which you can't say about other people), and they all left. It was going to end this way no matter which magical device they had used.

And yes Cat Grant is the best thing on this show and I really wish they brought Calista Flockhart around more. Is she in anything else right now? What's stopping her from flying to Vancouver once a month to shoot for a bit? Yeah I'm not really expecting her to change her life circumstances around just for us viewers but it would be great to see more of her in S3.

As for Mon-El leaving... meh? The goodbye scene was sad, sure, and he's nice enough to look at, but he's been kind of terrible. I'm unrealistically hoping Kara and Lena get together next season, but I doubt that will happen. They have such great chemistry though!

[TimelordSimone]

Spoiler:

I don't disagree, in the specific context, really?
It's just a little incongruous, thematically, to try and do 'aliens as persecuted minority' and ALSO 'aliens as faceless evil army', to me. If that makes sense.

Also yes obviously lena/kara forever (also winn is so gay for superman sorry not sorry)

[Zohar]

Spoiler:

Hah, Winn was not even subtext, just text. I'm cool if he's going to be openly bi/pan!

I have to admit Kara has fantastic chemistry with Barry Allen but I also love the adorable sibling-like relationship they have.

[SecondTalon]

Season 1 was basically 'all the other aliens are bad because they all escaped from the super prison that also crashed when supergirl crashed to Earth. Fair enough. Season 2, the aliens have all turned into a metaphor for refugees and immigrants, which is not at all explained?

The intro also doesn't exactly accurately describe the how's and whys of her outing herself as a Kryptonian.

Me, I am going to default to the comics and blame Flashpoint.

[pkcommando]

The intro also doesn't exactly accurately describe the how's and whys of her outing herself as a Kryptonian.

To Be Fair: "I was perfectly content with letting Awful Shit happen until someone I cared about was in danger," is... a little less than heroic.

Me, I am going to default to the comics and blame Flashpoint.

Or Superboy punching reality.

Wait -- isn't it all Dr Manhattan's fault, now?

[rmsgrey]

The intro also doesn't exactly accurately describe the how's and whys of her outing herself as a Kryptonian.

To Be Fair: "I was perfectly content with letting Awful Shit happen until someone I cared about was in danger," is... a little less than heroic.

It was also in her own city...

There's also an issue with expecting heroes to constantly save lives at the expense of having a life of their own...

[SecondTalon]

Even in the context of a world where people are fooled by a pair of glasses, I still don't understand how that very distinct scar by her eyebrow hasn't given her away like, 47 times. Exactly 47 times.

[rmsgrey]

I've never been keen on the stylised 'S' on the comic-books' title pages for Super-characters. I'm even less keen on it in the opening-titles monologue ("my cousin had already grown up and become Superman" and "I am Supergirl").

[Diadem]

Watching this show, and I have to way: Wow, those cross-overs with other shows are annoying.

I didn't mind them in Arrow, but the way they do it in Super-girl is just ridiculous. One episode end with a relationship breakup of a major character, and Kara getting abducted. The next episode starts with neither thing apparently ever having happened. I can only guess that a cross-over happened, but only because the swirly portal Kara was abducted through kind of looks similar to the one The Flash used in an earlier episode.

Cross-overs if done right are nice, but don't do major character developments in a cross-over! Sjeesh. And at least tell the viewer which show you are doing a cross-over with, and which episode. There's like 37 trillion of them, do you really expect me to watch months and months of television just to find out why X and Y are suddenly back together?

[maybeagnostic]

There's like 37 trillion of them, do you really expect me to watch months and months of television just to find out why X and Y are suddenly back together?

I think that's the whole point of those crossovers- forcing you to watch all the shows if you want to follow any of them.

[Angua]

There was a lot of marketing before and during the crossovers. Also, I thought at the end there was a line of text that says 'continued on the Flash'.

But yeah, they probably shouldn't do major stuff in a crossover. It was a cute episode, but pretty cheezy.

[rmsgrey]

I can see why they did the crossover like they did - both characters were at similar places in their relationships, needing to learn similar lessons, so, rather than do it twice, they put both moments into one episode. It does mean that Kara has a significant change in attitude between consecutive episodes, that could have been handled better, but it was a change she needed.

[Diadem]

I can see why they did the crossover like they did - both characters were at similar places in their relationships, needing to learn similar lessons, so, rather than do it twice, they put both moments into one episode. It does mean that Kara has a significant change in attitude between consecutive episodes, that could have been handled better, but it was a change she needed.

Perhaps it's because I'm watching the show on Netflix, but I've never seen any marketing for Supergirl, or any arrowverse show for that matter. Nor was there any text like that. I've seen texts like that on Arrow and Flash, but not on supergirl.

The problem with crossovers is that they don't pair well with Netflix, where you watch entire shows in order before moving on to the next one. I still wouldn't mind crossovers, it's fun to see different shows interact on occasion, but they should at least tell me what they are crossovering with what. And a brief recap at the start of the next episode wouldn't hurt either.

[rmsgrey]

I can see why they did the crossover like they did - both characters were at similar places in their relationships, needing to learn similar lessons, so, rather than do it twice, they put both moments into one episode. It does mean that Kara has a significant change in attitude between consecutive episodes, that could have been handled better, but it was a change she needed.

Perhaps it's because I'm watching the show on Netflix, but I've never seen any marketing for Supergirl, or any arrowverse show for that matter. Nor was there any text like that. I've seen texts like that on Arrow and Flash, but not on supergirl.

The problem with crossovers is that they don't pair well with Netflix, where you watch entire shows in order before moving on to the next one. I still wouldn't mind crossovers, it's fun to see different shows interact on occasion, but they should at least tell me what they are crossovering with what. And a brief recap at the start of the next episode wouldn't hurt either.

Yeah, same problem happens/happened with DVD boxsets (and later reruns) - Buffy and Angel ran into that a fair bit in S4/1 (though they tended to do recaps - and not just for crossover episodes).

In general, the problem of how to distribute series with crossovers hasn't had a commercial solution discovered - it's not exactly a trivial problem since, at best, the other series' portion of the crossover requires awareness of (and generally contains spoilers for) all previous episodes of that series. So anyone who wants to understand the crossover basically has to stop watching the series they're watching and watch the past of the other series. The other way of doing it is to watch both series in parallel (much as they aired originally) but that would mean either distributing the two series as a single unit, or with convenient breaks at just the right places to accommodate the crossovers (which would put restrictions on when crossovers could happen in order to suit the eventual DVD release); or, of course, just doing a lot of extra disc-swapping or whatever the Netflix equivalent is...

In the big picture, there's no reason why someone couldn't come up with the systems and distribution to support crossovers - whether inserting a recap, interleaving series, or just embedding the crossover episode in the series - though there are complications with deciding which approach is suitable for which instance of crossing over - and a question of how much effort it's worth putting into supporting a non-standard situation.

[SecondTalon]

I can see why they did the crossover like they did - both characters were at similar places in their relationships, needing to learn similar lessons, so, rather than do it twice, they put both moments into one episode. It does mean that Kara has a significant change in attitude between consecutive episodes, that could have been handled better, but it was a change she needed.

Perhaps it's because I'm watching the show on Netflix, but I've never seen any marketing for Supergirl, or any arrowverse show for that matter. Nor was there any text like that. I've seen texts like that on Arrow and Flash, but not on supergirl.

The problem with crossovers is that they don't pair well with Netflix, where you watch entire shows in order before moving on to the next one. I still wouldn't mind crossovers, it's fun to see different shows interact on occasion, but they should at least tell me what they are crossovering with what. And a brief recap at the start of the next episode wouldn't hurt either.

Watched it on Netflix, y'all missed the "Continued on The Flash" bit.

Also, Welcome to Comics! You get used to piecing things together for Broodyman because you can't find SunshineWoman #37 anywhere.

That said - useful recaps are useful.

[Angua]

I was thinking about this - I could have sworn they did recaps when I watched it. Are you sure it's not just netflix skipping the recaps when you're watching back to back? Cause netflix does that automatically.

[rmsgrey]

I was thinking about this - I could have sworn they did recaps when I watched it. Are you sure it's not just netflix skipping the recaps when you're watching back to back? Cause netflix does that automatically.

So the lesson here is that Netflix is rubbish at crossovers?

[Zohar]

Any streaming service isn't going to provide you with the same experience as following a show in real time. It would be awesome if you could set your play queue for shows to be according to release date, but unfortunately no one provides that yet. I would love to do it with Amazon and the DC animated universe (also Amazon's player is terrible at remembering where you were, including the season - it often just starts you off at episode 1).

[rmsgrey]

Any streaming service isn't going to provide you with the same experience as following a show in real time. It would be awesome if you could set your play queue for shows to be according to release date, but unfortunately no one provides that yet. I would love to do it with Amazon and the DC animated universe (also Amazon's player is terrible at remembering where you were, including the season - it often just starts you off at episode 1).

Can you at least manually assemble an ordered playlist? If not, then YouTube might be the way to go...

[Zohar]

Not really. These services just aren't built for crossovers. YouTube isn't a very good solution though - for one thing it's illegal to have that stuff on it, and as a consequence it's very difficult to find it there. I don't mind too much if I have a guide or something.

[rmsgrey]

Not really. These services just aren't built for crossovers. YouTube isn't a very good solution though - for one thing it's illegal to have that stuff on it, and as a consequence it's very difficult to find it there. I don't mind too much if I have a guide or something.

Sorry, yeah, I meant for shows which are legally available on YouTube, though I don't actually know how flexible they are once you pay for the episodes/season playlists - whether you can rewatch without paying again, whether you can watch out of order, most significantly, whether you can mix and match between playlists... Worst case, it's easier to switch tabs than to switch discs...

[Diadem]

I was thinking about this - I could have sworn they did recaps when I watched it. Are you sure it's not just netflix skipping the recaps when you're watching back to back? Cause netflix does that automatically.

I suppose that's possible?

Netflix sadly has a terrible user interface. Plus their pricing structure vs. available content is absurd, they really fuck over some countries, including mine. Also they outright lie to their users. But sadly you're stuck with them, if you want to watch your content in a legal way. Monopolies suck.

[Zohar]

I'm not sure how they're a monopoly, considering you have many alternatives to get legal content. Maybe not all content, but still. Yes, the US obviously has a lot more options that you might not have available, but there are still plenty of ways to legally get video.