Spoilers Supergirl - Season 1

[ihno]

... and willing to kill everyone who is working for them as well. A very sustainable approach to things.

I miss the crazy villans from Stargate. The neck-breaking would have suited the Goa'uld so well. At least at Supergirl they've refrained from the pseudo-intellectual babble they had at Smallville: "Remember what Alexander the Great said bla bla bla"

 

[Guy Gardener]

I'm almost wondering if this is a trap within a trap, that Astra is trying to save the world and get the most convoluted divorce in the history of the galaxy.

If you share a bed with someone, murder is easy.

Your spouse can have already swallowed half a bath mat before they wake up and start struggling.

Half a bathmat?

#### off.

No one's gag reflex is that good.

 

[Zaku]

If you thought freezing the water was ridiculous, I thought her "super suck" power was absurd. I've never seen Superman do a reverse "super breath" to clear some poisonous gas from a room.

From "A Death in The Family" (he is Superman in disguise)

 

[Christopher]

I remember the discussion between Astra and her Kara's mum where Kara's mum told her that she's been convicted and has to go to prison now. I must have missed the trial I guess.

The trial was shown in "Blood Bonds," the January 4 episode.

To me it seems the sisters was judge, jury, executor etc. pp. all in one person which is a bit simple.

No, we saw in "Blood Bonds" that there was at least one other official involved at the trial.

 

[ihno]

Ok, then there were two people involved in the trial. That makes it better. But Astra was not present, was she? Do I remember correctly that Kara's mum told her about the result? "Oh, btw, you have been convicted, you might get something in the mail!" Shouldn't there be some kind of defense?

But thank you, I will take a look at the scenes again.

 

[Christopher]

Ok, then there were two people involved in the trial. That makes it better. But Astra was not present, was she?

Of course she was. The dialogue between Alura and Astra was at the heart of the whole sequence. You really need to rewatch the episode.

 

[ihno]

Yes, I see. I'm just rewatching the scene (not the whole episode).

I remember the scene (and the dialogue) but I admit I thought that all happened at her home in her living room. And well, it could just as well have happened in her living room, could it not?

Yes, Astra is wearing some kind of shoebox-handcuffs and her husband is there, also with shoebox-handcuffs and some other evil-doers as well. And yes, there is a guy in the background who nods occasionally. Is that Alura's husband?

It doesn't look like a court yard to me. There is no defender, there is no recess in which the court discusses the verdict (there is no court at all), no chance for appeal. There is only a little overdramatic discussion and then Alura says "You give me no choice but to impose the maximum penalty for your crimes..." And then she herself sends her brother in law away to Guantanamo. She is judge, jury and executor in one person, not counting the nodding clacqeur.

 

[Christopher]

And yes, there is a guy in the background who nods occasionally. Is that Alura's husband?

It may have been. I would've thought it was a fellow judge or tribune, but IMDb says that Robert Gant (Zor-El) was in the episode.

It doesn't look like a court yard to me. There is no defender, there is no recess in which the court discusses the verdict (there is no court at all), no chance for appeal.

I don't think what we saw was the actual trial, but the sentencing after the trial. Maybe the verdict had already been decided and Astra and Non were being given one last chance to show repentance and earn clemency before the sentence was carried out.

Of course, Kryptonian society hasn't always been portrayed as benevolent or just. After all, it is a society that silenced an inconvenient truth about the threat to its planet's survival and thereby doomed itself. Some versions have suggested it had a certain fascist quality about it, like the Donner movies and the Byrne post-Crisis version. But on the other hand, we know that Kara lived on Krypton for 12-13 years and remembers it fondly, so I'd be surprised if they were going there in this version.

 

[ihno]

You all have much more background knowledge than me. I have watched Superman II (Donner version) years ago but I'm lost if it comes to different versions of Krypton in different films/comics etc. So I watch Supergirl more of a stand alone series.

I guess the scene is written like that so the audience doesn't know which one of the sisters is the real evil one and so they have some drama. Maybe we can agree on that it's a tv show for a proabably younger audience and you should not look at it too critically. I mean I do that but with a little tongue in cheek.

There is hardly any way you can "retcon" this scene to make it appear like this trial was spawned from a long tradition of justice. Shows like Supergirl have this simplicitiy in them and at least it's not insulting your intelligence like "The 100" is.

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

Or he might just turn out to be a fairly decent human being, over the next few episodes come to terms with Kara not returning his feelings and rebuild the friendship on a more healthy foundation.
That's how I'd go about it anyways...

There's no drama in that; he's emotionally wrecked from being rejected by the woman he's loved long before she turned into SG. It would be poor writing to have him suck it up...or find a convenient new woman to grab his attention.

 

[dahj]

There's no drama in that; he's emotionally wrecked from being rejected by the woman he's loved long before she turned into SG. It would be poor writing to have him suck it up... or find a convenient new woman to grab his attention.

I disagree.
It would be poor writing to have him "turn bad" because he was rejected, and it would essentially confirm the "if your parents are evil, you'll be evil" thing Toyman was trying to sell in this episode. That would just suck, and go against the more optimistic tone of the show.
There's plenty of drama left without turning Winn evil, or his continued pining for Kara.

 

[tomalak301]

I disagree.
It would be poor writing to have him "turn bad" because he was rejected, and it would essentially confirm the "if your parents are evil, you'll be evil" thing Toyman was trying to sell in this episode. That would just suck, and go against the more optimistic tone of the show.
There's plenty of drama left without turning Winn evil, or his continued pining for Kara.

It would also be kind of predictable to have an episode about not wanting to turn evil and then turning evil because a girl pushed you over the edge. This is like the Star Wars effect going on. Winn is a good person who needs to fight against the Dark Side. Hopefully they keep that going for a while and not just turn him evil for shits and giggles.

 

[JD]

You all have much more background knowledge than me. I have watched Superman II (Donner version) years ago but I'm lost if it comes to different versions of Krypton in different films/comics etc. So I watch Supergirl more of a stand alone series.

I guess the scene is written like that so the audience doesn't know which one of the sisters is the real evil one and so they have some drama. Maybe we can agree on that it's a tv show for a proabably younger audience and you should not look at it too critically. I mean I do that but with a little tongue in cheek.

There is hardly any way you can "retcon" this scene to make it appear like this trial was spawned from a long tradition of justice. Shows like Supergirl have this simplicitiy in them and at least it's not insulting your intelligence like "The 100" is.

I apologize for going off topic, but that last comment caught my attention. How does The 100 insult your intelligence? I've never had any issues with it.

 

[davejames]

It would also be kind of predictable to have an episode about not wanting to turn evil and then turning evil because a girl pushed you over the edge. This is like the Star Wars effect going on. Winn is a good person who needs to fight against the Dark Side. Hopefully they keep that going for a while and not just turn him evil for shits and giggles.

Yeah it should definitely take a lot more than being rejected by Kara to turn Winn evil. And it's kinda hard to see him becoming the next Toy Man as well, given that we haven't seen a hint so far of him having his father's gift for building toys and gadgets (in fact he actually had trouble even hooking up a video camera in one episode!)

Yeah he likes to collect toys and is good at sewing superhero outfits and hacking into computer systems, but that doesn't seem like enough to make him the next Toy Man. Or any other kind of supervillain frankly.

 

[ihno]

I apologize for going off topic, but that last comment caught my attention. How does The 100 insult your intelligence? I've never had any issues with it.

I have watched six episodes last year in summer but didn't watch any more. You better ask: what did not insult it. I remember the most idiotic things. I may be wrong in details :

- Like this Oktavia f.e. (I checked her name) She lived for sixteen years in a cupboard or under the floor. First thing she does when she arrives on earth is to jump in the nearest lake. Where did she learn to swim? Do they have a pool on board, which she visited secretly at night? I thought they were short of oxygen.

- They send 100 young people - their genetic future - down to earth after a nucelar holocaust but they forget to give them a communication device or a contermination meter.

- How were those juvenile deliquents able to act like lifelong pathfinders anyway? They were all prisoners (it's a tiny space station but enough space for prisoncells I guess) but on earth they can build camps.

- Why would people that are forced to live on a spacestation kill the technical personal? In one of those episodes the cliche evil guy wanted to kill the main doctor of the station. Who would do the doctor work then? One of the next generation? ups, no, they were sent to earth to die.

- And they have no air on their station but they execute people by throwing them out of the airlock? Still enough air for that I guess.

There were so many things that didn't make any sense. That show was obvioulsy written for the sole purpose of showing beautiful 20 year old (playing even younger ones) running though woods and crying about their relationsship to their parents and having some love drama.
So after six or seven episodes I lost interest to watch more of it.

Comparing to that Supergirl is pure intellectual gold.

 

[Christopher]

They send 100 young people - their genetic future - down to earth after a nucelar holocaust but they forget to give them a communication device or a contermination meter.

- How were those juvenile deliquents able to act like lifelong pathfinders anyway? They were all prisoners (it's a tiny space station but enough space for prisoncells I guess) but on earth they can build camps.

Those don't bother me, because it was never meant to be a viable survey mission -- just an excuse to rid the Ark of undesirables so that the remaining inhabitants could have a few more months of life support. It would've been too unpopular to say outright "We're executing a hundred teenagers," so the Ark leaders dressed it up as a mission to repopulate the surface, one that they expected to fail utterly.

My main problems with The 100 are, one, that they kept killing off black and Asian characters disproportionately, or else casting actors of color mainly as primitive savages and exotic others (and then killing them off too), and two, that the show embraced constant death and bloodshed and torture and cruelty as their primary go-to plot devices, relying on shock rather than substance. I think they're trying to mimic The Hunger Games, but failing to realize that the violence and sadism in THG are a means to a thematic end, not an end in themselves.

 

[ihno]

Those don't bother me, because it was never meant to be a viable survey mission -- just an excuse to rid the Ark of undesirables so that the remaining inhabitants could have a few more months of life support. It would've been too unpopular to say outright "We're executing a hundred teenagers," so the Ark leaders dressed it up as a mission to repopulate the surface, one that they expected to fail utterly.

Didn't they send them down to see if survival is possible so they can go themselves after a while? The kiddies had those subdermal transmitters. As some kind of "environmental tasters". Again, I have only watched some episodes. If you refer to some later twist I have not seen that any more. I also haven't watched long enough to notice the problems you saw.
I also haven't watched THG yet, only heard of that and of the connection to The 100.

 

[Christopher]

Didn't they send them down to see if survival is possible so they can go themselves after a while?

Nominally, of course. And if they happened to survive and demonstrate that Earth was inhabitable after all, so much the better. But that wasn't the primary purpose of the mission, just the cover story.

I also haven't watched long enough to notice the problems you saw.

I don't think you have to watch very long. The first sign of it is when the commander's son, who's one of the central viewpoint characters in the book the series is based on, is killed off in episode 3. Of all the lead characters from the book, the first one to be killed in the show was the black guy. That was a bad start, and it didn't get much better.

 

[Arrrrgggh]

Didn't they send them down to see if survival is possible so they can go themselves after a while? The kiddies had those subdermal transmitters. As some kind of "environmental tasters". Again, I have only watched some episodes. If you refer to some later twist I have not seen that any more. I also haven't watched long enough to notice the problems you saw.
I also haven't watched THG yet, only heard of that and of the connection to The 100.

Yes, that was the mission, but no one expected Earth to be survivable. It was a culling at its heart though, just a culling with a purpose. Either way they were never coming back, and that was the point.

 

[ihno]

Oh, it was based on a book. I didn't know that. Maybe the twist was in the episodes I have still watched but I was too busy rolling my eyes perhaps.

Anyway, I lost interest because of the many very obvious gimmicks and logical errors and things that were only in the script to make a certain audience happy. A bit like the dog in Enterprise or the showers they had there. It's not like that with Supergirl, it's not the most remarkable series either but it's nicely positive. A lot of people hate it (if you look at imdb f.e.) and call it feminist propaganda etc. Well for some a female lead role is feminist propaganda.