Spoilers Supergirl - Season 1
- Thread starter Commander Richard
- Start date
The hologram of Supergirl's mom helped Alex fly the pod, reducing Alex's role in flying it to giving voice commands, really.
And even J'onn - who argued against Alex going - underestimated exactly how taxing defending her *and himself* (he didn't think it would effect him at all but it turned out that prolonged exposure was proving him wrong, maybe) from Myriad would be, or he would have used that, also, as an argument against her going.
There. Everyone happy now?
And even J'onn - who argued against Alex going - underestimated exactly how taxing defending her *and himself* (he didn't think it would effect him at all but it turned out that prolonged exposure was proving him wrong, maybe) from Myriad would be, or he would have used that, also, as an argument against her going.
There. Everyone happy now?
I don't have a problem at all with Alex piloting Supergirl's pod. We are starting to developing self-driving cars now. Surely a civilization that is more technologically advanced as us like the Kryptonians could make a pod that is easy to fly with voice commands and AI. Plus, we know Superman was a baby when he left Krypton and the pod was able to fly itself. Supergirl was a small girl when she left Krypton and the pod flew itself. Clearly there is precedent that the pod can fly itself. So, it shouldn't have been too difficult for Alex to give the pod general voice instructions like "lift off" or "intercept Supergirl" and have the pod fly itself.
Yes but how did she actually save Kara? She wasn't wearing an EV-suit so how would she have opened the pod without dying?
Or did she just use the Pod to nudge Kara towards Earth?
Or did she just use the Pod to nudge Kara towards Earth?
It was nonsense; this was not a situation like Luke Skywalker (in The Empire Strikes Back) who believed he felt the Force enough to go on a rescue mission that was also a known trap. Luke was outmatched (to a degree) by Darth Vader, but he was still closer to a level of actually facing off against the villain, than Alex vs. the Myriad effect, or Non & Indigo. She has no superpowers and was a complete liability with zero capability to hold her own.
Agreed.
Season finale ratings:
The Supergirl season finale suffered yet another drop from the previous week. Episode 19 from 4/11/16 pulled 6.118 (viewers in millions), but E20--the 4/18/16 finale dropped to 6.109. Apparently, the set up from E19 was not enough to bring back the same numbers, or draw anyone else in just to see how this new series wrapped up its season.
And good guys who get other people hurt by charging into dangerous situations without any plan or reasonable expectation of actually being to do anything about it are labeled reckless, arrogant idiots. That's another one of the biggest tropes of heroic fiction.
Yes, it is different.
For this analogy to make any sense in Alex's situation, the mother would have to be 1) physically incapable of actually rescuing the child, 2) suffering from a paralyzing fear of fire that would make it extremely likely she would just get stuck and become another victim that needed to be save and 3) have clear knowledge of highly trained, professional firefighters who she personally knew and trusted already being in the building working on saving the child.
And a generic mother whose child is in danger might very well become so irrational as to go into the burning house in this situation anyway, but we're not talking about a random family member. We're talking about a highly trained military operative who is supposed to understand how missions work and how important it is to send the right people on the right mission and how dangerous it can be to everyone if one of the team members is a outright liability.. There is no world in which Alex's insistance on going into Myriad makes any sense given her background.
But her background also includes growing up with a superpowered foster sister, feeling inadequate by contrast, and turning herself into a badass fighter as a way of overcoming those feelings of powerlessness. Yes, she has training and military discipline, but she also has a lot of pride and a lot of baggage. Staying behind while a superpowered Martian fought her battles for her would bring back a lot of that sense of inadequacy and that need to prove herself. Being in her childhood home with her mother watching couldn't have helped much either. Yes, it was an irrational choice, but it's not a bad thing for a character in a work of fiction to be flawed and to make poor choices. If Alex were a paragon of soldierly perfection, she wouldn't be as interesting.
In medical dramas now and then Doctors and Nurses are ably trying to help a sick and bawling child as one of their parents is screaming "Stop Hurting him! Stop Hurting him!" or "Fix Him, Help him! Please!!!!" or "I need to be here and hold his hand while I'm screaming about the necessary emotional support that bloody sack of meat needs, so get out of the damn way Nurse, so I can hug my child with the massive spinal trauma and almost certainly make it worse!!! I know better than you, and I'm not drunk! Promise!"
J'onn is a shitty parent.
The correct move was to belt Alex, bind her, and then single handedly save the day before she even wakes up.
J'onn is a shitty parent.
The correct move was to belt Alex, bind her, and then single handedly save the day before she even wakes up.
Well, as I've said, the writing on the show is generally sophomoric and ignorant of the Way the World Works, but I keep watching 'cause the actors are so damn likeable.
BTW, since when can't Superman or Supergirl fly in space? What's this shit about "generating thrust"? Does she fart to fly?
BTW, since when can't Superman or Supergirl fly in space? What's this shit about "generating thrust"? Does she fart to fly?
Poor writing all around.
I mean, why couldn't she have just pushed off of Fort Rozz, not only helping send it away from Earth faster, but generating all the force she needs to fly. Nevermind that she didn't need to leap off anything to, say, hover in mid air. Or change directions while flying. Or do anything else that doesn't require anything to push off of as shown pretty much since the first episode.
Who needs logic when DRAMA! (complete with caps lock and exclamation point) is on the line.
Just because you don't like a narrative decision that's been made, it doesn't make said decision poor writing.
There's no "hard and fast" rule that says that Superman and Supergirl HAVE to be able to fly in space, and this show is not the first to have tackled that idea.
That's not why I said it was poor writing.
I said it was poor writing because they keep changing the rules on a whim. At one second she's strong enough to lift millions of tons of dwarf star matter without even breaking a sweat, the next she can't even cling to a nuclear missile without getting thrown off. At another second she's hovering in mid-air and changing directions on a whim, the next she "needs something to thrust off of" (whatever that means, or whatever it is they said). And yet at another second Clark is off-world doing off-world things with no mention of him needing a special suit or rocket, the next Kara can't even hold her breath for a minute or push off of Fort Rozz to send herself hurtling back to Earth.
You can call it a "narrative decision" all you want, but in reality it's just poor writing. It's like saying in one episode that the Enterprise's max speed is Warp 5, then later in that same episode the Captain says "let's hit Warp 9!" and no one says a bloody thing about it being impossible or even requiring technobabble from the engineer; the ship's speed just magically changed because of a "narrative decision."
I'm not asking for her to be a paragon of soldierly perfection, but this isn't the first time the writing on the show has severely undermined her supposed credentials as a professional military agent. At this point it pretty much feels like the writers want her to be an agent whenever they like and to act nothing like an agent whenever it's convenient for them. That's a problem.
Or like it being the 28th century in one episode, and the 23rd a few episodes later? Yeah, you're right - a show that makes mistakes like that just isn't going to be around long.
...and is just another in a season-long push to make Alex relevant in situations beyond her abilities. Once Hank/MM found out about Myriad, he should have ignored Alex, leaving her with her mother.
Of course it made no sense, but Berlanti's (and crew) agenda continues to have this kind of implausible situation derail the series, all for reasons having nothing to do with concern for writing sensible stories.
But in numerous adaptations Superman flies in space. From Filmation's The Superman / Aquaman Hour of Adventure & The Batman / Superman Hour, Hanna Barbera's Super Friends franchise, the WB/Donner movies, the 1988 Ruby-Spears Superman cartoon, etc. Its happened so often and for so many decades that there's an audience expectation of Kryptonians being able to fly in space.
"Audience expectations" is a tough metric to use when judging a show. Whose the "audience"? Where are their "expectations" recorded? Are those "expectations" even possible?
Can we broadly agree that it is unlikely that the *studio* is deeply concerned that it matches up with a kid's cartoon from 1967?
:thumbsup:
Only if you concede that Superman is supposed to wear red
underpants, not look like some kind of blue Ken doll with muted privates. 
